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come from?” Agatha had asked that day. “Your mother’s side or your father’s side?”
    The question took Eloise aback.
    “Neither,” she said. “This happened to me in the accident.”
    “No,” said Agatha with a smile and a gentle shake of her head. “That’s not how it works. These abilities are not acquired . They are inborn.”
    Eloise had objected. But Agatha was immovable.
    “You may not have had access to your gifts before the accident,” she said. “But trust me, they were there, lying dormant. If you went back into your genealogy, I’ll bet that one of your female ancestors was burned at the stake as a witch. Or she was some weird recluse, or a palm reader, or whatever.”
    Eloise had experienced her usual desire to shut down when she talked about her origins. Her upbringing had been harsh and joyless. Her mother had died shortly after Eloise’s birth, and the truth was that Eloise knew almost nothing about her. Eloise had one photo, her wedding dress (which Eloise had worn at her own wedding), and an old stuffed bear that Eloise had carried around until it became embarrassing and slept with it long after that. She still had it; Bear sat on a shelf in Emily’s old room.
    And her father had been a silent, unaffectionate man. He’d provided for Eloise, never abused her. On the other hand, he never even seemed to notice her. It was her aunt Beth, her father’s sister, who cared for her mostly.
    But Eloise learned early, as all motherless children must, to take care of herself—she learned to cook and do the laundry, clean the house. Once she learned to read, she spent her life in books—reading of places better and lives more interesting than her own.
    She was lonely in a deep and total way. But it wasn’t the kind of loneliness one noticed. She simply had never known anything else. But it was probably why she married so young and started a family as soon as she could. Her father died while she was in college, just a year before she and Alfie married. He left her some money, but few memories of any kind of love at all. After that, Alfie’s parents became her parents. They loved her, and for the first time in her life she knew what it was like to be part of a family. She didn’t tell this to many people, but she told it all to Agatha.
    “What about your aunt Beth?” asked Agatha. “Didn’t she ever tell you anything about your mother? Anything about either family?”
    Beth, too, was gone. She’d moved to Santa Fe while Eloise was in college. Their contact dwindled, and then she’d disappeared altogether. One day, Eloise tried to call and the phone had been disconnected. A birthday card Eloise sent was returned with no forwarding address. Eloise had tried to find her, had even managed to track down an old roommate. But the girl hadn’t been kind, told Eloise that some people just didn’t want to be found. Which Eloise knew now was true.
    “She was young,” Eloise said to Agatha. “Just a teenager, really. A teenager in the sixties. I don’t know how much she knew about anyone, or if she cared. She left The Hollows as soon as she could, never came back.”
    Agatha cocked her head toward Eloise. “Where did she go?”
    “Last I heard, she had joined some commune in Pecos, New Mexico.”
    Agatha raised her eyebrows meaningfully. “When was that?”
    “Twenty years ago?” said Eloise. “Maybe more?”
    Agatha wore a sad smile, held her head at an inquisitive tilt. “Aren’t you curious, Eloise? Don’t you want to know more about your family?”
    Eloise felt ashamed in that moment for what seemed suddenly like an odd disconnection from her roots. All of her family, and Alfie’s, had lived in The Hollows for generations. Why didn’t she know more? Had she purposely tried to distance herself? Had she instinctively avoided asking questions of her father and her young aunt, even of herself?
    “You need to go see Joy Martin at The Hollows Historical Society and do some research. I