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death! Please do not scream unless you really have something to scream about.”
    “Like what?” she asked.
    I could have answered: A killer bee! A brown recluse! A wasp! A wolf! A bear! A rattlesnake! A fire! An earthquake! A serial killer! Instead I just said, “A real emergency, Abby. Use your good judgment.”
    “But he bit me,” she insisted, pulling up the sleeve on her T-shirt to show a red mark on her arm.
    Aunt Jean had caught up and was now kneeling next to Tank, talking in a voice that sounded familiar. It took me a second to realize it was my own parenting voice when I was at my best—a perfect balance of firm and friendly at the same time. “People aren’t allowed to bite other people out here in the country,” she was saying. “There are too many other things that really do bite.”
    She stated it like it was just a rule. Nothing personal. And I could see in Tank’s eyes that he was making a note of it.
    Next Aunt Jean dusted off the knees of her overalls and said, all business, “Who wants to see the house?”
    Jean looked so much like my mother—the unpainted version—that it was mind-boggling to watch her step in with the kids and handle them that way. I tried to think what my mother would have done if she’d been here. But there was nothing to compare it to, because she would’ve been at the nail salon.
    The kids jumped up and down when they saw the house. Jean showed them the weather vane, the porch bell they could ring at dinnertime, and the spot under the steps with a litter of orange kittens still lapping up a fresh bowl of goat’s milk.
    We walked around back to the screened porch, which was almost the size of the house itself.
    “I like the way everything’s at an angle,” I said.
    Jean smiled. “Frank was a big fan of imperfection.”
    “I haven’t been here before, have I?” I asked then. “This place feels familiar.”
    There was a pause. “No,” Jean said, “you haven’t.”
    I knew why, of course. Because my mother hated Jean. Which suddenly made me wonder if Jean hated my mother, too. I wanted to ask, but I didn’t know Jean well enough to know how to phrase it.
    Standing there, it hit me that in all those years of Jean sending me birthday cards and money, I had never once written to her. Or thanked her. Or invited her to my wedding. It was almost like she hadn’t even been a real person. She was some fictional lady living a crazy hippie life far away. I would no more have written to her to ask how she was than I would have checked in on Santa. How strange to just now figure out she was real.
    “My mom said you lived in a mansion,” I said. “Was this the—”
    “The family home?”
    I nodded.
    “No,” she said. “I don’t live there. And I wouldn’t call it a mansion, either.”
    “You might want to mention that to Marsha sometime,” I told her. “She imagines you living in obscene luxury.”
    “She grew up in that house,” Jean said. “She knows exactly what it is. But she never did let reality get in the way of resentment.”
    The kids had climbed onto the porch swing. Jean studied them, then said, “Is she pretty mad at you for coming here?”
    I nodded. “You have no idea.”
    “Oh,” Jean said, wrinkling her nose, “I think I do.”
    I couldn’t help making air quotes with my fingers as I said, “She’s ‘never speaking to me again.’ ”
    Jean arched an eyebrow. “That’ll last.”
    “My money’s on two months.”
    “My money’s on two weeks.”
    I let out a breath that was part laugh. It was so strange to not know each other at all, yet have this one burden in common—the burden of dealing with my mother. Before I could think better of it, I heard myself say, “But it lasted with you. For almost thirty years.”
    Jean dropped her smile. “I suppose that’s true,” she said. “Except I’m actually the one who’s not speaking to her.”

Chapter 3
 
    There was no question that Jean was eccentric. In the next few weeks