Polly’s overriding theory, since leaving Long Island, was that shit happened, and you molded the mess into the next best option. Even if nothing needed to be romanticized, everything was still a wonder. But what did you say to Ariel during the dark, harsh night, your mind on a pillow of needles, brain writhing like a panicked earthworm?

Helen’s big, clear voice: “Mom, what’s this?”

A flicker shot overhead, followed by two peevish magpies protecting a massive twig nest in the oldest apple tree. Polly waved to Helen, delaying, and by the time she got up, Helen was back to her mud trance.

“What did you want to show me?” asked Polly.

“What do you mean?” asked Helen.

Polly, feeling neglectful, watered her beans and lettuce, her fennel and cabbages and twenty tomato plants. She weeded, and she did not scream when Maude, who wasn’t usually capable of a silent approach, spoke.

“A terrible thing,” she said.

“Yes,” Polly said, straightening. As if Maude hadn’t been tottering drunk and raving about death the night before.

“Your father said you had a moment this morning.”

“I’m tired,” said Polly. “I drank too much.”

Maude excelled in sidelong looks. She was, after all, a psychiatrist, though never the talking kind. She’d worked in hospitals back in the days of Thorazine and shock therapies and lobotomies, specializing in veterans with head injuries, and she’d authored one of the first papers suggesting that explosions damaged the brains of people with no obvious injuries.

But there had been no prize in the past for people skills. Maude had essentially been a single parent, and her children seemed sane, but her training had come in the neurological Stone Age between world wars. According to Jane, Maude thought Polly’s damage was nonprogressive but akin to wet brain, a kind of benign fabulism with false memories. The only way to talk Polly out of them was for her to keep a notebook and check herself. Hence the ongoing battle: Polly felt as if Jane was testing out Polly’s stories the way she’d tested fables when she was a student, trying to determine which version was scariest. A game of telephone, this time with Polly’s head.

Polly tried an evasive maneuver. “Will you help Sam with the family tree? He needs a simple one for school, and it seems like the party would be the time to ask questions.”

“A simple one,” said Maude with a little smile. “How funny. Now tell me, do you still get those migraines?”

“They don’t hurt,” said Polly. “Now they only cause daydreams.” A lovely, innocuous word.

“But they must be so hard on Ned.”

One of Papa’s better-known essays had been titled “The Emergent Past.” Polly thought she should reread it. “No,” said Polly. “I think he’s fine.” And a counterattack: “So who was the man in the car with Asta?”