“Feeding her lines? No.” Polly asked Helen, “What do you have there?”

“A map of all the places Ari likes that she might be. I have to add the rabbit.”

Polly reached for the notebook. Helen’s drawing showed their street, with a cat and rectangle houses, several dogs, and a ribbon that Polly guessed was the river. The map portion looked like a macramé plant hanger, but Helen had also drawn clouds and the sun on top of the paper and the river on the bottom. The beginning of hell, thought Polly. Bring on the boat and the ferryman. Bring on the Jabberwock. The big X for Ariel was near the place where they planned to picnic, and Polly felt a little queasy. Helen was looking, and what if she found?

Polly told Helen her map was beautiful, waved her off to chase candy with Sam. She tapped the notebook. “I want to argue about memory,” she said to Jane. “Evie drew pictures for me.”

“That was Rita.”

“I never once sat on Rita’s lap. You drew horses and buildings. Evie drew birds and castles.” Polly could see her teenaged aunt shuffling cards, cross-legged on a blanket outside. She shuffled like Merle, like a rural kid, a handy, competent, smart-ass kid. Polly would study Evie’s big knees and her own small ones while the cards whirred, and she tried not to worry about bugs dropping from the mulberry tree that shaded them.

Polly might have the short-term memory of a hamster, but the deep past of her brain was just fucking fine. “Think of the things I don’t claim to remember,” she said. “The plane ride.” Polly had been given a ride in the deadly plane with her grandmother Cora and Merle a few weeks before it fell into Lake Michigan with Evie and Frank.

Jane, watching the cheerleaders’ float pass with a weird combination of glee and disgust, wasn’t impressed. Subsets of people began to quarrel. Sam wanted Helen to be deferential to his greater age, Ned arrived with sandwiches and argued with Merle about whether the new bookshelves should be solid wood or veneer. Maude, surrounded by a clutch of old—very old—friends, disagreed with everyone about dates and names. Shriners on tiny bicycles rode in spirals and when one man, a retired teacher, tipped over and his friends ignored his plight, Merle pulled him upright, and the crowd cheered.

“I don’t claim to remember the funeral.”

“We didn’t take you. We tried to keep you away from it all.”