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Leaving the red barn behind, we walk on beneath a cloudless blue sky. Ahead, the green pond comes into view. I haven’t yet taken a dip, but reading about Hazel and Evelyn’s swim makes me feel braver about jumping in someday.

Gentle bleats greet us as we approach the pasture. The electric fence sags where the snow smashed it down, but I managed to piece it back together. We pause to watch the spring-shorn ewes feast on early summer grasses.

“Did your neighbor drive them out here for you?” Sam asks.

“No,” I say. “David, my husband, was from Ireland. His parents have a sheep farm there. They coached me how to lead the flock on foot.”

“Sounds like you’ve become a real shepherdess, Audrey.”

I think of Evelyn’s definition of husbandry: providing what a creature needs so it can flourish on its own. “I suppose so.”

After we’ve left the pasture behind, Sam points into the trees. “Look, there’s the wire Evelyn strung up so Hazel wouldn’t get lost in the woods.”

Trailing my fingertips along the metal strand, I say, “Then Evelyn got lost, and Hazel found her.”

We walk on quietly, our downhill steps following in reverse the path Hazel took when she first brought Evelyn to see the house that would become their home. Hazel was just twenty-one, same as the college seniors I taught. Evelyn was twenty-seven, close to the age I was when I lost my dad. Both of them, so young.

“So this is Patience Creek,” Sam says when we reach the stream. “It’s funny, because everyone calls my mom Pat. I didn’t even know her name was Patience until I saw it on her passport. I bet she has no idea she’s named after her, what, great-great-grandmother?”

“Something like that,” I say.

Sam contemplates the creek awhile. “I think she’ll be glad Billy and Mai didn’t change their mind about her name, even after everything that happened.”

The water is flowing fast after a recent rain but we find some rocks to hop across. Hazel’s voice is in my mind as we pass the falling-down barn described on my deed. There’s her daddy’s shed, a rusted padlock holding its sagging doors in place. There’s her mother’s garden, glutted now with weeds, and the empty coop that once housed a gaggle of clucking birds.

Approaching the saltbox house from behind, it’s clear someone’s been keeping up with the lawn, but shuttered windows suggest the place is uninhabited. Hearing a car start up, we come round the front to find Rhonda’s Subaru backing down the driveway. Seeing us, she brakes and lowers her window.

“Go on in, door’s open,” Rhonda calls out. “The owner’s expecting you.” The window rises, then lowers again. “Make sure she drinks water. She never drinks enough water.”

We watch Rhonda drive away, then turn to contemplate the house where so much of Hazel’s story happened. It’s like being in a deserted theater from which the last play’s set was never struck. My mind’s eye fills in the action: Evelyn leaning against her car, smoking a cigarette. Billy embracing his parents. Hazel approaching arm in arm with Mai. Mr. McIntyre storming off into the woods with his rifle.

“It kind of feels like stepping into the past, you know?” Sam says.

“I was thinking the same thing.” I notice, now, the front shutters are pinned back. There’s a window open, too. A breeze shifts white curtains in a dark room. “Are you ready for this, Sam?”

He shrugs. “I guess we’ll find out.”

We climb the steps. The house could use a coat of paint, but the porch is sturdy. Sam pulls the screen door open, its hinges squealing as scarily as Hazel described.

“Hello, we’re here to see the house?”

There’s no answer. We step onto a threadbare runner in a hallway dimly lit by tarnished sconces.

“Hello?” Sam calls again.

“In here.” The voice, frail and feminine, draws us to a pair of pocket doors that have been pulled apart. Light streams out from a window within, illuminating a million swirling motes. We look into the room where Evelyn spent her first night in Schuywich. Cardboard moving boxes are stacked in every corner. Opposite an antique china cabinet, there’s a metronome atop a piano dull with dust. Against the far wall, a bedsheet patterned with roses covers a couch. Between us and the couch, there’s an aluminum walker parked beside a ratty wingback chair—a match, I realize, for the one that sat in front of my kitchen fireplace until Wren replaced it. All that’s visible of the person sitting in it is a halo of white hair.

“Come here where I can see you.”

We do as she asks. Blue-veined fingers grasp the walker’s handlebars. A woman pulls herself up, grunting at the exertion standing requires. Her face is pale, the wrinkled skin paper-thin. Elastic-waist jeans and a chunky sweater are both sized for a fleshier frame. It seems to me a stiff wind could knock her flat, despite the sturdy sneakers that anchor her feet to the floor.

“Hello, ma’am. I’m Sam, and this is Audrey. Rhonda Tate said it was okay for us to see the house?”

“Is it really you?” Releasing her grip on the handles, she reaches up and places her palms on either side of Sam’s face. An expression of wonder dances in her eyes. “I never thought I’d see my brother again.”

Sam glances at me, amused. “I’m not your brother, ma’am,” he says gently.

“I know who you are. Rhon told me. I see him in you, though. Billy and your grandmother, too.”