Marigold admired her image in the mirror. She had never admired herself before. But she was admiring herself now, and it was a rare moment of happiness that she did not usually afford herself. But today she was in a good mood. There was something happy in her.

Helen sat in bed, reading a newspaper. She was sipping coffee from a tin mug and paying no attention to Marigold.

Marigold smoothed her dress against her tummy. Somewhere along the way, she’d outgrown her girlish frame and childish clothes. She’d become a tall, slender woman. It had all happened right before her eyes so that she never really noticed it. But today she did. And was grateful for it. Most often, when Marigold looked into a mirror, she saw ugly. She saw a big-boned, copper-topped fifteen-year-old.

“You believe this?” said Helen. “They’re calling up all the men.”

“What do you mean?”

“The government, they’re gonna steal all our men, ages eighteen to forty-one. Says it right here in the paper.”

“Take the men? You mean they’re sending them to war?”

“Well, they sure ain’t gonna teach them to play patty-cake.” Helen turned the page and shook her head. “This war’s gonna put us outta business.”

Earlier that week, Marigold had gone into town and stood in line at the post office. There she’d met an old lady in a blue dress with a matching hat. Most women avoided Marigold, but not this woman. They had talked. The woman was a pleasant woman who was better at conversation than most people. Before they’d parted ways, Marigold felt a familiar heat in her palms. It started in her palms and moved upward to her elbows, then her shoulders. She was no longer afraid when it happened. She knew what it meant, and she knew what she had to do when her hands became hot.

She did not ask the woman before she laid her hand on her neck. No sooner had Marigold touched her than she developed a headache that was so splitting it made her vision blur and her teeth hurt. The woman had only closed her eyes and started to cry. Marigold embraced her outside the post office.

“Sometimes,” the woman told Marigold, “my migraines get so bad that I go two, three days without sleeping.”

But Marigold already knew this before the woman said it. She had seen the woman’s pain when she touched her.

“Are you a healer?” the woman had asked Marigold.

“No,” said Marigold.

“What are you?” the woman asked.

Marigold shrugged. “A redhead.”

Marigold was interrupted from inspecting herself in the mirror by a horrible sound. Helen had dropped her newspaper and leaned over the edge of her bed. She wrenched forward. She moaned. The sound of splattering came next.