On this particular night, I was drumming my fingers aimlessly on my typewriter wishing I had more personal anecdotes about Mrs. Brown and her children and wondering if I couldn’t just make some up, when I heard a commotion below, but the cupola is so far from the first floor that I couldn’t make out any words. I tried to see whose car was in the driveway, but it was too dark.

After the back door slammed and the person left, I peered out again and realized they must have walked over because there was no sound of a car starting up and I could see a flashlight beam head off across the fields. I knew it had to be one of our far-flung neighbors. When the person got to Becher Bay Road and it was clear that they were truly gone for the night, and that I wouldn’t have to speak to them, I went downstairs and Sina told me what had happened.

Mrs. Madden, otherwise known as Crying Alice, had charged over to our house.

“Yoohoo, Mrs. Whitekraft!” Sina heard her call as she opened the front door and came into the front hall uninvited. “Mrs. Whitekraft? I know we haven’t gotten to know each other greatly. Or even very well. Or even at all. But now I need you. I NEED you, Mrs. Whitekraft. Thomasina?” And Alice began to bawl. Crying was what Alice did best.

Sina and I had named her Crying Alice after we had compared notes about all the places we had seen her cry.

We had seen her cry at parent-teacher conferences for no apparent reason. I didn’t know much about her children because they were all in different grades from me, but they appeared to be very good citizens, good students, upstanding humans, as Old Tom would say. Nothing to cry over.

We had seen her cry when there were no eggs left at Brookman’s. Brookman’s was on the edge of Sooke and the closest store for all the far-flung residents, and so the hub of a lot of its social life. On Saturdays we brought our eggs and milk to sell there, and the ladies met there to chat in the morning.

We had seen Alice cry at school Christmas concerts.

“Well, really,” said Sina, clearing her throat in embarrassment when we got to this part. “That could happen to anyone.”

Sina had a soft spot for gently lisping carolers.

Alice didn’t just cry a lot; she cried in situations where normal people seem to be able to hold it together. She cried when she got mud on her dress. She cried when her car got a flat. She cried when she saw the new kittens at Brookman’s. She cried when dropping her children off for their first day of school in the fall. And once Old Tom and I had caught her crying while her car was being filled up with gas. We just sat there in our truck watching in fascination until she pulled away.