Ivy filled the kettle and set it on the burner—its flames were like a ring of tiny campfires—and reached for a mug. Her hand brushed against something. She made a little leap and then there was a crash. Perkin yowled and Beryl’s light came on in her room down the hall.

“I broke something,” Ivy said as soon as Beryl appeared in the kitchen. “I’m sorry. I’ll get it fixed—” She looked at the shattered pieces and realized how dumb that sounded. “I mean, I’ll buy you a new one.”

Beryl limped over and poked at the pieces with the tip of her crutch. “Thank God.”

“What?”

“Free at last. Geena gave it to me. Housewarming present. I’m sure it was expensive, it was from that gallery down on the water where they get a king’s ransom for everything, but it was hideous. Couldn’t say that, of course.”

Ivy stood very still. She didn’t know whether to believe Beryl or not.

“The thing was a terror. Not my style at all, or hers either I’d have thought, but everybody makes a bad choice sometimes. Listen, get the kettle. The whistling’s making me nervous.”

Ivy switched the burner off.

Beryl poked again at the broken pieces of teapot. “Probably better sweep it up before we step on it.”

Ivy hurried to get the broom and dustpan. When she’d finished, she didn’t know what to do next. “I guess I’ll go back to bed.”

“Don’t you want your tea?”

Ivy glanced at Beryl uncertainly. “Do you want some?”

“No, but I’ll sit with you, if you want. Maybe you’ll tell me what that word meant.”

“What word?”

“That name Patience called you. Kennis-something.”

“Knasgowa.” Ivy smiled. “It’s a nickname.”

“I figured that. But what does it mean?”

“Heron,” Ivy said. “It means heron, in Cherokee.”

Beryl waited, but Ivy didn’t know what else to say. Knasgowa was a compliment. Herons were determined and curious. They were good hunters, good at waiting. They were known for being independent. Loners, really. If they were people, they wouldn’t like anyone looking over their shoulder, telling them what to do. Sometimes that got them into trouble. Sometimes their eyes were bigger than their stomachs and they tried to bite off—or snatch up, in the case of a fish—more than they could chew. Still, they usually coped. They were survivors.

Ivy had looked it up on the computer at school when Grammy first said it, but she hadn’t had to look it up to know what Grammy meant. Being called Heron was a big deal. Also a private deal.

“Like pulling teeth,” Beryl said equably when Ivy stayed quiet. “Come on, let’s sit in the dining room, my leg’s killing me.”

• • •

The clock on the credenza chimed once: three thirty. Ivy fiddled with the cake server, which Beryl had told her to leave out so she could polish it later. Ivy used to help Aunt Connie polish the silver after holiday dinners. Those were times—getting the silver out, setting the table, smelling the big chicken cooking—when Ivy had felt like a normal kid.

She smiled sadly. Aunt Connie. She told Ivy every drawing she did was wonderful, her best yet. She clapped loudly at Ivy’s school programs and always did a wolf whistle that was embarrassing. Once Ivy was a tree in a forest of trees in a play, and Aunt Connie insisted she was the best of the bunch, even though she didn’t have a single line to speak. Trees are good, she’d told Ivy. They don’t have to talk. They just stand tall and strong.

No matter how bad things were, she had always stayed cheerful, or at least cheerful-ish. Oh well, she’d say, looking over whatever the problem was. Shee-ite happens. She actually did say that, shee-ite, instead of the real word.

It was strange, how two sisters could be so different.

She and Ivy’s mom hadn’t had a spectacular childhood. She’d told Ivy that, right at the end. Not to excuse anything, she said. Just to, kind of, explain your mama to you. I’ll tell you more about it one day. She’d run out of time, though. It was a talk Ivy guessed neither one of them had much wanted to have.

The clock ticked and Perkin batted at a tinfoil ball. Otherwise the house was silent. Beryl sat with her leg up, her head tipped back, and her eyes shut. Ivy drew a fork toward her, then a spoon, and then the cake knife. “I could polish these,” she said. “If you wanted. I used to like polishing my aunt Connie’s silver.”

• • •

She ended up talking more than she meant to. Maybe because it was the middle of the night. Everything was strange; the rules were broken.

“I think about my aunt Connie’s stuff a lot.” Ivy had never said this to anyone before. She’d never even told Prairie how much time she spent walking through Aunt Connie’s house in her head on nights she couldn’t sleep. “I miss the weirdest things. Like her blender. Who misses a blender? But she used to make me milk shakes in it. Strawberry banana, chocolate chip coconut, whatever I wanted. And the silver—we used it for every single holiday. Mardi Gras, Earth Day, Halloween, everything. She said life was hard enough already without missing the chance to make a party of things—”

Beryl pumped her fist in the air without lifting her head from the back of her chair or opening her eyes. “Agreed. Bravo, Aunt Connie.”

Ivy glanced at her; the surface of her skin tingled with a feeling she couldn’t pin down. Hope? Love? Or maybe it was trust. “And the Christmas decorations—I really miss those. She had this inflatable Santa sleigh and reindeer she put out on the lawn every winter. It was kind of dumb, but—you know. It was ours, it was us.”

“Of course it was.”

“I miss her collections. She collected everything. Umbrellas, coffee mugs, old postcards, anything to do with a dragonfly—”

Beryl’s eyes were still closed but her voice sounded interested. “What happened to all of it?”

“Mom put it in storage.” Everything Ivy hadn’t grabbed and hidden in her closet.

“Storage. As in—a storage facility?”

“Yes. We jammed everything in. Boxes and boxes. It took forever.” Ivy remembered the sound of her mom slamming the storage room door shut. It was like she was shutting the door on that whole part of their life. Ivy hadn’t cried at the funeral but she did cry then. Cried and cried, and her mom snapped at her to stop it.

Beryl sat up. “Where is this storage facility?”

Ivy picked up a knife. “In New Paltz.”

“You never went back to get the stuff?”

“The house Mom rented was small. Too small to hold it all, I guess.” Or maybe it was that her mom had not liked to be reminded of Aunt Connie after she was gone. She never talked about her; she’d get mad if Ivy tried. “Anyway, no, we didn’t go back, and then I moved in with the Everses. Mom came to get me in April, and we just never—it’s still there, I guess.”

“Do you know where the key is?”

Ivy nodded. Her mom had kept the key in her underwear drawer. Ivy had gone into her mom’s room to get it while Mrs. Marsden was waiting for her to pack her things. No way was she leaving it in a house she didn’t know if she’d ever see again.

“Let’s go check it out.” Beryl reached for her crutch.

“Now?”

“No time like the present.” Beryl thumped her leg to the floor.

“But how would we get there?” Beryl could drive, but she didn’t like to, especially not at night.

“I’ll call Geena. She’s got that big old truck, might as well put it to use.”

“But—Beryl—” Ivy looked at the clock on the credenza. She couldn’t believe how long they’d sat talking. “It’s almost five a.m.”

“I know, but trust me, she’ll love it. It’s exactly the kind of stunt we used to get up to in high school. Plus—well—it’s time you caught a break, I think.” Beryl clomped to the den and picked up the phone.