“Fiona Donovan. She raised miniature horses. She was a hoarder and hadn’t lived in it for years when she sold it to Trevor, which explains the state it was in when you bought it.” Colleen drained her glass and poured herself another. On her cheek, by her ear, was a bruise.

“Are you okay?”

“Hm?”

Joad touched her own face where Colleen’s bruise was.

“Oh, it’s nothing, I think I knocked into something. It’s sore when I touch it. So I don’t.” Irritated by the sympathy, Colleen looked into the distance, sullen.

“She was a curious little thing. To look at her she seemed utterly banal.”

“Fiona?” Colleen nodded.

“Did something happen with her … an accident, in our house?”

“An accident?” said Colleen, emphasizing the word as though it were an insane notion.

“With her children.”

“What in the world are you talking about? Fiona didn’t have any children. I wish she had, maybe she would have left me alone.”

“What did she do to you?”

“She hounded me. You see, I was in publishing for a great many years. I was an editor. We lived in the city and came out here for weekends. Then about a thousand years ago, I retired, and since then I have been a permanent resident. And now I detest the weekend people.”

“But what did Fiona want from you?”

“To be published! She was desperate to be a writer. She wrote and she wrote. Story after story, all about women living around here. And every one of them ended up in my mailbox. She was relentless. Truth is, Fiona started to scare me after a while…” Joad stared at Colleen, not listening anymore.

A writer! What a dirty trick. Walking away from the river house, Joad felt as though reading the typed pages had infected her with a virus that she had to carry around now, nasty images downloaded into her head. What a weird thing reading is. For a time, that woman who killed her children had been so real to her, and now she wasn’t. Their house was clean again. But still the images remained. Fiona Donovan. People were such mysteries. Joad thought about Colleen, drunk and alone on her porch with Chet, her glory days hanging in the hallway, watching the indifferent sunset. Joad wondered how she’d gotten that bruise. If there was something wrong. A hawk glided overhead. It seemed too big. Maybe it was an eagle. Joad crested the hill and turned to their field. The many rows of vegetables were exact and abundant, a tumult of growth bursting out of that black soil. This is real, she marveled. This exists.