"Iowa," she echoes, spelling out the state name more slowly and with less grace than Regan. But she spells it, her first word in a new language, and that's a triumph all its own. She doesn't try to copy the other sign the girl shows her; something about it seems private, maybe just the fact that her now-absent family used it back wherever Regan's from. But just to have managed Iowa is enough to make her grin, bright and open, at the other girl.

Oh, that's brilliant, she writes. Thank you for showing me--wait, how do you say 'thank you'?