He was her little brother. She loved him. But in the past few years she couldn’t help but be annoyed and sometimes disgusted by him. He pinched his pimples when he thought no one was looking. He chewed his fingernails to raw bloody stubs, insisted on being a vegetarian to be difficult, and grew his hair long so that he could practically chew on his bangs—partially, she suspected, so he wouldn’t have to make eye contact with her when they saw each other.

On the other hand, she couldn’t blame him. She’d been a shitty sister. Sometimes she wished she could sit him down and explain, tell him that it wasn’t his fault, confess her deepest, truest secret: there was something rotten growing inside of her. She had hoped, in an inarticulate way, that having Amy would change things—would change her.

Amy was an Innocent.

Minna, too, had read The Raven Heliotrope, and although she was far too old for fairy tales, she had clung to one of its major tenets for a long time: the Innocents could save. They could redeem.

“It’s weird being here,” Trenton said. His head was still bent, his voice raw. “It doesn’t feel the same.” Then: “Why wouldn’t he let us see him?”

“You know Dad,” Minna said.

“Not really,” Trenton said.

Minna nudged a chair out from the table—the Spider—with her toe and sat down. The chair creaked underneath her and she felt suddenly weird, like this had never been her house, like everything had been set up to test her. Like a stage set for an actress, to see if she could figure out her role. She wouldn’t put it past her father. Maybe he’d planned all of this.

Minna put an arm around Amy, to keep her from wandering and touching things. Trenton still hadn’t looked up, and he was swiping at his phone, but she realized this must be hard for him. He had been young when their father and mother had divorced, and since then had seen their father only sporadically, when Richard would appear suddenly in Long Island like Father Christmas, toting gifts and a wide, jolly grin and a big laugh that made you temporarily forget that it would all be over by tomorrow.

“He was sick,” she said. “He didn’t want us to remember him that way.” That, at least, was true. It wasn’t for their sake, but for his. Richard Walker had been in control until the end.

“It’s f**ked,” Trenton said. Amy put her hands over her ears.

“Christ, Trenton,” Minna said.

“Trenton said a bad word,” Amy said in a singsong. Then, keeping her hands pressed tightly to her ears, she spun away from Minna, twirling around the kitchen, humming to herself, her cotton blue skirt fanning around her knees.

“Home sweet home,” Minna said.

A large part of her wanted to leave already: to get back into the small white BMW she’d leased exactly two weeks before being fired from her latest job; to sink down into the upholstery that smelled like Amy’s shampoo and old juice bottles; to drive as far and as fast as she could from Coral River, and the Minna who had been stuck there.

But there was another part of her that suspected—that remembered—that she had once been happy here. For years she had carried the image of a different Minna with her, a faint, heartbeat-shadow of a girl who had existed before the rot took hold.

So she was here. To face the demons.

To put them to rest for good.

ALICE

Caroline Walker, like Minna, walks into the kitchen as though expecting a party and seems bewildered to instead encounter an empty room filled with old belongings, stacked newspapers, and crusted dishes in the sink—as though everyone else must have mistaken the date.

“She got fat!” Sandra crows. “Didn’t I tell you she would?”

I do not remember that Sandra ever said this. Although, to be fair, I spend the majority of my time trying to ignore Sandra, so it’s possible that I missed it.

Caroline removes her sunglasses and, without going any farther into the house, calls: “Minna? Trenton? Amy? Where is everyone?”

I can tell you where they are. Trenton is in the upstairs bathroom, next to the Blue Room, which was always his; he has a magazine unfolded on his lap, and his pants around his ankles. Amy is sitting on the floor of the Yellow Room, where Minna has installed her. Minna is lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, talking on the phone.

“I just don’t see why he couldn’t do us a favor and die somewhere decent,” she is saying. “I told Trenton in the car—as far as I’m concerned, we can just burn the damn place . . . ”

Amy is braiding the tassels on the worn yellow rug, humming to herself.

“Well, of course there’s nowhere to eat around here,” Minna is saying. “It’s a miracle I even have cell-phone reception.”

In the kitchen, Caroline removes her coat—an enormous fur coat, despite the fact that it is unseasonably warm. She did get fat; it’s true. Her beauty is still there, but with age it has softened, blurred, and become faintly ridiculous, like the kind of amateur watercolor you might see in an office building.

“And she’s drunk.” Sandra gets still, and very alert. “Drunk as a whore on Sunday. Do you smell it?”

“No.” I smell perfume, and mildew, and Trenton’s bathroom, which I am trying hard not to smell.

“Vodka,” Sandra says, the way a music lover might say Bach. “I’d swear to it. Absolut. No, no. Stoli, with just a splash of tonic . . . ”

When Sandra was alive, she would drink anything she could get her hands on. Wine or beer when there were guests—she would top off her glass with bottles stashed behind curtains, or in the shower, so no one would know she was drinking more than double their amount—and vodka when she was alone. But she wasn’t picky. Whiskey, gin, and even—after a brief period of sobriety, when she had cleaned her entire house of liquor—rubbing alcohol.

It’s only now that she has developed a palate.

“And lime,” she says. “Definitely lime.”

If only it could have been anyone else but Sandra . . . that nice, quiet girl from down the road, whom Maggie used to be so fond of. Or Sammy, the butcher—he always had interesting things to say, and he was polite, even to the black customers. Even Anne Collins, who was constantly going on about her husband’s finances and bragging about the new coats she would buy, would have been preferable.

Trenton flushes. Water runs; pipes shudder; the system pulses. Rhythm and flow; ingestion, excretion. Input, output. These are laws of the universe.