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Evelyn got to her knees in the dirt and the sawdust on the toolshed floor and unrolled the top of the boy’s rucksack. It had perhaps been full of provisions when he set out from wherever he’d come from, but now it contained only a few items. She handled them with a mixture of wariness and deep reverence. A pair of woolen gloves, most of the fingers worn through. A lamp that did not work. A pad of paper with only a few sheets left in it, and those already scribbled upon. She caressed the surface of each one and felt the deep etchings of a pencil. The lines were wobbling and scattershot, but not, she thought, without meaning. On one of the sheets, among the lines, were bunched squares and triangles like a child’s building blocks. A house, perhaps, but not their house. It was not swathed in ivy and the roof was angular and the walls did not bow and swell. A few of the lines the boy had drawn curled around it. A map, was it?

She studied it for some time and then heard her mother’s voice again and worried that these, too, were men’s things, and were therefore imparting something forbidden and perhaps toxic to her soul. She quickly closed the pad and put it face down on the floor.

She carefully arranged the items in front of her. She knew her sister would wonder at them, would covet them. Mama, on the other hand, would have thrown the rucksack and everything in it onto the bonfire. Evelyn did not want to do that. Not yet, anyway. Another act of disobedience. Perhaps Lily was right about her long-arrested rebellion.

She lifted the bag and turned it upside down, but it still felt heavy. She groped inside and found a zipped pocket that contained a plastic lozenge a little smaller than her hand, with a small glass window and twelve rubber buttons arranged in a grid. Some of them were numbered. Hadn’t she and Lily had one of these? A toy, bright red and yellow. She remembered going into different rooms, the thing pressed coldly to her cheek. Lily’s high voice coming through the static. Come in! Come in! Is anybody there?

Evelyn stared at the telephone through rising nausea. She pressed all the buttons, but nothing happened. She pressed the little transparent square, and nothing appeared there either. She tried the buttons again, then held the mouthpiece to her lips and waited a long time before finding the courage to whisper.

“Hello?”

The telephone was dead. It seemed inoperable, but what did she know about such things? What if the boy had been using it, night after night? Who on earth was there to talk to?

Lily called to her from the kitchen and her heart flailed.

She put the telephone in the pocket of her nightdress and bundled everything else back into the rucksack and stuffed the rucksack into the croquet box. She got up and dusted her knees and looked along the rows of sharp tools hanging from the wall of the shed—axes and hacksaws and pruning knives. Studied their blades.

“Steady on, Evie,” she said aloud. “We won’t be needing those yet.”

—

Her sister was waiting for her on the lawn.

“Close your eyes,” Lily said.

“Why?” said Evelyn.

“Don’t come any closer! Just close your eyes.”

“I’m not in the mood, Lily. I need to talk to you.”

“Stop being such a sourpuss and do it!”

Evelyn closed her eyes. All she could picture was the contents of the bag.

“Ready? I promise you’ll feel better afterward. We have a surprise for you.”

Lily took her by the elbow and led her over the gravel and up onto the step. Evelyn had an unpleasant memory of helping their mama around the garden, just before the end, before she’d capitulated to the wheelchair. Mama had spat at her, told her she didn’t need help, that she wasn’t a child.

Evelyn stepped into the coolness of the kitchen and smelled woodsmoke and garlic and a sweetness she hadn’t expected. She heard the slight wheeze of the boy and felt fearful all of a sudden.

“All right,” said Lily. “You can open them.”

Evelyn opened her eyes. The kitchen was festooned with flowers. They were tied into bouquets and arranged in cups and vases, on the table, on the work surface, on the windowsill, around their bedding. Hundreds of varieties, almost every kind the garden had to offer.

“Gosh,” said Evelyn.

“They’re for you,” said the boy.

“For me?”

“To say thank you. And sorry. And…”

He fidgeted with the waistband of his too-large trousers. When she looked at him now, all she could think about was him creeping through the house, seeing things, touching things. And perhaps broadcasting everything he was seeing and doing on his old telephone. She felt its leaden weight in her front pocket.

“Well, you could show a little more enthusiasm,” said Lily when Evelyn had been silent for a long while. “Aren’t they gorgeous?”

Evelyn nodded. “Yes. They are. Very pretty.”

“He’s a good boy really.”

Lily gave her sister a meaningful look. As if this made up for everything. For breaking the most sacred of all Mama’s rules.

“Do you like them?” the boy asked.

“Very much,” said Evelyn. She picked a stem out of the vase on the table and looked at its ragged white end and felt it already going limp in the warmth of her hand.

—

They played cards again that night. Evelyn won a few games, but she knew it was because they were letting her. She looked around at the boy’s handiwork as if in admiration, but the only thing she thought was that all the flowers would be dead in a few days, and there would be bare patches in the flower beds that none but she would notice.

She still had not found an opportunity to tell her sister about what she had discovered, and by now had stopped looking for one. The longer they played, the more it seemed clear that Lily would only become overexcited by the bag and the telephone. She would probably give the boy another pat on the head for bringing them into the garden. It was in both of their interests, thought Evelyn, to keep the items to herself.

“Gosh,” said Lily when Evelyn had won her third game, “what a drubbing. Have you been practicing without us?”

Evelyn held the stack of all twenty-five cards. She straightened their edges.

“Seems it’s my lucky day,” she said.

“One more? What about you, beast of burden?”

The boy waited for Evelyn to reply.

“I’m going to bed,” she said.

“Then let’s all go to bed,” said Lily.

Evelyn got up and said nothing. She wanted to sleep by herself tonight. She went over to their bedding and started arranging the blankets.

“Oh, good heavens!” Lily said. “We’ve never read him the book!”

“I don’t think we should read him the book. It’ll just confuse him.”

“It’ll be fun, Sissie. He’ll like it.”

“He won’t understand it. We don’t even bloody understand it.”

Lily made a face. She led the boy from the table over to their bedclothes, lowered herself, then felt beneath her pillow for the book. She looked up and patted the floor. The boy sat cross-legged and floppy beside her.

Lily peeled open the first of the dry, curling pages and traced it with a dirty fingernail.

“What are you doing?” said Evelyn.

“What?”

“That’s not where we’d got to.”

“We may as well start over. For the boy.”

Evelyn folded her arms.

“Come on, Evie, sit down with us,” said Lily.

Evelyn didn’t. She went over to the dresser and opened the drawer. She pretended to read the almanac with one hand, and in the other she held the boy’s telephone, turning it over and over in the warm depths of her pocket.

“Suit yourself,” said Lily. “Right. Everybody ready, then?”

She cleared her throat.

“ There is no one left ,” she began.

Evelyn noticed the boy was listening very attentively. There was a sadness in his young face and for a few moments her anger at him subsided, and flared, and subsided again.

Lily went on. “ When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen… ”

Evelyn listened until the end of the first chapter. Almost against her will the book brought her some solace, the story so familiar and so utterly remote. The bittersweet remembrance of something they had never even had. She did not know what the boy thought about it. She did not know what the boy thought about anything.

“There,” said Lily. “What did you think of that?”

“It was good,” said the boy.

“See!” said Lily, though she didn’t turn around to address Evelyn. “I told you he’d like it.”

“Fine,” said Evelyn. “But that’s all. Bedtime now.”

“Have you seen one of these before?” Lily asked the boy.

“Yes,” he said.

“They have books where you came from?”

He nodded.

“We’ve got more in the house,” said Lily. “Mama wouldn’t let us read them, though.”

He looked at his lap and scratched his thigh with one finger.

“What else do they have?” asked Lily. “In the other place.”

Evelyn gripped the telephone tighter but did not say anything. Perhaps she would hear the answers this time. Perhaps she wanted to.

The boy shrugged. “Lots of things.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Lots.”

“Things we don’t have here?”

“Yes.”

“Electric things?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a car?”

“I don’t. Some of the men do.”

“The men…” Lily repeated, almost in a whisper. She waved the book in front of his nose. “You must know all sorts of things. I bet you understand this better than we do.”

She began scanning the first pages again. Evelyn came over from the dresser and seized the book from her sister’s hand. She tossed the pages across the room and one of them detached completely, making chaotic somersaults in the air. Lily watched her in disbelief.

“What was that for?”

“You know what it was for. What did I tell you earlier?”

“That was about the house.”

“It’s the same thing! Give me strength, Lily!”

Lily crawled on all fours to retrieve the book and tried to slot the loose page back among the others.

“You’ve ruined it,” she said.

“Good.” Evelyn fetched the almanac from the dresser and threw it down in front of the boy. “There,” she said. “If it’s a good book you’re after.”

It landed face up between them. Lunchtime. Bathtime. Bedtime. Evelyn gathered her blanket in her arms and went farther into the darkness and remade her bed. She did not want to see either of their expressions; she saw them anyway when she closed her eyes.

—

Thoughts of the sunroom came to her again and again as she tried to settle that night, though she’d hardly seen anything at all. A few dim outlines, but all the more menacing for their lack of substance. Thoughts of men and cars and electric things. The telephone, too. It was still in the pocket of her nightdress, and sometimes she rolled on it and had to stop herself from crying out when it dug into her hip.

When she fell asleep, she dreamed more black dreams. Some presence hefting itself about in the rest of the house. Man or animal or some other more malevolent thing. Doors slamming, though she didn’t know if they were slamming open or closed. She was young in the dream and moved about with ease. She tried to get outside, and when she finally found the way through, she saw that the garden was in full bloom but littered with boxes. The boxes were oblong in shape and made of a wood so dark and polished it might have been granite. She knew that the boxes contained bodies. They were beyond number. She realized there was a garden party taking place, and the guests wafted happily through the grounds, laughing and talking and resting their drinks on the boxes’ lids. When Evelyn approached one of them, there was a knocking from inside. She didn’t know if this meant she should open the box or keep it closed. Anxiety turned to dread, a great black lurch, and suddenly she was awake again and staring at the ceiling.

She listened for a moment. The boy and her sister were still whispering together in the darkness, and her heartbeat doubled. She did not listen any harder, for fear of understanding them.

“Stop chattering and go to sleep,” Evelyn said into her pillow.

They were quiet for a few minutes but then the whispering started again. Evelyn took the pillow from under her head and covered her ears, with each breath more certain that the boy was no less dangerous than a man—perhaps more so, since his dissimulation had fooled even Evelyn—and that he and all he had touched would need to be excised like the rot from an apple.