Every evening since the arrival, they had shared the ritual, and just the smell of cardamom triggered an overwhelming desire for sleep, and she always drank the potion to the dregs, a trail of spices climbing the inside wall of the ceramic mug. But Una had passed over the moment that evening, her neglect linked to the fuss over Wiley's shorn head. The sight of him shocked Erica initially, but when she touched the short bristles, she thrilled to the new sensation and could not resist running her palms over and over the coarse nap, the skin and bone. The old woman, likewise, could not stop staring at him, her son's name loose on her mouth as she whispered what she had wrought, if only in appearance. Like Frankenstein's Prometheus: it's alive. Or the ghost made flesh again. Una did not know what to think or how to act, for she had betrayed her grandmother under the willow tree, let slip her desire and extracted the truth, their plot unspooling like a skein of yarn batted by a cat.“You could pass for Cole,”
