Tony has dragged Charis off to one side to keep her out of harm’s way. She just hopes Charis will shut up about her vision, which—Tony has to admit—was accurate enough, though somewhat after the fact. But what really happened? Tony counts the possibilities: Zenia fell, Zenia jumped, Zenia was pushed. Accident, suicide, murder. Tony inclines towards the third: Zenia was killed—surely—by person or persons unknown. Tony’s glad she took her gun home, in case there are bullet holes, although she didn’t see any. She doesn’t think Charis could have done it, because Charis wouldn’t hurt a fly—it being her belief that flies might be inhabited by someone related to you in a previous life—but she’s not that sure about Roz. Roz has a temper, and can be impetuous.

“Did anyone know this woman?” says the policeman. The three of them glance at one another. “Yes,” says Tony. “We all came to see her, earlier today,” says Roz.

Charis starts to cry. “We were her best friends,” she says. Which, thinks Tony, is news to her. But it will have to do for now.

Roz drives Charis to the ferry terminal, and then she drives Tony home. Tony goes up the stairs to West’s study, where he’s plugged into two of his machines via the earphones. She turns off his switch.

“Did Zenia.call here?” she says. “What?” says West. ‘Tony, what is it?”

“This is important,” says Tony. She knows she’s sounding fierce but she can’t help it. “Have you been talking to Zenia?

Has she been here?” She finds the idea of Zenia rolling around on the carpet with West among the synthesizers highly distasteful. No: unbearable.

Maybe, she thinks, West did it. Maybe he went over to Zenia’s hotel room to beg and plead, hoping to run off with her again, and Zenia laughed at him, and West lost it and heaved her off the balcony. If that’s what happened Tony wants to know. She wants to know so she can shield West, think up a watertight alibi for him, save him from himself.

“Oh, yeah,” says West. “She did call, I don’t know—a week ago. But I didn’t talk to her, she just left a message on the machine.”

“What did it say?” says Tony. “Why didn’t you tell me? What did she want?”

“Maybe I should’ve mentioned it,” says West. “But I didn’t want you to get hurt. I mean, we both thought she was dead. I guess I would’ve liked her to stay that way.”

“Really?” says Tony.

“She didn’t want to talk to me,” says West, as if he knows what Tony’s been thinking. ‘‘She wanted you. If I’d had her on the phone in person I would’ve told her to forget it; I knew you wouldn’t want to see her. I did jot it down—where she was staying—but after I thought things over, I threw it out. She’s always been bad news.”

Tony feels herself softening. “I saw her, though,” she says. “I saw her this afternoon. She seemed to know that your study’s on the third floor. How would she know that, if she’s never been here?”

West smiles. “It’s on my answering machine. ‘Third floor, Headwinds: Remember?”

By this time he’s unwired and standing up. Tony goes over to him and he folds himself up like a bridge chair and wraps his knotted-rope arms around her, and kisses her on the forehead. “I like it that you’re jealous,” he says, “but you don’t need to be. She’s nothing, any more:”

Little does he know, thinks Tony. Or else he does know and he’s pretending not to. Squashed up against his torso, she takes a sniff of him, to see if he’s been drinking a lot. If he has, it will be a dead giveaway. But there’s nothing besides the usual mild scent of beer. “Zenia is dead,” she tells West solemnly.

“Oh, Tony,” says West. “Again? I’m really sorry.” He rocks her to and fro as if she’s the one who needs to be consoled, and not him at all.

When Charis gets back to her house, still shaky but under control, there’s a light on in the kitchen. It’s Augusta, taking a long weekend break, paying a visit. Charis is glad to see her, though she wishes she’d had time to tidy up first. She notes that Augusta has washed the dishes from the last couple of days and has done away with a couple of major spider webs, though she’s known better than to disassemble Charis’s meditational altar. She has noted it, however.

“Mom,” she says, after Charis has greeted her and has put on the kettle for bedtime tea, “what’s this chunk of stone and this pile of dirt and leaves doing on the living-room table?”

“It’s a meditation,” says Charis.

“Christ;” Augusta mutters. “Can’t you put it somewhere else?”

“August,” says Charis, a little tersely, “it’s my meditation, and it’s my house.”

“Don’t snap at me!” says August. “And Mom, it’s Augusta. That’s my name now”

Charis knows this. She knows she should respect August’s new name, because everyone has a right to rename herself according to her inner direction. But she chose August’s original name with such love and care. She gave it to her, it was a gift. It’s hard for her to let it go.

“I’ll make you some muffins,” she says, attempting to conciliate. “Tomorrow. The ones with the sunflower seeds. You always liked those.”

“You don’t have to keep giving me stuff, Mom,” says Augusta, in an oddly grown-up voice. “I love you anyway.” Charis feels her eyes watering. Augusta hasn’t said anything this affectionate for some time. And she does find it difficult to believe—that a person would love her even when she isn’t trying. Trying to figure out what other people need, trying to be worthy. “It’s just, I worry about you,” she says. “About your health.” This isn’t really the part of Augusta that worries her, but it stands in for the other, more spiritual things. Though health is a spiritual thing too.

“No kidding,” says Augusta. “Every time I come home you try to stuff me full of veggie burgers. I’m nineteen, Mom, I take care of myself, I eat balanced meals! Why can’t we just have fun? Go for a walk or something.”

It’s unusual for Augusta to want to spend time with Charis. Maybe Augusta isn’t totally hard, not lacquered and shiny all the way through. Maybe she has a soft spot. Maybe she is part Charis, after all.

“Did you mind a lot, not having a father?” Charis asks. “When you were little?” She’s been on the verge of asking this for a long time, although she’s feared the answer because surely it was her fault that Billy had left. If he’d run away it was her fault for not being appealing enough to keep him, if he’d been kidnapped it was her fault for not taking better care of him: Now, though, she has some other possible views of Billy. Whether Zenia was lying or not, maybe it’s just as well Billy didn’t stick around.

“I wish you’d stop feeling so guilty,” says Augusta. “Maybe I minded when I was small, but look around you, Mom, this is the twentieth century! Fathers come and go—a lot of the kids on the Island didn’t have them. I know some people with three or four fathers! I mean, it could have been worse, right?”

Charis looks at Augusta and sees the light around her. It’s a light that’s hard like a mineral and also soft, a glow like the luminosity of a pearl. Inside the layers of light, right at the centre of Augusta, there’s a small wound. It belongs to Augusta, not to Charis; it’s for Augusta to heal.

Charis feels absolved. She puts her hands on Augusta’s shoulders, gently so Augusta will not feel seized, and kisses her on the forehead.

Before she goes to bed, Charis does a meditation on Zenia. She needs to do this, because although she has often thought about Zenia in relation to herself, or to Billy, or even to Tony and Roz, she has never truly considered what Zenia was in and by herself the Zenia-ness of Zenia. She has no object, nothing belonging to Zenia, to focus on, so instead she turns off the lights in the living room and stares out the window, into the darkness, towards the lake. Zenia was sent into her life—was chosen by her—to teach her something. Charis doesn’t know what it was yet, but in time she will uncover it.