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memories I have, is really standing in front of me.
    “Please tell me it’s you,” she says, “Tell me this is real.”
    “ It’s me,” I say. But I can’t tell her it’s real. It doesn’t feel real—it feels disjointed and strange, like those times we smoked pot she scored off Gavin Green and my head felt detached from my body.
    Marly looks prepared to launch into a soliloquy of apology but suddenly people are moving toward her from all sides. She must have been the final speaker—it would be like her to organize the world ’s shortest funeral—everyone is sweeping out of their pews. Frowning older ladies clutch at her arms, circling her, and in a moment we are separated.
    “ Come to Gram’s house, in an hour,” she shouts over the bodies, and then she is absorbed into them like a drop of water into a sponge, as though she was never there at all.

Chapter Four
    I make it a point not to come this way. The sloping Y of the streets where Bolinas merges into Cascade inspires a feeling of vertigo, as though I am suddenly at the top of a hill on a bicycle without brakes. The road is still flanked by redwoods that I remember being half as tall.
    Adam parks, and we stare up the column of stone stairs, the ivy robust and shiny after winter rains. A diffuse yellow light shines out from one room in the big house. I have not set foot here since the night my childhood burned to ash.
    “Should I wait?” He frowns and glances up at the house as though it might be haunted. “Are you sure your friend is in there?”
    “ If she can’t give me a ride, I’ll take a cab home,” I say.
    “ Don’t be silly, Grace, call me. I’ll come back. I’m less than ten minutes away.”
    “ I appreciate it.” I feel him wanting to say more, but the pull of the house is so strong I forgo politeness.
    Once out of the car, I want to dash up the stone steps like I did years ago, but my body doesn ’t move with effortless ease. I pause halfway up the steps to wave to Adam, self-conscious of him watching my slow climb. Adam waves back at me and starts the engine, leaving me alone to face the final steps and the front door that feels like a barrier between me and the past. I knock as the sound of Adam’s car rattles off in the distance. There’s a deep moment of silence and then the clatter of dishes abandoned in the sink, followed by footsteps echoing along a wooden floor, and finally, at the top of the half-moon window, a dome of honey-blonde hair appears. Marly wrenches open the door, sniffles as though she’s been interrupted crying, and waves me in.
    The air inside is thick with a mixture of cedar chips and dime-store perfumes; the latter, Marly and I once spent hours daubing along our bodies. The couches and chairs are still draped in bright, Mexican textiles and the walls are hung with colorful masks, frames, and mirrors—a riot of ripe fruit colors. Marly ’s grandmother had called herself a bon vivante , and now, my adult self finally understands.
    “ It’s…exactly as I remember it,” I say. The click of the door behind me sounds final; there’s no turning back.
    She sighs heavily. “I know. I still get dizzy looking at it all. It’s getting sold or donated. It’s too much memory, or I’d take some of it back home with me.” She bites the cuticle of her thumb and then I can barely concentrate; what I wouldn’t give to have a thumb cuticle to bite. I force my hands deeper into the pockets of my sweatshirt.
    “ Back home?” I ask.
    “ Vegas.” She looks away, rolling her head on her neck as though working out a kink, but I wonder if she just doesn’t want to maintain eye contact. My own neck tingles with the urge to do the same.
    “ Are you thirsty? Hungry? I can make us a drink. Wine? Vodka?”
    “ Uh, whatever you’re having,” I say.
    She flips open cabinets expertly, whipping out a tall clear bottle of vodka, brand new, which makes me sad, as though Oona Donovan was waiting all these years for