I wave goodbye and head for the gates of the graveyard, where a few yellow leaves have already fallen onto the grass. Boomer and I walk between the old gravestones—crooked and slick with moss, some of them so old you can’t even read the names on them anymore—until we come to the newer ones.

The grass around the grave behind Gram’s—the one belonging to Isabella Fortune, Gram’s teacher who died really young—has been tidied up recently, and someone’s planted a little rosebush by it. It makes me happy to think there must be somebody left to remember her, even after all this time.

I kneel on the ground in front of Gram and Grandpa’s grave.

My grandpa died of a heart attack when I was too little to remember him, but I think I love him anyway. I know from the way Gram used to talk about him that he was a really good husband. The kind who gave her books and inscribed them, “For my muse and my best friend.”

Today, though, I’m almost jealous enough to hate him, because she’s with him now and not here with me and Boomer.

The grass is uneven at the place where they buried Gram’s ashes. Unlike on the old tombstones, the lettering on this one is sharp—sharp enough to cut me all up inside. Where there used to be only one name, now there are two.

“Hi, Gram,” I whisper, pressing my palm to her name.

Boomer whines before flopping down beside me.

“It’s weird being in the cottage without you,” I go on. Just because Gram can’t answer doesn’t mean I can’t keep on talking to her. It makes me feel a little less lonely anyway.

Boomer lays his head in my lap, and I rub his ears, tugging them gently the way Gram used to.

“I guess everything’s been kind of weird since you died, Gram. It’s too lonely in the Spinney. And there’s this thing that’s been happening to my skin. It’s turning white. I think . . . I think I might have this condition.”

Until now, I haven’t actually said the word out loud yet. Maybe I’m worried that if I say it, I’ll make it real. Like an incantation.

But maybe the opposite will happen. Maybe it’s like in Rumpelstiltskin. Maybe if I say the name, I’ll take away its power, and I won’t feel so scared about it anymore.

“It’s called vitiligo,” I say.

I know. It doesn’t sound like a big deal. It sounds more like something you would order at an Italian restaurant than a skin disease.

“It isn’t dangerous or anything, which is good, but it makes your skin turn white. And it can spread all over your body. Weird, right?”