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The days went on, but they were different days now. There was the sense that something had already ended and there was to be no reclaiming what had gone before. No amount of careful scrubbing and sewing would revive the almanac. Lily’s swelling eventually went down of its own accord, but the red lumps remained as testament to their madness. Evelyn felt constantly cold and damp no matter how long she sat next to the stove, only flushing with heat when she recalled what her sister had done. She thought often about what Lily had said; thought just as often about the silence and darkness beneath the lake, with a kind of longing she wouldn’t admit to herself. She went on with her tasks, as she remembered them, but took little pleasure in the work, pottering mechanically about the beds. She sewed her sister’s ballet pumps back together, but they seemed somehow more pitiable for being mended.

Lily attempted to build bridges in the only way she knew how. One morning she came into the kitchen wearing the butchered ballet shoes and the Marigolds and her favorite ball gown. She made an announcement:

“I’m ready,” she said.

Evelyn was pickling again. She tightened the lid on a jar of beetroot, her fingers smeared in juice the color of blood.

“For what?” Evelyn said.

“To perform.”

“The routine?”

“That’s right. I think I’ve cracked it.”

Evelyn could not believe it. How long had it been since her sister had begun her practice, had banished Evelyn from the gazebo for so many hours a day? She had given up all hope of seeing the thing.

She was surprised to find herself smiling. Her cheeks were stiff and unaccustomed to it. Perhaps reparations could yet be made.

“Well. I never thought the day would come. Goodie good. Give me a moment to finish up here.”

“Wear something nice, please,” said Lily, and went shimmering out of the door.

Evelyn stacked the jars in the store cupboard, then washed her hands and went to their pile of clothes. She picked out one of their mother’s tartan skirts and a floral blouse and silk scarf. Dared to feel a little excited.

She rounded the car and took the path along the edge of the lake to where her sister was waiting in the gazebo. She had turned some of their old clothes into bunting—faded T-shirts and skirts from when they were very little—and hung it around the posts. She had made a kind of theatrical curtain out of some of their blankets and was pattering about behind it. The boy was standing a little to one side and seemed not entirely sure of his role in the performance. He was wearing a man’s suit, much too big for him. Lily must have had him fetch it, but Evelyn was not as stung by the transgression as she’d expected, and chose not to mention it.

“Shall I sit?” she asked loudly.

“Yes, yes, sit, sit,” said Lily from behind the curtain.

Evelyn swept her skirt underneath her and sat. The ground was gritty. She placed a palm in the grass, and it came back gray with dust. She wiped it on her leg and tried not to think about it.

“Ready?” called Lily.

“As I’ll ever be,” said Evelyn.

The boy stepped forward and pulled the curtain to one side. Lily was in the center of the gazebo, en pointe . The sinews in her calves stood out, bound in ribbons. Her hair was artfully plaited and coiled and had been pulled back so tightly around her face that she looked several years younger.

Evelyn gasped.

Her sister had painted a backdrop for the performance on four wooden boards that looked very similar to the ones Mama had used to seal up the house. Evelyn wondered if Lily had found a store of leftovers. Or had pried them free herself. Or had got the boy to do it. More astonishing than the boards themselves were the things Lily had painted upon them. Windows and curtains and baroque chandeliers. Evelyn knew these were paintings of the rooms in the house. Knew, without even having to think, that they were perfect likenesses, because the boy no doubt had described them to her in detail. The rooms were not empty either. There were people relaxing in them, smiling, playing. A woman, a man, two girls. Eddie was in his cage on top of a bookcase. Lily began to hum her own accompaniment. She had once had a machine that played music, Evelyn seemed to remember, but there was nothing on hand for this performance. Lily lowered herself onto the flats of her feet and very slowly raised her arms, and then one leg, until it was parallel to the floor. Evelyn still had a hand to her mouth. She watched her sister working through each movement that she had learned when she was younger than the boy, even. Watched her pale and trembling body tracing arc after gentle arc. Such grace in it, and such sadness.

She danced around the painted boards and at times interacted with the figures she had sketched there. She had conjured these from her own memory, not the boy’s. The faces were masklike and frightening thanks to Lily’s broad brushstrokes and limited palette. She pirouetted from one to the next and seemed to have silent conversations with each of them. She planted a kiss on her father’s cheek. She imitated a bird in flight in front of Eddie’s cage.

Each act recalling a loss that Evelyn had barely felt, if she had felt it at all, until the full weight of her sister’s grief was upon her.

She watched through tearful eyes and could not look away. She did not know how long the performance had been going on for, but it seemed to be reaching a climax when something caught her eye. Something growing in the gaps between the scenery.

“Lily, stop,” she said, getting to her feet.

Lily continued to dance, a scowl on her face.

“Lily, please. You have to stop.”

“No,” said Lily, but then she stopped anyway. There was sweat on her forehead. “Why? What are you doing? I’ve barely got going!”

“Look.”

Finally Lily turned.

The storm was coming. The thunderhead was colossal. It reared like a wave across the horizon, already seemingly overhead, though it must have been hundreds of miles away. It surged darkly, a yellow tinge to each new erupting cloud, as if they were watching the blooming of some immense brassica. The light all around them yellow, too, and sickly. There were threads of lightning at its center, blueish and delicate among the columns and billows of dust, like the veins on the backs of Lily’s legs. The wind was already high and grasped at the tops of the trees, but the rest of the garden was still strangely quiet.

“We should go in,” Evelyn said. “We have to get things ready.”

“But my routine…”

Lily pursed her lips and seemed on the brink of arguing, but then her whole face fell slack.

“There will be time for the routine,” said Evelyn. “Afterward.”

She came up onto the stage and took her sister by the elbow, and they started back toward the house, the boy following behind them.