I had to stop for a moment to catch my breath. Most of the animals and poles were gone, I saw. On the far side, the roof had fallen, so it was almost like a cave. I peered into the shadowy recesses, and there she was. Coral Lee Pine, who owned that whispery voice I’d learned so well.

She sat on one of the bench seats for tired parents. It was loose from the base, canted to face the stairs. I could not make out her features in the shadows. I walked forward, conscious of the phone in my pocket, the seconds ticking away. How long had the climb taken? Four minutes? Less?

The bench’s sides were carved into the shape of a stampede of horses. They faced me, too. Their mouths yawped open, and their eyes were wide. As I got close, I saw they were actually unicorns, with faded wreaths of roses around their necks and short spiral horns.

One of the rideable animals, a lion, was lying on his side to Coral Lee’s left. The pole was still attached, so it looked as if he’d been run through. He had carved roses in a wreath around his neck, too, but the paint had faded and peeled away until the blooms looked like odd, spongy growths.

I was at the edge of the platform now. I stepped up, finally close enough to see her deep-set eyes. Here was the face I’d first seen peering through my bedroom window, with that pointed chin, the turned-down mouth. Here also was the meemaw of the school’s parking lot, wearing the same dark knit cap with its small peak. Her long hair straggled down her shoulders in thin, silvery ropes.

She was no older than my mother-in-law, but she had not had Margaret Cabbat’s regimen of moisturizers and doctors to roll back time; the years sat heavy on her. She was pale, and a sheen of sweat had broken on her brow. Her eyes met mine, wide and anxious and too intense for me to hold the gaze.

Just to her right, she’d placed a small card table. It was set for tea with a woven mat, a flowered china pot, and two matching cups on pink-flowered saucers, the delicate handles edged in gold. They were full of dark liquid, and all at once I could not swallow. The brimming cups were harder to look at than she was.

Her baggy, shapeless dress was ash-colored. She had a brown-and-orange afghan on her lap, hand-crocheted by the look of it. The folds of it pooled on the bench beside her. One hand was hidden under the blanket. Holding a gun? I had no way to tell. But that possibility did not make me nearly as anxious as those delicate cups or the intensity in her hooded eyes.