It turned out to be a disastrous meal, passion and impatience and resentment clashing like three winds coming from different directions and meeting in the middle of the table. The butter melted. The bread toasted itself. Water glasses overturned.

“It’s strange out here,” Bay said from her seat, where she was trying to eat. She picked up a handful of sweet-potato chips and left for the garden, where she didn’t think anything was strange at all about the tree. Strange, after all, depended on your personal definition.

“I guess we should go,” Tyler finally said, and Rachel stood immediately.

“Thank you for lunch,” Rachel said. What she didn’t say was, He’s leaving with me and not staying with you. But Claire heard it anyway.

When Sydney came home from work that evening, Claire was in the shower, the water on her hot skin causing such steam that the entire neighborhood was enveloped in the moist fog. Claire heard the bathroom door open and jumped when Sydney’s hand appeared and shut off the water.

Claire poked her head around the curtain. “Why did you do that?”

“Because you can’t see your hand in front of your face for an entire block. I walked into Harriet Jackson’s house, thinking it was ours.”

“That’s not true.”

“It could be true.”

Claire blinked through the water dripping into her eyes. “I had Rachel and Tyler over for lunch,” she admitted.

“Are you crazy?” Sydney said. “Do you want her to leave, ever?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then stop reminding her that Tyler wants you, not her.”

“She’s leaving in the morning.”

“You hope.” Sydney walked out of the bathroom, her hands out in front of her like she couldn’t see. “Don’t take another shower. She won’t be able to see to leave.”

Claire couldn’t sleep that night. In the early-morning hours she crept to Sydney’s room and knelt at the window that overlooked Tyler’s house. She stayed there until daybreak, when she saw Tyler walk with Rachel out to her car, carrying her luggage. He kissed her cheek, and Rachel drove away.

Tyler stood there on the sidewalk, looking at the Waverley house. He’d been doing that all summer, watching the house, wanting in to her life. It was time to let him in. She was going to live or she was going to die. Tyler was going to stay or he was going to go. She had lived thirty-four years keeping everything inside, and now she was letting everything go, like butterflies released from a box. They didn’t burst forth, glad to be free, they simply flew away, softly, gradually, so she could watch them go. Good memories of her mother and grandmother were still there, butterflies that stayed, a little too old to go anywhere. That was okay. She would keep those.