The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012

THE SUMMER PEOPLE Kelly Link

Fran’s daddy woke her up wielding a mister. “Fran,” he said, spritzing her like a wilted houseplant. “Fran, honey. Wake up for just a minute.”

Fran had the flu, except it was more like the flu had Fran. In consequence of this, she’d lain out of school for three days in a row. The previous night, she’d taken four NyQuil caplets and fallen asleep on the couch, waiting for her daddy to come home, while a man on the TV threw knives. Her head felt stuffed with boiled wool and snot. Her face was now wet with watered-down plant food. “Hold up,” she croaked. “I’m awake!” She began to cough, so hard she had to hold her sides. She sat up.

Her daddy was a dark shape in a room full of dark shapes. The bulk of him augured trouble. The sun wasn’t up the mountain yet, but there was a light in the kitchen. There was a suitcase, too, beside the door, and on the table a plate with a mess of eggs. Fran was starving.

Her daddy went on. “I’ll be gone some time. A week or three. Not more. You’ll take care of the summer people while I’m gone. The Roberts come up next weekend. You’ll need to get their groceries tomorrow or next day. Make sure you check the expiration date on the milk when you buy it, and put fresh sheets on all the beds. I’ve left the house schedule on the counter, and there should be enough gas in the car to make the rounds.”

“Wait,” Fran said. Every word hurt. “Where are you going?”

He sat down on the couch beside her, then pulled something out from under him. He held it out on his palm; one of Fran’s old toys, the monkey egg. “Now you know I don’t like these. I wish you’d put ’em away.”

“There’s lots of stuff I don’t like,” Fran said. “Where you going?”

“Prayer meeting in Miami. Found out about it on the Internet,” her daddy said. He shifted on the couch, put a hand against her forehead, so cool and soothing it made her eyes leak. “You don’t feel near so hot right now.”

“I know you need to stay here and look after me,” Fran said. “You’re my daddy.”

“Now, how can I look after you if I’m not right?” he said. “You don’t know the things I’ve done.”

Fran didn’t know, but she could guess. “You went out last night,” she said. “You were drinking.”

Her daddy spread out his hands. “I’m not talking about last night,” he said. “I’m talking about a lifetime.”

“That is—” Fran said, and then began to cough again. She coughed so long and so hard she saw bright stars. Despite the hurt in her ribs, and despite the truth that every time she managed to suck in a good pocket of air, she coughed it all right back out again, the NyQuil made it all seem so peaceful, her daddy might as well have been saying a poem. Her eyelids were closing. Later, when she woke up, maybe he would make her breakfast.

“Any come around, you tell em I’m gone on ahead. Any man tells you he knows the hour or the day, Fran, that man’s a liar or a fool. All a man can do is be ready.”

He patted her on the shoulder, tucked the counterpane up around her ears. When she woke again, it was late afternoon, and her daddy was long gone. Her temperature was 102.3. All across her cheeks, the plant mister had left a red raised rash.

On Friday, Fran went to school, because she wasn’t sure what else to do. Breakfast was a spoon of peanut butter and dry cereal. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. Her cough scared off the crows when she went down to the county road to catch the school bus.

She dozed through three classes, including calculus, before having such a fit of coughing the teacher sent her off to see the nurse. The nurse, she knew, was liable to call her daddy and send her home. This might have presented a problem, but on the way to the nurse’s station, Fran came upon Ophelia Merck at her locker.

Ophelia Merck had her own car, a Lexus. She and her family had been summer people, except now they lived in their house up at Horse Cove on the lake all year round. Years ago, Fran and Ophelia had spent a summer of afternoons playing with Ophelia’s Barbies while Fran’s father smoked out a wasps’ nest, repainted cedar siding, tore down an old fence. They hadn’t really spoken since then, though once or twice after that summer, Fran’s father brought home paper bags full of Ophelia’s hand-me-downs, some of them still with the price tags.

Fran eventually went through a growth spurt, which put a stop to that; Ophelia was still tiny, even now. And far as Fran could figure, Ophelia hadn’t changed much in most other ways: pretty, shy, spoiled, and easy to boss around. The rumor was her family’d moved full-time to Robbinsville from Lynchburg after a teacher caught Ophelia kissing another girl in the bathroom at a school dance. It was either that or Mr. Merck being up for malpractice, which was the other story, take your pick.

“Ophelia Merck,” Fran said. “I need you to tell Nurse Tannent you’re gone to give me a ride home right now.”

Ophelia opened her mouth and closed it. She nodded.

Fran’s temperature was back up again, at 102. Tannent even wrote Ophelia a note to go off campus.

“I don’t know where you live,” Ophelia said. They were in the parking lot, Ophelia searching for her keys.

“Take the county road,” Fran said. “129.” Ophelia nodded. “It’s up a ways on Wild Ridge, past the hunting camps.” She lay back against the headrest and closed her eyes. “Oh, hell. I forgot. Can you take me by the convenience first? I have to get the Roberts’ house put right.”

“I guess I can do that,” Ophelia said.

At the convenience, she picked up milk, eggs, whole wheat sandwich bread, and cold cuts for the Roberts, Tylenol and more NyQuil for herself, as well as a can of frozen orange juice, microwave burritos, and Pop-Tarts. “On the tab,” she told Andy.

“I hear your pappy got himself into trouble the other night,” Andy said.

“That so,” Fran said. “He went down to Florida yesterday morning. He said he needs to get right with God.”

“God ain’t who your pappy needs to get on his good side,” Andy said.

Fran coughed and bent over. Then she straightened right back up. “What’s he done?” she said.

“Nothing that can’t be fixed with the application of some greaze and good manners,” Andy said. “You tell him we’ll get it all settled when he come back.”

Half the time her daddy got to drinking, Andy and Andy’s cousin Ryan were involved, never mind it was a dry county. Andy kept the liquor out back in his van for everwho wanted it and knew to ask. The good stuff came from over the county line, in Andrews. The best stuff, though, was the liquor Fran’s daddy brought Andy every once in a while. Everyone said that Fran’s daddy’s brew was too good to be strictly natural. Which was true. When he wasn’t getting right with God, Fran’s daddy got up to all kinds of trouble. Fran’s best guess was that, in this particular situation, he’d promised to supply something that God was not now going to let him deliver. “I’ll tell him you said so.”

Ophelia was looking over the list of ingredients on a candy wrapper, but Fran could tell she was interested. When they got back into the car Fran said, “Just because you’re doing me a favor doesn’t mean you need to know my business.”

“Okay,” Ophelia said.

“Okay,” Fran said. “Good. Now maybe you can take me by the Roberts’ place. It’s over on—”

“I know where the Roberts’ house is,” Ophelia said. “My mom played bridge over there all last summer.”

The Roberts hid their spare key under a fake rock just like everybody else. Ophelia stood at the door like she was waiting to be invited in. “Well, come on,” Fran said.

There wasn’t much to be said about the Roberts’ house. There was an abundance of plaid, and everywhere Toby mugs and statuettes of dogs pointing, setting, or trotting along with birds in their gentle mouths.

Fran made up the smaller bedrooms and did a quick vacuum downstairs while Ophelia made up the master bedroom and caught the spider that had made a home in the wastebasket. She carried it outside. Fran didn’t quite have the breath to make fun of her for this. They went from room to room, making sure that there were working bulbs in the light fixtures and that the cable wasn’t out. Ophelia sang under her breath while they worked. They were both in choir, and Fran found herself evaluating Ophelia’s voice. A soprano, warm and light at the same time, where Fran was an alto and somewhat froggy, even when she didn’t have the flu.

“Stop it,” she said out loud, and Ophelia turned and looked at her. “Not you,” Fran said. She ran the tap water in the kitchen sink until it was clear. She coughed for a long time and spat into the drain. It was almost four o’clock. “We’re done here.”

“How do you feel?” Ophelia said.

“Like I’ve been kicked all over,” Fran said.

“I’ll take you home,” Ophelia said. “Is anyone there, in case you start feeling worse?”

Fran didn’t bother answering, but somewhere between the school lockers and the Roberts’ master bedroom, Ophelia seemed to have decided that the ice was broken. She talked about a TV show, about the party neither of them would go to on Saturday night. Fran began to suspect that Ophelia had had friends once, down in Lynchburg. She complained about the calculus homework and talked about a sweater she was knitting. She mentioned a girl rock band that she thought Fran might like, even offered to burn her a CD. Several times, she exclaimed as they drove up the county road.

“I never get used to it, to living up here year-round,” Ophelia said. “I mean, we haven’t even been here a whole year, but… It’s just so beautiful. It’s like another world, you know?”

“Not really,” Fran said. “Never been anywhere else.”

“Oh,” Ophelia said, not quite deflated by this comeback. “Well, take it from me. It’s freaking gorgeous here. Everything is so pretty it almost hurts. I love the morning, the way everything is all misty. And the trees! And every time the road snakes around a corner, there’s another waterfall. Or a little pasture, and it’s all full of flowers. All the hollers.” Fran could hear the invisible brackets around the word. “It’s like you don’t know what you’ll see, what’s there, until suddenly you’re in them. Are you applying to college anywhere next year? I was thinking about vet school. I don’t think I can take another English class. Large animals. No little dogs or guinea pigs. Maybe I’ll go out to California.”

Fran said, “We’re not the kind of people who go to college.”

“Oh,” Ophelia said. “You’re a lot smarter than me, you know? So I just thought…”

“Turn here,” Fran said. “Careful. It’s not paved.”

They went up the dirt road, through the laurel beds, and into the little meadow with the nameless creek. Fran could feel Ophelia suck in a breath, probably trying her hardest not to say something about how beautiful it was. And it was beautiful, Fran knew. You could hardly see the house itself, hidden like a bride behind her veil of climbing vines: virgin’s bower and Japanese honeysuckle, masses of William Baffin and Cherokee roses overgrowing the porch and running up over the sagging roof. Bumblebees, their legs armored in gold, threaded through the meadow grass, almost too weighed down with pollen to fly.

“It’s old,” Fran said. “Needs a new roof. My great-grandaddy ordered it out of the Sears catalog. Men brought it up the side of the mountain in pieces, and all the Cherokee who hadn’t gone away yet came and watched.” She was amazed at herself: next thing she would be asking Ophelia to come for a sleepover.

She opened the car door and heaved herself out, plucked up the poke of groceries. Before she could turn and thank Ophelia for the ride, Ophelia was out of the car, as well. “I thought,” Ophelia said uncertainly. “Well, I thought maybe I could use your bathroom?”

“It’s an outhouse,” Fran said, deadpan. Then she relented: “Come on in, then. It’s a regular bathroom. Just not very clean.”

Ophelia didn’t say anything when they came into the kitchen. Fran watched her take it in: the heaped dishes in the sink, the pillow and raggedy quilt on the sagging couch. The piles of dirty laundry beside the efficiency washer in the kitchen. The places where hairy tendrils of vine had found a way inside around the windows. “I guess you might be thinking it’s funny,” she said. “My dad and I make money doing other people’s houses, but we don’t take no real care of our own.”

“I was thinking that somebody ought to be taking care of you,” Ophelia said. “At least while you’re sick.”

Fran gave a little shrug. “I do fine on my own,” she said. “The washroom’s down the hall.”

She took two NyQuil while Ophelia was gone and washed them down with the last swallow or two of ginger ale out of the refrigerator. Flat, but still cool. Then she lay down on the couch and pulled the counterpane up around her face. She huddled into the lumpy cushions. Her legs ached, her face felt hot as fire. Her feet were ice cold.

A minute later Ophelia sat down on the couch beside her.

“Ophelia?” Fran said. “I’m grateful for the ride home and for the help at the Roberts’, but I don’t go for the girls. So don’t lez out.”

Ophelia said, “I brought you a glass of water. You need to stay hydrated.”

“Mmm,” Fran said.

“You know, your dad told me once that I was going to hell,” Ophelia said. “He was over at our house doing something. Fixing a burst pipe, maybe? I don’t know how he knew. I was eleven. I don’t think I knew, not yet, anyway. He didn’t bring you over to play after he said that, even though I never told my mom.”

“My daddy thinks everyone is going to hell,” Fran said into the counterpane. “I don’t care where I go, as long as it isn’t here, and he isn’t there.”

Ophelia didn’t say anything for a minute or two, and she didn’t get up to leave, either, so finally Fran poked her head out. Ophelia had a toy in her hand, the monkey egg. She turned it over, and then over again. She looked a question at Fran.

“Give here,” Fran said. “I’ll work it.” She wound the filigreed dial and set the egg on the floor. The toy vibrated ferociously. Two pincerlike legs and a scorpion tail made of figured brass shot out of the bottom hemisphere, and the egg wobbled on the legs in one direction and then another, the articulated tail curling and lashing. Portholes on either side of the top hemisphere opened and two arms wriggled out and reached up, rapping at the dome of the egg until that, too, cracked open with a click. A monkey’s head, wearing the egg dome like a hat, popped out. Its mouth opened and closed in chattering ecstasy, red garnet eyes rolling, arms describing wider and wider circles in the air until the clockwork ran down and all of its extremities whipped back into the egg again.

“What in the world?” Ophelia said. She picked up the egg, tracing the joins with a finger.

“It’s just something that’s been in our family,” Fran said. She stuck her arm out of the quilt, grabbed a tissue, and blew her nose for maybe the thousandth time. “We didn’t steal it from no one, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No,” Ophelia said, and then frowned. “It’s just—I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like a Fabergé egg. It ought to be in a museum.”

There were lots of other toys. The laughing cat and the waltzing elephants; the swan you wound up, who chased the dog. Other toys that Fran hadn’t played with in years. The mermaid who combed garnets out of her own hair. Bawbees for babies, her mother had called them.

“I remember now,” Ophelia said. “When you came and played at my house. You brought a minnow made out of silver. It was smaller than my little finger. We put it in the bathtub, and it swam around and around. You had a little fishing rod, too, and a golden worm that wriggled on the hook. You let me catch the fish, and when I did, it talked. It said it would give me a wish if I let it go.”

“You wished for two pieces of chocolate cake,” Fran said.

“And then my mother made a chocolate cake, didn’t she?” Ophelia said. “So the wish came true. But I could only eat one piece. Maybe I knew she was going to make a cake? Except why would I wish for something that I already knew I was going to get?”

Fran said nothing. She watched Ophelia through slit eyes.

“Do you still have the fish?” Ophelia asked.

Fran said, “Somewhere. The clockwork ran down. It didn’t give wishes no more. I reckon I didn’t mind. It only ever granted little wishes.”

“Ha, ha,” Ophelia said. She stood up. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. I’ll come by in the morning to make sure you’re okay.”

“You don’t have to,” Fran said.

“No,” Ophelia said. “I don’t have to. But I will.”

When you do for other people (Fran’s daddy said once upon a time when he was drunk, before he got religion) things that they could do for themselves, but they pay you to do it instead, you both will get used to it. Sometimes they don’t even pay you, and that’s charity. At first, charity isn’t comfortable, but it gets so it is. After some while, maybe you start to feel wrong when you ain’t doing for them, just one more thing, and always one more thing after that. Maybe you start to feel as you’re valuable. Because they need you. And the more they need you, the more you need them. Things go out of balance. You need to remember that, Franny. Sometimes you’re on one side of that equation, and sometimes you’re on the other. You need to know where you are and what you owe. Unless you can balance that out, here is where y’all stay.

Fran, dosed on NyQuil, feverish and alone in her great-grandfather’s catalog house, hidden behind walls of roses, dreamed—as she did every night—of escape. She woke every few hours, wishing someone would bring her another glass of water. She sweated through her clothes, and then froze, and then boiled again. Her throat was full of knives.

She was still on the couch when Ophelia came back, banging through the screen door. “Good morning!” Ophelia said. “Or maybe I should say good afternoon! It’s noon, anyhow. I brought oranges to make fresh orange juice, and I didn’t know if you liked sausage or bacon, so I got you two different kinds of biscuit.”

Fran struggled to sit up.

“Fran,” Ophelia said. She came and stood in front of the sofa, still holding the two cat-head biscuits. “You look terrible.” She put her hand on Fran’s forehead. “You’re burning up! I knew I oughtn’t’ve left you here all by yourself! What should I do? Should I take you down to the emergency?”

“No doctor,” Fran managed to say. “They’ll want to know where my daddy is. Water?”

Ophelia scampered back to the kitchen. “How many days have you had the flu? You need antibiotics. Or something. Fran?”

“Here,” Fran said. She lifted a bill off a stack of mail on the floor, pulled out the return envelope. She plucked out three strands of her hair. She put them in the envelope and licked it shut. “Take this up the road where it crosses the drain,” she said. “All the way up.” She coughed a rattling, deathly cough. “When you get to the big house, go around to the back and knock on the door. Tell them I sent you. You won’t see them, but they’ll know you came from me. After you knock, you can just go in. Go upstairs directly, you mind, and put this envelope under the door. Third door down the hall. You’ll know which. After that, you oughter wait out on the porch. Bring back whatever they give you.”

Ophelia gave her a look that said Fran was delirious. “Just go,” Fran said. “If there ain’t a house, or if there is a house and it ain’t the house I’m telling you about, then come back, and I’ll go to the emergency with you. Or if you find the house, and you’re afeared and you can’t do what I asked, come back, and I’ll go with you. But if you do what I tell you, it will be like the minnow.”

“Like the minnow?” Ophelia said. “I don’t understand.”

“You will. Be bold,” Fran said, and did her best to look cheerful. “Like the girls in those ballads. Will you bring me another glass of water afore you go?”

Ophelia went.

Fran lay on the couch, thinking about what Ophelia would see. From time to time, she raised a pair of curious-looking spyglasses—something much more useful than any bawbee—to her eyes. Through them she saw first the dirt track, which only seemed to dead-end. Were you to look again, you found your road crossing over the shallow crick once, twice, the one climbing the mountain, the drain running away and down. The meadow disappeared again into beds of laurel, then low trees hung with climbing roses, so that you ascended in drifts of pink and white. A stone wall, tumbled and ruined, and then the big house. The house, dry-stack stone, stained with age like the tumbledown wall;, two stories. A slate roof, a long covered porch, carved wooden shutters making all the eyes of the windows blind. Two apple trees, crabbed and old, one green and bearing fruit and the other bare and silver black. Ophelia found the mossy path between them that wound around to the back door with two words carved over the stone lintel: Be bold.

And this is what Fran saw Ophelia do: having knocked on the door, Ophelia hesitated for only a moment, and then she opened it. She called out, “Hello? Fran sent me. She’s ill. Hello?” No one answered.

So Ophelia took a breath and stepped over the threshold and into a dark, crowded hallway with a room on either side and a staircase in front of her. On the flagstone in front of her were carved the words: Be bold, be bold. Despite the invitation, Ophelia did not seem tempted to investigate either room, which Fran thought wise of her. The first test was a success. You might expect that through one door would be a living room, and you might expect that through the other door would be a kitchen, but you would be wrong. One was the Queen’s Room. The other was what Fran thought of as the War Room.

Fusty stacks of old magazines and catalogs and newspapers, old encyclopedias and gothic novels leaned against the walls of the hall, making such a narrow alley that even lickle, tiny Ophelia turned sideways to make her way. Dolls’ legs and old silverware sets and tennis trophies and mason jars and empty match boxes and false teeth and stranger things still poked out of paper bags and plastic carriers. You might expect that through the doors on either side of the hall there would be more crumbling piles and more odd jumbles, and you would be right. But there were other things, too. At the foot of the stairs was another piece of advice for guests like Ophelia, carved right into the first riser: Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.

The owners of the house had been at another one of their frolics, Fran saw. Someone had woven tinsel and ivy and peacock feathers through the banisters. Someone had thumbtacked cut silhouettes and Polaroids and tintypes and magazine pictures on the wall alongside the stairs, layers upon layers upon layers; hundreds and hundreds of eyes watching each time Ophelia set her foot down carefully on the next stair.

Perhaps Ophelia didn’t trust the stairs not to be rotted through. But the stairs were safe. Someone had always taken very good care of this house.

At the top of the stairs, the carpet underfoot was soft, almost spongy. Moss, Fran decided. They’ve redecorated again. That’s going to be the devil to clean up. Here and there were white and red mushrooms in pretty rings upon the moss. More bawbees, too, waiting for someone to come along and play with them. A dinosaur, only needing to be wound up, a plastic dime-store cowboy sitting on its shining shoulders. Up near the ceiling, two armored dirigibles, tethered to a light fixture by scarlet ribbons. The cannons on these zeppelins were in working order. They’d chased Fran down the hall more than once. Back home, she’d had to tweeze the tiny lead pellets out of her shin. Today, though, all were on their best behavior.

Ophelia passed one door, two doors, stopped at the third door. Above it, the final warning: BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BUT NOT TOO BOLD, LEST THAT THY HEART’S BLOOD RUN COLD. Ophelia put her hand on the doorknob, but didn’t try it. Not afeared, but no fool neither, Fran thought. They’ll be pleased. Or will they?

Ophelia knelt down to slide Fran’s envelope under the door. Something else happened, too: something slipped out of Ophelia’s pocket and landed on the carpet of moss.

Back down the hall, Ophelia stopped in front of the first door. She seemed to hear someone or something. Music, perhaps? A voice calling her name? An invitation? Fran’s poor, sore heart was filled with delight. They liked her! Well, of course they did. Who wouldn’t like Ophelia?

She made her way down the stairs, through the towers of clutter and junk. Back onto the porch, where she sat on the porch swing, but didn’t swing. She seemed to be keeping one eye on the house and the other on the little rock garden out back, which ran up against the mountain right quick. There was even a waterfall, and Fran hoped Ophelia appreciated it. There’d never been no such thing before. This one was all for her, all for Ophelia, who opined that waterfalls are freaking beautiful.

Up on the porch, Ophelia’s head jerked around, as if she were afraid someone might be sneaking up the back. But there were only carpenter bees, bringing back their satchels of gold, and a woodpecker, drilling for grubs. There was a groundpig in the rumpled grass, and the more Ophelia set and stared, the more she and Fran both saw. A pair of fox kits napping under the laurel. A doe and a faun peeling bark runners off young trunks. Even a brown bear, still tufty with last winter’s fur, nosing along the high ridge above the house. Fran knew what Ophelia must be feeling. As if she were an interloper in some Eden. While Ophelia sat on the porch of that dangerous house, Fran curled inward on her couch, waves of heat pouring out of her. Her whole body shook so violently her teeth rattled. Her spyglasses fell to the floor. Maybe I am dying, Fran thought, and that is why Ophelia came here.

Fran, feverish, went in and out of sleep, always listening for the sound of Ophelia coming back down. Perhaps she’d made a mistake, and they wouldn’t send something to help. Perhaps they wouldn’t send Ophelia back at all. Ophelia, with her pretty singing voice, that shyness, that innate kindness. Her short hair, silvery blond. They liked things that were shiny. They were like magpies that way. In other ways, too.

But here was Ophelia, after all, her eyes enormous, her face lit up like Christmas. “Fran,” she said. “Fran, wake up. I went there. I was bold! Who lives there, Fran?”

“The summer people,” Fran said. “Did they give you anything for me?”

Ophelia set an object upon the counterpane. Like everything the summer people made, it was right pretty. A lipstick-sized vial of pearly glass, an enameled green snake clasped around it, its tail the stopper. Fran tugged at the tail, and the serpent uncoiled. A pole ran out the mouth of the bottle, and a silk rag unfurled. Embroidered upon it were the words drink me.

Ophelia watched this, her eyes glazed with too many marvels. “I sat and waited, and there were two fox kits! They came right up to the porch, and then went to the door and scratched at it until it opened. They trotted right inside and came out again. One came over to me then, with something in its jaw. It laid down that bottle right at my feet, and then they ran down the steps and into the woods. Fran, it was like a fairy tale.”

“Yes,” Fran said. She put her lips to the mouth of the vial and drank down what was in it. It tasted sour and hot, like bottled smoke. She coughed, then wiped her mouth and licked the back of her hand.

“I mean, people say something is like a fairy tale all the time,” Ophelia said. “And what they mean is somebody falls in love and gets married. But that house, those animals, it really is a fairy tale. Who are they? The summer people?”

“That’s what my daddy calls them,” Fran said. “Except, when he gets religious, he calls them devils come up to steal his soul. It’s because they supply him with drink. But he weren’t never the one who had to mind after them. That was my mother. And now she’s gone, and it’s only ever me.”

“You take care of them?” Ophelia said. “You mean, like the Roberts?”

A feeling of tremendous well-being was washing over Fran. Her feet were warm for the first time in what seemed like days, and her throat felt coated in honey and balm. Even her nose felt less raw and red. “Ophelia?” she said.

“Yes, Fran?”

“I think I’m going to be much better,” Fran said. “Which is something you done for me. You were brave and a true friend, and I’ll have to think how I can pay you back.”

“I wasn’t—” Ophelia protested. “I mean, I’m glad I did. I’m glad you asked me. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

If you did you’d be sorry, Fran thought but didn’t say. “Ophelia? I need to sleep. And then, if you want, we can talk. You can even stay here while I sleep. If you want. I don’t care if you’re a lesbian. There are Pop-Tarts on the kitchen counter. And those two biscuits you brung. I like sausage. You can have the one with bacon.”

She fell asleep before Ophelia could say anything else.

The first thing she did when she woke up was take a bath. In the mirror, she took a quick inventory. Her hair was lank and greasy, all witch knots and tangles. There were circles under her eyes, and her tongue, when she stuck it out, was yellow. When she was clean and dressed again, her jeans were loose and she could feel her hip bones protruding. “I could eat a whole mess of food,” she told Ophelia. “But a cat-head and a box of Pop-Tarts will do for a start.”

There was fresh orange juice, and Ophelia had poured it into a stoneware jug. Fran decided not to tell her that her daddy used it as a sometime spittoon. “Can I ask you some more about them?” Ophelia said. “You know, the summer people?”

“I don’t reckon I can answer every question,” Fran said. “But go on.”

“When I first got there,” Ophelia said, “when I went inside, at first I decided that it must be a shut-in. One of those, you know, hoarders. I’ve watched that show, and sometimes they even keep their own poop. And dead cats. It’s just horrible.

“Then it just kept on getting stranger. But I wasn’t ever scared. It felt like there was somebody there, but they were happy to see me.”

“They don’t get much in the way of company,” Fran said.

“Yeah, well, why do they collect all that stuff? Where does it come from?”

“Some of it’s from catalogs. I have to go down to the post office and collect it for them. Sometimes they go away and bring things back. Sometimes they tell me they want something and I have to go get it for them. Mostly it’s stuff from the Salvation Army. Once I had to buy a hunnert pounds of copper piping.”

“Why?” Ophelia said. “I mean, what do they do with it?”

“They make things,” Fran said. “That’s what my momma called them, makers. I don’t know what they do with all of it. They give away things. Like the toys. They like children. When you do things for them, they’re beholden to you.”

“Have you seen them?” Ophelia said.

“Now and then,” Fran said. “Not very often. Not since I was much younger. They’re shy.”

Ophelia was practically bouncing on her chair. “You get to look after them? That’s the best thing ever! Have they always been here? Is that why you aren’t going to go to college?”

Fran hesitated. “I don’t know where they come from. They aren’t always there. Sometimes they’re… somewhere else. My momma said she felt sorry for them. She thought maybe they couldn’t go home, that they’d been sent away, like the Cherokee, I guess. They live a lot longer, maybe forever, I don’t know. I don’t think time works the same way where they come from. Sometimes they’re gone for years. But they always come back. They’re summer people. That’s just the way it is with summer people.”

“And you’re not,” Ophelia said. “And now I’m not, either.”

“You can go away again whenever you want,” Fran said, not caring how she sounded. “I can’t. It’s part of the bargain. Whoever takes care of them has to stay here. You can’t leave. They don’t let you.”

“You mean, you can’t leave, ever?”

“No,” Fran said. “Not ever. My mother was stuck here until she had me. And then when I was old enough, she told me I had to take over. She took off right after that.”

“Where did she go?”

“I’m not the one to answer that,” Fran said. “They gave my momma a tent that folds up no bigger than a kerchief, that sets up the size of a two-man tent, but on the inside, it’s teetotally different, a cottage with two brass beds and a chifforobe to hang your things in, and a table, and windows with glass in them. When you look out one of the windows, you see wherever you are, and when you look out the other window, you see those two apple trees, the ones in front of the house with the moss path between them?”

Ophelia nodded.

“Well, my momma used to bring out that tent for me and her when my daddy had been drinking. Then my momma passed the summer people on to me, and one morning after we spent the night in the tent, I woke up and saw her climb out that window. The one that shouldn’t ought to be there. She disappeared down that path. Maybe I should have followed on after her, but I stayed put.”

“Where did she go?” Ophelia said.

“Well, she ain’t here,” Fran said. “That’s what I know. So I have to stay here in her place. I don’t expect she’ll be back, neither.”

“Well, that sucks,” Ophelia said.

“I wish I could get away for just a little while,” Fran said. “Maybe go out to San Francisco and see the Golden Gate Bridge. Dip my toes in the Pacific. I’d like to buy me a guitar and play some of those old ballads on the streets. Just stay a little while, then come back and take up my burden again.”

“I’d sure like to go out to California,” Ophelia said.

They sat in silence for a minute.

“I wish I could help out,” Ophelia said. “You know, with that house and the summer people. You shouldn’t have to do everything, not all of the time.”

“I already owe you,” Fran said, “for helping with the Roberts’ house. For looking in on me when I was ill. For what you did when you went up to fetch me help.”

“I know what it’s like when you’re all alone,” Ophelia said. “When you can’t talk about stuff. And I mean it, Fran. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

“I can tell you mean it,” Fran said. “I just don’t think you know what it is you’re saying. I ought to explain at least one thing. If you want, you can go up there again one more time. You did me a favor, and I don’t know how else to pay you back. There’s a bedroom up in that house, and if you sleep in it, you see your heart’s desire. I could take you back tonight and show you that room. Besides, I think you lost something up there.”

“I did?” Ophelia said. “What was it?” She reached down in her pockets. “Oh, hell. My iPod. How did you know?”

Fran shrugged. “Not like anybody up there is going to steal it. Expect they’d be happy to have you back up again. If they didn’t like you, you’d know it already.”

Fran was straightening up her and her daddy’s mess when the summer people let her know that they needed a few things. “Can’t I just have a minute to myself?” she grumbled.

They told her that she’d had a good four days. “And I surely do appreciate it,” she said, “considering I was laid so low.” But she put the skillet down in the sink to soak and wrote down what they wanted.

She tidied away all of the toys, not quite sure what had come over her to take them out.

When Ophelia came back at five, she had her hair in a ponytail and a flashlight and a thermos in her pocket, like she thought she was Nancy Drew.

“It gets dark up here so early,” Ophelia said. “I feel like it’s Halloween or something. Like you’re taking me to the haunted house.”

“They ain’t haints,” Fran said. “Nor demons or any such thing. They don’t do no harm unless you get on the wrong side of them. They’ll play a prank on you then, and count it good fun.”

“Like what?” Ophelia said.

“Once I did the warshing up and broke a teacup,” Fran said. “They’ll sneak up and pinch you.” She still had marks on her arms, though she hadn’t broken a plate in years. “Lately, they’ve been doing what all the people up here like to do, that reenacting. They set up their battlefield in the big room downstairs. It’s not the War between the States. It’s one of theirs, I guess. They built themselves airships and submersibles and mechanical dragons and knights and all manner of wee toys to fight with. Sometimes, when they get bored, they get me up to be their audience, only they ain’t always careful where they go pointing their cannons.”

She looked at Ophelia and saw she’d said too much. “Well, they’re used to me. They know I don’t have no choice but to put up with their ways.”

That afternoon, she’d had to drive over to Chattanooga to visit a particular thrift store. They’d sent her for a used DVD player and all the bathing suits she could buy up. Between that and paying for gas, she’d gone through seventy dollars. And the service light had been on the whole way. At least it hadn’t been a school day. Hard to explain you were cutting out because voices in your head were telling you they needed a saddle.

She’d gone on ahead and brought it all up to the house after. No need to bother Ophelia with any of it. The iPod had been a-laying right in front of the door.

“Here,” she said. “I went ahead and brought this back down.”

“My iPod!” Ophelia said. She turned it over. “They did this?”

The iPod was heavier now. It had a little walnut case instead of pink silicone, and there was a figure inlaid in ebony and gilt.

“A dragonfly,” Ophelia said.

“A snake doctor,” Fran said. “That’s what my daddy calls them.”

“They did this for me?”

“They’d embellish a bedazzled jean jacket if you left it there,” Fran said. “No lie. They can’t stand to leave a thing alone.”

“Cool,” Ophelia said. “Although my mom is never going to believe me when I say I bought it at the mall.”

“Just don’t take up anything metal,” Fran said. “No earrings, not even your car keys. Or you’ll wake up and they’ll have smelted them down and turned them into doll armor or who knows what all.”

They took off their shoes when they got to where the road crossed the drain. The water was cold with the last of the snowmelt. Ophelia said, “I feel like I ought to have brought a hostess gift.”

“You could pick them a bunch of wildflowers,” Fran said. “But they’d be just as happy with a bit of kyarn.”

“Yarn?” Fran said.

“Roadkill,” Fran said. “But yarn’s okay too.”

Ophelia thumbed the wheel of her iPod. “There’s songs on here that weren’t here before.”

“They like music, too,” Fran said. “They like it when I sing.”

“What you were saying about going out to San Francisco to busk,” Ophelia said. “I can’t imagine doing that.”

“Well,” Fran said. “I won’t ever do it, but I think I can imagine it okay.”

When they got up to the house, there were deer grazing on the green lawn. The living tree and the dead were all touched with the last of the sunlight. Chinese lanterns hung in rows from the rafters of the porch.

“You always have to come at the house from between the trees,” Fran said. “Right on the path. Otherwise, you don’t get nowhere near it. And I don’t ever use but the back door.”

She knocked at the back door. BE BOLD< BE BOLD. “It’s me again,” she said. “And my friend Ophelia. The one who left the iPod.”

She saw Ophelia open her mouth and went on, hastily, “Don’t say it, Ophelia. They don’t like it when you thank them. They’re allergic to that word. Come on in. Mi casa es su casa. I’ll give you the grand tour.”

They stepped over the threshold, Fran first.

“There’s the pump room out back, where I do the wash,” she said. “There’s a big ole stone oven for baking in, and a pig pit, although why I don’t know. They don’t eat meat. But you prob’ly don’t care about that.”

“What’s in this room?” Ophelia said.

“Hunh,” Fran said. “Well, first, it’s a lot of junk. They just like to accumulate junk. Way back in there, though is what I think is a queen.”

“A queen?”

“Well, that’s what I call her. You know how, in a beehive, way down in the combs, you have the queen, and all the worker bees attend on her? Far as I can tell, that’s what’s in there. She’s real big and not real pretty, and they are always running in and out of there with food for her. I don’t think she’s teetotally growed up yet. For a while now, I’ve been thinking on what my momma said, about how maybe these summer people got sent off. Bees do that too, right? Go off and make a new hive when there are too many queens?”

“Honestly?” Ophelia said. “It sounds kind of creepy.”

“The queen’s where my daddy gets his liquor, and she don’t bother him none. They have some kind of still set up in there, and every once in a while when he ain’t feeling too religious, he goes in and skims off a little bitty bit. It’s awful sweet stuff.”

“Are they, uh, are they listening to us right now?”

In response came a series of clicks from the War Room.

Ophelia jumped. “What’s that?” she said.

“Remember I told you ’bout the reenactor stuff?” Fran said. “Don’t get freaked out. It’s pretty cool.”

She gave Ophelia a little push into the War Room.

Of all the rooms in the house, this one was Fran’s favorite, even if they dive-bombed her sometimes with the airships, or fired off the cannons without much thought for where she was standing. The walls were beaten tin and copper, scrap metal held down with two-penny nails. Molded forms lay on the floor representing scaled-down mountains, forests, and plains where miniature armies fought desperate battles. There was a kiddie pool over by the big picture window with a machine in it that made waves. There were little ships and submersibles, and occasionally one of the ships sank, and bodies would go floating over to the edges. There was a sea serpent made of tubing and metal rings that swam endlessly in a circle. There was a sluggish river, too, closer to the door, that ran red and stank and stained the banks. The summer people were always setting up miniature bridges over it, then blowing the bridges up.

Overhead were the fantastic shapes of the dirigibles, and the dragons that were hung on string and swam perpetually through the air above your head. There was a misty globe, too, suspended in some way that Fran could not figure, and lit by some unknown source. It stayed up near the painted ceiling for days at a time, and then sunk down behind the plastic sea according to some schedule of the summer people’s.

“It’s amazing,” Ophelia said. “Once I went to the house of some friend of my father’s. An anesthesiologist? He had a train set down in his basement and it was crazy complicated. He would die if he saw this.”

“Over there is a queen, I think,” Fran said. “All surrounded by her knights. And here’s another one, much smaller. I wonder who won, in the end.”

“Maybe it’s not been fought yet,” Ophelia said. “Or maybe it’s being fought right now.”

“Could be,” Fran said. “I wish there was a book told you everything that went on. Come on. I’ll show you the room you can sleep in.”

They went up the stairs. BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BUT NOT TOO BOLD. The moss carpet on the second floor was already looking a little worse for wear. “Last week I spent a whole day scrubbing these boards on my hands and knees. So, of course, they need to go next thing and pile up a bunch of dirt and stuff. They won’t be the ones who have to pitch in and clean it up.”

“I could help,” Ophelia said. “If you want.”

“I wasn’t asking for help. But if you offer, I’ll accept. The first door is the washroom,” Fran said. “Nothing queer about the toilet. I don’t know about the bathtub, though. Never felt the need to sit in it.”

She opened the second door.

“Here’s where you sleep.”

It was a gorgeous room, all done up in shades of orange and rust and gold and pink and tangerine. The walls were finished in leafy shapes and vines cut from all kinds of dresses and T-shirts and what have you. Fran’s momma had spent the better part of the year going through stores, choosing clothes for their patterns and textures and colors. Gold-leaf snakes and fishes swam through the leaf shapes. When the sun came up in the morning, Fran remembered, it was almost blinding.

There was a crazy quilt on the bed, pink and gold. The bed itself was shaped like a swan. There was a willow chest at the foot of the bed to lay out your clothes on. The mattress was stuffed with the down of crow feathers. Fran had helped her mother shoot the crows and pluck their feathers. She thought they’d killed about a hundred.

“I’d say wow,” Ophelia said, “but I keep saying that. Wow, wow, wow. This is a crazy room.”

“I always thought it was like being stuck inside a bottle of orange Nehi,” Fran said. “But in a good way.”

“Oh yeah,” Ophelia said. “I can see that.”

There was a stack of books on the table beside the bed. Like everything else in the room, all the books had been picked out for the colors on their jackets. Fran’s momma had told her that once the room had been another set of colors. Greens and blues, maybe? Willow and peacock and midnight colors? And who had brought the bits up for the room that time? Fran’s great-grandfather or someone even farther along the family tree? Who had first begun to take care of the summer people? Her mother had doled out stories sparingly, and so Fran only had a piecemeal sort of history.

Hard to figure out what it would please Ophelia to hear anyway, and what would trouble her. All of it seemed pleasing and troubling to Fran in equal measure after so many years.

“The door you slipped my envelope under,” she said, finally. “You oughtn’t ever go in there.”

Ophelia yawned. “Like Bluebeard,” she said.

Fran said, “It’s how they come and go. Even they don’t open that door very often, I guess.” She’d peeped through the keyhole once and seen a bloody river. She’d bet if you passed through that door, you weren’t likely to return.

“Can I ask you another stupid question?” Ophelia said. “Where are they right now?”

“They’re here,” Fran said. “Or out in the woods chasing nightjars. I told you I don’t see them much.”

“So how do they tell you what they need you to do?”

“They get in my head,” Fran said. “I guess it’s kind of like being schizophrenic. Or like having a really bad itch or something that goes away when I do what they want me to.”

“Not fun,” Ophelia said. “Maybe I don’t like your summer people as much as I thought I did.”

Fran said, “It’s not always awful. I guess what it is, is complicated.”

“I guess I won’t complain the next time my mom tells me I have to help her polish the silver, or do useless crap like that. Should we eat our sandwiches now, or should we save them for when we wake up in the middle of the night?” Ophelia asked. “I have this idea that seeing your heart’s desire probably makes you hungry.”

“I can’t stay,” Fran said, surprised. She saw Ophelia’s expression and said, “Well, hell. I thought you understood. This is just for you.”

Ophelia continued to look at her dubiously. “Is it because there’s just the one bed? I could sleep on the floor. You know, if you’re worried I might be planning to lez out on you.”

“It isn’t that,” Fran said. “They only let a body sleep here once. Once and no more.”

“You’re really going to leave me up here alone?” Ophelia said.

“Yes,” Fran said. “Unless you decide you want to come back down with me. I guess I’d understand if you did.”

“Could I come back again?” Ophelia said.

“No.”

Ophelia sat down on the golden quilt and smoothed it with her fingers. She chewed her lip, not meeting Fran’s eye.

“Okay. I’ll do it.” She laughed. “How could I not do it? Right?”

“If you’re sure,” Fran said.

“I’m not sure, but I couldn’t stand it if you sent me away now,” Ophelia said. “When you slept here, were you afraid?”

“A little,” Fran said. “But the bed was comfortable, and I kept the light on. I read for a while, and then I fell asleep.”

“Did you see your heart’s desire?” Ophelia said.

“I guess I did,” Fran offered, and then said no more.

“Okay, then,” Ophelia said. “I guess you should go. You should go, right?”

“I’ll come back in the morning,” Fran said. “I’ll be here afore you even wake.”

“Thanks,” Ophelia said.

But Fran didn’t go. She said, “Did you mean it when you said you wanted to help?”

“Look after the house?” Ophelia said. “Yeah, absolutely. You really ought to go out to San Francisco someday. You shouldn’t have to stay here your whole life without ever having a vacation or anything. I mean, you’re not a slave, right?”

“I don’t know what I am,” Fran said. “I guess one day I’ll have to figure that out.”

Ophelia said, “Anyway, we can talk about it tomorrow. Over breakfast. You can tell me about the suckiest parts of the job and I’ll tell you what my heart’s desire turns out to be.”

“Oh,” Fran said. “I almost forgot. When you wake up tomorrow, don’t be surprised if they’ve left you a gift. The summer people. It’ll be something that they think you need or want. But you don’t have to accept it. You don’t have to worry about being rude that way.”

“Okay,” Ophelia said. “I will consider whether I really need or want my present. I won’t let false glamour deceive me.”

“Good,” Fran said. Then she bent over Ophelia where she was sitting on the bed and kissed her on the forehead. “Sleep well, Ophelia. Good dreams.”

Fran left the house without any interference from the summer people. She couldn’t tell if she’d expected to find any. As she came down the stairs, she said rather more fiercely than she’d meant to: “Be nice to her. Don’t play no tricks.” She looked in on the queen, who was molting again.

She went out the front door instead of the back, which was something that she’d always wanted to do. Nothing bad happened, and she walked down the hall feeling strangely put out. She went over everything in her head, wondering what still needed doing that she hadn’t done. Nothing, she decided. Everything was taken care of.

Except, of course, it wasn’t. The first thing was the guitar, leaned up against the door of her house. It was a beautiful instrument. The strings, she thought, were pure silver. When she struck them, the tone was pure and sweet and reminded her uncomfortably of Ophelia’s singing voice. The keys were made of gold and shaped like owl heads, and there was mother-of-pearl inlay across the boards like a spray of roses. It was the gaudiest gewgaw they’d yet made her a gift of.

“Well, all right,” she said. “I guess you didn’t mind what I told her.” She laughed out loud with relief.

“Why, everwho did you tell what?” someone said.

She picked up the guitar and held it like a weapon in front of her. “Daddy?”

“Put that down,” the voice said. A man stepped forward out of the shadow of the rosebushes. “I’m not your damn Daddy. Although, come to think of it, I would like to know where he is.”

“Ryan Shoemaker,” Fran said. She put the guitar down on the ground. Another man stepped forward. “And Kyle Rainey.”

“Howdy, Fran,” said Kyle. He spat. “We were lookin’ for your pappy, like Ryan says.”

“If he calls I’ll let him know you were up here looking for him,” Fran said. “Is that all you wanted to ask me?”

Ryan lit up a cigarette, looked at her over the flame. “It was your daddy we wanted to ask, but I guess you could help us out instead.”

“It don’t seem likely somehow,” Fran said. “But go on.”

“Your daddy was meaning to drop off some of the sweet stuff the other night,” Kyle said. “Only, he started thinking about it on the drive down, and that’s never been a good idea where your daddy is concerned. He decided Jesus wanted him to pour out every last drop, and that’s what he did all the way down the mountain. If he weren’t a lucky man, some spark might have cotched while he were pouring, but I guess Jesus doesn’t want to meet him face to face just yet.”

“And if that weren’t bad enough,” Ryan said, “when he got to the convenience, he decided that Jesus wanted him to get into the van and smash up all Andy’s liquor, too. By the time we realized what was going on, there weren’t much left besides two bottles of Kahlua and a six-pack of wine coolers.”

“One of them smashed, too,” Kyle said. “And then he took off afore we could have a word with him.”

“Well, I’m sorry for your troubles, but I don’t see what it has to do with me,” Fran said.

“What it has to do is that we’ve come up with an easy payment plan. We talked about it, and the way it seems to us is that your pappy could provide us with entrée to some of the finest homes in the area.”

“Like I said,” Fran said. “I’ll pass on the message. You’re hoping my daddy will make his restitution by becoming your accessory in breaking and entering. I’ll let him know if he calls.”

“Or he could pay poor Andy back in kind,” Ryan said. “With some of that good stuff.”

“He’ll have to run that by Jesus,” Fran said. “Frankly, I think it’s a better bet than the other, but you might have to wait until he and Jesus have had enough of each other.”

“The thing is,” Ryan said, “I’m not a patient man. And what has occurred to me is that your pappy may be out of our reach at present moment, but here you are. And I’m guessing that you can get us in to a house or two. Preferably ones with quality flat screens and high-thread-count sheets. I promised Mandy I was going to help her redecorate.”

“Or else you could point us in the direction of your daddy’s private stash,” Kyle said.

“And if I don’t choose to do neither?” Fran asked, crossing her arms.

“I truly hope that you know what it is you’re doing,” Kyle said. “Ryan has not been in a good mood these last few days. He bit a sheriff’s deputy on the arm last night in a bar. Which is why we weren’t up here sooner.”

“He was pigheaded, just like you,” Ryan said. “No pun intended. But I bet you’d taste better.”

Fran stepped back. “Fine. There’s an old house farther up the road that nobody except me and my daddy knows about. It’s ruint. Nobody lives there, and so my daddy put his still up in it. He’s got all sorts of articles stashed up there. I’ll take you up. But you can’t tell him what I done.”

“Course not, darlin’,” Kyle said. “We don’t aim to cause a rift in the family. Just to get what we have coming.”

And so Fran found herself climbing right back up that same road. She got her feet wet in the drain but kept as far ahead of Kyle and Ryan as she dared. She didn’t know if she felt safe with them at her back.

When they got up to the house, Kyle whistled. “Fancy sort of ruin.”

“Wait’ll you see what’s inside,” Fran said. She led them around to the back, then held the door open. “Sorry about the lights. The power goes off more than it stays on. My daddy usually brings up a torch. Want me to go get one?”

“We’ve got matches,” Ryan said. “You stay right there.”

“The still is in the room over on the right. Mind how you go. He’s got it set up in a kind of maze, with the newspapers and all.”

“Dark as the inside of a mine at midnight,” Kyle said. He felt his way down the hall. “I think I’m at the door. Sure enough, smells like what I’m lookin’ for. Guess I’ll just follow my nose. No booby traps or nothing like that?”

“No sir,” Fran said. “He’d have blowed himself up a long time before now if he tried that.”

“I might as well take in the sights,” Ryan said, the lit end of his cigarette flaring. “Now that I’m getting my night vision.”

“Yes sir,” Fran said.

“And might there be a pisser in this heap?”

“Third door on the left, once you go up,” Fran said. “The door sticks some.”

She waited until he was at the top of the stairs before she slipped out the back door again. She could hear Kyle fumbling toward the center of the queen’s room. She wondered what the queen would make of Kyle. She wasn’t worried about Ophelia at all. Ophelia was an invited guest. And anyhow, the summer people didn’t let anything happen to the ones who looked after them.

One of the summer people was sitting on the porch swing when she came out. He was whittling a stick with a sharp knife.

“Evening,” Fran said and bobbed her head.

The summer personage didn’t even look up at her. He was one of the ones so pretty it almost hurt to peep at him, but you couldn’t not stare, neither. That was one of the ways they cotched you, Fran figured. Just like wild animals when you shone a light at them. She finally tore her gaze away and ran down the stairs like the devil was after her. When she stopped to look back, he was still setting there, smiling and whittling that poor stick down.

She sold the guitar when she got to New York City. What was left of her daddy’s two hundred dollars had bought her a Greyhound ticket and a couple of burgers at the bus station. The guitar got her six hundred more, and she used that to buy a ticket to Paris, where she met a Lebanese boy who was squatting in an old factory. One day she came back from her under-the-table job at a hotel and found him looking through her backpack. He had the monkey egg in his hand. He wound it up and put it down on the dirty floor to dance. They both watched until it ran down. “Très jolie,” he said.

It was a few days after Christmas, and there was snow melting in her hair. They didn’t have heat in the squat, or even running water. She’d had a bad cough for a few days. She sat down next to her boy, and when he started to wind up the monkey egg again, she put her hand out to make him stop.

She didn’t remember packing it. And of course, maybe she hadn’t. For all she knew, they had winter places as well as summer places. Just because she’d never been able to travel didn’t mean they didn’t get around.

A few days later, the Lebanese boy disappeared off, probably looking for someplace warmer. The monkey egg went with him. After that, all she had to remind herself of home was the tent that she kept folded up like a dirty handkerchief in her wallet.

It’s been two years, and every now and again, while Fran is cleaning rooms in the pension, she closes the door and sets up the tent and gets inside. She looks out the window at the two apple trees. She tells herself that one day soon she will go home again.