“Bring some water,” she said, pointing toward the spigot and watering can that sat in a small concrete well several dozen yards off.

Robert did, then poured water into each vase, being careful not to disturb Nest’s arrangements.

Together, they stood looking down at the plots, the sun streaming through the branches of the old shade trees that surrounded them in curtains of dappled brightness.

“I remember all the times your grandmother baked us cookies,” Robert said after a minute. “She would sit us down at the picnic table out back and bring us a plate heaped with them and glasses of cold milk. She was always saying a child couldn’t grow up right without cookies and milk. I could never get that across to my mother. She thought you couldn’t grow up right without vegetables.”

Nest grinned. “Gran was big on vegetables, too. You just weren’t there for that particular lecture.”

“Every Christmas we had that cookie bake in your kitchen. Balls of dough and cookie sheets and cutters and frosting and little bottles of sprinkles and whatnot everywhere. We trashed her kitchen, and she never blinked an eye.”

“I remember making cookies for bake sales.” Nest shook her head. “For the church, for mission aid or something. It seemed for a while that I was doing it every other weekend. Gran never objected once, even after she stopped going to church altogether.”

Robert nodded. “Your grandmother never needed to go to church. I think God probably told her she didn’t have to go, that he would come to see her instead.”

Nest looked at him. “That’s a very nice thing to say, Robert.”

He pursed his lips and shrugged. “Yeah, well, I’m just trying to get back into your good graces. Anyway, I liked your grandmother. I always thought, when things got a little rough at home, that if they got real bad I could move in with you if I really wanted to. Sure, you and your grandfather might object, but your grandmother would have me in an instant. That’s what I thought.”

Nest nodded. “She probably would have, too.”

Robert folded his arms across his chest. “You can’t sell your house, Nest. You know why? Because your grandmother’s still there.”

Nest was silent for a moment. “I don’t think so.”

“Yes, she is. She’s in every room and closet, in every corner, and under every carpet, down in the basement and up in the attic. That’s where she is, Nest. Where else would she be?”

Nest didn’t answer.

“Up in Heaven playing a harp? I wouldn’t think so. Too boring. Not floating around on a cloud either. Not your grandmother. She’s in that house, and I don’t think you should move out on her.”

Nest wondered what Robert would say if he knew the truth of things. She wondered what he would say if he knew that Gran’s transgressions years earlier had doomed her family in ways that would horrify him, that Gran had roamed the park at night like a wild thing, that she had run with the feeders and cast her magic in dangerous ways, that her encounter with a demon had brought about both her own death and the death of Nest’s mother. Would he think that she belonged in an afterlife of peace and light or that perhaps she should be consigned to a place where penance might be better served?