“Good. But you’ll get no prize for knowing.”

He stepped back even farther from me, like he might leave without ever turning around. Instead, he stopped.

“I can make sure you stay this way. That you are Elsie forever.” His brow buckled as though I’d kept him waiting an impossible time. “I can make sure you are never changed, do you hear me?”

“I hear you, Lyman.” It was his skin that changed then, turning damp and pale before me. “You can make sure of that, I’m aware. You must know that’s why I’m here. But you will spare me or you won’t; either way, you’ll get no payment from me.”

My entire body clenched tight, threatened for the second time in my short visit to the Shepherd house. But my Source’s husband seemed to crumble then, and the next moment Lyman was gone, disappeared into another faintly lit room. When I was alone, I breathed free.

Leaning against a column on Lyman Shepherd’s porch, I waited. For Dolores to awaken somewhere inside the house and fill the late afternoon with screams. For Lyman to come and find me once he’d collected himself—or hadn’t. I didn’t worry over the unlikely reemergence of Dolores’s attendant, because pride I understood.

I looked out from the hilltop, as quiet as the valley below. Every breath was even, but more than that. It was easy, like the contentment of revealing a winning hand. It was never pure—at least not when I’d actually beaten Camille and the Professor at mah-jongg; my winning hand had always been made up of multiple suits. But there it was, the tiles arranged together in a kind of order that meant triumph, that meant I’d made sense of fate and happenstance.

This new confidence was the same, made up of heartache and joy and every good and painful thing. It was made up of my parents and fair-weather friends, of Ettie and the Vault and Harvey, too. All the things anyone had been sure I must be, however well-meaning, and all the ways I’d tried to oblige. It was made complete by seeing my Dolores again, seeing that a spark remained. What she gave to me eclipsed the feel of my silk robe, of needing to wear my name on my chest. It meant the truth was inside of me now; it swam beneath my skin, a calm and calming victory for an audience of one. It was for me and only so many as I decided to tell—and I was glad that my Dolores knew. That her husband knew as well meant nothing at all.

When a billow of dust rolled up the solitary drive as if escorting the automobile in its midst, I was ready to leave. With one final glance over the valley, I walked to the gravel road to await my chauffeur’s arrival.