“Helen,” Lily said. “What do you think I’ve been doing these past few weeks?” She swept her arm out over the room. It was still cramped. It was still sloped. It was still drafty. But it was empty of junk and scrubbed clear of mold. It smelled of Lemon Pledge and creek water. A merry fire rippled in the stove, boxes of brand-name food were stacked unopened on the shelves, the bucket beneath the sink had disappeared, the leaky pipes had been patched, the pissy tomcat had been banished, the spiders, wasps, and mice, if they were there, knew better than to show themselves. Lily and I were the only animals to be seen. “Look at this,” Lily said. She reached into the bib of her overalls, and carefully pressed open the reunification plan so that I could see where she had begun to check off items, one by one. “I think we can do this,” she said. “Besides the septic system.”

“And the snakes,” I said.

“I haven’t seen one since Karen left,” she said.

“That’s because it’s winter,” I said. “They’re hibernating. If I lifted up the floorboards right now, you’d see them curled up sleeping together in a cozy ball.”

“The review won’t happen until the spring,” she said. “They might have moved outside by then. They’re really the worst in the fall.”

“We can’t depend on that,” I said.

“I’m doing my best,” she said.

“So then you’ve given up on kidnapping,” I said. I wasn’t gloating, exactly, but I was glad to be right.

“Kidnapping is leaving and then leaving again,” Lily said. “It’s always on the run. They want to push us out. Well, I won’t let them. I don’t want to leave. I want to get Perley back, and I want to stay.”

The tam-o’-shanter was gone. Lily tossed the brick-red ball into her knitting basket, where it rolled down to settle among the plastic eggs.

“Where did you learn to knit?” I asked.

“My grandma taught me,” she said. “She also taught me to hot-wire a car. But it’s been years since I’ve done either one.”

I put the envelope from the pipeline company on the kitchen counter, intending to take it to Aldi. Later, with her newfound efficiency, Lily filed it among the cookbooks. Later still, I moved it to the drawer underneath the silverware. This is one way of saying that it got buried beneath other shit, including our lives, and it wasn’t long before we forgot all about it.