She says it without surprise. They must have realized already; they must have been speculating about those Wakefields, the witches, the swamp people, this whole time, knowing who I am by virtue of not recognizing me, for it is true, I do not spend much time in town, I am like a ghost here.

“And what does that make you?” I snap back. “How would you like it if I sat here snickering and whispering about you? As if I had nothing better to do.”

Both women now fix me with looks of such vapid affront that I almost laugh in their faces, but we are interrupted by Elizabeth, enormous and full of easy courage. “Making friends?”

The woman pinches her red lips as if sucking on a lemon. “Another Wakefield, I suppose.”

Scornfully, Elizabeth replies, “I’m not a Wakefield anymore.” Then, as soon as the words have tumbled from her mouth, her face goes ice-cold and still; I can see the realization blooming in real time. If a divorce is imminent, then will she be a Wakefield again? Will she revert to her maiden name? Who will she be, she wonders? Elizabeth Hill or Elizabeth Wakefield?

We are Wakefields, all of us, even in this patriarchal world. Even when my mother was married to my father, she kept her name, and they debated long and hard over which name their daughters would take, eventually settling on my mother’s family name, allowing us to inherit a lineage that would otherwise be lost to time and X chromosomes. Perhaps it does not matter, anyway. Perhaps the Wakefield name will die with us after all. It is so hard to keep a thing like that alive.

Maybe the house will keep it alive for us.

When I first came to stay with my mother, my intentions were for a short-term lease. A few weeks, perhaps, to regain my equilibrium. A month at best.

I should have known: once this house has you, it doesn’t let you go.

I slept on Liz and Don’s couch for about a month after I was mugged. Each night sleep tugged gently at me like television static, and just as I let my eyes slip closed, a windblown shutter would beat against the window, or a neighbor’s dog would bark to be let out, and I would snap awake and lie wide-eyed in the dark with my ears attuned to every minute noise that crept or cracked or whispered: the hiss of a passing car, the rustling of a bothered tree outside, or perhaps the patter of footsteps, some stranger stealing onto the porch, rattling a lock pick until the handle of the front door jiggled metallically, and the creak of the door swinging open, and that pungent odor of musk and sweat and my cheek pressed into the cement and the gun pressed into my neck—

Unable to take it, I would rise from the couch, check all the locks, make sure the windows were closed, and then, wired with nervous energy, I would spend the next several hours straightening up the house: pairing shoes and lining them side by side against the wall, alphabetically organizing DVDs, putting empty glasses in the dishwasher—and once I was so bored and fidgety that I moved all the furniture in the living room four inches to the left, just to see if they would notice in the morning.