There was no one to tell things to.

For instance, she would like to tell someone this: Two nights ago, after her first visit to Rico, she had a dream about walking along the paths of a city zoo she had been taken to as a child. What was different was that the visit took place now, at her present age. She felt like a child but saw her adult self standing before the glass wall of a large aviary. The expansive enclosure was roofed and filled with trees and shrubs and roosts and loops of thick rope. As she walked past, winged creatures inside stared out at her. One bird laughed uncontrollably.

What could such a dream mean?

Brigg would have dismissed her imaginings—or maybe not. He might have been interested. She had no way of knowing; he was dead and couldn’t be asked. Since his off-time death, Gwen no longer had to think about being ridiculed. She no longer had to listen to the detested handbell clanging demands while its echoes bounced off the walls. Brigg insisted on having the bell atop his bedcovers after the stroke. It had to be placed in exact position, beside his left hand, the one he could move. She listened to the barbarous clang-clang-clang all through March and into April, the interminable and desperate days leading to his death.

And there was something else. He made a noise at the back of his throat, a staccato mechanical sort of sound he did not seem to realize he was responsible for: click-click, click-click.

She reminded herself that she no longer had to respond to calls in the middle of the night when he shouted from his bed. Click-click, click-click. She tried many times to convince herself that he was gone. She kept looking over her shoulder despite willing herself not to. She did not present her back to a door—any door—though she knew he would not return. She tried to stop listening, stop waiting for the handbell to announce his anger, clatter his demands. She’d moved into one of the spare rooms during his illness, but her sleep had been constantly interrupted. After his death, she stayed on in the spare room, not wanting to return to a space they’d once shared. Why had she allowed the bullying? She had no answer.

Instead, she put effort into convincing herself that she no longer had to be alert to mood, or prediction of mood, every waking moment. Not until the visits to Rico began. Rico, she decided, was a moody bird. But she was not afraid of Rico.

If the Grands did return home at the end of seven weeks—or eight—she wouldn’t tell them about her zoo dream. Except for the two phone calls she’d had with Cecilia Grand, and except for being inside their house every day, Gwen had no idea what kind of people the Grands were. Even if she did recount the dream, she would not disclose that Rico, with his parrot-sized brain, was the impudent bird directing his laughter at her.