He dialed James’s cell phone number. He began to worry after the tenth ring. Then he started saying to himself, after the twentieth ring I’ll know this wasn’t meant for him.

Then the thirtieth.

The fortieth.

The fiftieth.

Bay watched the party preparations from under the tree. Everything seemed fine, so she couldn’t figure out why she felt so anxious. Maybe because there were tiny vines of thorns starting to sprout along the edge of the garden, so small and so well hidden that even Claire, who knew everything that happened in the garden, couldn’t see them yet. Or maybe she had seen and had decided to ignore them. Claire was happy, after all, and being happy made you forget that there were bad things in the world. Bay wasn’t quite happy enough to forget. Nothing was perfect yet. Still, Tyler had stopped roaming his yard at midnight and giving off those purple snaps that looked like Pop Rocks. And it had been more than a week since Bay or her mother had smelled Bay’s father’s cologne, and Sydney smiled more because of it. Sydney had even started to talk more about Henry, bringing him up in nearly every conversation they had. Bay should be pleased about all this. She was even registered for school now, and in two weeks she would start kindergarten. Maybe that’s what was bothering her. She knew her mother had lied about Bay’s name at registration. It was a bad start.

Or maybe it was just the fact that Bay still couldn’t figure out how to make the dream she’d had of this place real. Nothing worked. She couldn’t find anything that made sparkles on her face, and her mom wouldn’t let her take any more crystal from the house outside to experiment. There was no way to replicate the sound of paper flapping in the wind either. There hadn’t even been any wind for days, not until that afternoon when, as soon as Sydney and Claire tried to spread the ivory tablecloth over the table in the garden, out of nowhere the wind suddenly kicked up. The tablecloth snapped out of the sisters’ hands and floated across the garden like a child had draped it over his head and was running away with it. They laughed and chased it.

Sydney and Claire were happy. They stirred rose petals into their oatmeal in the mornings, and they stood side by side at the sink as they did the dishes in the evenings, giggling and whispering. Maybe that was all that mattered. Bay shouldn’t worry so much.

Big clouds, white and gray like circus elephants, began to lumber across the sky with the wind. Bay, on her back by the tree, watched them pass.

“Hey, tree,” she whispered. “What’s going to happen?”

Its leaves shook and an apple fell to the ground beside her. She ignored it.