But Miss Grange gave Papa a steady smile instead. “If you would be so kind as to lend me your daughter’s helping hands, I can manage an admirable harvest.”

I leapt up, chagrined at Papa’s behavior. “I will just be a minute, Miss Grange,” and I left the dining room in search of my shawl.

We entered into the cool afternoon, directing our steps over the yellowing lawn toward the dark hem of pines that rung round the back of Grange House. Miss Grange walked slowly but with renewed strength, the mushroom basket bobbing against her hip, her gray figure a ship pointing us into those woods, and I was nothing but the dinghy following.

We proceeded side by side and at a measured pace, though as always, Miss Grange spoke little to me as we passed through the trees. The sound of the waves slapping into the shore receded, so I knew we pierced inward, deeper into the woods, though I had lost all trace of direction. This was a path I had not walked before, and I saw now we were bound for a mushroom patch other than the one that grew in the rocky ledges around the blacksmith shop. All about us, the broken limbs of trees lay like whitened whalebone on the mossy ground, the woods repeating the underwater life of the bordering sea, several granite boulders pocking the pine-needle surface like the sudden gray reefs of an inland ocean.

As we ventured farther and farther in, I grew aware of an old stone wall running alongside us, and looking down, I saw that we walked on a type of road, almost an alleyway of the sort one might find in a formal garden, stretching through the trees, though the long roots of the pines had grown cross the clearing, poking beneath the moss like interwoven fingers. I stepped over them with a little shudder.

After a time, we reached the end of the wall, and I slowed my steps then to gain my bearings. Miss Grange, however, continued straight on. I thought I heard the slap of water against rocks, though how we could have walked so far inland and still hear the ocean confounded me.

For a moment, all was hush. I was aware of feeling quite flushed suddenly, my curls damp on the back of my neck, my forehead hot. Though I did not look at her, I heard Miss Grange’s footfalls stop. I heard her set the basket down. I imagined what she did, though I still stood in the middle of the pathway, not wishing really to venture forward, nor yet backward, content to rest a little in this invisible quiet.

“Maisie Thomas?”