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she was crazy,” Audrey’s father later related, “and told her not to set foot on their property again.”
    Audrey’s mother had died of something called acute myeloid leukemia when Audrey was three. The McNair house came on the market soon after, and Audrey’s father, almost vindictively, bought it. He could not quite afford it, but he told himself that was just temporary—he was doing well in his firm and would do even better as time passed. He put a lamp in the upstairs window and left it on, more in memory of his deceased wife than of Grady McNair.
    In Audrey’s four-year-old mind, the belief formed that if she turned off the light, her mother would go out, too. And that wasn’t her only fear. The whole house was terrifying: the darkly papered walls, the carved posts and paneling, the smells of coal and mildew, and—her father immediately regretted telling her the legend—the memory of the dead soldier. When the wind inflated a curtain, four-year-old Audrey thought she was seeing the soul of the soldier, or of her mother.
    After they moved in, a sixty-year-old German woman named Olga Hoffmann—“Oggy,” to Audrey—had joined the household, first as nanny and then, later, as cook, driver, and mother-substitute. Room by room, Oggy painted and papered the walls so that, in time, the house became lighter and cleaner. The framed pictures of Audrey’s mother smiling in the Queen of Jemison Days float and lighting the candles on Audrey’s first birthday cake were joined by photographs of black-eyed, white-haired Oggy serving Audrey oatmeal, stabilizing Audrey’s first ride on a Schwinn, and supervising one of Audrey’s early swimming lessons.
    Audrey’s memories of her mother were visual, and remote: the white crown of roses on her mother’s head in the bridal and Jemison Days photographs; the white pearls at her throat; her eternally young face. Audrey’s memories of Oggy were deeply physical: the Werther’s butter toffees she carried in her purse, her German vocal groups harmonizing on the stereo, the watery jasmine of Echt Kölnisch Wasser, a cologne that came in gold-and-turquoise-labeled bottles that Oggy always gave to Audrey when they were empty. There were many images of Oggy waiting—waiting for Audrey to come down for breakfast in the morning; waiting with German cheese-cake when she came home from school; waiting in the car, reading
Frau im Leben
magazine, until Audrey’s piano lesson was over. And finally, as Audrey reached adolescence, she’d found Oggy surprisingly frank about sexual development. (“I think today we go buy our Audrey a
Büstenhalter,
” she’d announced matter-of-factly one day after studying Audrey’s barely budding breasts. “Maybe also supplies for your
Periode
.”)
    This afternoon, Audrey opened the front door and said, “Hallo?” She wished, impossibly, that Oggy would call, “Hallo!” in return. To Oggy, she could have described how handsome Wickham Hill was, how horrid Sands and Zondra had been, and how intense Clyde the Mummy was, preferably while slicing yet another thin piece of Käsekuchen. But this past August, Oggy’s sister in Germany had broken her hip, and Oggy had taken a leave of absence to care for her in Berlin.
    Without Oggy’s counterbalancing weight, the world of Audrey and her father seemed to tip slightly, with everything sliding this way and that. Audrey didn’t know how to cook, clean, or iron. (In truth, she hadn’t realized that clean clothes were initially wrinkled, or that Oggy had ironed her sweat-pants.) The house began to remind Audrey of the way it had looked when they moved in: dust on the stairs, spots on the windowpanes, dead flies on the windowsills, rust-colored stains in the washbasins and tubs. Oggy had been gone nine weeks now, and her sister was still bedridden.
    Audrey stood in the hall and