It’s still sunny outside and the humidity’s completely gone. It’s a perfect summer’s day—the kind you’d get once or twice during the season back in the real Tyson County. I lean against the porch pillar to listen to a jay somewhere off in the spruce, scolding and raucous, then sit down on the top step and open the book again.

“Do you really think that’s going to be enough?” an unfamiliar voice asks.

I suppose I should feel nervous, but I’m very calm as I turn to see who’s spoken. I’m even calm when I recognize the newcomer as another character from the Ellen Wentworth book.

This time it’s Tom Foolery, the title character from “The Scarecrow That Couldn’t Sleep.” Like Mattie, he looks like he simply stepped out of one of Wentworth’s paintings. I could turn to the page of the book on my lap and find the same raggedy man with the painted cloth face and the bits of straw sticking out of his seams and from under his floppy brown hat. He’s wearing a checkered shirt, old worn overalls, and a pair of rubber boots that are cracked with age.

“Don’t tell me I did something to you, too,” I say.

“No,” he says. He waves a floppy arm out past the yard. “I was just hanging around out in the fields and got this sudden inclination to come back to the house.”

I smile. “Literally hanging around?”

“Oh, no. I’m retired now. I was never much good as a scarecrow anyway. I like crows too much and, well, why shouldn’t they have a share of the corn? They were here first, after all.”

“Not in Ellen’s story.”

He takes a seat beside me. “Yes, well, that’s the thing with stories. They only hold a little piece of your life, and even then, it’s from somebody else’s perspective.”

“Unless you write it yourself.”

He shakes his head. “No, the perspective still wouldn’t be right. It would be an older you writing about a younger you, and memory has a knack of playing tricks on us, no matter how much we think we know better. Nobody remembers things the way they really happened, only how we think they happened.”

“Are you talking about my memories of Del?”

“No, no. It’s just . . . “ He has work gloves for hands and spreads them between us. “You’re getting the details right, but you’re missing the big picture.”

“I don’t understand.”

It’s weird following the play of emotions on his face. The features are painted on, but they’re still mobile like a real person’s.

“The little girl who didn’t know what she was doing, but still made Mattie’s life miserable . . .”

“You mean me.”

He nods. “The young you, yes. Where do you think she got the ability to do that?”