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work, just a few weeks. The hardest part was bringing Henry back to Heron Key in the first place. Now that had been hard. She had tried every spell handed down to her by Grace, who had brought the knowledge with her from Haiti. Selma had written it all out in her unschooled hand before Grace died, in the bulging, tattered book beneath the shelf.
    Selma stroked the book’s rough cover, made from an old burlap feed bag. Those last weeks with her mother had been a whirl of activity. Grace had chosen her own time, sure as if she had walked into the sea to drown. It had happened when Henry had been gone for fifteen years. Selma had felt Grace’s haste, her need to finish things off; her mother was preparing for her most important trip, but she would not need the battered old wicker suitcase for it.
    â€œSelma,” Grace would say, “I got somethin’ to learn you.”
    And Selma would scoop up the ragged collection of pages in their shabby binding and begin to write. They would sit for hours together in the dappled shade of the pines around Grace’s tiny shack. The fallen needles made a soft and fragrant blanket on the sand. Dragonflies settled on them, so still were they. Eyes closed, her back propped against the tree trunk, Grace would recite the spells without stumbling or hesitation. The words poured from her mouth faster than Selma’s pencil could write. It was, Selma realized as her hand traced the book’s contours, her fondest memory of Grace. There were far more of the other kind of memories.
    That Grace had the power was beyond question. People in the neighborhood came to her for help with all manner of woes in their lives: to bring or banish love, to heal a sick child, to make a good harvest, to bring misfortune on their enemies. The definitive demonstration of Grace’s power had come one Thanksgiving when Selma was thirteen. Dinner was just a scrawny chicken and some stunted sweet potatoes. The air was thick with the smell of other people’s turkey and gravy and stuffing. Selma went for a walk in the Key lime grove to distract her hungry stomach and came across Shonuff Thompson, named on account of his stock answer for pretty much everything. He was smoking by himself, on the ground under the thorny branches, skinny ankles crossed. With a nearly toothless smile and the promise of a piece of chocolate, he had beckoned her down beside him. Her mind had shut the memory away but her body remembered—the rough stubble on his chin, the way he had forced her legs apart with a thrust of his knee, his sour, smoky breath hot on her neck, the coral hard under her back.
    When she had stumbled home, Grace demanded an explanation for her torn and dirty dress. Selma had whispered the tale through bruised lips, shamed by the blood on her legs. Grace had said nothing for a long time, so long that Selma had thought she had been forgotten. And then Grace had looked at her, a dark flame in her eyes, and said, “Wait, child, and see the Lord at work.” A few weeks later, Shonuff was killed by a lightning strike while asleep in the grove under a tree that took a direct hit. To Grace, it was all the same Lord, much to the despair of the local pastor. She prayed equally hard to the old spirits and to Jesus, confident that one or the other would come through.
    But they did not. Years passed. The war ended. Still Henry did not come back. At first, there were a few postcards, from California, from New Mexico, from Oregon. Then they stopped. Neither prayers nor spells could bring him back. And when Selma had transcribed the last one in the book, Grace had taken to her bed and turned her face to the wall. Nothing could coax her to eat or drink. She just stopped, like a car out of gas. Doc Williams could find nothing wrong with her. He offered to take her to Miami to see a specialist, but Selma had declined. She knew why Grace had sickened, and no specialist would be of any help: she had lost her