“I’ve finally decided to throw my hat into the ring. I’m running for Congress. My team decided a few months ago that a series of new real estate commercials would be the perfect way to reintroduce me to the public, only this time with you and Devin “Moving On” with me. I received a lot of condolences after Matt died from people who were fans of the old commercials. They wanted to know what happened to him. What his life turned out like. This will show them. It will be a nice tribute to him. It will make a lot of people remember him—and me.” Silence. “Kate?”

It still amazed Kate that when Cricket did talk of Matt, she did it so plainly. Her grief wasn’t fresh. Cricket had mourned Matt a long time ago, when she’d lost him to Kate. It was the reason why, a few months after his death, Cricket had been so matter-of-fact about getting rid of all of Matt’s clothes. Kate had let her; at one point she’d even tried to help, stopping sometimes to tell Cricket a story behind a shirt or a pair of shoes. Cricket hadn’t liked that and had told Kate that she could handle this on her own. Kate had seen it then, just briefly, Cricket’s jealously that Kate knew more about her son’s life than she did. Kate had saved only one item of Matt’s clothing from Cricket’s purge, that T-shirt with the moth on it, hidden in a sewing bag somewhere among her things back in Atlanta.

“That’s what this past year has been about? Getting you ready to run for Congress?” Kate finally said. She couldn’t fully wrap her mind around it. She’d always known Cricket was unreadable, but she never imagined that this was what she’d been hiding.

“Of course not. It’s been about getting you and Devin through this difficult time,” Cricket said, sounding just like she did in her commercials.

“But you’ve known about this for months? Why didn’t you say anything? I’ve gone along with everything you wanted me to do for the past year, Cricket. Why did you still feel the need to blindside me with this?”

Cricket made a sound of disbelief. “Selling your house for, frankly, more than it was worth, putting your daughter in private school, letting you move in with me, giving you a job—these are things you just went along with?”

“I didn’t want any of it,” Kate said loudly, and the ghost ladies on the lake seemed to turn to her. “And I don’t want to be a part of this either, Cricket. Matt wouldn’t think of new commercials as a nice tribute to him. He would hate them. He would never want Devin to be in them. Did you give any thought to that?”