“Okay. Fine,” she said, acting defeated. “I won him at the Amity Agricultural Fair this summer in one of those ring-toss games, and I named him Peter, but my brothers kept on trying to play with him so you offered to take custody. And you renamed him Rasputin after the mystical adviser to the Tsar of Russia, which I thought was kind of gruesome because of where his body was found—the mystical adviser, not the fish—but you told me that this sort of overbearing behavior was going to cost me visitation rights, and—”

“We were friends?”

Ursula was silent for so long that her breathing blended into the simmering cicada song. Then: “We’re still friends, I hope.”

Simple, earnest words. They plunked into Kane one by one, like bits of sea glass. They sank into his depths and glimmered at him from his shadows, hinting and unknowable. The truth was deep within him and well beyond his reach.

He needed to know more. Everything.

“For how long?”

“Umm. I guess since third grade when I asked to borrow your comb on picture day and you told everyone I had fleas from the pound or something, which turned into this whole thing about me and dogs, and then your dad made you come over to my house and apologize. Been friends ever since. Except I guess part of seventh grade because you went through this pretty intense goth phase and started doing tarot card readings, which my dad thought was Satan worship, and we got into this big fight and you cursed me.”

Painfully, Kane remembered that phase. He did not remember Ursula during it, before or after. She had been cut from his memory entirely. How was that possible?

“I cursed you? Like, with magic?”

“Yeah, I guess. That was the goal, but it wasn’t the real stuff or anything.”

“The real stuff?”

Ursula let out a tight laugh. “Did you find my note?”

“Your note?”

“It was with the box I dropped off at the hospital? They said no visitors except family, so I left it at the desk.”

There had been many gifts and flowers. Sophia had diligently brought them all home from the hospital, and Kane had diligently shoved them all into the trash.

“I missed it. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. It was dumb.” She sounded relieved, but after a beat of silence her tone turned hesitant. “Look, Kane, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when I saw you on the path. I’ve replayed that night like a million times in my head, and I mess it up every time. When you didn’t recognize me I just…I don’t know. I panicked. I heard the rumors that your memories got messed up, but I thought maybe when you saw me…”

Her voice failed her. She swallowed.

“I shouldn’t have left you like that. I just didn’t want to confuse you even more.”