The weather worsened after Syracuse. Her mother, leaning forward, gripped the steering wheel with both hands. Like a thundercloud, her dusky hair had answered the moisture in the air with threatening billows, a surge in frizz and curls. She usually would have remedied the anarchy with a hairband and ponytail, but this morning, she didn’t seem to notice, not even when she glanced in the rearview mirror. She changed lanes, flexed her hands, and rolled her neck.

“Want me to drive for a while?” Maggie dabbed at her hair. Similarly huge.

“In a storm?” Mom shook her head. Woods lined both sides of the thruway, and the trees drooped in the rain. “Too much of this, and we won’t have a pretty fall. It will ruin the foliage.”

“Yeah.” Good. Maggie pictured her old campus sopping, the leaves ripped off the branches and plastered to the ground. Maybe Carlton College would flood. An apocalyptic deluge.

They got off Interstate 90 at Exit 45 and took I-490 into Rochester. The highway became a dizzying loop that wound around skyscrapers, billboards, river, and stadium. Mom attended to the GPS with the concentration of someone expecting to get lost. Which could happen. She had only a hazy idea of where they were going. Aunt Wren was Mom’s twin but, for three decades, more of a distant acquaintance. The aunt had gotten out of Carlton at eighteen, almost as soon as she’d tossed aside the tasseled graduation cap. Her trouble had been with their parents, not her sister, but Mom had never shared Wren’s contention with their folks. That difference of opinion had landed Maggie’s mother in the disowned camp, until last October, when poor Grandma and Gramps died in a car accident. Mom and Aunt Wren had talked more since then.

Maggie eased back and closed her eyes. She ordered her body to relax.

Cut it out. Grab her hands, Matt. Fucking relax, okay?

Her eyes flew open.

“Lake Ontario Parkway’s up ahead. Won’t be long now.” The traffic had trickled off. Though lightning split the sky and the windshield wipers’ speedy sluice could barely keep up with the downpour, Mom exhaled and smiled a little. “Go ahead and take a nap. I can figure out the rest.”

Maggie frowned. What was her mother talking about? She hadn’t played navigator once.

The implication was nice, though. Her mere presence helping, comforting.

She closed her eyes again, willed her brain shut, too. She didn’t sleep. Couldn’t. Hardly ever anymore. It was like she’d lost the knack.

Aunt Wren lived at the dead end of a dirt road called Ash Drive. A generous person might have called the place rustic. However, holding open a screen door patched with duct tape, Aunt Wren, herself, hollered through the heavy rain, “Welcome to the shack!” and beckoned with a wave.