After the man had shown her how to change the tent, Lara began to attempt simpler tricks. She began with the lock on Simon’s office door. It was an easy door, requiring just a small movement of the notch on the doorknob. Closing her eyes, Lara thought not of the lock, but of rotating a penny between her fingers. Then she recalled Simon’s candy jar. He’d filled it with peppermint patties that morning. Most of all, she wanted a peppermint patty. Focusing on her deepest desire for the crisp, sugary candy, Lara heard the lock click.

But now all her corrections were focused on fixing the tent. After a week, she came back to the tent. Starting with color, she focused on the faded blue of the canvas, thinking of the blue of the ocean. Coaxing the worn fabric, she saw it brighten. Next, using her hand to pretend, she lifted the top of it, like she was pulling up the dome of a candy jar. On command the tent lifted and the beige color began to brighten. “Carousel, come back.”

Nothing.

“Carousel, come back.” She barked the command loud enough to make Gomez Addams—now named Squiggy—look up in alarm.

She could see something flicker and could hear the faint echo of an organ as though it were somewhere else, just beyond reach, the volume low. Growing impatient, she said, “Carousel, come back.” Again, she could see it shimmer, but then it faded. With that, the tent sank, returning to its dull state. Lara was exhausted. This was harder than turning locks.

Lara knew what her father and grandfather would say—she was a child with a “vivid imagination.” An only child, she needed one to keep herself occupied. But when she’d gone to the place where the man had stood, she saw the dried, long-dead clover lying on the ground. The man had plucked it, not her. She gathered it up as proof that what she’d seen was real and took the flower fragments and pressed them in her Rumpelstiltskin book. Months later, she would pull out the book and see the dried flower in waxed paper.

He had plucked that flower. He had been real. She wasn’t mad.

She came back to the field every day. If she had to practice the guitar, then she could practice this. For weeks, she brightened and tugged at the old tent. Once, she brought the carousel through but held it only for a few seconds until it disappeared. A week later, a storm blew the tent over, shredding the old fabric.

As the summer went on, several elderly men and women visited Cecile to reminisce about the old circus. As if they felt the pull of the tide, performers drove their old, battered trucks up the long drive to sit on the porch with Cecile and drink iced tea or Tanqueray and tonic and reminisce about life in the old days.