Tully is placed in the foster care system

Tully is placed in the foster care system after her grandmother Ima’s death and her mother’s refusal to take custody. The decision strips away the home Tully hoped to keep and leaves her facing a future she rejects; the prospect of the Mularkeys returning the next day becomes her immediate hope of escape from that outcome.

The Loss of a Guardian

After Ima’s funeral, Tully’s mother disappears while Tully is still trying to gather herself. A social-services worker waits outside Tully’s bedroom, glancing at her watch as she attempts to explain what comes next. Tully objects that she is almost eighteen, that there is no mortgage on Ima’s house, and that she has paid the bills that year. In her view, those facts make living alone a reasonable possibility. The worker’s practical urgency, however, leaves no space for that argument: the lawyer is expecting them, and Tully must pack.

Tully closes her suitcase after putting Kate’s letters inside. Unable to say that she is ready, she picks up the case and her macramé purse and goes with the worker. The letters are among the few possessions she carries from the life she is being made to leave. Her compliance is not consent: the act of shutting the suitcase marks a forced transition, not a chosen departure.

The Placement Decision

At the lawyer’s office, Tully quietly corrects him when he calls her Tallulah, reminding him that she prefers Tully. He then confirms that her mother has refused custody. Tully has rehearsed an argument for being allowed to live alone, but in the office she feels small and too young to make it prevail. His apology offers little comfort; she has grown to loathe the sentiment because it cannot change what has happened.

The social-services worker, Ms. Gulligan, has found a family willing to care for Tully and other displaced teenagers. The lawyer presents the placement’s practical advantage: Tully can remain at her current school. His attempt to frame that continuity as good news draws a sarcastic response from her. Remaining at school may preserve one part of her routine, but it does not answer her deeper objection to being placed in care.

The arrangement is accompanied by a consequential decision about Ima’s estate. Ima has left Tully both homes, the car, bank accounts, and stocks, while directing her to continue monthly payments to her daughter, Dorothy. The lawyer explains that selling the homes would provide Tully with money for years and help pay for college. Tully sees the other side immediately: if the houses are sold, she will have no home at all. Ima’s instructions preserve financial opportunity, including her hope that Tully might one day win a Pulitzer, but they do not give Tully a place to live now.

Refusing Foster Care as a Future

After the meeting, Tully takes her suitcase into the hallway and leans against the wall, trying not to cry. Her response to the placement is direct and absolute: foster care cannot be her future. The declaration gives the episode its central tension. Adults have arranged a safe placement and a path to continued schooling, while Tully experiences the decision as the removal of her home and her control over what happens next.

She looks at the date on her Bicentennial wristwatch and remembers that the Mularkeys will be home tomorrow. Their imminent return supplies a concrete alternative to the placement, though the available evidence does not establish the terms of any new arrangement at this point. What matters here is the contrast between the imminent institutional decision and Tully’s belief that a family who knows her may offer another possibility.

A Need for Care and Belonging

The foster-care decision follows a history in which Tully has been left to bear losses without a dependable parent. When she later tells Kate that her grandmother has died, she names her anger at Cloud, Ima, and God; Kate responds by holding her while she sobs. Earlier, after Tully discloses that she has been raped, Kate’s first response is to ask whether she is okay. These moments clarify what an official placement cannot provide by itself: emotional presence, trust, and care responsive to Tully’s particular distress.

The Mularkey household also offers an image of care before the placement crisis. Mrs. Mularkey tells Tully that Kate is a good girl and has been praying for Tully’s mother to recover from cancer, even setting up a small altar in her room. This kindness does not erase Tully’s losses or guarantee that the family will take her in, but it helps explain why the Mularkeys’ return matters so much to her. For Tully, belonging is not merely a question of where she sleeps or whether she can continue school; it is bound to whether someone will remain present when her family has not.

Recurring Care and Its Limits

Later in the story, Tully repeatedly takes an active role in caring for people close to her. When Kate becomes dizzy and bleeds, Tully steadies her, gets her to a phone, insists on riding in the ambulance, and stays beside her, repeating that she is there. As an adult, she offers to accompany Marah to modeling school and help her through it, although Kate objects that Tully is not Marah’s mother and sees the offer as undermining her authority. The conflict shows that care can be fiercely devoted and still raise questions of responsibility and boundaries.

That tension becomes sharper when Tully intervenes publicly in Kate and Marah’s relationship, telling Kate that both she and Marah need help and that Johnny has asked her to act. Her concern is real, but the intervention is also a breach of trust and leaves Kate feeling exposed. By contrast, when Kate is dying, Tully asks Johnny to take the children home and stays in the hospital room with her; she brings a recording of her final show, and the two watch it together. Kate asks Tully not to treat her as if she is dying, but to remain herself so Kate can remember who she is. The request defines care as presence shaped by the person receiving it, rather than by the caregiver’s impulse to manage or protect.

Across these later moments, Tully’s childhood placement resonates as more than a change of address. She knows what it is to have decisions made around her while the need for dependable attachment remains unanswered. Her later acts of loyalty often take the form of staying close and offering practical help, but the story also distinguishes supportive presence from taking control. The placement’s emotional force lies in that lasting contrast: institutional arrangements can secure a bed or preserve a school routine, while belonging depends on relationships in which someone listens, responds, and stays.