She’d thought her family consulted her on things. She’d thought that, as matriarch, her opinion was still relevant. That was the impression they gave her when they visited. But she realized now just how coddled she was. This place lulled its residents into thinking that this was all there was to the world anymore. It shrank everything down, Alice in Wonderlandly. It was startling to her that there was still a world outside these walls, one that went on turning even when she wasn’t in it.

She couldn’t believe her family had actually bought the Blue Ridge Madam. All those years of carefully constructing the rumors of ghosts, of making every child, and most adults, afraid of the Madam, of watching it crumble, year after year, waiting for the time when it would finally collapse and it and everything that had happened there would disappear, had been for naught.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Paxton was planning a big gala there, celebrating the formation of the Women’s Society Club. Agatha had tried everything she could to get Paxton to stop it, to cancel it. She’d said hateful things she didn’t mean and made threats she couldn’t keep, but nothing was going to stop it. Paxton was in control of the club now, and Agatha felt her lack of power acutely.

Those silly girls had no idea what they were really celebrating. They had no idea what it took to bring Agatha and her friends together seventy-five years ago. The Women’s Society Club had been about supporting one another, about banding together to protect one another because no one else would. But it had turned into an ugly beast, a means by which rich ladies could congratulate themselves by giving money to the poor. And Agatha had let it happen. All her life, it seemed, she was making up for things she let happen.

She knew it wasn’t a coincidence that the club would be celebrating in the Madam. There was no such thing as coincidence. It was fate. Looking at it objectively, it even had a cruel sort of symmetry. The reason they’d started the club in the first place had to do with the Madam. It was just a matter of time now before it was all going to come to light. Secrets never stay buried, no matter how hard you try. That’s what Georgie had always been afraid of.

She got up and walked out of her room, counting her steps to the nurses’ station. She could hear the morning nurse’s voice there as she approached. She was young. Too young. She sounded like she should still be playing hopscotch with her best friends. Why were girls in such a hurry to grow up? Agatha would never understand. Childhood was magical. Leaving it behind was a magnificent loss.

“Hello, Mrs. Osgood,” the nurse said, in a tone that tried but fell short of pleasant. Agatha inspired this in all the help here. She wasn’t sure when it had happened, but sometime in the past ten years, she’d discovered that it made her feel better to make other people as miserable as she was. It was the help who hid her teeth in the bathroom this morning, where the fancy man had found them. She was sure of it. It was a give-and-take she’d played with the staff for years now. “What can I do for you?”

“If I need your help, I’ll ask for it,” Agatha snapped as she walked by. She walked to the third hallway, her papery fingertips trailing along the walls as she counted the doors to Georgie Jackson’s room. When Georgie’s son Ham had come to her and asked for Agatha’s help in getting Georgie a place here in the home, Agatha had given him the money without hesitation. All she’d ever wanted was to help Georgie, to make up for the one time when Georgie had needed her the most and Agatha had turned her back on her … the one time that had changed everything. Agatha kept tabs on how Georgie was being treated, but she rarely visited Georgie here. Georgie wouldn’t have liked it. She would have said, You have your side, I have mine. That’s the way it has to be now.

When she reached the room, all Agatha could make out was a dark form haloed by the morning sun. Georgie looked like a hole Agatha could fall into.

Agatha mourned for a lot of things she’d lost, but lately this was the loss she felt the most—the loss of friendship. She missed her eyesight. She missed her husband. She missed her mother and father. But those girls she grew up with were such an important part of her life. If her old friends all appeared to her now, she would protect them with her last breath, which of course was too little, too late. The way it had always been. They were gone, all except for Georgie, who was suspended here in life only by a thin, glittering thread.

She walked over to Georgie and sat beside her. “It’s finally happening,” Agatha whispered.

Georgie—sweet, innocent Georgie—turned to her and said, “Peach.”

Agatha fumbled around until she found Georgie’s hand, and then held it in her own. “Yes,” Agatha said. “It’s still there.”

But the question was, for how long?

FOUR

Wish Lists

Colin sat in the corner café of Au Naturel Sporting Goods, nursing his cappuccino and staring out the large store window at the cars going by. Because this road led directly to the entrance of Cataract National Forest, there was a lot of traffic. This side of town had a completely different feel to it, hectic and slightly superficial. It had been a long time since he’d been here, but nothing much had changed, like the fact that locals rarely came to National Street because they considered it too touristy. The long rows of brick buildings were old, but the shops they housed were hip and new, and most were owned by transplants.

As much as he didn’t like acknowledging it, he was still connected to this place, if just by memory. He’d seen a lot of the world in his work. Urban landscaping wasn’t about homogenizing cities but drawing from their heritage, and he was one of the best landscape architects in the business. Learning about new cultures, traveling to new places, not staying in one place too long—it was exactly what he wanted to be doing. But then he would come home, usually only when forced by guilt from his mother or, in this instance, a request for help from his sister, who never asked for help, and he would feel a strange sensation, like his feet growing heavy. It was as if he was sinking back into the root system of this place. And he didn’t want to be that Colin anymore, the one planted here, the one pruned to exactly the size and shape everyone expected him to be.

He heard the bell over the door ring, and he turned.

Willa Jackson had just walked in. She was wearing jeans over black cowboy boots and a black sleeveless top that crisscrossed over her bare shoulders. Her honey-brown hair was wavy in a way that was no curl and all volume. It’d been much longer in high school, and she’d always worn it in a messy braid. Actually, he really didn’t know if she’d always worn it like that, it was just how he remembered it the last time he saw her, walking out of the school.

Now her hair ended just below her ears and she parted it on the side, catching the hair at one temple with a sparkly barrette. He liked it because it was spunky, and it suited the image of what he thought she’d become. He didn’t realize he’d gotten it so wrong. Surely he couldn’t have gotten it so wrong. Because if he was wrong about Willa, his inspiration, then maybe he was wrong about his own decisions, too.

The girl who’d earlier made him the cappuccino excused herself from talking to a customer and walked over to Willa. He could hear her say, “Someone is here to see you.”

“Who?” Willa asked.

“I don’t know. He came in about an hour ago and asked for you. I told him you’d be here soon, so he’s sitting in the café, waiting for you. Cappuccino with one raw sugar,” she said in a lower voice, reciting his order as if it was confidential information, some secret she was revealing about him.