I smiled at her. “You have a right to the name she gave her daughter, Cady. A name to conjure with, to undertake bold deeds. I’m glad you don’t want to give it up.”

“I owe you a lot,” Cady said. “My life in the silo—I can’t ever repay that. Giving me the truth about my birth after all this time. It adds up to a huge debt.”

I nodded at her. “It’s the cliché of our era, to pay it forward, but that’s what you do when you feel overwhelmed by gratitude. I don’t want anything from you except to know you’re doing your best in a world that’s hard on poets and small creatures.”

Gertrude couldn’t quite forgive me for upsetting the narrative she’d imposed on Cady’s life, but at least she offered me a glass of wine and a bowl of nuts; at least she let me talk to her granddaughter in the living room instead of on the cold porch. And she let me bring Peppy in with me.

The next day I went to see Sonia. She was in a nursing home, recovering her energy so she could join her brother Stuart in Maine. Three weeks without alcohol or those badly named recreational drugs had taken some of the coarseness out of her skin. She didn’t have any memory of the events at the Lion’s Pride, but she did remember watching the air force reel through Doris McKinnon’s front-room window.

“I was there, you know, back in 1983. I saw it all. I saw them shoot Matt, I saw Magda steal the film from the air force truck while everyone was arguing. She put it in the basket that Doris and Lucinda had left in Jenny’s tent. I guess she thought she’d come back for it, but Lucinda took it up to the house.

“Later, after I recovered from the plague, Nate couldn’t bear that I knew what had happened, so he was happy for me to be crazy. I became what everyone wanted, the crazy woman. I’ve promised Stuart I won’t drink or do drugs while I’m living with him and Kevin up in Bangor, but that’s the best I can do right now. Stay sober, keep away from Shirley and Nate. One day, one minute at a time, like all those slogans at St. Rafe’s kept telling me.”

“I borrowed your journals,” I said, “and they were stolen out of my room. I’m sorry. The army has them—Bram Roswell’s private goons had broken in and taken them, and Colonel Baggetto recovered them. They seem to be evidence now in a federal case against Marlon Pinsen and Bram Roswell. You may never be able to get them back. Those beautiful pictures you painted of Lima and Autumn are gone, too. The only thing they didn’t take was this.”