She makes me want to remember things, which isn’t always nice, to be honest, but it feels like the right thing to do. It feels like the only thing I can do for her.

After a couple of months she changed, though, and it was a toss-up whether she’d be happy to see me—smiling or doing this giggle that made me think of gingerbread, I don’t know why. Or whether she’d be terrified, convinced I’d come to steal things from her. She’d cry and wail and throw things at me until I left. Or whether she’d ignore me completely.

On good days we would go for walks or sit together on the porch of the Oceanic. She had this funny habit where she made wishes over everything. If a red bird flew by or a boat went past. Sunsets, rainbows, if I stumbled over the doorjamb of the entryway. Her wishes were always different—good weather tomorrow, someone to bring her treats, health for someone in her family, for her baby sister to go to heaven or for her baby sister to come back (she died of tuberculosis when she was six and the Duchess was eight), for the war to end. Mine was always the same until one day she asked, “Is that really what you want?” I told her it was what I needed, and so what was the point bothering God or the universe or whatever for anything else?

“But what do you want? You must want something, even some little thing?” I thought about the world, the future. Beached whales, people in surgical masks walking along highways bathed in smog, tap water you can set on fire. Waiting in line outside a football stadium with my folks for someone to look at our teeth, waiting in line outside a church for groceries, waiting here . . . I told her I couldn’t think of anything.

“Then you’ll never get anything, silly.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t work like that.”

She brushed her fingers across my forehead and the front of my hair. “I wish you could be less afraid. Just a little less. Come ’ere, I have an idea.” A grin crinkled up around her dark brown eyes, and she led me up to her room faster than I’d ever seen her move before. Her hand clamped enthusiastically around my wrist was girlishly small.

She led me over to her dresser and pulled a little red change purse out of her top drawer. “Here.” She pressed a coin into my palm. “It’s a real Indian Head penny. For courage, like a brave.”

I was relieved she stopped there and didn’t make any embarrassing noises with her hand over her mouth like she did sometimes when she thought we were kids playing.