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forward for a new one. “Oh?”
    “She claimed the open house was a huge success.”
    I looked at her. “Did someone make an offer?” If so, maybe my terrible behavior had been worth it.
    “Not yet.” She bit into her burger, chewed. “But she said there was a decent crowd. Especially considering that tourism’s down and there are more sellers than buyers right now.”
    “There was a guy.”
    She tilted her head, raised her eyebrows
    “I talked to him and his wife a while. They seemed really interested. I think his name was Brian?”
    She nodded. “Corwin. Yes, Anne mentioned him. Apparently he was ready to pay the asking price in cash right then and there, but his wife refused. They even got into a heated argument about it and Anne had to ask them to discuss matters outside. They left from there.”
    My heart sank. I took a water glass from the table. “That’s too bad.”
    “They may come around. Not everyone makes this kind of decision as quickly as we did.”
    “Not everyone has to.”
    She stopped chewing. Started again. Swallowed. “Right.”
    We ate quietly. Or, Mom ate. I drank. I’d been out of the water a matter of minutes and already my skin was tightening, my throat constricting.
    “Was that where you were?” she asked a minute later.
    The glass started to slip from my fingers. I squeezed it gently.
    “When?”
    “During the showing. Anne said you disappeared for a while. Were you busy talking up potential buyers? Showing them around?”
    My fingertips, still gripping the glass, turned white. “Yes. This one family wanted to know exactly where our property started and ended. I spent a lot of time with them outside.”
    “Did you get their names?”
    “Their what?”
    “If you spent a lot of time with them, introductions must’ve been made, yes?”
    I tried to think of random names, but my head was spinning. “Vanessa.”
    I looked down. Mom’s hand was on my knee.
    “I’m so sorry,” she said.
    “What? Why?”
    She sat back with a sigh. “For asking you to be there. You
love
that house. Who could blame you for ducking out? What kind of mother am I to ask you to do something like that?”
    I put down the glass. Faced her. “The kind who’d turn her whole life upside down—more than once—for her daughter.” I shook my head. “I do love the house and, yes, part of me will miss it. But that’s not why I ducked out.”
    I hoped this would put her at ease, but her frown only deepened.
    “Mom, really, I promise—”
    “Simon.”
    My back hit the chair.
    “You were with him, weren’t you? Oh, sweetie. You know that’s not a good idea. To try to rekindle things when they’ll only have to end again in a few months? Long-distance never works, no matter how much you want it to, and—”
    “I didn’t feel well.”
    Her mouth snapped shut.
    I chose my words carefully. “I didn’t want to worry you, so I wasn’t going to say anything … but I started to feel a little weird while I was there. So I hung out in the boathouse a while. And just rested.”
    She nodded as she processed this. “Weird, how?”
    “The usual ways. Tired. Thirsty. Weak.”
    “Headache?”
    My eyes met hers. “No. No headache.”
    She looked down, pushed her food around her plate.
    “Mom.” Now my hand was on her knee. “They’re gone. We don’t have to worry about them anymore.”
    “That’s what you say but how do you know? How do you
really
know? Because you also said you thought they were gone once, and then they weren’t.” She trembled. “Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe we were better off at home. Or, I don’t know, moving to Canada. Or somewhere else far, far away.”
    My ancestors were actually from Canada. I didn’t share this now, though. Unlike everything else I’d told Mom over the past several months, including the fact that I was stricken withblinding migraines anytime vengeful sirens were near, I didn’t think that was information she needed to have.
    “I saw the