We didn’t talk when we got home. She went to her room and didn’t come out. I cooked something and made a salad with some red and yellow nasturtiums on top—like a peace offering. It was really pretty. But when I yelled up to her she just called back and said she wasn’t hungry. And neither was I, really, so when I got sick of just sitting alone at the table I packed everything up and cleaned the kitchen till it was totally spotless and went to bed before it was even dark. And now Lolly’s dead and it would have been so easy to make a little bit of an effort when she took me to Appledore. It doesn’t matter, but I can’t stop thinking about it. I never thought my sparkling personality would be a miracle drug, but maybe it would have made a difference or something. Never mind.

But I was talking about the houses on Swan. Most of them look like Lolly’s house—old, white with gray roofs, wooden and straight and, I don’t know, really house-shaped, like the picture of a house you’d draw if you were a kid who was really good at drawing. But there are a couple of exceptions. Some people have gone all out. Marie is a widow in her eighties who’s made her house look exactly like it belongs to a witch in a story. It’s short and purple and surrounded by wildflowers and grasses taller than I am. The air around it is thick with bees and butterflies and whatever she’s got on the stereo. Jefferson Airplane or Fleetwood Mac. She dresses to match her house in long skirts and lots of jewelry that looks like it performs some kind of magical function, sucking up moonlight to save for later, or hiding poison or medicine or blades. The kind of thing my mom likes to wear. Marie calls herself the Island Crone, but actually a lot of people call themselves that, so many that I had to go and look up what it meant.

The Psychedelicatessen is another building that stands out. It’s the island’s only café, run by a husband-and-wife team, Suzie Q and Johnny Come Lately. They seem to know how weird they are, which is comforting and funny because otherwise they would be pretty scary. They wear matching leather jackets with Hell’s Angels written across the back, even when it’s way too hot. Their motorcycles are two of the only vehicles on the island, along with some mopeds and three or four golf carts. I don’t know if electric wheelchairs count. The Psychedeli looks just like the name sounds, like a tie-dyed shirt with skeletons wearing top hats and Come on inside for a little touch of grey . . . graffitied underneath. The couple next door helps them when they get really busy—Helen and Nancy, who are only sixty-six and sixty-seven. People under seventy are usually called “youngsters” here, which got more complicated when I arrived, ’cause some people started calling me “the youngster” and then people got confused about whether someone was talking about a youngster or the youngster, but it’s not such a huge problem that we have to call the Coast Guard or anything and we have plenty of free time here, so sometimes it gives you something to talk about.