“She clearly is talented, Maude. She’s somehow managed to turn two weeks into three months. I mean, I thought that’s what we agreed. The minutes of the meeting say two weeks, six at the most. And here we are, three months on, and I know I’m not the only one wondering when we get our island back. No disrespect to Violet, but I don’t see anything in our charter about compromising our vision to run an orphanage for the offspring of every deadbeat who can’t clean up and get on with it. I mean, enough is enough, surely . . .”

And I’m like, right, that’s my talent, getting dumped on Swan and losing everyone who means anything to me. As if I could be anywhere in the world doing whatever I want, and I picked this place, an idiotic rock in the middle of nowhere, irritating the elderly with the fact that I exist. Living next door to some ugly curmudgeon giving me constant side-eye. Calling hospitals and distant relatives and their friends, scanning cameras and police reports and obituaries. Paying the bank for a house that has a death wish and trying to sweep the crumbs left behind into my future. The big bone at the base of my neck ached against the pew I was sunken down into.

Patches of dandelions poke their jagged leaves and rough little heads out along the edge of the dirt road. The closed buds of the new blossoms look like chapped lips puckering for a kiss no one wants. Dust and sweat are forming streaks of mud on the soles of my grandmother’s shoes.

My mother was going to show me how to make dandelion wine, once when I was a kid, but it didn’t work out. We lived in Colorado then. One of my dad’s friends was starting a business, something to do with telecoms or internet phones or something, and he was going to get us in on the ground floor. Turned out to be just another stupid pyramid scheme. We’d packed up and moved two thousand miles for a scam, but that’s the thing with my folks. They hear what they want to hear.

Colorado was where I realized that there are places where people don’t ignore each other to be polite, or even just give you a quick smile and nod if they’ve seen you around; they give you an entire sentence, a whole Have a good day, or whatever. I’ve lived in places where that practically constituted an assault. Having someone be that nice to you, out of nowhere, it’s almost like being touched. Most of the Swans are at least polite like that. Not Nick; he acts like even waving to me would make his hands dirty.