“It doesn’t matter,” I told her, “because he’s never coming back.”

Jessica glanced around the room, taking a break from the conversation, trying to decide whether to keep haranguing me or let it go. It would cost her something to keep it up, I could see. It had already cost her her poise, her equilibrium, in some fundamental way. We both took a quiet sip of coffee. By the time she turned back to me, she had arranged her features and was back to her ladylike self.

“Listen,” she said. “I have some good news.”

It turned out the silver-haired Nate had called her just that morning, sounding sheepish. He said if she felt at all strange about it, he would understand. But the fact was, he and Jason could not dislodge the thought of Irene Petrie’s house from their minds. If she, Jessica, was still even doing business with the monstrous homeowner who had assaulted her in the driveway, they would like to make an offer.

30

I discovered my sister at one of the long communal tables where I’d left her, only now she was contentedly rolling coloured clay beneath her palm. She’d roll it and roll it until it started to resemble a worm, and when she felt she was finished she’d hand the worm off to a fellow crafter, who would shape it into hearts and rainbows and the like. There was a candy-coloured array of Kelli and her partner’s creations spread out on the table in front of them. The most elaborate one was a face — one big long worm to form the circle of the head, two little ones for the eyes (with two tiny clay balls that had been squashed flat for the irises), a couple of worms curved into C’s for the ears, and plenty of long, skinny ones for hair.

“Who is that?” I asked, pointing to the face. I was so delighted by Kelli’s output I wanted to engage with it somehow, ask questions, and this was the only question I could really think of.

Kelli’s partner, a woman in her forties wearing a yellow velour tracksuit of the kind I remembered J.Lo and Britney Spears wearing in the early aughts, turned and beamed up at me. “Iss you!” she declared. We had not been introduced at that point, but I went along with it.

“It does look like me,” I said, smiling down at the circular face and Medusa hair.

“Karie dat,” Kelli confirmed with an air of satisfaction.

Around us, balls and drums and beanbags were being gathered up and put away and chairs were being pushed in to the tables, their feet scraping musically against the floor, as everyone prepared to go home for the day. Marlene was no longer around, but Lina reported to me that Kelli had been so taken by the craft portion of the day — the play-dough shapes — they allowed her to just sit and roll out worms alongside her tracksuited collaborator for the entire afternoon. They had offered her a drum when it came to drum circle time, but she’d turned up her nose and, as I predicted, showed no interest whatsoever in the exercise portion of the day. But the modelling clay had been a hit and Lina explained to me that when something went over as big with one of their participants — especially a newbie — as the clay did with Kelli, their motto tended to be “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”