When I found my mother, she seemed to have forgotten I was there, inciting my fear of dementia—that she would lose her memories, too, like her parents before her, the house sucking them away to keep for itself as if feeding on her mind. But she was only confused. The memories confused her, she confessed after the fact, so that she had thought me a memory as well, wasn’t sure if I was real or not, as the memories had become more real to her than anything else in this world.

It was easy to fall into the comfortable habits of home, and easier still to tell myself I had to stay for my mother—a sharp, clever woman, but anyone will grow dull and muddled if they are left on their own for too long with their own mind. So I broke my lease, moved the rest of my things in, took over the grocery shopping and other necessary trips into town, and found there the very same people of Shadydale I had left behind, their flat profiles, the infinite corners of their eyes.

These people would never invade Wakefield Manor, however, and so I felt safe from them. They never ventured that far out toward the swamp. They left us well enough alone.

And then I remembered who I was in Shadydale: not just a small, meek, anonymous creature, the way I was out in the world, but one of those Wakefields. Most of the time I kept to myself, tried to make myself invisible, but sometimes I stood outside the post office after mailing the gas bill and stared at the woman walking her dog until she shuddered from my gaze and hurried away, yanking the leash after her. Or I stopped at the diner for a milkshake and sat in the shadowy corner booth, slurping until long after the drink was gone, until that empty bone-rattling gurgle of the straw made the young couple at the next table call out for the bill, throw down some cash, and scurry away whispering.

Sometimes it is a pleasure to be one of those Wakefields. If everyone leaves me alone, then I have nothing to fear.

When we returned from the doctor’s office, Elizabeth had that cracked smile on her face, and she wandered about the house like that, restless, trying to rein in some terrible identity crisis burbling just under the surface, which those smirking women had managed to stir loose. She handed the ultrasound photo to our mother, whose delight seemed not enough for her, as she kept urging my mother on with questions about every little visible part of the child’s body—Don’t you see his foot there? And his head? And what about …?—until even my mother gave her a look of alarmed confusion, said he looked like a healthy baby, and handed back the picture to put a period on the conversation. She then went about cleansing the air of whatever negative energy Elizabeth had brought back with her by lighting up a variety of incense. She hummed all the while.