The first thing she did when she woke up was run a bath. In the mirror, she took a quick inventory. Her hair was lank and greasy, all witchy knots. There were circles under her eyes, and her tongue, when she stuck it out, was yellow. When she was clean and dressed again, her jeans were loose and she could feel all her bones. “I could eat a whole mess of food,” she told Ophelia. “But a cat-head and a couple of Pop-Tarts will do for a start.”

There was fresh orange juice, and Ophelia had poured it into a stoneware jug. Fran decided not to tell her that her daddy used it as a sometime spittoon.

“Can I ask you some more about them?” Ophelia said. “You know, the summer people?”

“I don’t reckon I can answer every question,” Fran said. “But go on.”

“When I first got there,” Ophelia said, “when I went inside, at first I decided that it must be a shut-in. One of those hoarders. I’ve watched that show, and sometimes they even keep their own poop. And dead cats. It’s just horrible.

“Then it just kept on getting stranger. But I wasn’t ever scared. It felt like there was somebody there, but they were happy to see me.”

“They don’t get much in the way of company,” Fran said.

“Yeah, well, why do they collect all that stuff? Where does it come from?”

“Some of it’s from catalogs. I have to go down to the post office and collect it for them. Sometimes they go away and bring things back. Sometimes they tell me they want something and I get it for them. Mostly it’s stuff from the Salvation Army. Once I had to buy a hunnert pounds of copper piping.”

“Why?” Ophelia said. “I mean, what do they do with it?”

“They make things,” Fran said. “That’s what Ma called them, makers. I don’t know what they do with it all. They give away things. Like the toys. They like children. When you do things for them, they’re beholden to you.”

“Have you seen them?” Ophelia said.

“Now and then,” Fran said. “Not so often. Not since I was much younger. They’re shy.”

Ophelia was practically bouncing on her chair. “You get to look after them? That’s the best thing ever! Have they always been here?”

Fran hesitated. “I don’t know where they come from. They aren’t always there. Sometimes they’re…somewhere else. Ma said she felt sorry for them. She thought maybe they couldn’t go home, that they’d been sent off, like the Cherokee, I guess. They live a lot longer, maybe forever, I don’t know. I expect time works different where they come from. Sometimes they’re gone for years. But they always come back. They’re summer people. That’s just the way it is with summer people.”

“Like how we used to come and go,” Ophelia said. “That’s how you used to think of me. Like that. Now I live here.”