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When they got back to the house, Lily was standing in the doorway wearing their mother’s plum-colored tracksuit and a pair of kitten heels. She was holding a bundle of the boy’s old clothes, his boots perched on top. She looked at the boy, who was still sobbing and sniffing, and after a moment or two said to Evelyn:

“I’m going to burn all these.”

“Why?” said Evelyn.

“Because they’re disgusting.”

She threw them on the gravel and went back inside.

They went in after her, and Evelyn sat the boy down at the kitchen table. She poured him a cup of water. Their jug was nearly empty. He took two slow swallows and then held the cup against his swollen lip.

“He was stung inside his mouth,” Evelyn said when Lily did not ask.

The boy moaned.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” said Lily. “I never kicked up this much fuss. You see, Evie? He’s no use at all.”

“I think it was the surprise more than anything,” said Evelyn. “I don’t think he knows anything about bees.”

“I don’t think he knows anything about anything,” said Lily.

Evelyn thought again about what the boy had told her. She thought she might not mention it at all. It would not be the first thing she had hidden from her sister, but perhaps, in light of the boy’s arrival, there was no longer reason or compassion in trying to conceal such things. She cleared her throat.

“He said something.”

“Yes?”

“He said that there are others.”

Lily took out a large tin mixing bowl and started adding flour and water. She put on a good show of being unconcerned.

“And you believed him, did you?” she said. “More fool you.”

“I don’t know if I believe him or not,” said Evelyn.

Lily worked the mixture for some time before she spoke again: “Why would you say that?”

“Say what?”

Lily looked up, her fingers still submerged in floury sludge. “Even if you believed him, why would you tell me that? Are you trying to scare me?”

“No, I’m not trying to scare you.”

“Like Mama all over again. We agreed there’s nothing out there, didn’t we?” She paused and then said, again: “We agreed .”

She shook her head and began working the dough harder, the bowl skittering about under the force of her hands. Evelyn said nothing. The remark stung. So many years gently probing and extracting each individual terror their mother had left imprinted on her sister. All undone now.

“Well, I suppose it’s obvious, isn’t it,” said Lily.

“What is?”

“That there must be others. He didn’t sprout out of the flower beds, did he?”

“No,” said Evelyn, though she would happily have believed that fiction.

“Maybe they’ll come looking for him,” Lily said.

“Yes,” said Evelyn. “I wondered about that.”

“Well. You should have wondered about that when you decided to keep him, shouldn’t you?”

“If we’d let him go, he might have gone and told them about us anyway.”

“Nonsense. We should have left him to shrivel up and die, and that would’ve been the end of it.”

There was another long pause, and Evelyn could see Lily’s jaw working as hard as her fingers, as if she were molding a question behind her lips.

“What did he say, then?” she said. “About the others?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you not ask him?”

“No. Why would I want to know?”

“Why would you not? Seems you and Mama were both wrong to blazes.”

“Wrong how?”

“Well, it’s not monsters out there, but it’s not nothing either. Is it? So what is it then? More horrid little boys?”

The bowl was silent beneath her hands, and she seemed to expect a straightforward answer.

“I didn’t ask him,” said Evelyn. “He doesn’t want to talk about it anyway. So that’s the end of that.”

A bank of clouds passed in front of the sun, or perhaps it was just the mood in the kitchen, but the world turned momentarily gray. Evelyn could see that Lily was still thinking about what she had said. She had always had a more vivid and searching imagination than Evelyn and could not keep it confined to the inside of her head. That was another reason she and Mama had argued so much. So many questions that their mother had been unable, or unwilling, to answer.

What if someone or something did come looking for him? What kind of someone or something would that be?

Lily began kneading again but abruptly swore and pushed the bowl away. She flexed her fingers.

“These bloody things won’t do what I tell them to,” she said.

She came back to the table and sat beside Evelyn in the half-light. The cloud persisted in its long eclipse. She seemed to have left her questions and worries and the whole topic of the boy’s provenance behind with the bowl. Abandoned, but to be returned to.

“How is your back?” she asked.

“I’ll live.”

“And the garden?”

“Getting away from me a little. I’ve not had time, what with looking after him.”

The boy coughed. They both seemed to have forgotten he was there, nursing his sore lip. He said something that neither of them could hear clearly.

“What’s that?” said Lily.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Straightaway he lifted the cup to drink, as if to hide behind it. Evelyn and Lily looked at him, and then at each other. Evelyn wondered—and she guessed her sister was also wondering—whether he was apologizing for what had happened, or for something that might happen in the days to come.