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had changed. I knew that. Not just that he’d grown slightly taller, although I swear I thought he was going to be a dwarf most of his natural-born days. He had changed . Oh, he was his usual pale, wormy self, and his snow-white hair was ragged from one of Aunt Cricket’s bad cutting jobs (at their home in Savannah they had three dogs, and Aunt Cricket used the dog-clipping shears on the pets and on her child—the results were usually choppy). He looked the same on the outside, but in the eyes —that one place in all living creatures that lets you look right down into their most secret places— his eyes were different . The only thing I could think was maybe he’d stayed up all night brooding over things.
    He squinted them so they turned into slits. One thing about Sumter, however: He was always an immaculate dresser, which I never could comprehend because he was such a walking disaster area in every other respect. He wore a clean-pressed white oxford cloth button-down shirt and khaki shorts, a pair of white socks beneath his sandals.
    “You hear me, Beau? She gone?” He began twiddling his fingers across the stains on Grammy Weenie’s faded wallpaper—the stains had been made by us kids over various summers, and although Grammy always had help to do the cleaning, no one ever thought to scrub the walls.
    “Hey, Sumter.”
    He brought his thumb back from the yellow paper, licking it. “Peach preserves.” He held his fingers up; they were covered with a dark amber goo. “ ’Member that time you stole ’em from Grammy’s cupboard? You ran along here and threw one of the jars at the wall. Still tastes like what Gummi bears would do in the woods.” He had a laugh that went “Haw Haw Haw,” just like he was faking it.

    Sumter himself had broken the jar by throwing it. I know because I was there and the jar narrowly missed my head—three inches, if at all—and running barefoot across the landing, I cut my feet on the glass. I reminded Sumter of his participation in stealing the preserves; he was always making up stories to suit his version of things.
    He smirked, flicking the last of the preserves in my direction. “You’re getting more and more like the old Weenie, but my mama says that you’re all doomed because of the alcoholism that runs on your daddy’s side.”
    I was not witty or clever enough to say what I should’ve, which was, “Seems to me your own folks knock back their fair share of booze.” Even this wouldn’t have gone over with Sumter, because there was a popular mythology among the Lee side of the family that other people couldn’t hold their liquor, but the Lees had no problem. How many times had I heard Aunt Cricket say, “Lord, I hope I never become an alcoholic, ’cause then I couldn’t drink anymore.”
    What I did say was, “I hear you tried to kill Grammy.”
    “It wasn’t me. It was my Slinky going down the stairs that got her. If you don’t believe me, the old witch knows the truth. Ask her.”
    “How can a Slinky attack somebody?”
    “Don’t ask questions you don’t want answered.”
    “You coming to the beach?”
    He grinned—Sumter didn’t have an open, friendly grin. He always looked a little sour, even at his best. “I got more important things to do.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like I’m not gonna tell you.”
    “Oh, come on.”
    “If I told you, you’d be a blabbermouth, you’d tell Missy and she’d tell Nonie and she’d tell Aunt Evvie and she’d tell the Weenie.”
    “You don’t have anything to do. You’re a big fat liar.”
    “I’m holding something ransom.”
    “Kidnapping?”
    “You tell anyone and you’re dead.”

    “Tell me.”
    Sumter shrugged. Julianne started yelling for me to come down because it was time to go to the beach and if I wasn’t down by the count of five I may as well not come down at all. Already I could hear the big horseflies buzzing and whapping into the screens on the windows.
    “Wait,” he said, grabbing my