The house was built high above the Sound, with a flower garden below it, and below that a series of hedged rooms with fountains, a true interlocking maze with tall yews. The hedges were neglected, but still dense enough that the people who walked inside were mostly invisible from the higher house, except for the center, next to the large dry fountain. There were smaller fountains in different corners of the maze, vine-covered stone animal heads—a horse, an elephant, a camel, a lion—that Dee had sculpted for Mr. Porter back when she’d been strong enough, before she’d taken up pottery. She’d seen fountains in Rome like this when she was young, and she’d sketched the heads as lizards ran in and out of the statues’ eyes and mouths.

There were no lizards on Long Island, but the magic of all this green, the way a person became invisible in the strange growing walls, did something to Polly’s mind, led to decades of dead plant tags, a private mythology, and a false sense of what a garden could be.

Mr. Porter’s grandchildren, who lived with their parents in a smaller place up on the hill, were a little older and slightly predatory. Edmund and Polly ran through the big house’s stables, but eventually the fear of what would happen if they were caught was overwhelming. The Porters commanded that Edmund and Polly help collect tent caterpillars and put them in a marble trough on the side of the stable. The girl pried at Polly’s legs while she was up in the tree, reaching for the caterpillars’ tents. When the boy lit a match, and as the pyre of writhing worms shot up above the trough, Polly and Edmund raced down to the beach and hid in the maze, then parked themselves between Dee and Papa, who commented on the smoke and got the truth.

“The worms go in, the worms go out, the worms play pinochle on your snout,” said Dee. “I hope they have nightmares.”

“Those children have problematic eyes,” said Papa. “Learn to recognize the look.”

The Porters did not reappear, but Edmund and Polly sensed that someone was always watching them—from behind a corner, from the sea, from a hole in the hedge, from the eyes of Dee’s animals. They ran around the gutted, echoing mansion and wallowed in the still, cold salt water with Lemon while Merle and Jane lolled on a blanket, sometimes kissing, and Papa and Dee read. Papa had brought his rowboat down that morning, and at dusk, at high tide, he rowed Edmund and Polly the two miles back to Stony Brook, as all the lights on the shore flickered on.