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Days passed and Evelyn wondered whether she would ever be able to stand up straight again. She felt her head bowing her spine like a bud on a stem. She found herself constantly looking at the floor, wondering if this was the beginning of her last, slow descent back to the earth she had sprung from.

The boy was put to work in her stead. Every morning she talked him through the tasks in the almanac and sent him on his way with Lily as his grudging chaperone. Evelyn heard them together while she sat outside the kitchen door mending their clothes. Lily had started speaking to the boy in the same way she spoke to the slugs and the pigeons, with a kind of resigned exasperation. She would hiss and suck her teeth when he did something wrong and then give her instructions again, slowly and carefully, as if he were entirely brainless. The boy would reply with one or two words, his voice youthful and bleating.

He worked hard, as he had promised. He dug over the winter beds in an afternoon, where it would have taken Evelyn and her sister several days. He trimmed the hawthorn. He cut back the ivy that was creeping into the toolshed and prying the roof from the walls. He dredged the stream that led from the lake and cleaned the rusted sluice gate. Every morning a bucket of fresh water appeared on the kitchen doorstep; sometimes there were three or four eggs in a box beside it. In the afternoons he would come back and lie on the lawn for an hour or two while Lily practiced her routine, and Evelyn would quiz him on the garden and his morning’s labors but nothing else beyond that. The larger questions, about him, about the outside, lay submerged like a dark reef, and she did all she could to steer clear of them.

One afternoon she looked up to see him standing in the middle of the lawn, turning on the spot and shielding his eyes with his hand.

“What are you looking for?” Evelyn asked.

He stopped spinning and came over to her chair, a deep scowl on his face. “How did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Make this.”

“The garden?”

He nodded. She set her sewing to one side. Lily’s sequined dress, which she had split again while practicing.

“We didn’t make it. Our mother did. We’re just looking after it.”

“She said there was a storm at the beginning.”

“Lily did?”

He nodded again. He had never once used either of their names.

“Oh, yes,” said Evelyn. “The really big one. We had to dig it all out by hand. Mama and Papa and me and Lily. Dust and sand a couple of feet thick in places. It got everywhere, on your skin, in your hair. You couldn’t tell us apart from the statues in the garden.” She paused. “Sometimes I can’t believe we really did it. Sometimes I think I dreamed it.”

“She says it might happen again.”

Evelyn felt her temper flare. No doubt the boy was a more receptive audience to her sister’s pronouncements and predictions.

“Lily says lots of things. To get a reaction, mostly. We’ve only known three or four storms since we’ve been here. The last time we had one was…oh, donkey’s years back.”

“Donkey’s?”

They looked at each other. Evelyn herself didn’t understand the phrase. It was just one that her mother had used.

“It was a very long time ago. And even then we only got a little dusting. It was very far away, but we could still see it. Went right up into the sky. Lightning and all sorts.”

The boy looked up as if some vestige of the storm still hung there.

“Why don’t you go in the rest of the house?” he said.

Evelyn blinked. Thrown from one unwanted memory to another. “You’re full of questions, aren’t you.”

“It’s so big, but you only use the kitchen.”

Evelyn thought back to Lily’s game of hide-and-seek and wondered if it had been the boy she’d seen in the window. And if it had, what he might have seen, too. She glanced back at the house. Locked doors, closed curtains. Dark landings, perhaps a little daylight from a broken shutter creeping along the floorboards, the shelves. That rug. That vase.

“We don’t go in there because it’s dangerous,” she said. “Don’t even think about it. For your own good.”

“Dangerous how?”

“It’s full of men’s things.”

“Men’s things?”

“And worse. Mold and poison in the air. Electrical residue. Makes your hair and teeth fall out just like that.” She snapped her fingers at him and realized in that instant that she was not speaking in her own voice. A mother’s warning. She took a couple of breaths and added, “You steer well clear. Do you understand?”

He nodded. He looked scolded.

“Now. Let me get on.”

The boy wandered back to the lawn. Evelyn took up her sister’s dress again but could not concentrate.

Not long afterward, Lily came back from her practice. She was buoyant, humming a tune to herself and conducting some tiny, imagined orchestra with one finger. She stood in front of Evelyn’s deck chair and cast her in shade.

“I remembered it,” she said.

“Remembered what?”

“All the steps!”

“Oh. Goodie good. See, you don’t need your shoes after all.”

Lily didn’t reply to that. She took a few deep breaths.

“I want to play cards tonight,” she announced.

Evelyn looked up. She let the dress fall in her lap and wondered, suddenly, if her sister had been talking to the boy about the house, as well as about the garden and the storm and everything else.

“If you want,” she said.

“No need to look quite so worried, Sissie. You might actually win something if the beast of burden is playing.”

“The what?”

“The beast of burden.” She nodded at the boy. “That’s what I call him.”

“That’s not very nice.”

“He likes it. Don’t you?” she called over to where he was sprawled on the lawn. He sat up but didn’t say anything.

“Not even listening,” said Lily. “Not a thought between his ears. What have you been talking about anyway?”

“This and that,” said Evelyn. She paused. “I wish you hadn’t mentioned the storm to him.”

“He knows what a storm is, Evie. He’s seen worse things than we have.”

“I don’t want to know what he’s seen. I’m sure he doesn’t want to be reminded.” She paused. “And don’t talk about Mama, or the house. Please.”

They both looked at him. When Lily spoke again, it was loud enough for him to hear.

“If you say so. Haven’t got time to make polite conversation with him anyway. I spend all my time telling him what to do, a hundred times over.” She looked back at Evelyn and shielded her eyes against the sun. “So. Cards tonight?”

“Yes. Why not.”

“Good. And a snifter of potato wine.” She nodded in agreement with herself and called over to the boy: “Right, come on, you horrible thing. We still haven’t burned your filthy clothes. Have you washed at all since you got here? If you’ve given me lice and I have to cut my hair, I shall throttle you.”