I fold my arms, ignore her sentiment about my mother because Ruth will always have a soft spot for Alice. I touch the mark under my eye from where the graduation cap gouged into my skin. It was the last time I saw her. In some ways, I’m grateful for the physical scar she left then. It’s a reminder to me of how scarred I am on the inside. Ruth stares at me. At one point she and Mom were close, and despite everything, Ruth is the kind of person to see the good in everyone. I should know. She’s always managed to find the good in me, even when I was a teenage girl who thought smoking pot and picking fights would fill the sinkhole my mother left behind.

I take the tray from her hands, inhaling a rich chocolate scent that makes my mouth water. “Smells amazing. Thanks for baking.”

Ruth snorts, lifts one side of her mouth in a half smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. There’s something different about her. I tilt my head. She looks pale, and her back, normally straight up and down like she’s preparing to have her height measured, rounds just the slightest bit. “Everything okay, Ruth?”

She holds my gaze, then says, “I don’t know, Claire; do you think everything is okay?”

Her words aren’t heavy with sarcasm or clipped with rudeness; it just comes across as a question, so I don’t take offense to the oddness of it. I am very good at figuring situations out, so maybe Ruth is just testing my honed skills. I study her: red-rimmed eyes, the skin around her nostrils flaky with dryness, her cheeks slightly pale. “Looks like you don’t feel well. A cold? It’s okay if you’re not up for joining us for dinner tonight,” I say. “I can make up a plate and bring it over for you if you’d rather rest at home.”

She blinks, shakes her head, and taps my hand, wordless. The contact startles me. Ruth is not a touchy kind of person. “I could use some company tonight, Claire,” she says. “Let’s go, or Harriet will eat all of that garlic bread I smell before we get a chance to sit down.”

From the table, Harriet barks a hoarse cigarette laugh and says, “She’s not wrong!”

Later, with the garlic bread gone, a few stragglers of soggy romaine stuck to the sides of the empty salad bowl, and Ruth’s surprisingly exquisite brownies drowning in vanilla bean ice cream on a plate in front of me, I slide the SOCIAL EVENTS CURRENT folder from the file storage by my feet and open it on my lap. I scan the conversation plan quickly. “So, Harriet, I heard you had an interesting pair of renters last week. Sefina said something about witches?”