“So you’re WP Tree Poet?” Allison said.

Lucy raised and lowered her eyebrows, neither admitting nor denying it, but definitely capitalizing on it. Now people were only allowed to post beautiful things on the big bulletin board in back of the café. “I’m reversing its karma,” she said, offering Allison an index card upon which to write her own sentiment.

Allison wrote, “And the tree was happy,” and tacked it up with a blue-tipped thumbtack.

She poked amid the open boxes of plates and glasses, place mats, and flatware, old DVDs, computer games, and bed linens. When she spied a flat white box under one of the couches, she pulled it out, opening it to find poster-sized black plastic sheets like photo negatives on steroids.

She took one out and held it up to the sun. What she saw was both beautiful and strange. It was a negative of some sort, amorphous, yet familiar. It was painted in fantastic colors, like a haunted sunrise, with yellows, oranges, and green amid the gray and black. She set it aside, and pulled out another. This one was a melee of blues and greens, more like an ocean than the sky. There were dozens of similar negatives. She was about to take out another, when she heard a shrill “Noooooooooo” from across the lawn.

Allison looked up to see Kaye running toward her, a wild expression on her face. What in the world? Allison moved out of the way just as Kaye skidded onto the box, belly down.

“This is all trash. It shouldn’t be out here. I missed a few boxes, that’s all.” Kaye sat on the box, then grabbed the two films Allison had and held them to her chest.

“They don’t look like trash,” Allison said.

“Well, they are.”

“What are they?”

“Nothing. They’re nothing.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“Please don’t make fun of me,” Kaye said.

“Make fun . . . ?”

“Just forget you ever saw them. Promise me.” She looked ashamed.

“But they’re incredible. They ought to be in a gallery or something. Where did you get them?”

Kaye whispered something.

“What?”

“I made them,” she said, her voice just audible now.

“You made these?”

“Hush!” she said. “Please?”

“They’re amazing, Kaye.”

Kaye looked at Allison with skeptical eyes.

“I didn’t know you were an artist.”

Kaye frowned. “I am?” She blinked back tears.

Allison bought two of Kaye’s pieces for far more money than she would ever admit to Ted. She had insisted on the price, and Kaye had thrown in a light box as a bonus, for being the first person ever to buy a Kaye Cox original “mammographic.” Kaye smiled, showing a welcome glimmer of her old self. Others came over to see what the fuss was about, and she sold several more, rapid fire, everyone afraid they were going to miss out on Something Big. And maybe they were right. Only time would tell.