I shook my head. “Not really. Tess is like family. We’ll still see each other. That’s how Ormewood is. But when Sam died, things changed between us. I was thinking, all year, that everyone else had changed, and that was hard for me. But now I’m thinking maybe it’s me. Maybe I’ve changed. And maybe that’s okay.”

“Really okay?”

I nodded. “Really okay.”

And it was, so we went back to painting the leaves on the wall in comfortable silence.

At last, the mural was finished, and we stood back to look at it. It was even nicer than the door in the real Vine Realm. I guessed we’d learned something from our many hours of painting, gotten better as we went along. There were purple morning glories entwined with the leaves, and Jasper had painted amazing butterflies and ladybugs all over the kudzu leaves. The late-afternoon light that shone in through the open window made the whole thing come alive.

“Wow,” I said. “It’s really great!”

Jasper nodded. “It really is!” she said. “Maybe I want to be an artist.”

“Maybe you do.”

Jasper sniffed the air, which was now perfumed with the smell of something rich and meaty, but as full of garlic as promised. “God, whatever your mom is making sure smells good. Now I’m wishing I hadn’t said no to dinner.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But I’ll bring you some, I promise. Whatever it is.”

She sighed. “Thanks. But I guess I should head out. You know, since my mom is expecting me for family dinner?”

I laughed. “Okay,” I said. “But before you go, there was one more thing I wanted to tell you.”

Jasper raised her eyebrows.

“It’s probably no big deal, but I saw a guy hanging around the entrance to the Vine Realm earlier, when I stopped by to look for you. And he kind of . . . spooked me.”

“Spooked you how?”

“I don’t know. He just gave me a bad feeling. He had tattoos, and a funny tooth. I waited for him to leave before I headed up to your house, and he did leave after a while. But I still thought you should know. And be careful. He might come back.”

Jasper didn’t move for a moment, but then she shrugged. “Eh. There have to be other people who know about the place. When I first moved in, I cleared out a bunch of cigarette butts and a pair of gross pants. Like, gross gross. But nobody’s come in since I’ve been there. I’m not worried.”

“Okay,” I said.

It didn’t feel totally okay, but I guessed there wasn’t much to be done. And like Jasper had said, sometimes you couldn’t make the bad feeling go away. Sometimes you just had to carry it. If Jasper could carry it, I could carry it too.

A Change in the Weather