Maria pulled the spider ring out of the box once more. She slipped it delicately on her finger. It really was a beautiful ring when you looked at it. The level of detail on the spider was so fine, down to its sharp pincers and tiny leg joints, it was as if it wasn’t a carved stone at all, but a real spider that had calcified and been placed on a band. But it couldn’t be a real spider. For one thing, this spider had six eyes, when Maria was almost positive that all spiders had eight.

Now that Maria looked at it, she thought she saw something on the underside of the spider’s abdomen. A tiny clasp, if she wasn’t mistaken. She tried to pry it open with her fingernails, and finally, the mechanism clicked, revealing a small container. It was hardly big enough to hold anything, and it was empty now, though Maria thought she saw the residue of a fine powder along the edges.

There was a name for rings like this that hid little containers. “Poison rings,” Derek’s dad had called them once. The idea was that old knights and kings would keep real poison in them, either for their enemies or else, if they were captured, for themselves. But more often, poison rings held medicine or mementos. A locket of hair or a whiff of perfume. Poison rings sometimes had another name, for that very reason. “Funeral rings,” for the mourners left behind.

In spite of that name, Maria smiled.

Leave it to Grandma Esme to have a ring with a secret compartment.

“Are you okay, sweetie?” Mom said, appearing suddenly in her doorway. Maria realized she must have looked odd, sitting here admiring her ring.

“Yeah, just missing her,” she said.

“I miss her, too,” her mom said. She stared into the middle distance, as if she could see Grandma Esme there in the room with them. She shivered. “She was a real one-of-a-kind lady, your grandmother.”

“Two-of-a-kind,” Maria replied.

“Is that right?” Her mother’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Well, it’s true you got her imagination. Your father had it, too.”

“Really?”

“Does that surprise you?”

“Well, you just always say that Dad didn’t like stories that much.”

Maria’s mother sat down on the edge of her bed.

“Oh, I said he wasn’t a reader like you are, but he always liked stories. He used to say he was going to buy us one of those fishing boats in the gulf, and that we would all go on an adventure, to Japan and Australia and everywhere.”

Maria liked the sound of a boat trip around the world. It was too bad her father wasn’t here to make it come true.

“Who knows, maybe after we sell Grandma Esme’s house, we can finally buy that boat after all. I’ve been thinking we could use a little more family adventure around here.”

Maria wasn’t sure if she did need any more adventure. It seemed to be finding her well enough already. Her feelings must have shown crystal clear on her face, because her mother backtracked and changed the subject.

“Do you have your clothes picked out for tomorrow? We need to leave around eight thirty so we can get to the church a little early.”

“I’ll put my clothes out,” Maria said. She already knew she didn’t have anything special to wear. She had one black dress and one green dress, which she alternated between for church and special occasions. The black dress might have been stylish once. The green dress looked like it had been a fir tree in a past life.

“All right, then. If you’re sure you’re okay …”

“I’m sure.”

“Good night, sweetie.”

“Good night, Mom.”

Her mother leaned in for a hug, and then got up to go back to her room. Maria stopped her in the doorway.

“Mom?” she said.

“Yes, mija-oh-my-a?”

“Do you think Dad and Grandma Esme are together again?”

“Of course they are. And since I don’t believe in stories, you know it’s true.”

This was exactly the right response.

When Maria turned out her light to go to sleep, she kept the spider ring on, deciding that this was a fitting way to keep Grandma Esme close tonight. Her black dress lay draped over her chair like she’d promised, its little quarter sleeves threatening to make Maria look like a Victorian baby doll the next day, when she wanted to appear sophisticated and somber. If only she’d thought to grab one of Grandma Esme’s shawls. Then she would have looked like Esmerelda the Magnificent’s granddaughter.

She closed her eyes and imagined the kind of dress she would buy if she had unlimited money. A sleek dress, elegant and mysterious. A dress that said, Here is a girl who is not to be trifled with.

As Maria lay there picturing her dress, the ring on her finger began to grow warm. Faster than she could think, she scrambled to slide the ring off her finger, removing it so forcefully that it flew and landed somewhere at her feet. The best thing to do was put it back in the box, she decided. Then she’d put the box back in her sock drawer, and then maybe push her dresser out into the hall.

When Maria turned on her light and picked up the ring box, she opened it wrong-side up and found the note from Grandma Esme staring her in the face.

The spiders are your friends. Do not abuse their friendship.

Were they her friends, or were they out to get her? Could they be both at once? Perhaps her grandmother really had been crazy after all.

Finally, Maria decided that if the spiders had wanted to get her, they easily could have done so while she was asleep last night. Boldly — or was it recklessly? — Maria put the ring back on her finger and said in a small voice, “I wish I had a beautiful dress to wear to Grandma Esme’s funeral.”

This time, she hardly flinched when she felt the ring heat up. And when the line of brown spiders came trickling in through the crack under her door, she greeted them with what she hoped was a convincing smile.

The spiders got to work at once. They swarmed and surrounded Maria’s baby-doll dress, until she could hardly see the fabric underneath the cloud of moving legs.

“Be careful,” Maria couldn’t help saying, hoping that this wouldn’t offend them. She could just imagine explaining to her mom why one of her two dresses was ruined. The problem with being a park ranger who didn’t believe in stories was that sometimes even the truth was unbelievable.

The spiders didn’t seem to be offended, though. If anything, they worked faster, some of them swinging from the chair on strands of cottony spider silk. Maria could even swear she heard the buzz of voices. But as soon as the word voices formed in her mind, the buzzing she thought she heard was gone.

At last the army of spiders began to break ranks, scurrying to leave in separate waves. When the final few stragglers completed their work and left, Maria felt the ring go cold.

From where she sat in her bed, she could already see that her dress had changed. She put one foot on the floor and then the other, crossing her room as fast as she could on her tiptoes.

When she got to the dress, she gasped.

Each shoulder strap of this old-but-new creation was formed from three strands of black fabric woven into a braid. When Maria touched it, the fabric felt different than it had before, like expensive silk, only softer, if that was possible. The body of the dress was made of the same rich fabric. Around the waistline, rows of shimmery sequin-like orbs crisscrossed until they met at a spiral in the back.

When Maria lifted the dress and looked at the chair beneath, she discovered the best detail of all: two sheer black gloves, each long enough to stretch past her elbow, with interlocking webs to match the pattern on the dress.

Maria could hardly believe her good fortune. She decided to try on the dress now, just in case this was a dream. She’d hate to wake up in the morning and realize she’d missed her chance to see how it looked on her.