Well, S. Hawkins helped for a little while, anyway.

Downstairs, Noah is sitting on the couch with a strand of red licorice hanging out of the side of his mouth, playing video games with the volume turned all the way up. I tell him I’m going outside, but I don’t think he even hears me. Or else he’s just gone back to ignoring me again.

I don’t need a jacket because even though it’s fall, it’s a bright, sunny day. I try to think about what I would be doing right now if this were an ordinary day. Things still seem very ordinary:

There are birds pecking at feeders in the yard.

A squirrel runs along the telephone wire like a tightrope walker.

A dog barks in the distance.

After breakfast, on a normal Sunday, I would usually go out to Mama’s “She Shed” to help with her latest mosaic (which is a type of art). My job is to—very carefully, wearing goggles and gloves and all the other safety equipment—smash up old chipped dishes and glass and ceramic tiles into small pieces that Mama uses to make pictures. She uses glue and cement to put the pieces back together again like a puzzle, only you’re not sure what the puzzle is supposed to look like until she’s done.

I cup my hands around my eyes and look inside the window of the She Shed and see all of Mama’s supplies neatly put away in boxes. The mosaic we were working on is only half-finished, propped against the wall. I realize the last time we were actually out in the She Shed was weeks ago. We haven’t been out back in ages.

I walk down the stone path that leads out to the fairy fortress that lines the base of the biggest tree in the backyard, the one that has a hollowed-out kid-sized hole that Jude and I used to pretend was a portal to the enchanted part of the forest. That’s why we chose that tree to build our fairy fortress around in the first place. The fairy fortress started out as “Code Name: Pixie Dust,” a mission to protect the magic fairy portal that lives inside the tree. Whenever Jude and I found special rocks or shells or other tiny things that were unique, we would add them to the fortress.

Or at least we used to, when she was still here.