Fear flutters in Rose’s belly, but it is too tired to take flight.

“If you get me a drink of water, and promise not to rat me out yet, I will confess all,” Rose says.

Mel scrabbles in the bedding, then crawls across the floor to put a water bottle into Rose’s outstretched fingers. Rose is so excited, her hands are shaking. “Open it for me?”

Melanie does. Rose tips the bottle back and drinks until it is empty. “Nectar of the gods,” she says with a sigh.

“Boy, you were thirsty!” Melanie says. “Want me to get you another? It won’t get you out of confessing,” she warns.

“No. I’m good for now, but thanks. First, can I ask you a question?”

“Ask.” There is a scratching sound, then a flare as Melanie lights the candle on the miniature table beneath the window.

Rose fills her eyes with the tousled perfection of the girl. Mel is at the very end of childhood. In weeks, maybe days, she will be gone into the labyrinth leading to adulthood.

“Ask,” the girl repeats.

“What’s today’s date?”

“October eighteenth,” Melanie says.

“How long have I been in…” Rose doesn’t want to say the words “old folks’ home” or “Alzheimer’s ward.” “… the facility?”

“Actually inside Longwood?”

“Yes.”

“Not that long. A month or so,” Mel says.

“A month! Four weeks?” Rose gasps. “You’ve got to be kidding! Let me get this straight. One day I am perfectly sane, then, a month later, I’m in a lockdown ward? Didn’t anybody think that was a wee bit odd?” Anger, fresh and full of energy, wells up where, for such a long time, there has been only confusion and fatigue. Pure energy. Power. Rose welcomes it.

“You’d had a shock with Granddad’s death,” Melanie explains.

Shock with Granddad’s death. Granddad, Harley, Rose’s husband, dead.

Rose remembers.

At the Hobbit gate, she’d recalled the name, Harley, and seen a handsome white-haired man in a tool belt. Now she feels Harley, his arms strong around her. She watches the look of joy on his face as she walks up the steps in the backyard where he waits with Father Jenkins, Flynn beside him as best man. Harley hanging a swing for a toddling Mel, building a playhouse, sitting with Flynn as he drinks vodka and cries.

Then she is in the new house in Charlotte, surrounded by boxes. Flynn and Melanie come to the door. Drying her hands on a dish towel, she opens it. The moment she sees their faces, she knows.

“Do you want to sit down?” Flynn asks.

“No. Tell me.”

“It’s Dad,” Flynn says.

Rose stops breathing.