“Ah,” she said.

“I think he ate the Easter Bunny a few times.”

I was quiet for a moment. I could not look at her. I kept staring at the corner of the window.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, I felt her fingers brush my neck. “What is this?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said, alarmed. I put my hand up to cover it. “A scar.”

“Clearly.”

I held very still.

“Sorry,” she said, and immediately pulled her hand away.

I closed my eyes. “Where are you from?” I asked lamely. “How did you learn, you know, how to do all the mechanical stuff?”

She sighed. “I’m not from around here. I kind of found myself here.” A pause. “I think I used to be a mechanic in a past life. I think I travel around a lot.”

“You ‘think’? You don’t know?” I felt her looking at me.

“Do you know how you got your scar?” she said.

I could finally look at her. Slowly I sat up.

“I think I do,” I said. And we both smiled.

Slowly, over a couple of weeks’ time, the dizziness grew less intense and I could get around on my own. I found that I missed Rita visiting me in my room, and, not having much else to do, I began following her around as she fixed the generator and replaced broken lights and wires. Her knowledge of machines seemed mystical to me. Where I was stymied by anything more complex than a screw, and might have stood around for a whole hour, mealy-mouthing about next steps before ransacking drawers for an instruction manual, she would take a wrench and start twisting and yanking with full enthusiasm.

She had a sudden, unexpected sense of humor, her face a mask of guarded solemnity one second, her lip wryly curling with a blunt joke the next. Sometimes her humor was mysterious; I often felt like she was sharing an inside joke with me I didn’t fully understand, but felt privileged to be let in on.

Like me in a past life, she did not like to be surprised. Once, when I visited her in the outbuilding where she was working on the generator, I must have entered too quietly. She was hunched over something, fully absorbed. Metal parts clacked, and for a moment I watched as she ran her hand over her face. It was warm in the room.

“Hey there,” I said.

She jumped, frightening both of us, but when she turned to face me, the look in her eyes—

Murder.

I stuttered an apology, backing out of the door, running the rest of the way back to the house, my head swimming.

That night, I didn’t see her. I kept listening for my truck engine, waiting for her to drive away forever. Maybe she would walk back into the woods the way she’d come.

The next morning, though, she was downstairs, sitting on the kitchen floor near the fireplace, opening a can of beans. I heard her rattling around before I saw her, so I made sure to clomp in noisily. I sat down six feet away from her and concentrated on opening a can of beans for myself.