Rush. I think I understand the name change now, maybe even better than she does. She was closer to her dad because he was the one who was closer to her, not because she chose him over Moony. In the end, after everything, regardless of what she says, she chose Moony over him.

Gary is rubbing my mom’s back like he can stroke the chill from her voice. I am trembling. I feel my history tumbling like old stones around my feet—reordering itself—erecting a wall of unfeeling marble, of worn and battered granite bricks spliced together, full of chinks.

“Who is Madora Charles?” I ask, pointing to the folded clipping.

Mary shrugs. “A woman. A medium. A patient. Someone who lived and died a long time ago.”

“Who is she to us?” I clarify.

She stares at me a long moment.

“I can see the resemblance to Moony,” I add, in case she thinks she can spin it any way but straight.

“She’s your great-great-grandmother,” she says.

“How do you know about her? Where did you get this?” I ask.

“She told me,” she says smugly. “Edna. After I found the cards. After she found me with them. I must have been eight or nine years old. I’d never been whipped like that before or since. She screamed it at me and showed me this article, shaking it in my face. And then she took the cards away. But I snuck back later and stole them—the cards and the article. I hid them from her. She punished me for weeks when she found out.” My mother laughs humorlessly as she remembers something the rest of us can only guess at. “She had a unique brand of discipline. She was creative, your grandmother. I’ll give her that.”

I shake my head as if that could keep the words from crawling into my ears and lodging themselves inside my brain. My heart is cracking open. The only discipline I ever got from Moony was a time-out. When I was young, she kept a little red stool in one corner of the kitchen, and if I was really bad—if I shouted at her or deliberately did something she told me not to—she would put me on it for five or ten agonizing minutes. When I got older, she abandoned the stool and simply sent me to my room to “cool off” or “think about things.” I could count on one hand the number of times that happened and still have fingers left.

“I broke her,” Mary says now, her chin lifting, her face hardening. “I broke her. That’s why she was so good to you. Because I didn’t flinch against the hardness in her until all her edges were worn smooth. I got the stone, but you got the pebble. You have me to thank for that.”