“I’d love a cup, even with this heat. I haven’t gotten used to the iced tea thing, yet,” Dani said.

Jillian gave her a sympathetic look. “Did you get confused when they offered you ‘sweet or unsweet?’”

“Yes. What in the hell is ‘unsweet?’ I’ve traveled around the world twice and I’ve never heard of it. And when I said so, the waitress at the truck stop in Houma gave me water.”

“You’ve mostly traveled outside of the American South, huh?” Jillian asked as Dani followed her down the rickety wooden steps to the tiny dollhouse kitchen, with its ancient refrigerator.

“I was born in Wisconsin, spent some of my toddler years in Arizona, and then I lost count of the places my dad decided we needed to visit. My passport couldn’t hold any more stamps by the time I was eight.”

“That sounds nomadic,” Jillian said as she pulled a kettle down from a hook over the sink. Dani shrugged, sitting at the tiny breakfast table. “Well, for the record, they’re just asking if you want a plain glass of iced—unsweet. Some people prefer to sweeten it at their tables with the tiny colored packet of their choice. Others want the real deal—basically, rock candy added into boiling hot tea so the sugar dissolves evenly through the drink. I do not recommend trying it without a half-and-half mix of sweet and unsweet on the first try. Otherwise your dental enamel could spontaneously dissolve.”

“That sounds really complicated. I think I’ll just stick with Diet Coke.”

Jillian filled the kettle. “Probably for the best. Anyway, the house has been called maison de fous, the Fool’s House, since it was constructed more than a century ago. A sea captain named Worthen built it for a water sprite he’d fallen madly in love with. He retired from his navy commission and followed her into the bayou. He built the house to show her how much he wanted a life with her, to show her the sort of future he could give her. But she was just not that into him, rejected him pretty much at every turn, and he was so distracted by the constant refrains of ‘let’s just be friends’ that he didn’t really pay attention to what he was doing when he was building, or that his house in no way resembled anything that his neighbors lived in.”

“Are all sea sprites so freaking mean?” Dani asked.

Jillian set the kettle on the stove and pulled two mugs from the cupboard. One that said, “Loveland, Ohio—Home of the Loveland Frog,” and another that said, “Knitters grab life by the balls” in hot pink script over two round skeins of pink yarn.