“The no-touching thing sort of preempts that,” I finished awkwardly.

She was obviously not as concerned by the problem as I was. Without bothering to end the discussion properly, she shut the door in my face.

“Night,” she called belatedly, her voice muffled by the wood.

Although Jillian couldn’t see me, I rolled my eyes at her door. Even with all we’d been through together, I guessed some things never changed. I took a quick peek at Jeremiah and Rebecca’s door, to make sure they hadn’t heard me talking in their house so late at night. Then I crept back downstairs, through the back kitchen door to where the gazebo—and Joshua—waited for me.

When I woke the next morning, I found myself curled as close to Joshua as I could get on the daybed in the gazebo, where we’d stayed up talking. I pushed myself into a stretch, yawning.

I cast a glance back at Joshua, and my yawn transformed into a soft smile. I loved the way he looked as he slept: frowny and disheveled like a little kid. Not as heart-wrenchingly handsome as I found him while he was awake, but somehow just as appealing. Sitting this close to him, I experienced that familiar, curling ache within my core, the one that awakened each time I really let myself look at him. Physically, it felt as though I’d slept alone in an otherwise empty bed. Emotionally . . . well, that part never changed.

My gaze drifted upward, to the mesh skylights that Rebecca had sewn into the cloth ceiling of the gazebo. I wasn’t surprised to see that it was still dark outside. On a day like this, there was no way I would sleep past dawn. I was too edgy. Too anxious.

I slithered off the bed—no need to rouse Joshua, since no one in the Mayhew household could possibly be awake yet. I stepped carefully across the creaky gazebo floorboards and parted the drapes, slipping quietly through the backyard. I almost laughed at myself as I crept into the Mayhews’ house like a cat burglar: for a girl who could go invisible, I was acting a bit ridiculous.

Yet something about my goal this morning felt a little clandestine. Maybe because I hadn’t told anyone, including Joshua, my full plan.

With my lips pressed tightly shut, I climbed the stairs and then paused outside Jillian’s room. Did I really want to do this? Like a crazy person, I answered myself by nodding. Then, as slowly and delicately as possible, I turned Jillian’s doorknob.

Inside, Jillian was sprawled diagonally across her bed, taking up every available inch of space with weirdly angled arms and legs. And she was snoring. Loudly. I stifled a snicker: the wry, jaded Jillian Mayhew snored. That was something I could file away for later use, I told myself as I passed the foot of her bed.

A slight hitch in one of her snores made me pause, midstride. But when the jackhammer-like chorus started back up, I continued to tiptoe across the room. There, draped over an armchair, I found what I needed.

I wasted no time changing into the black dress, struggling only momentarily with the back zipper. After placing the floppy hat on Jillian’s vanity, I took my discarded clothes to the closet, where the rest of my wardrobe was secretly stored. I shoved my jeans and top into a bag of dirty clothes—which Jillian begrudgingly washed with hers each week—and dug around for the pair of black heels that Gaby’s brother Felix had given me as I was leaving New Orleans. I stood and slipped into them unceremoniously, trying not to think about the fact that the shoes probably cost more than my mother’s mortgage payment.

Next, I sat on the bench in front of the vanity and squinted at my dim reflection. As much as I hated to admit it, Jillian was right: I needed to do something about my face, which didn’t look a day over eighteen. Probably because it wasn’t, and hadn’t been for over a decade.

Breathing a quick prayer for good luck, I tried to re-create the makeover that Gaby had given me in New Orleans. After an additional swipe of blood-red lipstick, I smoothed my hair into a low ponytail and put on the floppy hat. With just the slightest catch in my throat, I slipped on Gaby’s huge pair of Fendi sunglasses—the ones I’d handed to Jillian the minute we left Louisiana. Then I leaned back to assess my handiwork.

I couldn’t believe how transformed I actually looked. The dress, the ponytail, the lipstick—combined, they made me look at least five years older. Best of all, the hat and sunglasses obscured my face so well that I could pass as any random woman in her midtwenties. One of Serena’s friends from work, maybe.

Satisfied, I snuck out of Jillian’s room as quietly as I’d snuck in and made my slow, stealthy way back outside. As I crossed the back porch and prepared to descend to the driveway, I caught a glimpse of the gazebo and faltered. I hated to leave Joshua there alone, to wake up in a few hours and find me gone. But if I woke him up now, he might insist that he come with me after all. So, with a guilty heart, I took the last few steps to the driveway and began my long, lonely walk.

I’d seen this place at dawn, many times. Yet today, it seemed different. More watchful, more alive, if that was possible.

Just outside the cemetery gates, I paused to inspect the changes. Every other time I’d seen my graveyard, it looked a little dilapidated and ignored—a burial place for people who couldn’t afford better. Now, the rusted gates had been polished up and adorned with a new sign that announced the name of the cemetery in wrought iron curlicues. All along the front fence line, someone had planted a thick row of irises, which bloomed in bright purples and pinks and yellows. Even the gnarled trees seemed more welcoming with rustic wooden birdhouses nailed to their trunks.

My cemetery actually looked cheerful. More like a pretty little park than a place where the poor buried their dead. But somehow, the differences made me more ill at ease than ever. Maybe because I just couldn’t imagine a living person—or even a team of living people—spending any significant time in this place. Especially when you considered all the secrets and souls that lay deep beneath its soil.

Still, the irises presented me with a solution. I made my way over to a particularly thick clump, knelt as best I could in the black dress, and plucked a few of the more vibrantly flowered stems. I laid them across the crook of one arm, careful to keep the petals off the fabric of my sleeve, and stood. Then, with just a slight falter in my steps, I entered the graveyard.

I walked slowly down the main cemetery corridor, pulling my heels up whenever they sank a little too deeply into the unpaved path. When I’d covered the overpriced shoes with a sufficient amount of grime, I yanked them off and continued barefoot. Old habits died hard, I supposed.

As I passed a freshly dug grave, in front of which someone had placed a few rows of white plastic chairs, I tried not to look at it. I would deal with that problem later.

Finally, I’d gone far enough into the cemetery that I could stop at my first destination. Funny that I remembered the location of this headstone, even though I’d only visited it once. I dropped a single yellow iris on the grave and said a quick prayer before turning away. That small tribute was the most Eli Rowland deserved, and probably the most he’d received since being buried here almost forty years ago.

Now that my respects to Eli’s grave were paid, I made my way over to the headstones I really wanted to visit. Or headstone, as the quick glance at my own was mostly obligatory. I dropped a purple flower on the small mound of my grave and then turned to the most important slab in this entire cemetery.

I was happy to see that my father’s grave still looked well tended. If the mowed plot and cleanly swept marker were any indication, then my mother visited pretty regularly. A pot of slightly wilted flowers sat on top of the headstone, so I added two irises to the bunch. For lack of anything else to do, I rearranged them, moving the freshest flowers to the front and plucking out any stems that were brittle or brown.