Lucy couldn’t just go home. She’d packed up her stuff and moved out of the dorm two days before. She’d spent the two nights at Marnie’s summer apartment on Bolling Avenue, and now the car was packed to take her back to Hopewood for the next three months. This was her only chance. She got back in her hot, overstuffed car and waited. What am I doing here? She felt like a stalker.

How the mighty are fallen, she thought to herself. A year ago she hadn’t had have the remotest confidence in Madame Esme, and now she was staked out in front of her sad-looking trailer that didn’t have any wheels, pinning her hopes on what Madame Esme might say.

Lucy leaned her cheek against the window and had almost fallen asleep when she heard a car pulling into the driveway. It was an old rusted red Nissan. It took Lucy a moment to decide that the girl who got out was the same girl who called herself Madame Esme.

Lucy got out of her car and intercepted the girl on her way to her front door.

“Excuse me? Sorry to pounce on you, but—”

The girl turned, and Lucy saw she was wearing a dark blue polo-style shirt with the Wal-Mart logo in white thread. Her name tag said hi, her name was Martha.

“I came to see you once before,” Lucy continued. “A year ago. You go by Madame Esme, right?”

The girl nodded slowly. She didn’t show any obvious sign of remembering Lucy, nor did she look pleased.

“I’m sorry to just show up like this. You did a reading for me. I don’t know if you remember. Probably not. You probably do a lot of these. So . . .”

The girl shrugged. Lucy thought the whole Madame Esme getup had been kind of silly, but in retrospect it had also been formidable and strange. Without it, this girl looked terribly young and small. Lucy noticed the bruise on her jaw and wondered about it. She found her hand floating up to her own jaw protectively.

“Listen, I’ve thought a lot about the things you told me. I was hoping I could ask you a couple of questions. Or if maybe you could do another reading. I brought money.”

The girl was shaking her head before Lucy could finish. “Sorry. No.”

“But, could you . . .” Lucy’s voice was trembling. She didn’t know what to do. Her arrival here was a desperate act. She who had disdained, doubted, and mocked Madame Esme had finally capitulated. Esme/Martha here was three parts nutjob, but Lucy needed her. Lucy had dropped to the bottom of sanity’s barrel. She hadn’t even thought of the further humiliation of getting turned down. Not with fifty bucks in her pocket.

“Could I just ask some questions?” Lucy asked. “You probably don’t remember me, but you said a lot of really strange things, and as I said, I’ve been thinking about them. I didn’t understand them at all, but I think—”

The girl was shaking her head again. Lucy realized the girl looked not so much uninterested as uncomfortable. She stared at Lucy carefully as Lucy kept talking.

“Are you not in the business anymore?” Lucy asked.

She shook her head. “It’s not that. I just don’t want to.”

“You don’t need the whole outfit and setup and everything, do you? I mean, I don’t mind if you don’t mind. And if you do need to get set up, I could wait. I could just—”

“You should go,” Esme/Martha said in a low voice. She turned and walked to her door.

Lucy’s distress was overwhelming. This was the last resort. What did you do when you couldn’t even surrender?

“Please,” Lucy said. “I’m sorry to ambush you like this. I realize how weird that seems. I don’t mean to bother you, but if I could just—could I come back at a better time? I could make an appointment. I should have done that, but I don’t have your number.” Lucy held up her bag. “I have money,” she said again, less confidently.

The girl was standing in her open doorway, looking over her shoulder at Lucy. Lucy saw compassion there but also wariness.

“My name is Lucy, but you called me Sophia. Do you remember me at all?”

“I have to go inside,” the girl said.

Lucy couldn’t do anything but walk herself to the car and get in it. There was nothing else to do. On one level, Lucy had hoped to find some answers. Short of that, she had hoped to prove to herself that Madame Esme was full of crap, clueless, possibly lucky, and driven by greed. She got less than neither.

She slumped into her car and cast a last hopeless look at the trailer. Esme/Martha was still standing in the doorway. She looked about as happy and comfortable as Lucy felt. Lucy was poised to close the door, but she saw the girl’s mouth moving. She leaned out of the car.

“He’s not dead.”

“I’m sorry?” Lucy asked, astonishment dawning.

“I’m just saying. He’s not dead.”

Lucy was holding the door so hard her fingers were numb. “You mean Daniel?”

The girl didn’t say anything more. She closed the door behind her forcefully.