This was the first opportunity she’d had to check the place out since arriving in town, and the prospect of making her initial assessment of the nonprofit boys’ home had a little frisson of excitement slithering up her spine. She locked the car and strode across the pavement to the archway in the black-stained wood fence that formed the grounds’ front perimeter. Gazing out across the property, she noted that its other borders were made up of woods comprised of cedar and alder trees. On the other side of the archway three paths veered off in separate directions. A post at their confluence bristled with wooden hand-shaped signs pointing toward the various buildings to be found down each one. As she started along the path indicated by a thrusting finger that read Administration, she looked around. The homey, sprawling collection of one-storied buttercream-colored, black-trimmed buildings took her by surprise, even though she hadn’t consciously envisioned the setting ahead of time.
