“You are the last one,” the witch said. “I have your invitation.”

She took an envelope from the white cloth that shrouded her and held it out to him with hands that seemed to tremble.

Wunder took the letter in both hands. It was the same as the others but with his name instead of someone else’s. He traced the tree on the wax seal, the DoorWay Tree. His fingers moved down the roots and then up the branches, to the flowers.

When he looked back up, the witch was watching him intently through her black eyes.

“You have something to say, Wunder,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes. Tell me what you have come to say.”

Wunder felt like he had when he went to see Mariah Lazar, certain that he was at the end, certain that he was about to learn everything he so desperately longed to know, everything he was so utterly terrified to know.

Only instead of asking question after question, he couldn’t seem to get even one out.

“If you’re not her,” he finally said, “if you’re not my sister, then you’re a terrible person. A horrible, terrible person. It’s not right to do what you’re doing.”

“What do you think I am doing?” the witch asked.

“I don’t know,” Wunder said. “I don’t know what you’re doing. Officer Soto said—my mother thinks—”

“Whatever your mother thought,” the witch said, “she does not think anymore. She has come to visit me twice now. In fact, she left just before you arrived.”

Wunder stared at her, stared straight through the light and into the dark of her eyes. “My mother? My mother came here?”

The witch nodded once. “Yes, yes, yes. She is very worried about you.”

“She’s not.” Wunder shook his head. “She’s not worried about me at all.”

“She is,” the witch said. “And she had many questions to ask.”

Questions. Wunder thought of his mother here, in this kitchen, and he realized what it meant. His mother, who had been so paralyzed by grief that she had hardly left her room in weeks, his mother who had fled the house shoeless at the sight of his sister’s crib—his mother had been with the witch.

The witch who read the obituaries and spoke about the dead. The witch whose name was Milagros.

The witch who Faye and Davy were convinced was Wunder’s dead sister.

“What did you tell her?” His voice was suddenly loud, hard, the shakiness gone. “Did you tell her your name? Did you tell her who you are? What did you say to her?”

The witch smiled, a sad smile. “I gave her an invitation, and I answered what she was ready to ask. But some things—some things can never be said. Some miracles must be understood without words.”

Wunder felt the stone of his heart go horribly still at this, go cold at this, cold as the grave, cold as death.

“There are no miracles!” he cried, his words both a challenge and a plea to the witch to prove him wrong.