“Ted,” I said as I laid a quilt on top of the freshly made bed. “Thank you. For always being there for Lexie.”

He gave me a puzzled look, shook his head, said, “I wasn’t. But I did my best. That’s all any of us do, isn’t it?”

His words hit me like a cannonball in the chest.

* * *

Once Ted was tucked in, I set off to walk to town. I pulled out my phone to call my therapist but got her voice mail.

“Barbara, it’s Jackie Metcalf. I was hoping we could schedule a time to talk by phone. Being here, it’s… it’s, uh, bringing up a lot of stuff. Old issues and new questions. Anyway, I could use a rational voice to help me out a little.”

The walk to town seemed farther than when we were kids. But then again, Lexie and I had made the trip on bikes, singing, screaming, daring each other to ride faster. We’d go to the Four Corners Store for penny candy—licorice pipes, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Bit-O-Honeys, Mint Juleps, tiny wax bottles full of bright liquid sugar. Stuff they didn’t sell at the corner store back home—hadn’t really sold anywhere else for years. Lexie called it “old lady candy.” We’d park our bikes out front, go into the store with its old creaking wooden floorboards, and load up paper bags and then get a couple of ice-cold Hires Root Beers to wash it all down.

Now, I followed our dirt road to Lower Road, which had been dirt when I was a kid but was now paved. Lower Road ran downhill to Main Street. So little had changed. It felt like there was a protective bubble over Brandenburg, keeping everything frozen in time—like the dome of a snow globe with the perfect little New England village trapped inside.

There was the Brandenburg Post Office, where Lexie and I sent postcards to our mom and Ted and friends back home. Having a great time at Sparrow Crest. Swimming every day. Gram sends her love. And the Blue Heron Bakery. When I was growing up people had been known to drive all the way from Burlington for the lemon-blueberry muffins Terri Mueller made. Ryan’s dad, Randy, greeted nearly every customer by name and gave Lexie and me free hot chocolate with extra whipped cream whenever we went in.

We played with other kids in town, kids whose names I can no longer recall—a girl with white-blond hair, a boy with thick glasses. But Ryan was like family. His grandmother, Shirley, was Gram’s best friend. They’d grown up together, Shirley’s family just on the other side of the hill from Sparrow Crest. They liked to sit by the pool drinking gin and tonics and playing cards on summer afternoons.

I passed Lily’s Bed and Breakfast—a quaint old farmhouse with a white picket fence and tidy flower beds. Lily had been running the place forever. In addition to the rooms in the house, she had riverside cabins out back and a large renovated barn where she hosted weddings, graduations, and local theater productions.

The Four Corners Store had a large wooden porch with benches for people to sit and enjoy the ice cream cones they scooped inside. A bulletin board out front held notices for yard sales, camp wood, a fly-fishing tournament, and a chicken-pie supper at the Methodist Church. I pushed open the heavy front door and crossed the creaking old floorboards to the beer cooler in the back. I grabbed a six-pack of a local IPA—something I thought my dad would like. If he was going to drink, I knew from experience that we were better off having him stick with beer. Besides, IPA sounded good to me, too. As I was closing the cooler, a memory came to me. Standing right in this spot, picking root beers from the cooler as two women we didn’t know talked in the next aisle over.

“Lets those girls run around wild with the Mueller boy.”

“What’s she going to do? Keep them locked up in the house with her?” the other woman had said to her companion.

“Those girls shouldn’t be staying up there in that house. Shouldn’t be swimming in that pool. That pool should be filled in. I don’t understand why Maggie didn’t do it after she lost poor Rita. Nothing good ever came from that place. Cursed, that’s what my mother always said.”

They’d been talking about us. Us and Gram.

I shook off the memory and brought my beer up to the counter, where an older man rang me up. The store owner. I struggled to remember his name. Bob? Bill?

“That be all for you today?” he asked.

“Actually, I don’t know if you’ll remember me. I’m Jackie Metcalf, my sister, Lexie, and I used to spend summers up at Sparrow Crest with our grandmother, Maggie Harkness. Lexie recently…” I fumbled for the word. Died? Passed away? Went totally out of her mind and drowned herself in her own pool?

“Oh my gosh, Lexie’s sister! Of course I remember you. I was sorry as hell to hear what happened. My son, Vern, he’s in the VFD, he was one of the paramedics who got there first. Terrible thing.”

A knot formed in my throat as I imagined this man’s son standing over Lexie’s naked body, knowing there was no reviving her. “Thank you,” I managed. “We’re having a memorial service tomorrow. You’re welcome to come.” I gave him the details.

“Me and the missus will be there. She was in here a lot and always so friendly. A good girl.”

I wasn’t sure what to say.

“Oh hell, I nearly forgot,” he said. “I’ve got something for you.”

“For me?”

“Something your sister placed a special order for. It’s all paid for. I’ve got it out back, just a sec.”

Lexie never shopped online. She didn’t own a computer. Or a cell phone. She hated the idea that people could track everything you did online, every site you visited, everything you looked at or bought.

He went through a curtained door behind the register and came back with a sealed and taped cardboard box addressed to Lexie, care of the Four Corners Store. “Here you go.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking the box from him. It was long and narrow—about four feet by eight inches. It weighed very little. I thought about opening it, but I wanted to be alone when I saw whatever Lexie had ordered. “I know Lexie wasn’t a fan of computers.”

“It wasn’t just the computer thing,” he said. “She didn’t trust the UPS guy. Didn’t like strangers coming to the house. Didn’t even get her mail there, rented a PO box in town. If she needed something, she’d come to us and we’d order it for her. All her swimming and diving stuff, things for the house, whatever she needed and couldn’t buy locally.”