I marched down Trowbridge Road, my shuttered house shrinking behind me like a tomb with Mother trapped inside.

Backpack clattered on my back.

I liked the feeling of straps on my shoulders, the weight reminding me that I had muscles. Even if someone put out their foot and tried to trip me, even if they pushed my back with two hands the way Lucy Delmato pushed me once on the swings, I could steady myself. I was strong. A soldier knows how to keep on marching. I was not at all like Mother. I was a different kind of creature entirely. I was a nomad of the ninth dimension. I had powers beyond belief. I could punch a hole through the clouds with my power.

When I got close to Nana Jean’s house, I could see her standing on the steps watching me, smiling and holding out her arms.

I approached her slowly and stopped in front of her, uncertain of what to do. Her body settled in front of mine, her arms extended.

“Well,” she said, “are you going to just stand there, or are you going to give Nana Jean a hug?”

As soon as it became clear that I was not going to move on my own, she went ahead and pulled me close, pressing my cheek into the round buttons of her housedress. All at once she was hugging me hard.

It was a rocking, rollicking, gorgeous hug that melted me from the inside and made me want to be cradled like a baby, made me want her to brush my hair and dress me and feed me and sing me lullabies.

“Well, that’s better,” said Nana Jean. “I always think a hug is the best way to turn a day around. Don’t you? Ziggy told me that you’ve become friends. He said you might like to have some lunch with us. You hungry?”

I nodded.

“Well, come inside. There’s plenty.”

I took a tentative step forward.

“Look at you,” Nana Jean said. “You must be starving.”

“I am,” I said.

“Well, let’s go, then. Come with me.”

Nana Jean took my hand and led me inside her house.

I had waved hello, walking down the street. I had been in the tree hundreds of times. I had even been on her porch for trick-or-treating. But never in my entire life had I ever been inside Nana Jean’s house. The front hallway was lined with bookshelves full of old, dusty books. There was a carved wooden banister that curved up the winding stairs, promising more unseen rooms where people walked and slept and lived, maybe with their windows and doors wide open. I couldn’t help closing my eyes and taking a long breath through my nose. I knew what that smell was. It was freedom. Nana Jean stroked my hand.

“Don’t cry, honey. Everything is going to be okay.”

I hadn’t realized I was crying.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my arm.

Nana Jean led me into the kitchen.

Ziggy and Matthew were at the table already.

Ziggy had a napkin tucked into the front of his shirt. He was holding a knife and fork.

“Hello, June Bug Jordan,” Ziggy said.

“Hi,” I said, still grasping Nana Jean’s hand.

“I decided you needed one of Nana Jean’s home-cooked meals. Is that okay?”

I nodded.

“Sit down, honey,” said Nana Jean. “We’ve already set a place for you. You know when your daddy and Uncle Toby were little boys and your grandma was working, they used to come over to play with my Jenny, and I cooked them lunch here plenty of times. Your daddy would sit right there in that same seat you’re sitting in. You look a lot like him, you know that?”

I nodded.

It felt good to hear those words coming from her.

The inside of Nana Jean’s kitchen was just how I always imagined it would be: filled with the ghosts of tantalizing meals. Generations of lasagna. Leagues of Italian wedding soup.

Nana Jean’s kitchen smelled like the gossip of garlic and bacon and oregano. It smelled like the laughter of sun-dried tomatoes and sausages and cheese. The recipes whispered to each other from the glazed windows to the spaces between the floorboards to the countertops. We have fed the children and grandchildren in here. We meals. We blessed, blessed meals. I entered like Alice on the threshold of Wonderland, or Dorothy taking her first steps into the Emerald City — the prickling feeling that I was about to enter something glorious.

She did not ask me what I wanted to eat. How could I be expected to answer such a question? My desire to be filled was boundless. I might as well have answered that I wanted to swallow both of them, and the ferret and the tree and the kitchen and the whole neighborhood, but even after devouring all of this, I still would not be satisfied.

I was grateful when Nana Jean began bringing food to the table anyway. She presented us with a feast as if we were royalty.

This is not the kind of food Mother helped me prepare at our house, food we could cook without tasting or touching. Soup from cans. Cold cuts from white wax paper. These were recipes that Nana Jean’s hands needed to touch. They required stirring and chopping, required her fingers to feel the brush of egg white, the grain of table salt — maybe even for her tongue to taste something uncooked, just a tiny piece, to tell if the spices were right. How can you cook without tasting? You need to imagine the other person’s tongue to know if everything is perfect.

Nana Jean sat with us.

She did not try to talk to us. She leaned forward, sometimes nodding when we swallowed, as though eating was a kind of conversation. Do you love it? asked the plate. We answered by lifting the fork to our lips again. Yes, our bellies whispered. We love it.