Fran said, “Somewhere. The clockwork ran down. It didn’t give wishes no more. I reckon I didn’t mind. It only ever granted little wishes.”

“Ha ha,” Ophelia said. She stood up. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. I’ll come by in the morning to make sure you’re okay.”

“You don’t have to,” Fran said.

“No,” Ophelia said. “I don’t have to. But I will.”

When you do for other people (Fran’s daddy said once upon a time when he was drunk, before he got religion) things that they could do for themselves, but they pay you to do it instead, you both will get used to it.

Sometimes they don’t even pay you, and that’s charity. At first, charity isn’t comfortable, but it gets so it is. After some while, maybe you start to feel wrong when you ain’t doing for them, just one more thing, and always one more thing after that. Might be you start to feel as you’re valuable. Because they need you. And the more they need you, the more you need them. Things tip out of balance. You need to remember that, Franny. Sometimes you’re on one side of that equation, and sometimes you’re on the other. You need to know where you are and what you owe. Unless you can balance that out, here is where y’all stay.

Fran, dosed on NyQuil, feverish and alone in her great-grandfather’s catalog house, hidden behind walls of roses, dreamed—as she did every night—of escape. She woke every few hours, wishing someone would bring her another glass of water. She sweated through her clothes, and then froze, and then boiled again.

She was still on the couch when Ophelia came back, banging through the screen door. “Good morning!” Ophelia said. “Or maybe I should say good afternoon! It’s noon, anyhow. I brought oranges to make fresh orange juice, and I didn’t know if you liked sausage or bacon so I got you two different kinds of biscuit.”

Fran struggled to sit up.

“Fran,” Ophelia said. She came and stood in front of the sofa, holding a cat-head biscuit in each hand. “You look terrible.” She brushed her knuckles over Fran’s forehead. “You’re burning up! I knew I oughtn’t’ve left you here all by yourself! What should I do? Should I take you down to the emergency?”

“No doctor,” Fran said. “They’ll want to know where my daddy is. Water?”

Ophelia scampered back to the kitchen. “You need antibiotics. Or something. Fran?”