“No. No. You’re right. I couldn’t decide. The crab cakes look lovely. I’ll have the shrimp next time,” said Aunt Tilda as she nestled beside Vera, sipping a glass of iced tea with a wedge of lemon.

Vera glanced around the crowded restaurant. It was a Saturday night in early August, and it seemed the tourists were finally venturing back. The darkness had lifted from Roaring Creek, not just from Max’s mother, but from everyone.

“Who ordered no tomatoes with balsamic?” asked Mrs. Oliver as she approached their picnic table with a tray of side salads.

His mother was stunning. Sometimes Vera found herself staring at her, wondering how this could be the same person. She looked so much like Chloe, with those bouncing black curls. Her skin glowed.

But her eyes sometimes fell with the weight of remorse.

Vera insisted Mrs. Oliver go to the hospital after everything settled. A full workup was imperative, but it was an uncomfortable consultation. You couldn’t exactly put “possessed by a demon” on a patient intake form, but after Vera called in a few favors, the doctors ran as many tests as her insurance allowed. She was given a clean bill of health, aside from some malnutrition and dehydration from not eating properly for several weeks. But it was her mind Vera worried about, the aftereffects.

She spent two weeks at an inpatient facility to recover from “exhaustion,” and she finally admitted it would take time, and regular therapy, to deal with her grief. She was willing to do the hard work. Max, however, blamed himself, insisting he missed the signs that her self-help fixes had shifted to something more sinister. It took some talking—a lot of talking—to convince him that it wasn’t his job to regulate her every move. He was her son; she was the adult. She needed to handle this herself.

Max’s grandparents moved into the house, taking care of him and Chloe while Lilith was away. Father Chuck arranged for a priest with a doctorate in psychology to treat the entire family. His mother’s memory was spotty—chunks of the experience were missing—but Chloe suffered from nightmares. It was hard to explain what happened to her, and to convince her that she couldn’t talk about it with anyone outside of their circle. Vera knew that horrific experience, Chloe’s brush with death at the hands of a monster that wore her mother’s face, would change the person Chloe would turn out to be. And that reality stabbed at Vera’s heart.

But in the end, the experience changed all of them.

“All right, Grandma, Pops—we got a fried Captain’s Combo and broiled crabmeat.” Max set two steaming plates in front of his grandparents—his father’s parents.

They didn’t know what happened to his mom. They just knew she was still grieving their son, and she was sober. She needed time. Aunt Tilda had convinced them to move to Roaring Creek, to be a part of this family instead of breaking it up. Max’s mother needed her children, but she needed help as well. They listened. Max’s grandma even taught Aunt Tilda how to make jerk chicken and stew peas. Pops played the harmonica on the porch every evening and told stories about Max’s dad. He also befriended Mr. Zanger. Turned out they had a lot in common—they were both veterans who grew up in Brooklyn. Sometimes he even walked Snowball.