In the kitchen with its bleached mock-marble Formica and floral linoleum, with a gun above the door and an electric stove set into the recess where a wood stove must have once stood, Sylvie Spicer had cleaned up the scrapes on Linda’s hands, anointing them with yellow iodine. Now she served tinned fruitcake in the living room. The sinking furniture was crowded by low shelves of curling farm annuals, condensed novels, an aged encyclopaedia and a few curious titles such as In the Wake of Sea Serpents and The Fables of Mkhitar Gosh.

“That was my son. We lost him.” The boy in the picture with its curved glass frame was holding a rifle and not exactly a boy. He wasn’t in uniform, but Linda, not used to seeing rifles in snapshots, assumed a war took him. Korea, perhaps? The frame was older than the picture. He looked like a clever young man; he might have been an amusing uncle. But he wasn’t Linda’s uncle, and Sylvie had never been her grandmother. A dusty, stale grief sat in the hollow of Linda’s throat.

Sylvie went on. “They found his clothes and gun, but no sign of him. Then your mother arrived. Washed up in the creek after the rain. I almost hated her for taking poor David’s place. Strange girl. Never liked to say where she’d been before us, and didn’t stay long after. But she was the only thing I had left to love.”

“She loved me,” said Linda, as she had told herself many times. She needed to believe it—she had lost any claim she hoped to have on Mrs Spicer, and the ache surprised her. Still, the old woman had invited her here. Maybe she was lonely. A foster-grandmother was better than none. “Do you have any photos of her?”

“No,” said Mrs Spicer.

Linda pulled out her wallet. “I have one in here—not very good, she never did like cameras—you can have it. If you want.”

“My memory will serve. What happened on the path?”

In the ordinariness of the house, it all seemed half-imagined. “Your dog,” said Linda. “I’m frightened of dogs. They always seemed to be barking at us when I was little. I was startled, and fell into the creek.”

“I don’t keep a dog,” said Mrs Spicer flatly, and stood to carry the teapot back to the kitchen.

Linda glanced around for a telephone. Perhaps Darryl Scott, taciturn as he was, could take her back to Carter’s Crossing. There must be somewhere to wait for a bus back to the coast.

“Silver-brown?” Mrs Spicer asked from the kitchen.

“Yes,” said Linda. “With pale eyes. Like bottle-glass.”

“It must have liked you,” said Sylvie Spicer, bitter as the tea. “It doesn’t usually show itself so readily. Called, did it?”