The aunt made a squawking sound. “What kind of question is that?”

“Well, I was just wondering…”

“Jesus, Min. This isn’t the seventies. No one uses lead glazes anymore.” She snorted. “Unless you’ve got an enemy you want to poison.”

Mom smiled, abashed. “Sorry.”

Aunt Wren met Maggie’s gaze and rolled her eyes, as if to include her in her exasperation. “Should I throw together some killer glazes, Margaret? Might take a few decades to finish off our target, but what the hell. Got anyone you want me to get rid of?”

“That’s okay.”

The sisters laughed, easy with each other again.

Maggie turned. Did she want to get rid of anyone? Not anymore. She already had.

Quilt to chin, eyes on silvered shadows, Maggie listened.

The tumble of lake: up, down, get up now, fall again, turn, I said, before I do it for you, crash. Foliage pattered in the woods. More rain or wind in the leaves? They sounded the same. The house was asleep. If Maggie listened hard, she thought she could almost hear the sisters in Aunt Wren’s room, the slow inhale, exhale, snuffling murmur. Did their twinness synchronize their breathing? Would they touch in their sleep? Did some deep troughs in their brains magnetize them, turn the faintest recollection of shared enwombing into a lasting pull? A tidal pull, a lunar listing. Lunacy. Enwombing, wounding. Felled and wrenched.

Wretched.

Getting hurt required planning. Or no planning. Maggie realized this after the fact. She was told how this was so.

There were variations on procedures she should have considered before the bad thing happened. Shower. Did she shave her legs? Condition? Exfoliate? Makeup. Red lipstick or pink? Eyeliner or mascara? Body. Lotion? Serviceable white underwear or satin or lace and satin? Sports bra? Sexy bra? Hair. Ponytail? Loose? Clothes. Tight shirt? Tight jeans? Loose? Loose. Sneakers? Flats? Heels? Friends. Alone? With one? Or two? Single girls? Searching girls? Pretty girls? Ugly girls? Loose girls? Doing. Drinking? What kind? How many? One, two, three? Four? Sober enough to remember? Too drunk to know? To know to say no? There: That was it. Speak up, loud, even louder, scream the word, or not a person will believe it. Practically a rule. Too softly spoken, and any word must count as yes.

2

MOM HAD TAKEN the week off from her job at Carlton Library. When she returned to Vermont, she’d go back alone. Maggie was staying with Wren for however many weeks or months she wanted. She wasn’t sure what she wanted or what she’d do while she stayed. Currently, she had no interest in deciding either. She had, however, formed a hazy notion of how this stint would begin: She was going to wander by the water, unthinking and uninterrupted, while Mom and Aunt Wren went off and did whatever—shopped, visited a museum, ate out.

But they didn’t. Instead, they took over the beach.