Ondine had taken a chance and booked a flight, rented a car, and then undertook the five-hour drive through the country and up and over the mountain, finally to this dirt road. She didn’t have an actual civic address. Her grandmother had told her there was only one house on the Flying Squirrel Road, about fifty miles from a place called Lupin Cove. Ondine planned to interview anyone she could find, if she could actually locate the house, and then drive back and stay at the airport hotel. But even Google Maps didn’t show anything when she did a search for the road name.

Her grandmother had retreated more and more from reality and it was difficult to know whether what she’d whispered was truth or fantasy, or if the stories were a weave of both. That was often the case, Ondine had discovered in her research. Her grandmother had longed for the seashore and sometimes hadn’t recognized the people around her. She was cryptic and lapsed into long silences. Ondine regretted not doing more formal interviews with her grandmother while she could — before, that is, she walked out of the country nursing home when the door to her unit had been propped open by a new nurse. They never found her body. The police didn’t make much of an effort to find someone that elderly. They figured she had fallen into a ravine or been eaten by coyotes, although they had put it more delicately.

Ondine saw the old woman sitting on the porch as soon as she pulled into the driveway. Her frizzy silver hair flowed around her shoulders and deep wrinkles rippled through her face. Ondine had expected someone much younger, but realized that of course her grandmother had spoken as though still a teenager, her mind floating through all the years of her life and anchoring in her girlhood. Ondine was nervous. She sat in the car with her hands on the steering wheel, surprised by her own inability to bring professional objectivity to her personal life.

As soon as the car engine was off, a seagull squawked and the old woman called out to Ondine. “Young woman, are you lost or is this your destination?” She didn’t seem surprised to see her. It was Ondine who was surprised the place even existed, how it wasn’t a fictional setting in a story passed down within her family.

Ondine got out of the car but the woman didn’t get up or beckon her to the house. Ondine was not sure what to do. She gave what she hoped was a friendly wave. “I think this is the right place. My grandmother said she grew up on the Flying Squirrel Road. I always promised her I would come back to visit when she died.” Ondine didn’t begin explaining the complicated story of her grandmother’s end.

“Well, imagine! Isn’t that nice of you to respect her wishes. No doubt she’ll be pleased. It’s some hot today. What a summer. It’ll be cooler down by the water. Cool and foggy but it will be most welcome. It’s been a long time in coming. I wasn’t sure who could be pulling into my driveway. My friends are all passed away now and there are only a few distant cousins but I don’t want a thing to do with their corruption.”