Please stop, I told him. I knew there was no ghostly mother hanging around. There was no one hanging around. The smell of sandalwood was everywhere, but that didn’t mean we weren’t suddenly and terrifyingly alone, or that our future plans hadn’t been obliterated with swift and absolute disregard. When she died and her body was gone, the silence in the house was overwhelming. Whole systems of movement and vibration evaporated. It felt wrong, like the air before a storm, to be without parents.

We were twenty when she died. We had no college education, no way of making money, a house three times too big for us, a mortgage, and a sudden necessity to readjust everything we thought the future held. The only thing I understood clearly was what my responsibility was in regard to Lucas. I could not leave him alone. Never. What kind of sister would do such a thing?

There was no alternative, so I gave up thinking about alternatives. Anyway, I was happy on the island with Lucas. Loving my brother was the biggest feeling I’d ever had. It was a ferocious feeling, almost angry. It was bigger than anything I’d felt at school, I told myself. Who was Mary, a friend I’d had for a few weeks, compared to this relationship between brother and sister? And Lucas wasn’t an ordinary brother.

When my mother told me to take care of Lucas, it was because he honestly needed taking care of. Despite his shyness, or because of it, as kids we were always together. He needed me to talk for him. Even with the islanders, he was rigid and reserved. And with new people? He turned pale; he trembled; he broke out in a cold sweat. He could barely breathe. He was afraid of other people. Or afraid of how they made him feel. My parents made him see a psychologist for years—but he never learned to like people. Only me. I was his sister, and his friend. And after Mom died, I was his mother, too.

He was happy that way; at least most of the time. He knew the deserted stretches of beach. He knew the hidden forest paths. He began his job as a landscaper at the Day Estate the summer after we graduated high school, and he’d worked there ever since. The plants and seeds and sod and mulch and leaves and moss and old stones never tried to make conversation.

He wore an old sun hat when he went out, so he could pull it down over his eyes when he passed someone.