“Come outside,” he says.

I follow him out through the double doors that lead from the dining room onto a wide deck that stretches along the entire back of the house. On one side is an outdoor kitchen complete with a grill, a sink, and a stone island with a refrigerator in it. In the middle are a few benches facing east, over the water. It is a perfect deck for parties, for entertaining, but Tom doesn’t strike me as the entertaining kind, not anymore. And even if he was, who from Nysa would he invite to his house? Junior? Jenny the witch queen from the diner?

One section of the deck has two comfortable chairs with a small table in between. Tom motions for me to sit in one of them. I do, staring into the forest off to the side of the house. The sky is dark in the east. Tom walks soundlessly along the edge of the deck, lighting small torches that flicker and somehow make the night outside of the light seem that much darker.

He sits in the chair beside mine, and for a long time we say nothing. I am very aware of my own breathing. I can sense the lost presence of Mary and Shirley in a tangible way.

“How long since Shirley passed?” I ask.

“One year,” Tom says, and I can’t tell by his response if this is something he wants to talk about.

Again, an apology forms in my mind alongside this growing sense that I somehow abandoned Tom and Shirley, that things would have worked out differently if I had stayed. But I keep it to myself.

“It’s forty years since Mary,” I say, unable to add a verb onto the end of that sentence. Died? Disappeared? Left?

“Yes, I know,” Tom says. “And how is John?”

I take a breath. “Not well. Haven’t heard from him in a long time. Four years now, give or take.” Saying it, I feel like a complete failure. Here we sit in Tom’s mansion, with its accompanying garage that holds his expensive car. Meanwhile, back at home, I live in a falling-down row house raising my granddaughter because I failed at parenting the first time around. Even my own body, with this knot growing out of my head, is somehow evidence of my failure.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Addicted to drugs.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “Happens a lot these days. I see it all the time.”

“I have Pearl. Every day I ask myself how John can keep himself away from her. She’s the most beautiful thing in my life.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to spoil her. I’ve known people dependent on substances who leave their lives because they think they’ll destroy the people they love.” He moves in his seat and the wood creaks under him. The night is quiet around us. “She’s a fascinating girl,” he says.

“You don’t know the half.”

He smiles. “Is that so?”

“Tom,” I begin hesitantly. “Do you remember the woman Mary saw in the field that night? The one she kept seeing every so often after that?”