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the tiny grocery that proclaimed FRESH CURED BACON, DAVE ’ S EGGS, LAST OF THE SILVER QUEEN from a blackboard on the sidewalk.
    “Dad would love this place,” Fai said. “It would crack him up.”
    I had a flash of longing for Jeremy. He
would
laugh, Fai was right. The town was a caricature of New England quaintness, a caricature of itself. But in a moment we were beyond houses, beyond sidewalks and stores. The sharp light caught and flamed in the saffron-colored leaves of maple trees.
    I nearly passed the road, had to screech onto it. The girls screamed.
    “Mom, it can’t be
here
!”
    “What, we have to live on a
dirt road
? No, we can’t, I’ll be
mortified
.”
    “Aren’t there even streetlights?”
    “You saw the pictures,” Nathan reminded them. Carl Streeter had sent photos, so we knew what we were getting into.
    “Yeah, but nobody told us we were gonna be hicks.” I felt her kick the back of my seat.
    Nathan turned and gave her one of his burning looks. “Save it, Gracie. And if you don’t want to be a hick, don’t act like one.” I just went on driving down the road, which was smooth as a board in spite of the lack of paving. The road dipped down, dappled with sunlight and floating leaves.
    “There are so many trees,” Fai grumbled.
    “Yeah, too many.” Grace resumed her complaining. “I don’t see why—”
    “Here we are.” I cut her off, mid-gripe. Drove down another sweep of road, through a tall gate in a high fence, a gate that swung open after some unseen device read the bar code I’d fixed to the windshield. Past the line of huge old sugar maples, past what had once been an active Congregational church, white and imposing, in spite of needing a fresh coat of paint. Past two houses, also white, also peeling paint, old New England farmhouses, one with a rambling porch. Briars and weeds grew up around them all.
    The girls just sat for a moment, awed.
    “This is it? We’re gonna live here? It’s almost a whole town.”
    “Well, it was a town once. A very small town,” I amended.
    “Does the fence go all the way around?”
    I considered the tall fence, the electric wire strung above it, and a luxurious calm washed over me, unknotted muscles I didn’t know were clenched. “It sure does.”
    “Mom,” Fai said, “don’t you think it’s overkill?”
    I looked back at my daughters, their fledgling faces. They waited for an answer, unaware of their loveliness, or their fragility in the world. Losing their father had tempered them, but hadn’t made them feel any less the invincibility of youth. They believed they would live forever. Always a bad assumption.
    “No. I don’t think it’s overkill.”
    “It makes me feel like what’s-her-name. Snow White.” Grace was staring at the cluster of old houses. “Wasn’t she the one in the castle with the thorns all around?”
    “That was Sleeping Beauty. Snow White had the glass coffin.” Caleigh, closer to the years of bedtime stories, corrected her.
    “Yeah, her, Sleeping Beauty.”
    I recalled the story, the spell cast. If only our problem was a fairy with a grudge.
    “Is this where they lived?” Caleigh asked. “The ladies that had your name?”
    “Our great-great-great-whatevers,” Grace clarified.
    I pulled into the drive of the farthest house, the largest, the loveliest. The paint was peeling, like the others. But the grass was mowed, the weeds subdued. And the fanlight over the massive front door was glowing, welcoming us, so at least there was electricity. The windows of the plain, vast Federal house shone bluely in the last of the afternoon light. We were home, in the land I grew up in. The land of the Revelations.
    “Yes,” I told my daughters. “This is where they lived.”
2
    The townspeople in Hawley Village knew me as only Reve Dyer, a widow with three girls. Not as the Great Revelation, one half of the Amazing Maskelynes.
    I’d used my maiden name for everything, bank accounts, contracts, in my