She leaned in and whispered, “The Good Lord made marijuana so my hips wouldn’t hurt, that he did. Blessings all to him!”

“Blessings to Jesus.”

“Praise be to God!” She gave me a squeezy hug. “I’ll be by your bookstore later to buy some of your coconut chiffon cake. I heard you have that in? It tastes so delicious with the . . .” She wiggled an invisible joint with her fingers and winked at me. “And I’ll need a juicy romance. You know my authors. Have any new ones? You do? Perfection. So, must go. God is waiting! And he doesn’t judge my la la la!”

I would have to agree with her on that. I don’t think God judges pot smokers. Surely He has much better things to do.

I did think of Chief Ass Burn. He might well sit in judgment of my mother and aunts, swinging his handcuffs.

This was not a safe situation.

I warned my mother and aunts that night. “Chief Ass Burn will most likely arrest you if he finds out what you’re growing in the greenhouse.”

They laughed. They were making new hats. They were sending them to a hospital on the mainland for a fund-raiser for kids. They were using faux flowers so the “hats will last until Kingdom Come and beyond that into eternity,” Aunt Camellia said.

“You have to take this seriously,” I begged.

They pshawed me and attached more faux daffodils, wisteria, and tulips, a tiny lizard (clearly, faux), a yellow parakeet, and three butterflies on wires so they wiggled about. It sounds silly, but the Dr. Seuss–like hats were a creative, moving, colorful sight to behold.

“We are healing others,” my mother said. “Physically and mentally. We should call ourselves The Hat Healers.”

“We are simply selling happy sticks,” Aunt Camellia said. “Everyone likes to be happy.”

“We have a side business, and we’re going to Antarctica,” Aunt Iris muttered. “It’s purely, practically economically driven.”

What I felt purely, practically? Alarm.

* * *

The next morning, early, before I went to work, I grabbed coffee and sat down at our cozy beach on a log and stared at the other islands across the white bubbles of the waves. The sun was coming up, a soft yellow, slashes of cotton candy pink and a deep orange spreading across a few puffy clouds. The birds were busy, a song here and there, the trees whispering in a slight wind.

Sundance sat right next to me on my left while Butch and Cassidy wrestled and ran. Mars and Ghost were exploring the trees. In the distance I could hear Shakespeare and Jane Austen whinnying.

I had woken up deeply sad.