Some people are so rich, they don’t even notice when they shame others. What value was there in all the deliberate, scrabbling care Jane put into her subsistence now, if a near-stranger’s indifferent invitation, born of boredom and a need to pee, made Jane more financially comfortable than she could make herself?

But it wasn’t possible to say no, because of Aunt Magnolia. The promise.

“Janie, sweetheart,” Aunt Magnolia had said when Jane had woken extra early one morning and found her aunt on the stool at the kitchen counter. “You’re awake.”

“You’re awake,” Jane had responded, because Jane was the insomniac in the family.

She’d balanced her hip on the edge of Aunt Magnolia’s stool so she could lean against her aunt’s side, close her eyes, and pretend she was still asleep. Aunt Magnolia had been tall, like Jane, and Jane had always fit well against her. Aunt Magnolia had put her cup of tea into Jane’s hands, closing both of Jane’s palms around its warmth.

“You remember your old writing tutor?” Aunt Magnolia had said. “Kiran Thrash?”

“Of course,” Jane had responded, taking a noisy slurp.

“Did she ever talk about her house?”

“The house with the French name? On the island her dad owns?”

“Tu Reviens,” Aunt Magnolia had said.

Jane had known enough French to translate this. “‘You return.’”

“Exactly, darling,” Aunt Magnolia had said. “I want you to make me a promise.”

“Okay.”

“If anyone ever invites you to Tu Reviens,” she’d said, “promise me that you’ll go.”

“Okay,” Jane had said. “Um, why?”

“I’ve heard it’s a place of opportunity.”

“Aunt Magnolia,” Jane had said with a snort, putting her cup down to look into her aunt’s eyes. Her aunt had had a funny blue blotch staining the otherwise brown iris in one of her eyes, like a nebula, or a muddy star, with little spikes, spokes.

“Aunt Magnolia,” Jane had repeated. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Her aunt had chuckled, deep in her throat, then had given Jane a one-armed hug. “You know I get wild ideas sometimes.”

Aunt Magnolia had been one for sudden trips, like camping in some remote part of the Finger Lakes where overnights weren’t exactly permitted and where cell phones didn’t work. They would read books together by lantern light, listen to the moths throw themselves against the canvas of the tiny, glowing tent, then finally fall asleep to the sound of loons. And then a week later Aunt Magnolia might go off to Japan to photograph sharks. The images she brought back amazed Jane. It might be a photo of a shark, but what Jane saw was Aunt Magnolia and her camera, pressed in by water, silence, and cold, breathing compressed air, waiting for a visit from a creature that might as well be an alien, so strange were the inhabitants of the underwater world.

“You’re wild, Aunt Magnolia,” Jane had said. “And wonderful.”

“But I don’t ask you for many promises, do I?”

“No.”