“Pearl,” I say hesitantly, “aren’t you getting a little old for all of this . . . pretending?”

“Grampy, drink your tea before it gets cold.”

I lift the empty cup.

“What’s it like?” you ask.

“Where I grew up?”

“No, the tea,” you say, giggling.

I smile. “The tea is fabulous. A little too hot, actually. I might let it cool.”

You laugh quietly again, then sit up straight as if corrected by someone to watch your posture. “What’s it like where you grew up?”

“I haven’t been there for forty years. I don’t know what it’s like anymore.”

“What was it like?”

“Nysa was kind of like an island. I guess technically it’s a peninsula. The lake surrounds it on three sides. The river lines the western side. So we were always surrounded by water. We called ourselves an island even though we weren’t, not really.”

You take another sip from your teacup.

“I always thought it would become more popular, like one of those beach towns where everyone goes for vacation. The lake was enormous. I’ve always imagined that rich people bought up the waterfront property and built their mansions there after I left. I hope not, but who knows. The truth is, I really don’t know what it’s like. I’ve never been back, and I’ve never checked up on it.”

“Did you like it?”

“I liked it very much. We knew almost everyone on the island. There was a small town, one main street, but I grew up out in the country. Most of the island is farmland. Or it was when I was a kid.”

“Did you have a lot of friends?”

I think of the Halloween party. “No, not many, but I was happy.”

“Did you like your house?” you ask, stirring your tea with a tiny spoon. When you ask questions in that serious, absentminded tone, you could be twenty years old instead of eleven.

“My house? It was okay. There were places in Nysa that I loved, but my house wasn’t one of them. My parents were kind but a bit absent. I’m sure they loved me. In those days children ran free.”

“Like me.” You smile.

“You’re a throwback,” I say, smirking.

“What about the field between your house and the road?”

The room feels colder.

“The field,” you say again. “Between your house and the road. The one along the woods.”

I don’t know how you know this. Your voice is very matter-of-fact.

“What about it?”

“It’s on the map I’m drawing.”

Yes. The field.

“There were fields everywhere,” I say, trying to steer the conversation away from these things you should not know.

“Not just any field,” you say. “I mean the field where Grandma saw the woman for the first time. The woman with the silver hair. She told me all about it.”

The Field

The four of us walked through the field late that night: a werewolf with his mask off; Dorothy, carrying her ruby slippers; Mary, dressed like death, in her dark cloak with the hood resting powerlessly on her shoulders; and me, no longer Charlie Brown, carrying my cut-up sheet under one arm. My house was the closest, and I think they were intrigued by me, the new guy, so we left Justin’s place and started walking to my house. Our feet made lonely sounds on the smooth back roads. The air moved in fits and starts, now breezy, now still. It was dark in the way only a backcountry road on a chilly fall night can be.