Memory and Dream

Kismet

I

Wren Island, September 1992

It would be winter soon, Isabelle thought. She’d paused in her packing to sit in the wing-backed chair by the bedroom window. She could see the island’s autumned fields from her vantage point, running off to the cliffs before they dropped into the lake. In the aftermath of last night’s storm, the sky was a perfect blue, untouched by cloud. She watched a crow glide across that cerulean expanse, then swoop down toward the fields. When it was lost to sight, her gaze moved back toward the house, where the forest encroached a little closer every year. The rich cloak of leaves was already beginning to thin, the colors losing their vibrancy. Movement caught her gaze again and she saw that the raggedy stand of mountain ash by one of the nearer outbuildings was filled with cedar waxwings, the sleek yellow-and-brown birds gorging on this year’s crop of the trees’ orange berries. Putting her face closer to the glass, she could hear their thin lisping cries of tsee, tsee.

Autumn was her favorite time of year. It bared the landscape, it was true, heralding the lonely desolation of the long months of winter to come, but it made her heart sing all the same with a joy not so dissimilar to what she felt when she saw the first crocuses in the spring. It was easy to forget—when the trees were bare, the fields turned brown and the north winds brought the first snows—that the world went on, that it wasn’t coming to an end. She agreed with what Andrew Wyeth was supposed to have said about the season: something did wait, underneath the drab masquerade that autumn eventually came to wear. The whole story didn’t show. But that was the way it was with everything. There were always other stories going on under what you could see—in people as much as landscapes.

Isabelle smiled at herself and rose from her chair. She knew what she was doing. Procrastinating.

She was going to miss the island—that was a given. Especially now. This was when she normally laid in a few months’ worth of supplies against that time when the channel between the island and the mainland became impassable. For anywhere from two to six weeks she would be cut off from all contact with the outside world, except by phone. She savored that forced hermitage. It was a time when she collected herself after the summer and its inevitable influx of visitors, and often got her best work done. As things were going now, she probably wouldn’t be able to return to the island until the channel froze over in early December. But it was too late to go back on the promise she’d made to Alan. Whether she liked it or not, she would be living in the city for at least a few months. Which reminded her: she should give Jilly another try.

Rubens was moping about in her studio when she went in to use the phone.

“You know what’s up, don’t you?” Isabelle said.

She punched in Jilly’s phone number. Cradling the receiver between her shoulder and ear, she hoisted the orange tom onto her lap and scratched the fur up and down his spine until he began to purr.

She was half expecting her call to go unanswered again, but after the third ring she heard the sound of the phone being picked up on the other end of the line, quickly followed by Jilly’s cheerful hello.

“Hello, yourself,” Isabelle said. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”

“Were you? I was over at Amos & Cook’s picking up some paints and I kind of got distracted on the way home. I ended up down by the Pier, watching these kids showing off on their Rollerblades. You should have seen them. They were just amazing. I could’ve watched them all day.”

Isabelle smiled. A rarer occasion would be a time when Jilly wasn’t distracted by one thing or another.

“Tell me something new,” she said.

“Ah ... the Pope’s staying with me for the weekend?”

“Rats. And here I was hoping that I could hit you up for a place to stay.”

“You’re coming to town? When? How long are you staying?”

Rather than taking the questions on an individual basis, Isabelle backtracked, explaining how Alan had come out to the island with his proposal for the omnibus of Kathy’s stories that Isabelle had agreed to illustrate.

“You mean in your old style?” Jilly asked.

“That’s the plan.”

“How do you feel about it?”

Isabelle hesitated. “Excited, actually,” she said after a moment’s thought. “And what was it like seeing Alan again?” Jilly wanted to know.

“Sort of weird,” Isabelle said. “In some ways, it was like I’d only just seen him last week.”

“I’ve always liked him,” Jilly said. “There’s something intrinsically good about him—an inborn compassion that you don’t find in many people these days.”

“You could be talking about yourself,” Isabelle pointed out.

Jilly laughed. “Not a chance. I had to learn how to be a good person.”

Before Isabelle could add her own comment to that, Jilly steered the conversation back to Isabelle’s current concern. “You’re welcome to stay with me,” she said, “although it sounds like you’re going to be in town for a while, so it could get a little cramped.”

“I was hoping to stay just for a couple of nights while I find myself something.”

“Are you bringing Rubens?”

“I couldn’t leave him behind on his own.”

“Of course not,” Jilly said. “But having a pet’ll make it a little harder to find a place unless—hey, do you remember the old shoe factory on Church Street?”

“The one by the river?”

“That’s the place. Well, some people bought it at the beginning of the summer and have turned it into a kind of miniature version of Waterhouse Street.”

Isabelle remembered having read about it in the features section of one of the papers. The ground floor was taken up by boutiques, cafes and galleries, while the two upstairs floors consisted of small apartments, offices, studio spaces and rented rooms.

“They call the place Joli Coeur,” Jilly went on, “after that Rossetti painting. They’ve even got a reproduction of it—a giant mural in the central courtyard on the ground floor.”

“I saw a picture of it in the paper,” Isabelle said. “Have you been in at all?”

“A couple of times. Nora has a studio in there. She says it’s all sort of communey, with everybody running in and out of everybody else’s place, but I’m sure no one would bother you if you made it plain that you didn’t want to be disturbed.”

“I don’t know,” Isabelle said. “I think I could use a bit of chaotic bohemia about now—just to get me back into the mood of what it was like when Kathy was writing those stories.”

Jilly laughed. “Well, I’d call this place more baroque than boho, but I suppose there’s really not that much difference between the two. At least there never was in the Waterhouse Street days. Do you want me to give them a call to see if they have any studio spaces free?”

“Do you mind?”

“Of course not. I think you’ll like staying there. You wouldn’t believe the old faces I’ve run into. I even saw that old boyfriend of yours the other day—what was his name? John Sweetgrass.”

Everything went still inside Isabelle. A cold silence rose up inside her, tightening in her chest, and she found it hard to take a breath. In her mind’s eye, she saw a painting, consumed by flames.

“But that ... that’s—”

Impossible, she’d been about to say, but she caught herself in time. “That’s so ... odd,” she said instead. “I haven’t thought of him in years.” Until yesterday. Until Alan came with his proposal and woke up all the old ghosts inside her. John and the others had been on her mind ever since.

“He doesn’t go by the name John anymore,” Jilly went on. “He calls himself Mizaun Kinnikinnik now.”

Isabelle remembered a long-ago conversation in a Newford diner, John telling her about the Kickaha, about names. The tightness in her chest was easing, but the chill hadn’t gone away. How could Jilly have seen him? She looked out the window of her studio. The view was different from here, the fields choked with rosebushes, the woods looming dark behind them. It was easy to imagine hidden stories when she looked at their dark tangle.

“Are you still there, Isabelle?” Jilly asked.

Isabelle nodded, then realized that her friend couldn’t see the gesture. “How did he look?” she asked.

“Great. Like he hasn’t aged a year. But I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to him. I was on my way out and he was on his way in and I haven’t seen him since. I did ask Nora about him and she says a friend of his runs the little boutique that sells Kickaha crafts and arts on the ground floor. You’ll have to look him up when you get to town.”

“Maybe I will,” Isabelle said.

As if she’d have a choice. As if he wouldn’t come to her first.

“I should finish my packing,” she told Jilly. “I’ll probably be leaving in another hour or so.”

“I’ll set an extra plate for dinner. And I should have some news about Joli Coeur by the time you get here.”

“Thanks, Jilly. You’re a real sweetheart.”

But Isabelle didn’t get back to her packing right away. She hung up the receiver and then sat there, stroking Rubens, trying to gain some measure of calm from the touch of his fur, his weight on her lap. But all she could think of was John, of the presences that she felt sometimes in the woods around her home—itinerant remnants of a lost time, cut adrift from their own pasts, but no longer a part of her present. And so they waited in the woods. For what, she’d never been quite sure. For her to take up that part of her art once more? To take a few pigments, some oil, a piece of canvas and an old brush and add others to their ranks?

She’d never been entirely sure if she’d made them real with her art, or if they were real first, if a part of her had recognized them from some mysterious else-where so that she was able to render their likenesses and bring them across. The only thing of which she was entirely certain was that she believed in them. For all these years she’d believed in them and in the part she’d played to bring them forth. But ifJohn was still alive, that changed everything. It created new riddles to unravel and made a lie of what Rushkin had taught her was real.

Rushkin, she thought. Considering all he’d done to her, why should she ever have believed anything he’d told her?

But she knew the reason before she even asked herself the question. No matter what Rushkin had done, she’d always believed that there were some things he held sacred. Some things he would never soil with a lie. If she couldn’t believe that, she didn’t know what to believe anymore.

She was bound to those errant spirits that had come across from their otherwhere. That much was real. Their lives still touched hers as though she were the center of a spider’s web and each fine outgoing strand was connected to one of them. She could close her eyes and see them. But if it wasn’t her art that made the connection, then what was?

II

The two red-haired women sat on a rococo burgundy chesterfield in the middle of a small glade surrounded by old birch trees. The glade had all the appearance of a living room, with the birches for walls, the sky for ceiling and the forest floor, mostly covered with an Oriental rug, underfoot. Though a breeze blew across the fields beyond the glade, inside the air was still. Inclement weather never intruded.

Lanterns hung from the white boughs above, unlit now since sunlight streamed into the glade, providing ample illumination. Standing across from the chesterfield were a pair of mismatched club chairs with a cedar chest set in between them to serve as a table. Beside the older woman was an empty bookcase with leaded glass panes, its one book presently lying open on her lap.

The older woman carried herself with a stately grace. She appeared to be in her early thirties, a striking figure in her long grey gown, rust underskirt and her thick red hair. She might have stepped from a Waterhouse painting, the Lady of Shalott, trailing her hand in a lilied river; Miranda watching a ship sink off her father’s island.

Her companion had half her years, was gangly where she was all slender curves, scruffy where she was so neatly groomed, but the resemblance between the two was such that they might easily have been sisters, or mother and daughter. If the younger girl’s hair was a bird’s nest of tangles, her choice of clothing torn blue jeans and an oversized woolen sweater spotted with burrs and prickly seeds, it was simply because she was endlessly active. She had no time to comb her hair or mend her clothes when there was so much to do.

But she was quiet now, sitting beside the older woman, the two of them unable to look away from the indistinct figures that gamboled about in the field just beyond the birch walls of their curiously situated room. The red-brown shapes romping about in the grass caught the bright sunlight and pulled it deep into their coloring until they appeared to glow from within.

“Look at them, Rosalind,” the younger woman said. “They’re so new. They must still remember what it was like in the before.”

Rosalind shook her head. “There’s not enough of them here to allow them memory. They’ll be gone in another hour.”

Cosette nodded glumly. She could see that one or two of them already were becoming less distinct.

The distant hills could be seen through an arm or a torso, flashes of lake appeared through hair that was turning to a soft, red-brown mist.

“What do you remember of before?” she asked, turning her head from the meadow to her companion.

It was an old question, but one she never grew tired of asking.

“There was story,” Rosalind said. Her voice was thoughtful, full of remembering. Of trying to remember. “Stories. And one of them was mine.”

Cosette was never sure if she actually remembered that there’d been stories, or if it was only from Rosalind having told her of them so often. What she did know was that she carried an ache inside her, that she’d lost something coming from before to here.

“We miss our dreams,” Rosalind had explained once. “We have no blood, so we cannot dream.”

“But Isabelle dreams,” Cosette had protested.

“Isabelle has the red crow inside her.”

Sometimes Cosette would run madly across the fields, dangerously close to the cliffs, run and run until finally she fell exhausted to the turfy ground. Then she’d lie with her hair tangled in grass and roots and weeds and stare up into the sky, looking for a russet speck against the blue, red wings beating like the drumming of a pulse.

Red crow, red crow, fly inside me, she’d sing in her husky voice.

But she could still prick her finger with a thorn and the red crow wouldn’t fly from the cut. She couldn’t bleed—not red blood, not green fairy-tale blood, not any blood at all.

And she couldn’t dream.

Sleep wasn’t necessary for her kind, but when she did close her eyes to seek it, there was only the vast darkness lying there in her mind until she woke again. When she slept, she went into an empty place and came back neither refreshed nor touched by the mythic threads of story that the red crow brought to others when they slept.

“It’s because we’re not real,” she’d whispered once, shaken with the enormity of the thought that they were only loaned their lives, that their existence depended on the capriciousness of another’s will, rather than how every other person lived, following the red crow’s wheel as it slowly turned from birth to death.

But Rosalind had quickly shaken her head in reply. Taking Cosette in her arms, she’d rocked the younger woman against her breast.

“We are real,” she’d said, a fierceness in her voice that Cosette had never heard before. “Don’t ever believe differently.”

It had to be true.

We are real.

She took Rosalind’s hand now and repeated it to herself like a charm. Her gaze was held and trapped by the red-brown shapes frolicking in the sun beyond the birch glade.

We are real.

Not like them. They’ll fade and go away, back into the before, but we’ll remain because we’re real.

Even if we can’t dream.

“Isabelle’s going back to the city, you know,” she told Rosalind. “She’s going to paint like she did before.”

She never looked away from the dancing shapes. Many were fainter now, their outlines vague, certain limbs almost completely washed away. They were becoming patterns of red-brown mist, rather than holding to true shapes as the sun and the dreams of this world burned them away.

“I know,” Rosalind said.

“I’m going to follow her.” Cosette finally looked away, turning her attention back to her companion.

“This time I’m going to learn how she reaches into the before and brings us back.”

“We’ve always known how she does it,” Rosalind said. “She paints.”

“I can paint.”

“Yes, but she dreams, so it’s not the same.”

Cosette sighed at the truth of it. It wasn’t the same at all.

“I’m still going to follow her,” she said.

“And then?” Rosalind asked.

“I’m going to reach into the before myself and bring back a red crow for each of us.”

“If only you could,” Rosalind murmured, the trace of a poignant smile touching the corners of her mouth. “It would be like in the story—one for memory and one for dream.”

“But none for the man who has no soul.”

Rosalind nodded again.

“Never for him,” she agreed.

The man who had no soul was only a dark figure in Cosette’s mind, an image of menace, lacking any detail. Thinking of him now stole all the warmth from the sunlight. Cosette shivered and drew closer to her companion. She hadn’t actually ever met him, only observed him from a distance, but she would never forget the emptiness that lay behind his eyes, the dark hollow of who he truly was that he could cloak so efficiently with his false charm and gaiety.

“You mustn’t tell the others,” she said. “That I’m going, I mean.”

“Paddyjack won’t need to be told.”

Cosette nodded. “But he won’t follow me if someone doesn’t think of it for him. If we have to take a chance, let it only be one of us that takes the risk.”

“But—”

“Promise me,” Cosette said.

“I promise.” Rosalind’s grip tightened on Cosette’s fingers. “But only ifyou promise that you’ll be careful. Promise me you won’t let that dark man find you.”

Cosette promised, but it wasn’t a pledge she was sure she could keep. She could only try.

She looked away again, out between the birches to the field beyond. The figures were all gone now.

There were only the autumn fields, red and gold and brown, and the lake farther off, a blue that was almost grey. The red-brown shapes had been washed away as easily as Isabelle might lift transparent pigment from wet paper.

That could happen to me, she thought. That could happen to all of us. But she took the fear and held it inside herself, leaving it unspoken.

“I like this Alan,” she said instead. “Maybe if Isabelle doesn’t want him, I’ll take him.”

“He’s far too old for you,” Rosalind said with a laugh.

Cosette’s lips formed a sulky moue that wasn’t at all serious.

“I only look young,” she informed her companion.

“That’s true,” Rosalind said, still smiling. “And you never play the fool. You’re far too mature for that.”

Cosette poked her in the ribs with her elbow.

“Hush you,” she said.

Rosalind let go of Cosette’s hand and put her arm around the younger woman’s shoulders. They spoke no more of departures or danger. Instead, they watched the day pass beyond their glade, the light change on the fields as the afternoon crept toward dusk, and pretended, if just for these few hours, that they wouldn’t miss each other. That nothing was changed. That the red crow flew inside their bodies and when they slept, they could dream.

III

Newford, September 1992

Driving back to the city, Alan was glad that he’d taken Marisa’s advice and not tried to apologize for or make sense of his and Isabelle’s estrangement all those years ago. His stay at Wren Island had contained enough odd and strained moments all on their own without his needing to bring up any old baggage. It was funny, though. He didn’t remember Isabelle as being so moody in the old days. She’d been somewhat serious, and certainly quieter than Kathy, but then everyone had been quieter than Kathy.

Thinking of Kathy woke a deep pang of loss. It was a familiar sorrow, but no less difficult to bear for that familiarity. He wondered if it was memories of Kathy that had brought on Isabelle’s extreme shifts of mood. Lord knew the memories seemed so fresh to him at the moment that they were leaving him more than a little off-balance. It wasn’t just the senselessness of her death that ate at him, but that he missed her so terribly. While time was supposed to heal all, it had yet to heal him. He thought it never might.

There were times when he was able to go a week or more without thinking of her, but something always came up to remind him and then that deep sorrow would return, lodged so firmly inside that there was no escaping it. The court battles with her family and working on the omnibus didn’t help either.

Sometimes he thought that if he could just get the book out, he’d be able to close the door on the past and get on with his life, but most of the time he felt that would never happen. He wasn’t even sure he wanted it to. Forgetting seemed too much like a betrayal.

Traffic was light going into the city and he made good time on the highway. The recent cassette of a New Jersey songwriter named Kate Jacobs was on the car stereo. She came across as folky and wise, with just a touch of sly humor, and he found himself relaxing to the sound of her voice, though he couldn’t help but wonder, After what?, as he listened to the title cut, “The Calm Comes After.” A miracle, he supposed. He reached the downtown core before the lunch crowds began to congest the streets and had no trouble driving into Lower Crowsea, which was somewhat of a miracle in itself. By the time he pulled into his garage, it was just under two and a half hours from when Isabelle had left him off at her landing on the mainland.

The first thing he planned to do was change; then he’d get on the phone to the New York paperback house that was interested in the omnibus to pass along the good news that Isabelle had come on board.

They could use one of the paintings hanging in the Newford Children’s Foundation to start the publicity machine rolling and he’d send out galleys of the unpublished stories to get some new quotes. Since Kathy’s work had been out of the limelight for five years now, it was important to choreograph her return so that it was just right.

With his head full of business details, he went up the stairs to his apartment, then stopped dead at the sound of music that was coming from the other side of the apartment’s front door. He was certain he hadn’t left the stereo on. With his key in hand, he moved forward again, an uneasy feeling prickling across his shoulder blades, but before he could put the key in the lock, the door swung open and Marisa was standing there.

“Hi,” she said.

Her familiar half-smile had a touch of nervousness about it and Alan could see why. She’d obviously made herself at home in his absence. She was barefoot, wearing one of his long-sleeved shirts over a pair of her own jeans. Her hair was a disheveled blonde tangle and her eyes were puffy and red, as though she’d been crying.

“I saw you pull up into the garage,” she went on, “but I didn’t have time to change.” She gave the shirt she was wearing a fidgety pluck with her fingers. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Alan said.

“I left so fast, I never even thought to pack anything. George, I mean.” She backed up a little so that Alan could come inside. “I left him last night. I didn’t know where else to go.”

Alan closed the door behind him. Of course, he thought. After all this time, she finally left George just when Isabelle had come back into his life. Then he felt like a heel for even thinking such a thing. Tears were brimming in Marisa’s eyes and her lower lip trembled.

“I . I tried to think of where I could go,” she said, “and then I realized that you’re the only person I really know. After all these years of living here, you’re the only person I can trust.”

“You can stay as long as you want,” Alan told her, and he meant it.

“I don’t want to get in the way of ... you know ... you and Isabelle ....”

“There’s nothing to get in the way of,” Alan said. Not yet. Maybe never.

“I ... would you hold me, Alan? I just need somebody to hold me ...”

As he put his arms around her, she buried her face in his shoulder and began to cry. Alan steered her toward the sofa. He sat there holding her for a long time, murmuring words of comfort that he wasn’t sure were true. Everything wasn’t necessarily going to get better for her. He knew how Marisa felt about him, but he wasn’t sure how he felt about her anymore. She’d waited so long to get out of her marriage—maybe too long.

She fell asleep finally. Being careful not to disturb her, Alan rose from the sofa after putting a pillow under her head. Sitting on the edge of the coffee table, he regarded her for a long time. After a few minutes, he pushed an errant lock away from her forehead, kissed her lightly on the top of her head and rose to his feet. He crossed the room and sat down at his desk, but found himself unable to concentrate on his work. Instead, he looked at Marisa, sleeping so peacefully now on the sofa.

From the first time he’d met her, he’d sensed an air of contradiction about her. She was very much a woman, but still retained a waiflike quality. She could be brash, and at times deliberately suggestive, yet she was painfully shy. She seemed to have an inborn wisdom about her, but she’d stayed in a marriage that only made her miserable and had gone sour long before he’d met her. She was incredibly easy to get along with, yet she had few friends. She was a talented artist in her own right, but so self-conscious about her work that she rarely completed a piece and preferred to work with other people’s art and ideas—which is how Alan had met her in the first place. He’d placed an ad in The Crowsea Times for a part-time book designer and she’d been the first person to respond. After the interview, he hadn’t bothered to see anyone else, but simply gave her the job.

“Now, remember,” he’d warned her, “when I said part-time, it’s really quite part-time. I rarely do more than three or four books in a year.”

“That’s okay. I’m not doing it for the money, but because I want to be doing something. We were just transferred to the city and I feel completely at loose ends.”

“We?” Alan had found himself asking with a certain measure of disappointment.

“My husband George and I. He’s a financial consultant with Cogswell’s. It’s because of his work that we came here.”

It was a good year before Alan got any inkling that the marriage was in trouble, but by that time he’d managed to teach himself to think of her as a friend and coworker and nothing more; beyond that he drew a line that was admittedly hard not to cross at those times that Marisa got into one of her teasing moods. But even if he had known that her marriage was in trouble, Alan wouldn’t have let it change their relationship. He was far too old-fashioned to court a woman who was already married, if only in name, though that hadn’t stopped him from wishing that she’d simply walk out on George once and for all.

Alan sighed. And now she had, now she was here, and all he could do was think about Isabelle and feel guilty about his being attracted to Marisa, even though he doubted Isabelle would care in the least what he and Marisa might get up to. There was certainly nothing going on between Isabelle and himself, nothing even implied or possible, so far as he could see.

It was the story of his life, Alan thought. He was never in the right place at the right time.

He remained at his desk for a while longer, shuffling papers that he couldn’t concentrate on. Finally he arose and went into the bedroom so that he wouldn’t disturb Marisa with his call to New York.

IV

Isabelle didn’t even have time to finish parking before Jilly had come down from her Yoors Street studio and was out on the pavement to meet her. She was wearing her usual jeans and scuffed brown construction boots, but Isabelle didn’t recognize the oversized sweater. It was a deep yellowish-orange, which made Jilly’s blue eyes seem a more startling blue than normal. When Isabelle stepped out of the Jeep, Jilly bounced up to her and gave her a big hug.

“It’s so great to see you!”

“You, too,” Isabelle said, returning the hug.

Stepping back, Jilly surveyed the contents of Isabelle’s Jeep. The backseat and storage compartment was stuffed with a tall pile of boxes and suitcases and various sacks and bags, while on the passenger’s seat was a woven straw cat carrier from which Rubens watched the proceedings with a mournful expression. Jilly went around to the other side of the car and opened the passenger’s door.

“Poor fella,” she said, crouching by the front of the cage and poking her finger through the mesh to scratch his nose. Once Rubens looked a little more settled she stood up and surveyed the back of the Jeep again. “Boy, you really were serious about staying awhile.”

“You know me. I always bring too much.”

“I think it’s called being prepared,” Jilly said dubiously.

Isabelle laughed. “Or something.”

“So do you want to come up for some tea, or would you like to go check out your new studio?”

“They had room at Job Coeur?”

Jilly nodded. “Third floor, with a huge bay window overlooking the river.”

“Who’d you have to kill to get that?”

“Nothing so drastic. The renovating of the top floor was only just finished this week, so they hadn’t even started renting space yet. The ad’s not going into the paper until tomorrow.”

Knowing that she at least had a place of her own, a weight lifted inside Isabelle. She’d been nervous the whole drive in, not sure quite what was waiting for her in the city. She’d never been very good at depending on the kindness of others for a place to stay. But now, with a studio found, and buoyed by Jilly’s infectious enthusiasm, her own excitement finally began to grow.

“Let’s go see it,” Isabelle said. “We can always have tea in one of those cafes on the ground floor.”

Jilly grinned. “I thought you’d say that,” she said, “so I already locked up before I came down.” She picked up Rubens’s carrier and slipped into the seat, perching the case on her knee. “Ready when you are.”

Isabelle shook her head in amusement. She always forgot how spontaneous Jilly was. The small artist was a witch’s brew of energy and wide-ranging interests, bubbling away in a cauldron and constantly spilling over to splatter anyone standing in the nearby vicinity. When Jilly had you in tow, everything took on new meaning. The ordinary was transformed into the extraordinary, the odd or unusual became positively exotic.

“Do they have parking?” she asked as she slipped behind the wheel on the driver’s side.

“‘Fraid not. You’ll have to park on the street. But you can get a permit if you’ve got the patience to wade through an afternoon or so of City Hall bureaucracy.”

“What? You’re not on a first-name basis with whoever’s in charge?”

“Well,” Jilly said. “Now that you mention it, Sue’s got an office on the second floor. Maybe she could help us.”

“I was kidding,” Isabelle told her.

Jilly smiled. “I knew that. But you should still give Sue a call. Do you know how to get there?” she added as Isabelle pulled away from the curb. “It hasn’t been that long.”

Jilly shrugged and settled back into her seat to fuss with Rubens through the mesh of his carrying case while Isabelle maneuvered them through the thickening afternoon traffic.

“You’re going to love the big city, old fella,” Jilly told Rubens. “There must be hundreds of lady cats just waiting for a handsome tom like you to come courting.”

“Oh please.”

Jilly shot Isabelle a quick grin. “Well he’s got to have something to make up for being uprooted from house and home the way he has.”

“It’s only for a few months.”

“People months,” Jilly corrected. “But how long is that in cat months?”

“This is true,” Isabelle said.

V

The offices of the Newford Children’s Foundation were situated in a building not nearly so prepossessing as one might imagine from its name, taking up only the ground floor of an old Edwardian-style house in Lower Crowsea. The outside of the house bore little resemblance to the blueprint from which it had been constructed. The original architectural lines were blurred with the addition of various porches and skylights, a sunroom along one side wall, the wall on the other side half-covered in ivy. Inside, it was changed as well. The front foyer led into a waiting room that had once been a parlor, while the remaining rooms on the ground floor had been converted into offices. Only the original kitchen at the rear remained as it had been, still overlooking a postage stamp of a backyard.

Because she lived in one of the two apartments upstairs, Rolanda Hamilton could often be found in the Foundation’s offices during off-hours, catching up on her paperwork. She was an attractive woman in her mid-twenties, broadnosed and full-lipped with short corkscrew hair the color of chestnuts. Alone in the office, she’d dressed for comfort rather than style. Her white sweatshirt made her coffee-colored skin seem darker than usual while her long legs were comfortably ensconced in a pair of baggy jeans. Her Reeboks were a dark magenta—the same color as the large plastic hoop earrings she was wearing.

She’d discovered not long after beginning work here that, since the salary for an office support person wasn’t in their budget, she, like the other four counselors that the Foundation employed, had to do double duty: counseling the children they worked with during the day, and then trying to find time to bring files up to date, send out the donation mailings, balance the budget and whatever else needed to be done that they hadn’t been able to get to during the course of their working day. It was an endless task, but Rolanda had yet to bum out on the job as had so many others before her.

There was a reason why she was so dedicated to the furtherance of Kathy Mully’s ideals. Rolanda had grown up in the projects, where her mother had instilled in her a respect for hard work and doing what was right. Her younger brother had been shotgunned when his gang got into a turf war with another crew. He died en route to the hospital and never saw his twelfth birthday. Her older brother was in jail, serving seven to ten for armed robbery. Two of her cousins were also in jail. The boy next door that she’d played with before she entered her teens was serving a life sentence for murder one.

These were statistics that her mother liked to recite whenever Rolanda got into trouble herself, like the time she got sent home from fifth grade for beating up a white girl during recess.

“But Mama,” she’d wailed as her mother gave her a slap across the back of her head as soon as they returned home from the school. “She called me a stupid nigger.”

“You are a stupid nigger if you can’t do better at school than listen to some white trash mouth off”

“It’s not fair. She started it.”

“And you finished it.”

“But—”

“You listen to me, girl. There’s nothing fair about having to try twice as hard to do well and then still have ’em spit in your face, but I’ll be damned if I won’t have one child of mine do well. You hear me?

Are you going to make your mama proud, girl, or do I have to be shamed by you as well?”

The projects ground you down, and Rolanda had never understood how her mother had resisted the oppressive heartbreak of its weight upon her frail shoulders. Five-foot-one and barely a hundred pounds, Janet Hamilton was tougher and more resilient than men twice her size. She had raised three children on her own when her husband abandoned her. She’d worked two jobs and still managed to keep their house clean and regular meals on the table. She’d always had time for her children, and even when she’d lost two of them to the projects, her spirit refused to bow under the loss.

“Why you always got to try so hard?” one of Rolanda’s classmates asked her when they got their tests back one day and Rolanda’s was the only one sporting that red “A” at the top of the paper. “You that afraid of the back of your mama’s hand?”

Rolanda had shaken her head in response. No, she’d thought. I’m afraid Mama won’t be proud of me anymore. But the words remained unspoken. Rolanda had long since learned how to make do in a world where her peers reviled her either for being black or for acting white, depending on the color of their own skin. She simply kept to herself and did the best she could. She didn’t fight with the other kids anymore. She didn’t run with the gangs. Her mother had taught her respect for the rules, both legal and societal, and Rolanda made a point of staying within their parameters, even when all she wanted to do was strike back at the unfairness that surrounded her every day of her life, even after the injustice of her mother’s death, in a drive-by shooting. She fought for change, but she fought from within what she wanted to change, rather than chipping away at it from the outside.

Rolanda had been bent over her computer for over an hour when she suddenly realized that she was no longer alone in the Newford Children’s Foundation office. Lifting her head, she looked across the waiting room to find a red-haired girl standing in front of Isabelle Copley’s painting The Wild Girl, and for a long moment all she could do was regard the stranger with mild confusion. It wasn’t that the girl was barefoot and wore only jeans and a thin flannel shirt—clothing not at all suitable for late-September weather; it was that she seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Rolanda hadn’t heard the front door open, hadn’t heard the girl enter. One moment she’d been alone at her desk and the waiting room was empty, in the next the girl was here, standing barefoot on the carpet and looking up at the painting. She bore, Rolanda realized, an uncanny resemblance to the subject of the painting.

“She could be your twin,” Rolanda said.

The girl turned with a smile. “Do you think so?”

“Definitely.”

Rolanda had thought the girl was in her early teens, but now she was no longer so sure, though she couldn’t pinpoint what had made her change her mind. Perhaps it was the momentary trace of a very adult mockery that she’d seen in the girl’s smile. Or perhaps it was the worldly look in her eyes. The latter, in itself, wasn’t so unusual. The children who came to the NCF’s offices invariably had either one of two looks about them: a worldliness that was out of keeping with their tender years, or fear. Rolanda hated to see either. Both spoke of lost childhoods.

“It’s awfully cold to be walking around in bare feet,” she said.

The girl looked down and wriggled her toes on the carpet. “I suppose it is.”

“What’s your name?”

“Cosette.”

Of course, Rolanda thought. They never had last names. Not at first.

“I think we might have some socks and shoes that would fit you,” she said. “A jacket, too, if you’d like one. Or a sweater.”

“That would be nice.”

Rolanda stood up from behind her desk. “Let’s go see what we can find.”

The girl dutifully fell in step behind her as Rolanda led the way down the central hall toward Shauna Daly’s office. Because it was the largest room in the building, Shauna had to share her space with much of the clothing and toys that were donated to the Foundation. Still more was kept in boxes in the basement, replenished whenever the supply in Shauna’s office ran low.

“Take whatever you like,” Rolanda said.

Cosette seemed delighted by the jumble of clothing that took up one side of the office. Laid out on a long worktable, or spilling out of various boxes, were any number of jeans and skirts, jackets, sweaters, socks and underwear. Shoes were lined up under the table, ranging from tiny footwear suitable for infants to boots and shoes to fit teenagers.

“Do you have a place to stay, Cosette?” Rolanda asked as the girl felt the texture of various jackets and sweaters.

“Oh sure. I sort of have a boyfriend and I’m going to be staying with him.”

Oh-oh, Rolanda thought. She’d didn’t like the sound of that. A “boyfriend.” Who let her wander around on the streets barefoot and without a jacket.

“What’s his name?” she asked, keeping her tone casual.

When the girl lifted her gaze from the clothing and turned it toward her, Rolanda felt an odd sensation. It was as though the carpet underfoot had suddenly dropped a few inches, settling like an elevator at a new floor. It wasn’t worldliness that lay in the girl’s eyes, she realized, but she couldn’t put a name to it. Otherworldliness, perhaps.

“His name?” the girl said. “It’s, um ... Alan. Alan Grant.”

Rolanda recovered her equilibrium and gave her a sharp look. “Alan Grant the publisher?”

“That’s right,” Cosette said with a bright smile. “He does make books, doesn’t he?”

Rolanda was shocked. She knew Alan. Everybody at the NCF did. He was one of the Foundation’s biggest supporters. He was also old enough to be this girl’s father.

“And he’s your ‘boyfriend’?” she asked.

“Well, sort of,” Cosette said. “I only met him last night and I know he likes Isabelle better than he likes me, but she’s not interested in having a boyfriend and I am.”

Relief flooded Rolanda when she realized that it was the girl who was fixated on Alan, not the other way around.

“I think he thinks I’m too young,” Cosette added.

“Perhaps you are ... for Alan, I mean.”

“I’m much older than I look,” Cosette assured her.

She sat down on the floor and tried on various shoes.

“Are you hungry?” Rolanda asked.

Cosette shook her head. “I don’t really need to eat.”

More warning bells went off in Rolanda’s head. While Cosette was thin, it wasn’t the same sort of thinness that Rolanda usually associated with eating disorders, but looks could always be deceiving.

“Why’s that?” she asked, maintaining that studied nonchalance she always assumed with clients when she wanted information, but didn’t want to scare them off.

Cosette shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just the way we are. We don’t need to sleep, either, and we never dream.”

“We?”

Cosette ignored her for a moment. Having found a pair of clunky leather shoes that she appeared to like, she was now trying on sweaters. She finished pulling one over her head before replying.

“My ... family, I guess you’d call them.”

“Do they live in the city?”

“All over, really. I don’t really keep track of them.”

“Why’s that?” Rolanda asked.

Cosette gave her another of those odd looks that had so unsteadied Rolanda earlier. She took off the sweater she’d been trying on and hoisted herself onto the table, where she sat with her legs dangling and the sweater held against her chest.

“Why do you want to know so much about me?” she asked.

“I’m just interested in you.”

Cosette nodded with slow understanding. “That’s not really it at all. You think I’m like the other kids who come here, don’t you? That I’m in trouble and I need help.”

“Do you?” Rolanda asked. “Need help, I mean.”

“Oh, no,” Cosette said with a merry laugh.

Rolanda was struck with a sense of incongruity at the sound of Cosette’s mirth until she realized why the girl’s laughter sounded out of place: the laughter was genuine, unforced—an alien sound in this place.

When children laughed here, it was not because they were happy or amused. Theirs was a laughter that grew out of stress, or relief, or some combination of the two.

Cosette hopped down from the table. “Thanks for the shoes and the sweater,” she said. “I don’t really need them, but I like getting presents,” she added over her shoulder as she left the room.

“You’re welcome,” Rolanda began.

She was caught off guard by the girl’s sudden departure, but by the time she had followed her out into the hallway, Cosette was already at the far end of the hall, opening the front door.

“Wait!” Rolanda called.

Cosette turned to give her a wave and stepped outside. Rolanda broke into a trot, reaching the front door just before it closed. When she stepped out onto the porch, the girl was gone. She wasn’t on the walkway, or on the sidewalk, or anywhere up or down the street.

That eerie feeling returned, the vague sense of vertigo, as if the ground underfoot had abruptly become uneven or spongy, and Rolanda had to steady herself against one of the porch’s supports. It was as though Cosette had never existed in the first place, disappearing as mysteriously as she had appeared in the office a few minutes ago.

“Who were you?” Rolanda asked the empty street.

She wasn’t expecting a reply, but just for a moment, she thought she heard Cosette’s laughter again, sweet and chiming like tiny bells, echoing not in her ear, but in her mind. She stood there on the porch for a long time, leaning against the support pole, before she finally went back inside and closed the door behind her.

VI

I guess I really messed up this time, didn’t I?” Marisa said.

Alan was sitting at the kitchen table, staring off through the window at the patchwork row of backyards that the view presented. He hadn’t heard Marisa come in and he jumped at the sound of her voice, scraping the legs of his chair against the floor as he half rose from his seat. He sat back down again when he saw Marisa standing in the doorway, still wearing his shirt. It had never looked half so good on him. Her hair was a little more disheveled than it had been earlier. Her eyes were still swollen, the rings under them darker. Alan’s heart went out to her.

“Pull up a chair,” he said. “Do you want something to drink? Coffee, maybe, or some tea?”

“Tea, please. Coffee would just make me feel even more jangly than I already am.”

Alan filled the kettle and put it on the stove. He rummaged around in the cupboard and came up with a box of Bengal Spice that still had a couple of bags left in it. Marisa sat at the table, hugging herself, her hands lost in the long sleeves of the borrowed shirt. Neither of them spoke until Alan finally brought two mugs to the table, steam wafting up from the rims of each. Alan wanted to say something to show his support for what Marisa was going through, but nothing had changed since he’d sat with her in the living room earlier. He couldn’t promise that things were going to get better. And while he was certainly willing to give her a place to stay, he couldn’t promise her anything else beyond his friendship. Even if Isabelle hadn’t been in the picture, thinking of Marisa as a friend for so long had eroded his desire for their relationship to become something more. At least he thought it had. Seeing her sitting there across from him in his shirt, barefoot and without any makeup, stirred something in him that he hadn’t felt for a while, but he didn’t feel right about bringing it up now. It wouldn’t be fair—not unless he was sure.

Marisa was the one who broke the silence. “What did Isabelle say about the project?” she asked.

“She’s going to do it.”

“That’s great. Did you call Gary to give him the news?”

Gary Posner was the editor at the paperback house who was interested in acquiring the rights to the omnibus. Thinking of him brought up a whole other set of worries for Alan.

“I called him while you were sleeping, but he’s not exactly thrilled with the news.”

“How can he not be?”

“Oh, he loves the idea that Isabelle’s on board,” Alan explained. “It’s Margaret Mully that concerns him. He’s afraid that if she appeals, it’ll put the whole thing on hold again. He says he can’t afford to commit until we have something from her in writing that says she won’t interfere with the project—preferably something notarized.”

“But you’ll never get that from her.”

Alan nodded glumly. “Tell me about it.”

“So what happens now?”

“We go ahead with our edition.”

“But you were counting on the paperback money ....”

“Only for the Foundation,” Alan said. “As the bank account stands now, we can afford to publish the East Street Press edition—especially since Isabelle’s donating the use of her art to the project.”

“Still ... you must be disappointed.”

Alan nodded. Talking business, Marisa seemed to have perked up some. Alan hated to remind her of her problems, but he didn’t see that he had any choice.

“Marisa, we have to talk.”

As soon as he spoke the words, Alan saw a change come over her. She sat up a little straighter and bit at her lower lip, but appeared determined to tough out what she seemed to think was coming.

“I won’t impose on you any longer,” she said. “I just didn’t have any other place to go. But I’ll call around. I ... I’m even thinking of moving back east. At least I know some people out there ....”

Her voice trailed off as Alan shook his head.

“We’re not talking about you leaving,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you that you’re welcome to stay here as long as you need to. We can move the boxes of books out of the spare room and set it up for you.”

There, he thought. Though he hadn’t meant to, he’d already begun to define how their relationship would go. Separate rooms, separate beds ... “I couldn’t let you do that. I know you need your own space.” Alan gave her an odd look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve always known you were a private person,” Marisa said. “Sort of reserved. Why do you think I tease you so much? It’s the best way to get a rise out of you.”

Alan didn’t feel able to explain why she had gotten the idea he was reserved. Originally, it’d had more to do with her, and her marriage to George, than his own feelings toward her. By now it had become a habit.

“I want you to stay,” he said. “That was never in question. What I wanted to talk to you about was what you wanted to take from your apartment and how you wanted to go about doing it.”

“Oh, god. I don’t know. If I could afford it, I think I’d just go out and buy all new things.”

Alan shook his head. “That’s your being upset that’s talking.”

“I don’t want anything from George.”

“Fine. But you should at least take your own things.”

She gave him a helpless look. “I don’t even know how I can face him. My leaving do you know that it came as an absolute shock to him? He had no idea our marriage was even in trouble, little say over. It’s like he’s never heard a word I had to say about it.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to think about it,” Alan said. “You know—if he didn’t acknowledge the problems, then they’d just go away.”

“Well, I guess it worked,” Marisa said. “Because I’m not going back.”

“I doubt this is the solution he was thinking of.”

Marisa shrugged. “It’s too late for anything to be done about it now.” She looked so hurt and confused that Alan’s heart went out to her. “Tell me I’m not making a mistake,” she said.

“The only mistake you made,” Alan told her, “was waiting this long to leave him.” 7

The smile that touched Marisa’s lips held no humor.

“Thanks,” she said. “I needed to hear that.”

VII

This is perfect,” Isabelle said. She stepped back from where she’d been looking out the window to survey her new studio once more. “There’s so much space.”

Jilly was sitting on the floor across the large room, surrounded by all the various cases and boxes and bundles that they’d just finished lugging up the stairs. Rubens lay sprawled across her lap, half-asleep and completely relaxed.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve often thought I should go into real estate. It’s just a gift I have.”

“I’ll have to get some furniture,” Isabelle said. “Nothing too fancy. A futon. A drawing table.”

“A kitchen table and chairs.”

“A bookcase.”

“An easel.”

“I’ve got one—it’s just in pieces in one of those boxes.”

“It’s like being a student all over again, isn’t it?” Jilly said. “Do you think you’ll survive?”

Isabelle looked around herself once more. The studio was utterly at odds with her work space on the island—not simply for what it was itself, but for what surrounded it: the view from the window of the river and the city spread out on either side of it; the sound of traffic rising up from the street; the sense of sharing a building with so many other people. There was a buzz in the air that Isabelle always associated with the city. Part electric hum, part the press and proximity of so many other souls.

“Actually, I think I’ll thrive,” she said. “I might have had some trouble getting into the proper frame of mind back on the island. But here ... ever since I arrived, I’ve felt as though I’m falling into one of Kathy’s stories.”

Especially when she thought of John Sweetgrass having been seen in this very No, she told herself. Don’t even start thinking about that.

“Is something the matter?” Jilly asked.

“What makes you think that?”

“Well, you just had the oddest expression on your face. I couldn’t tell if you were happy or upset.”

“Happy,” Isabelle assured her. “But a little intimidated with everything I’ve got ahead of me.”

“It’s going to be a lot of work, isn’t it?”

Isabelle nodded.

“Not to mention call up a lot of old memories,” Jilly added.

“Well, I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to do it,” Isabelle said. She gave Jilly what she hoped was a bright smile. “Ready to try out one of those cafes downstairs?”

“What about all of this?” Jilly asked, indicating the jumble of unpacked boxes and bags.

Isabelle shook her head. “That I’m going to deal with tomorrow. Tonight I just want to relax.”

“What about Rubens?”

“He can explore his new domain. We’ll come collect him when we’re ready to go back to your place.”

VIII

It took Cosette the longest time to find out where he lived. Isabelle was easy. She always knew where Isabelle was. All she had to do was close her eyes and she’d know, but that was because Isabelle was the one to bring her over from the before. It would have been more surprising for Cosette not to know where Isabelle was. But it took her longer to track down Alan and then, when she finally did climb up the fire escape attached to the side of his house and peer in his kitchen window, it was only to find that some other woman she didn’t know at all had gotten there before her.

Wasn’t it just the way, she thought grumpily, sitting down on the fire-escape steps. Somebody else always got there first. And it wasn’t as though that woman with Alan didn’t already have so much. She could sleep and dream on the wings of the red crow, just as everybody else in the world could—everybody except for her and those brought over from the before.

Rising to her feet, she pushed her face close to the glass and offered the pair of them a glower, but neither Alan nor the woman bothered to look her way. She started to lift a hand to tap on the pane, but then let her arm fall back down to her side again. Sighing, she returned to her seat on the fire escape.

And she’d so been looking forward to seeing him blush again. She’d never known that grown men could blush so easily. There was so much she didn’t know; so much she might never know. What did it feel like to dream? What was it like when the red crow beat its wings inside your chest and you didn’t have to wonder about being real, you just were? What a luxury to take such a miracle for granted.

She looked down at her new shoes, but all the pleasure from getting them and her sweater was draining away.

It wasn’t fair. It had never been fair and it never would be.

Her gaze traveled up into the sky where the moon hung drowsing among the stars, high above the neon lights and streetlamps and all the other sparkling, stuttering lights that made the city glow.

“Red crow, red crow,” she whispered. “Fly inside me.”

She cocked her head to one side and listened, but the only wings out tonight were those of bats catching the last few bugs of the season. She doubted that they had any more interest in her than stupid old Alan did. And she knew why. It was because she wasn’t

“Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it,” she chanted, her voice a husky whisper, hands clasped around her knees as she rocked back and forth on the fire-escape steps.

“Don’t say what?” a voice asked from below.

Cosette stopped rocking to frown at the dark-haired young man she could see standing below her.

The shadow of the fire escape made a strange pattern across his features.

“What are you doing here?” she wanted to know.

He shrugged. “I could say I was just passing by and happened to see you sitting there.”

“Did you?”

“Or I could say I followed you here.”

“Why would you want to follow me?”

“I didn’t say I was.”

Cosette laughed. She rose to her feet and ghosted her way down the fire escape, her new shoes silent on the metal steps. She paused when she could sit with her head at the same level as his.

“But you’re here all the same,” she said.

“What were you doing?”

Cosette shrugged. She glanced back up to where light spilled from the kitchen window out onto the landing of the fire escape. Inside, Alan’s girlfriend was probably laughing while Alan told her about the strange visitor he’d had on the island this morning. Maybe they were taking their clothes off and touching each other. Maybe Alan was lying with his head upon his girlfriend’s breast, listening to the red crow beat its wings inside her.

“Somebody gave me new shoes and a sweater today,” she said. “For no reason at all. Just for being me. I think the woman liked me.”

“Maybe. But she probably wanted something from you.”

“Do you think so?”

He nodded. “They always want something from us. If not today, then tomorrow. It’s just the way they are. Everything they do relates to commerce.”

“What do you want from me?” Cosette asked.

“To see you again. To remind myself that I’m not alone.”

“What makes you think you’re not?”

He looked away from her, down the street. A cab went down its long empty length, but the light of its headbeams never reached far enough across the darkened lawn to touch them.

“That was unkind,” he said when he finally turned back to her.

Cosette gave him another shrug. “You make me nervous when you start answering questions. The things you say make me feel bad. You always make Paddyjack cry.”

“I only tell the truth.”

Cosette cupped her chin with the palm of her hand, propped her elbow on her knee and studied him for a long moment.

“Rosalind says truth is like a ghost,” she said. “Nobody sees it quite the same.”

He met her gaze, but said nothing.

“And the reason you’re alone,” Cosette added, “is because you want it that way.”

“Is that what you think?”

“It’s what you told Paddyjack and he told me.”

“Paddyjack’s like a big puppy. He was always following me around until I had to tell him I wanted to be alone. I didn’t want him to get hurt and that could easily happen to him in the places I go.”

“But you hardly ever come by to say hello.”

“I’m here now.”

Cosette smiled. “But not because of me. You want to know about Isabelle. You want to know why she’s come back to the city. You know it’s not to visit, but you don’t know why, do you?”

“I’ll admit that I’m curious.”

“You see?” Cosette said, the disappointment plain in her voice. “You’re the one who wants something. You’re the one who makes everything into an object of commerce.”

“I never said I was perfect.”

“But you always pretended to be so happy.”

“I didn’t always pretend. I was happy once—but that was a long time ago.”

“Here’s a riddle for you,” Cosette said. “If love is such sweet sorrow, then why is it that people pursue it the way that they do?”

Before he could reply she closed her eyes and called up the painting of The Wild Girl that hung in the Newford Children’s Foundation. A moment later she was standing in front of it, her new shoes scuffing the carpet.

“It’s because usually we don’t know any better,” the dark-haired young man said to the empty fire escape where she’d been sitting. “And even when we do, we can’t stop ourselves.”

IX

What was that?” Alan said, turning toward the kitchen window. “What was what?”

“I thought I heard something out there.”

He rose from his chair and looked out the window, but between the darkness outside and the glare from the kitchen window, he couldn’t see anything beyond the fire escape.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Marisa said.

“I suppose it was just a cat or something.”

But he sounded doubtful and stayed by the window, gaze fixed on something that Marisa realized only he could see. There was something terribly for-lorn about the way he was standing. She wanted to get up and go over to comfort him, but she remained at the table, hands on her lap, fingers entwined.

“Some nights,” he said, “I feel as though there are ghosts out there—not just of people who have died, but of the people we used to be. The people we might have been.” He turned to look at her. “Do you ever think about things like that?”

“I guess so. Not that they’re ghosts or anything, but I think about the past and the choices I made.

And what might have happened if I’d chosen differently.”

Alan returned to sit at the table. He toyed with his empty mug. “Is marrying George something you wouldn’t have done if you were given the choice?”

Marisa shook her head. “If I hadn’t married George, I’d never have moved to Newford and met you.”

She watched him as she spoke, expecting to see him flinch, or withdraw behind his shell again.

Instead he reached across the table and took her hand. She knew he wasn’t promising her anything by the gesture. They were comforting each other, that was all, and for now it was enough.

X

Isabelle awoke to find Rubens kneading the pillow by her head his face pressed up close to hers, whiskers tickling her cheek. She turned slightly to see that Jilly was still asleep on the other side of the Murphy bed, before she pulled a hand out from under the comforter to give him a pat. The motor deep in his chest immediately started up.

“I know, I know,” she whispered to him. “You want to go out, but you can’t.”

When she didn’t get up, he butted his head up against the side of her face. “We’re not at home anymore,” she explained patiently, as though he could understand.

After a while, he trod daintily down to the end of the bed and lay down. She had to get up, just so she could get away from the reproachful look on his face. Once she was washed and dressed, she decided to forgo having breakfast here. She and Jilly had stayed up later than planned last night, just talking, catching up on gossip and each other’s news, so she was going to let Jilly sleep in.

She’d spent a restless night herself, just hovering on the wrong edge of sleep all night. City nerves, she’d told herself as she lay there, not wanting to move around too much for fear of waking Jilly. She just wasn’t used to all the ambient noise. It wasn’t the real reason, and she knew it, but she refused to let her mind dwell on what was really keeping her awake: Kathy and the book. The fact that Jilly had seen John Sweetgrass when he was supposed to be dead.

After shaking some dry cat food into Rubens’s bowl, she wrote a short note and left it propped up on Jilly’s easel:

Good morning, sleepyhead,

I decided to get an early start on some errands. I hope you don’t mind my leaving Rubens. I’ll be back around noon to pick him up.

Rubens ran up hopefully to her as she opened the front door, but had to settle for the quick hug she gave him before she slipped out into the hall. She waited a moment to see if he’d cry.

Good boy, she thought when he didn’t. You just let Jilly get some sleep.

Trailing a hand along the wall, she made her way down the steep stairs from July’s studio and out onto the street. There she stood on the pavement, checking her pocket for the key that she already knew was there, before she caught the southbound subway that would take her downtown to the bus terminal.

The key proved to be useless. It fit into the slot, but it wouldn’t turn. She tried it a half-dozen times, compared the number on the locker with the one on the key. The numbers matched, but the key wouldn’t work. Logically, it was what she should have expected. It made no sense that what Kathy had left for her in the locker would still be waiting for her after all this time. But still she was disappointed that, even from beyond the grave, Kathy hadn’t been able to work one last bit of magic. Isabelle had never known anyone who could manipulate luck better than Kathy had been able to. It was a gift that had only deserted her at the end.

Eventually Isabelle went looking for the security office, which she found tucked away in a short corridor on the far side of the public rest rooms. There were two uniformed men inside. The one who was her own age was slouched in a chair, reading a book. He looked up at her when she came in, giving her a glimpse of a pair of startlingly dark eyes before he returned his attention to his book. The older man stood at the counter, his admirable straight-backed posture at odds with the paunch that stretched over his belt.

“You have to understand, miss,” the older man said when she explained her problem to him. “We clear those lockers out every three months. Whatever we find is stored for awhile longer and then we dispose of it.”

Isabelle’s heart sank. She had no idea what Kathy had left for her in that locker. While it might have been of no intrinsic value by most people’s standards, it had still been important enough for Kathy to send Isabelle the key. The idea of it having been thrown away was unthinkable.

“Can you tell me where you would send it?”

“We treat it as abandoned. Anything that can be sold ends up in places like the Goodwill where the money can help out. The rest gets thrown away.”

“Yes, but—”

Behind the older security guard she could see his younger companion regarding her over the top of his book, a curious expression in those dark eyes of his. He ran a hand through his short brown hair and dropped his gaze when she looked back at him.

“It’s been five years, miss,” the older guard said.

“I know.”

“And you can’t even tell me what it was that your friend was storing for you.

“I understand,” Isabelle said. “It’s just ...”

Just what? she thought. There was nothing the man could do for her.

She could feel tears welling up in her eyes and turned away so that the man wouldn’t see them.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’d love to help you.”

Isabelle nodded. “Thank you. I I ...”

She gave him a helpless shrug and was starting to leave when the younger security guard put down his book and called her back. He opened the drawer of his desk and rummaged around in it for a moment. When he met her at the counter, he was holding a photograph that he laid down in front of her.

There were three people in the picture: Kathy, Alan and herself. They were sitting on the grass in Fitzhenry Park, a summer’s day, the sky a glorious blue behind them, the three of them so young. Isabelle couldn’t really remember ever having been so young, but she could remember that afternoon, Alan using the timer on his camera, setting it on one of the benches so that all three of them could be in the picture.

“That’s you, isn’t it?” the guard asked, pointing to her younger self. Isabelle nodded. “Where ...

where did you get this?”

“It was in your friend’s locker.”

Isabelle gave the older guard a confused look, but he was obviously as much in the dark as she was.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“I was a big fan of Katharine Mully’s writing,” the younger guard said. “I recognized her when she came in. I wanted to get her to autograph one of her books for me, but I didn’t have any of them with me. So I slipped a note into the locker, asking her to stop by the security desk the next time she came in.

But then she ... well, died.”

“Mark,” the older guard said. “If you’re telling me you went into that locker, I’m going to—”

“No way. I waited the ninety days. But then I stashed what was in the locker. I figured someone was going to come for it someday. It was like one of her stories,” he added, looking to Isabelle for support.

“You know the way she talked about everything being a part of a pattern and how it all comes together someday? Like in the story ‘Kismet,’ when the two pen pals finally meet, even though one of them’s been dead for twenty years.”

“Kismet,” Isabelle repeated.

He nodded. “Fate. That’s what this is, my hanging on to that stuff and you finally showing up here five years later to collect it. Kismet.”

“You mean, you’ve got what she left for me?” Isabelle said.

Mark nodded. “It’s in my own locker. Hang on a sec and I’ll get it for you.” When he left the office, the older guard turned to Isabelle. “I want to assure you,” he said, “that what Mark did is completely against company policy.”

“You won’t hear me complaining,” Isabelle told him.

She realized that the younger guard would have gone through this mysterious legacy that Kathy had left her, but she was so relieved to actually be getting whatever it was that she couldn’t muster up any anger against him.

“He’s not going to get into trouble, is he?”

“Well, strictly speaking, he should have turned in whatever he found in that locker. Our policy is quite clear on that.”

“But then I wouldn’t be getting it now.”

“Yes, well ...”

The conversation didn’t go any further because the other guard returned at that moment, carrying a plastic shopping bag. From it he took two flat parcels, each wrapped in brown paper and taped closed.

Neither appeared to have been opened.

“This is all there was in the locker,” Mark said. “These two packages and the photograph lying on top of them.”

Isabelle ran a finger along the seam of one of the pieces of tape, unable to believe that he’d kept them as long as he had without ever looking inside. “You didn’t open them?” she asked.

“I couldn’t bring myself to. It’s like she entrusted me to take care of them.” He shrugged. “I know that sounds stupid, but you have to understand. I was going through a really rough time when I first started reading her work. I never got the chance to meet her, but those stories pulled me through. It’s like she was my friend, and you don’t pry into your friends’ private concerns; you wait for them to share them or not.”

Isabelle moved her hand across the surface of one of the parcels. She could tell what they were, simply from their shapes. One was a book. The other, the parcel that lay against her palm, was a painting. She could feel the give of the canvas under the weight of her hand.

“You’re really amazing,” she told the younger guard. “I think you’ve just restored my faith in the basic goodness of humanity.”

“See?” Mark said. “It really is fate. That’s what Mully’s stories did for me.”

Isabelle turned to the older guard. “So it’s okay if I take these with me?” He hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. “Oh hell. Why not. Just don’t tell anybody how you got them.”

“Thanks—both of you.” Isabelle replaced the parcels in the plastic bag. “Don’t forget this,” Mark said, handing her the photograph.

Isabelle looked at it. Her memories didn’t need keepsakes to jump-start them.

“Why don’t you keep it,” she said.

“Really?”

“It’s the least I can do for you. Thanks again.”

She shook hands with both of them and left the office, the plastic bag clutched against her chest. It was an incredible coincidence how things had worked out, she thought as she walked across the bus terminal toward the exit. Or maybe it truly had been kismet and Kathy’s magic hadn’t entirely deserted her after all.

XI

Rolanda couldn’t stop dreaming about the strange young girl who had appeared so mysteriously in the Foundation’s office yesterday evening, appeared and then just as mysteriously vanished. The dream was as odd as the girl herself had been. It consisted solely of Cosette sitting on the edge of Rolanda’s bed, staring at her. Whenever Rolanda woke up and looked, the end of the bed was empty—which was how it should be, of course. Yet no sooner would she drift back into sleep again than the dream would return.

Finally Rolanda got up and decided to finish the financial report she’d been working on last night. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well make herself useful.

She brewed herself a strong cup of coffee in her own kitchen, then took it downstairs. She froze at the door of the office, and not simply because of the odd smell in the air. Her gaze fixed on the small figure curled up on the sofa. Cosette was still wearing the sweater and shoes she’d gotten from Rolanda earlier and she was using the arm of the sofa as a pillow. Her hands were clutched close to her thin chest, her torso and lower limbs forming a tight Z.

Rolanda slowly walked over to her desk and set down her coffee. Her hands were trembling and she spilled some of the dark liquid on one of the file covers, but she didn’t bother to mop it up. All she could do was stare at her mysterious visitor and wonder at the odor that permeated the room. Finally she went into Shauna’s office, where she collected a blanket. Returning to where Cosette was sleeping, she laid the blanket over the girl.

“I’m not asleep,” Cosette said.

Rolanda’s pulse skipped a beat. Slowly she sat down on the coffee table in front of the sofa. What are you doing here? she wanted to ask. How did you get in? But all she said was “I guess the sofa’s not all that comfortable, is it? I’ve got a bed upstairs that you can sleep in if you like.”

The girl regarded her with a solemn gaze. “I can’t dream, you know.” The abrupt shift in conversation didn’t phase Rolanda. She was used to it in this place.

“Everybody dreams,” she said. “You just don’t remember yours, that’s all.”

“Then why can’t I paint?” Cosette asked.

“I’m not sure I get the connection.”

Cosette sat up and pulled a still-wet canvas out from under the sofa. Turpentine, Rolanda thought when she saw it. That was what the odd smell was that she’d noticed earlier. She hadn’t been able to place it before because it was so out-of-place here.

“Look at this,” Cosette said. “It’s awful.”

Rolanda would have chosen the word primitive to describe it. In darkened tones of blue and red and purple, Cosette had rendered a rough image of a woman sleeping in a bed. The perspective was slightly askew and the proportions were off, but there was still a power about the simple painting, a sense of brooding disquiet that was completely at odds with the artist’s obvious limitations in terms of technique.

“I wouldn’t say it was awful,” she began, and then she looked more closely at the painting. The shape of the headboard ...

It was her bed, Rolanda realized. Cosette had painted her, sleeping in her bed upstairs. She hadn’t been dreaming. The girl really had been in her bedroom watching her.

“But you wouldn’t say it was good either, would you?”

Rolanda had a difficult moment trying to bring herself back to the conversation. The idea that Cosette had crept into her bedroom, had actually been sitting there, watching her, was unsettling. How had the girl gotten in? The front door was locked. And so was the door to her own apartment.

“Well, would you?” Cosette asked.

Rolanda cleared her throat. “How long have you been painting?” she asked.

“Oh, for years and years. But I can never get anything to look the way it really is. Not the way that Isabelle used to. If I was her, I’d never have given that up.

She spoke with such earnest weariness that Rolanda couldn’t help but smile.

“Have you ever taken any courses?” she asked. “Because it’s a long process, you know. Most artists take fine arts at a university or at least study under another artist. I can’t think of any who were already completely accomplished at your age.”

“I’m older than I look.”

Rolanda nodded. “You said that before.”

“Well, it’s true.”

“I believe you.”

“I just look like this because this is the way Isabelle brought me over. I’m not really a child.”

“Who is Isabelle?”

Cosette pointed to the painting of The Wild Girl that hung on the wall across the room. “That’s one of her paintings. It’s the one she did of me.”

“But that painting’s been here for years ....”

“I know. Didn’t I tell you I was older than I looked? It’s been fifteen years since she first brought me over.”

Rolanda felt as though she were in one of those old black-and-white comedies where conversations always went at cross-purposes. She regarded Cosette. It was true the girl looked like the subject of Isabelle Copley’s painting, but she couldn’t have sat for it. She simply wasn’t old enough. Rolanda wanted to confront Cosette with the impossibility of what she was saying, but the first thing you learned when you came to work for the Foundation was not to be confrontational with the clients—especially not at the beginning. They might be lying, you might know they were lying, but you didn’t call them on it.

By the time a child came to the Foundation, their life was already such a mess that the first priority was to make sure they were healthy and safe. Everything else was dealt with later.

“What do you mean about Ms. Copley bringing you over?” she asked instead. “Where did she bring you over from?”

Cosette shrugged. “From before.”

“Before what?”

“I don’t know. There are stories there, but they don’t belong to us anymore. We have to start a new story here. But it’s hard because we’re not like you. We can’t dream. The red crow doesn’t beat inside our chests.”

Rolanda found herself wishing she had the luxury of enough time to call someone: one of the other counselors. Alan Grant, whom Cosette had mentioned earlier. Or even this artist, Isabelle Copley. She knew she was missing something, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. She might have put Cosette’s odd conversation down to drugs, except that Cosette showed none of the usual signs of a user.

She was so matter-of-fact, so normal. Except for what she was talking about.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” she told the girl, “but I’m not sure I understand what you mean about ...

well, any of this. Red crows and coming across from before and the like. But I want to understand.”

“Maybe I should just show you,” Cosette said.

She threw the blanket back and got up from the sofa. Walking over to Rolanda’s desk, she rummaged around in the papers on top until she turned around with the sharp Xacto blade that Rolanda used for opening parcels. She brought it back to the sofa.

“Look,” she said.

Rolanda cried out and grabbed at Cosette’s hand as the girl drew the blade across her palm, but she was too late.

“Oh, my god!”

“Don’t worry,” Cosette said calmly. She dropped the blade onto the floor and held her cut palm up to Rolanda’s face. “Just look.”

All the blood, Rolanda thought. She couldn’t stand to see all the blood .... Except there was none.

There was just a white line on Cosette’s palm, which was already beginning to fade.

“Wh-what ... ?”

“We don’t have any blood,” Cosette said. She held her hand upside down and shook it, then held it out again, palm up. “And that’s why we can’t dream. We don’t have a red crow beating its wings inside our chest. We ... we’re like hollow people.”

Rolanda couldn’t take her gaze away from Cosette’s hand. When she finally did, it was to look at the Copley painting of The Wild Girl.

It’s the one she did of me.

Slowly she looked back at Cosette and the bloodless cut on her palm. The painting was at least ten or fifteen years old. But Cosette herself couldn’t be much older than fifteen ....

It’s been fifteen years since she first brought me over.

She didn’t bleed. She was unchanged after fifteen years. Rolanda couldn’t suppress a shudder. The Foundation’s rules and regulations fell by the wayside. “What ... what are you?” Rolanda asked. “What do you want from me?” Cosette dropped her hand to her lap and she seemed to shrink into herself.

She lowered her face but not before Rolanda saw the tears welling in her eyes. “I don’t know what I am.”

Her voice was small, pitched so low that the short distance between them almost stole away its audibility. And then she began to weep.

For a long moment all Rolanda could do was stare at her. Then slowly she reached out, shivering when her hands touched the girl’s shoulders. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but there was nothing alien under her hands. All she felt was the warmth of Cosette’s body under the sweater, the tremor in her shoulders as she wept. No matter what she was, no matter how strange, she was still a child. Still hurting. Rolanda could no more turn away from her than she could from any child that came in through the Foundation’s doors.

She went down on one knee and drew Cosette into a comforting embrace. She held her until the tears finally subsided; then she took her upstairs and put her into her own bed. Long after she could hear the other counselors arrive downstairs and the day’s work begin, she sat there beside the bed, holding Cosette’s hand. She looked into the girl’s face and saw no rapid eye movement under Cosette’s eyelids. She touched the pale white palm, now unblemished.

We can’t dream. The red crow doesn’t beat inside our chests.

She was way out of her depth here, but she didn’t know to whom she could turn. The first thing anyone would do would be to take Cosette to a doctor and then specialists would be brought in and then

...

Rolanda sighed. The first priority at the Foundation was always the child, and she knew she couldn’t allow Cosette to be put through any of that. She’d seen E. T. and Firestarter. They were both fictions but, she thought, not so far from the truth of how events would go if the situations in them were true.

Which left them on their own.

“What am I going to do with you?” she whispered.

Cosette’s fingers tightened on her own, but otherwise she didn’t stir.

XII

Jilly searched high and low, but no matter where she looked in her studio, she couldn’t find the two tubes of oil paint she’d bought the day before at Amos & Cook’s. She knew she’d brought them home and left them, still in their distinctive orange and white plastic bag, on the table beside her easel, but when she went to start work this morning, they simply weren’t there. And then, as she searched for the missing paint tubes, she discovered that a pair of brushes were gone as well—one of them a favorite—along with a glass jar that had been half-full of turpentine, and a small piece of hardboard that she’d been saving for the next time she went to paint on location out on the street.

Isabelle must have taken them, she decided, although why she would need them, Jilly couldn’t even begin to guess. It wasn’t as though Isabelle hadn’t brought half her studio down from the island with her.

And besides, it wasn’t like Isabelle to just take something without asking first. At the very least she would have mentioned it in her note. But there didn’t seem to be any other logical explanation.

“Is that what happened?” she asked Rubens. “Did Isabelle take that stuff? Or maybe it was the Good Neighbors. You know, the Little People. Do you have them out on the island?”

Rubens ignored her. He sat on the broad windowsill, staring through its panes at the three alley cats on the fire escape outside that were wolfing down the dry cat food that Jilly had put out for them earlier.

Rubens’s presence made them fidgety and eventually all three fled, nervousness overcoming their hunger.

Not until they were gone did Rubens finally deign to look at her.

“You’re going to have to learn to get along,” filly informed him. “You can’t just go around playing the heavy with every cat you meet, you know. Next time the window might be open and one of them’ll come in and give you a good box in the ears.”

She left him to think that over while she rummaged about in her closet for a jacket she felt like wearing on her trek back to the art shop to buy new supplies. Eventually she gave up and put on the sweater she’d been wearing yesterday. She was giving it a critical look in the mirror when she heard a knock on the studio door. Opening it, she was surprised to find John Sweetgrass standing out in the hall.

“Well, hello,” she said. “That didn’t take you long.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I meant it didn’t take you long to track Isabelle down. How’d you even know she was in the city?

Oh, I know. Somebody at Joli Coeur told you, right?” He gave her a blank look. “Do I know you?”

“Give me a break, John. I’m not in the mood for jokes. I was all set to get back to this piece I’ve been working on, only to find out that I have to go back to Amos & Cook’s to buy some more paints first—after just having been there yesterday.”

“You must have me mistaken with someone else. My name’s not John.”

“Oh, that’s right. It’s Mizaun Kinnikinnik now, right?”

He shook his head. “Is Isabelle Copley here?”

But now it was July’s turn to give him a puzzled look. “You’re really not John Sweetgrass?”

“I already told you that. Now, will you please answer my question.”

Jilly gave him a long look. She hated to think that she had somehow stumbled into that category of whites who thought all Native Americans looked the same, but there was no way she could deny the fact that to her he looked exactly like Isabelle’s old boyfriend.

“Is there some point to your wasting my time like this?” he asked when she didn’t reply.

“What?”

“I’m looking for Isabelle Copley. Is she here or not?”

“Your name’s not John?”

“Look, lady—”

“And you really don’t know me?”

“I don’t know you and I don’t want to know you. Just answer my question. If a simple yes or no’s too hard, you could just move your head. Nod for yes and—”

“Screw you,” Jilly told him, smiling sweetly. “Come back when you’ve learned some manners. Or better yet, don’t come back at all.”

Then she slammed the door in his face and engaged its two deadbolts. He knocked again, but this time she ignored it. The nerve of him. Who did he think he was to stand there and pretend he didn’t know her, not to mention treat her like she was something that had gotten stuck to the bottom of his shoe?

When he continued to bang on the door, she called out, “If you’re still here by the time I count to three I’m dialing nine-one-one. I’ve got the phone in my hand. One. Two ...”

The banging stopped.

“Three,” Jilly finished softly.

She waited a little longer, then went over to the window by the fire escape. Shooing Rubens away, she heaved the window up and stepped out onto the metal landing. Rubens immediately jumped back up onto the sill, but she closed the window before he could get out. At the bottom of the fire escape, she turned down the alley that led onto Yoors Street, hugging the brick wall as she went. Before she stepped out onto the sidewalk, she peeked around the corner. She was just in time to see the man who said he wasn’t John heading off in the other direction. He moved with a stiff angry stride that had none of the loose ambling gait that she always associated with the John Sweetgrass she knew.

This was so weird, she thought. She’d seen him just a few days ago and while it wasn’t as though they’d ever been great buddies or anything, he’d never been flat-out rude to her before. And it wasn’t just the rudeness. There’d been a meanness in his eyes that was out of keeping with the John Sweetgrass she remembered.

She waited until he turned the far corner before going back up to her studio. She’d better warn Isabelle, she thought, while running through a second act of

“Cat Trying to Escape Through Window” with Rubens when she climbed back into the studio from the fire escape. She had her hand on the phone and was already dialing the number at Wren Island when she realized what she was doing.

“Shit.”

Isabelle was in town now—probably organizing her studio at Joli Coeur. Where she didn’t even have a phone yet.

Sighing, Jilly realized that she’d have to walk over to talk to Isabelle. But maybe it wouldn’t be a complete loss, she thought as she left her studio by the more conventional method of the front door.

She’d at least be able to get her stuff back from Isabelle. She didn’t really care about any of it except for the brush. She really loved that brush.

XIII

By the time Isabelle reached her new studio in Joli Coeur, she felt as though the day had taken on a kind of surreal air. She laid the plastic bag she’d gotten from the security guard down on the windowsill and looked out on her view of the river.

She still couldn’t get over how things had worked out for her at the bus terminal. It was what usually happened to Kathy, not her. But then maybe part of Kathy’s legacy had been the kind fate that had allowed the letter to finally arrive in her mailbox yesterday, and for these packages to still be waiting for her after so many years when, by all rights, they should have been lost to her forever.

Or maybe it wasn’t fate. Maybe it was like the security guard had said: the two of them had gotten caught up in one of Kathy’s stories and his keeping these parcels for her was just a part of the story that had been hidden until now—the way the winter hid the ongoing story of the fields and woods under a blanket of snow.

How long would it take for the whole story to be laid out for her? she wondered. But then she thought of Rushkin, and of Jilly having seen John Sweetgrass downstairs from where she was standing at this very minute, and she wasn’t so sure she wanted to know the whole story. Not all ofKathy’s stories had ended with their protagonists happy, or even surviving.

Isabelle wasn’t even sure she believed in fate. Coincidence, surely. Perhaps even synchronicity. She liked to think there was such a thing as free will and choice, but there were times when events seemed to be the work of fate, and only fate: that Kathy should be her roommate at Butler U. Her first meeting with Rushkin. The arrival of yesterday’s letter and the claiming of today’s parcels.

Her gaze dropped down to the bag on the windowsill. What did fate have waiting for her in here?

She had lived this long, not having what was in this bag. There was nothing to make her open the packages. No one knew she had them, except for those two security guards and she wasn’t likely to run into them again.

There was no one to whom she would have to answer if she simply put the bag in the back of a closet and carried on with her life.

No one, except herself.

She sighed then and tried to shed her fear. For it was fear, plain and simple, that made her want to hide Kathy’s legacy and pretend it had never been delivered into her hands. It was still not too late, she thought, to escape the demands of the story to which the security guard had alluded, the story into which she could feel herself stepping. It waited like massed clouds on a far horizon, dark and swollen with events over which she would have no control, a storm that might easily sweep away all she held dear.

But she could do this much, she thought. If the story was there waiting for her, she could at least make the choice as to whether or not she would allow herself to step into it. She could wrest that much control from fate.

And so she sat down in the bay window and pulled the bag to her. She took the contents out and laid them beside her on the window seat. Book and painting. She chose to open the painting first. The tape was brittle and came easily away from the paper. She unwrapped the paper, but then she couldn’t move.

All she could do was stare at the familiar painting and feel the storm clouds leave that distant horizon to come swirling around her.

Paddyjack lay on her lap.

Her painting.

But it couldn’t be here. It had been destroyed in the fire with the others. She had seen it bum.

Unless memory had played her false and that had been the dream.

There was a knock on her door, but she didn’t answer it. She didn’t even hear it.