“All right. Now the fish. This one might be the best of all. It gives you the power to resist other people’s magic. How cool is that?”

She thought for a moment. “But how is that different from bad spells?”

He took the wire off the card and set the fish beside the other charms, lining them up carefully with his finger. “Very good question. You’re half asleep and still sharper than most people when they’re wide-awake. Okay, I can see how it sounds the same. But the difference is important, so pay attention.”

She sat up straighter.

“Somebody else’s magic might not be bad spells. It might be stuff that looks real good and sounds real nice. It might be—oh, I don’t know—somebody trying to convince you to do something you know you shouldn’t do. Like smoke cigarettes.”

“Yuck. I’d never do that.”

“Right. But maybe it’s something that’s not so yucky, like taking a candy bar from the Mini-Mart without paying.”

“But Mommy works there.”

“Yeah, she does, but even if she didn’t, you know it’s wrong to steal a candy bar, right? But maybe this person has a lot of magic and is very convincing. ‘Oh, come on, Moll, you won’t get caught,’” he says in a gruff whisper, “‘don’t you love candy, don’t you want some, come on, just one time?’” Picking up the fish, he talks in a stern fishy voice: “‘No, thank you! I know what you’re up to. You are not putting your magic on me, no sir, I will swim right away from you, y’hear? Okay, bye now.’” He turned the charm around and made a wave with his hand, up and down.

Feeling around in the bag, he said, “Aw, shit. I meant to get you a chain to clip these on.” He patted her knee. “Don’t worry about it. That’ll be part two.”

Two weeks later, coming home late one night, he lost control of his car, and that was that. Within six months, Molly was living somewhere else. It was years before she bought herself that chain.

Spruce Harbor, Maine, 2011

“Portage.” Vivian wrinkles her nose. “It sounds like—oh, I don’t know—a pie made of sausage.”

A pie made of sausage? Okay, maybe this isn’t going to work.

“Carrying my boat between bodies of water? I’m not so good with metaphors, dear,” Vivian says. “What’s it supposed to mean?”

“Well,” Molly says, “I think the boat represents what you take with you—the essential things—from place to place. And the water—well, I think it’s the place you’re always trying to get to. Does that make sense?”

“Not really. I’m afraid I’m more confused than I was before.”

Molly pulls out a list of questions. “Let’s just get started and see what happens.”

They are sitting in the red wingback chairs in the living room in the waning light of late afternoon. Their work for the day is finished, and Terry has gone home. It was pouring earlier, great sheets of rain, and now the clouds outside the window are crystal tipped, like mountain peaks in the sky, rays emanating downward like an illustration in a children’s bible.

Molly pushes the button on the tiny digital tape recorder she signed out from the school library and checks to see that it’s working. Then she takes a deep breath and runs a finger under the chain around her neck. “My dad gave me these charms, and each one represents something different. The raven protects against black magic. The bear inspires courage. The fish signifies a refusal to recognize other people’s magic.”

“I never knew those charms had meaning.” Absently, Vivian reaches up and touches her own necklace.

Looking closely at the pewter pendant for the first time, Molly asks, “Is your necklace—significant?”

“Well, it is to me. But it doesn’t have any magical qualities.” She smiles.

“Maybe it does,” Molly says. “I think of these qualities as metaphorical, you know? So black magic is whatever leads people to the dark side—their own greed or insecurity that makes them do destructive things. And the warrior spirit of the bear protects us not only from others who might hurt us but our own internal demons. And I think other people’s magic is what we’re vulnerable to—how we’re led astray. So . . . my first question for you is kind of a weird one. I guess you could think of it as metaphorical, too.” She glances at the tape recorder once more and takes a deep breath. “Okay, here goes. Do you believe in spirits? Or ghosts?”

“My, that is quite a question.” Clasping her frail, veined hands in her lap, Vivian gazes out the window. For a moment Molly thinks she isn’t going to answer. And then, so quietly that she has to lean forward in her chair to hear, Vivian says, “Yes, I do. I believe in ghosts.”

“Do you think they’re . . . present in our lives?”

Vivian fixes her hazel eyes on Molly and nods. “They’re the ones who haunt us,” she says. “The ones who have left us behind.”

Hemingford County, Minnesota, 1930

There’s hardly any food in the house. Mr. Grote has returned from the woods empty-handed for the past three days, and we’re subsisting on eggs and potatoes. It gets so desperate he decides to kill one of the chickens and starts eyeing the goat. He is quiet these days when he comes in. Doesn’t speak to the kids, who clamor for him, holding on to his legs. He bats them off like they’re flies on honey.

On the evening of the third day, I can feel him looking at me. He has a funny expression on his face, like he’s doing math in his head. Finally he says, “So what’s that thing you got around your neck?” and it’s clear what he’s up to.

“There’s no value in it,” I say.

“Looks like silver,” he says, peering at it. “Tarnished.”

My heart thumps in my ears. “It’s tin.”

“Lemme see.”

Mr. Grote comes closer, then touches the raised heart, the clasped hands, with his dirty finger. “What is that, some kind of pagan symbol?”

I don’t know what pagan is, but it sounds wicked. “Probably.”

“Who gave it to you?”

“My gram.” It’s the first time I’ve mentioned my family to him, and I don’t like the feeling. I wish I could take it back. “It was worthless to her. She was throwing it away.”

He frowns. “Sure is strange looking. Doubt I could sell it if I tried.”

Mr. Grote talks to me all the time—when I’m pulling feathers off the chicken, frying potatoes on the woodstove, sitting by the fire in the living room with a child in my lap. He tells me about his family—how there was some kind of dispute, and his brother killed his father when Mr. Grote was sixteen and he ran away from home and never went back. He met Mrs. Grote around that time, and Harold was born when they were eighteen. They never actually tied the knot until they had a houseful of kids. All he wants to do is hunt and fish, he says, but he has to feed and clothe all these babies. God’s honest truth, he didn’t want a single one of ’em. God’s honest truth, he’s afraid he could get mad enough to hurt them.

As the weeks pass and the weather gets warmer, he takes to whittling on the front porch until late in the evening, a bottle of whiskey by his side, and he’s always asking me to join him. In the darkness he tells me more than I want to know. He and Mrs. Grote barely say a word to each other anymore, he says. She hates to talk, but loves sex. But he can’t stand to touch her—she doesn’t bother to clean herself, and there’s always a kid hanging off her. He says, “I should’ve married someone like you, Dorothy. You wouldn’t’ve trapped me like this, would ya?” He likes my red hair. “You know what they say,” he tells me. “If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead.” The first girl he kissed had red hair, but that was a long time ago, he says, back when he was young and good-looking.

“Surprised I was good-looking? I was a boy once, you know. I’m only twenty-four now.”

He has never been in love with his wife, he says.

Call me Gerald, he says.

I know that Mr. Grote shouldn’t be saying all this. I am only ten years old.