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.