I press my palm against the rough bark of the giant oak tree and close my eyes. “Please,” I whisper to it. “Please be the right place. Help me fix things.”

A tiny part of me expects the tree to answer me, but it doesn’t. A gust of wind ripples through the forest, rustling the tree’s leaves and lifting up the back of my hoodie.

But that feels like enough of an answer.

Five

Cora

“You know it won’t bite,” Grams says as I’m tapping my pencil against my uncompleted math homework. I’ve been staring at the same problem for five minutes.

Dad’s in the kitchen cooking. It’s his night for dinner. Dad is not a great cook, but he’s mastered cheesy scrambled eggs. His trick is to add lots of generous pinches of salt. For accuracy’s sake, it should be noted that his pinches of salt are more like handfuls. We all have to drink a lot of water on Dad’s dinner nights.

Grams is knitting in the living room. Or at least I thought she was knitting. Now I get the sense that she’s spying on me while I struggle to solve for x. Grams has always been a grade-A sleuth.

I sigh and sit down on the floor. I’ve been on my knees for the past hour. I like to do my homework around the coffee table, but that means kneeling. Mabel always thought that was strange, but it works for me.

“I’m talking about the box,” Grams says.

I grip my pencil. “I know.”

“You could open it before dinner.”

I sigh again. This time in a louder and more dramatic way.

Grams doesn’t seem to get the message, though. She just keeps on knitting. She’s working on a cream-colored cardigan for herself right now. Before Mabel died, she was working on a pullover that Mabel had picked out. It was teal and gray with a chevron pattern. It was only half-finished when we got the news. I don’t know what happened to it, but sometimes when I see Grams knitting I think about that sweater that’s probably collecting dust in the back of her closet, and it makes me want to cry.

“It can be easier to just set things down, you know,” Grams says.

“I don’t know what that means. I’m not holding anything up.”

Grams gives me a look. “Oh, really?”

I hold out both my hands as if to show her.

“I’m speaking metaphorically, sweet pea.”

“I know,” I grumble. Metaphors are a concept I understand, but they can be a highly annoying thing when used in an actual conversation.

“Then why are you being so smart?”

“Because I wish you’d let it go.”

“Let it go. Hm.” Grams gives me her got-you smile. “I think it would help both of us to let it go if you opened the box. As I keep telling you, it’s only a box, Cora London.”