A small round upstairs room was topped off with a roof like a pointy cap. The house was cute. Pretty, even, with periwinkle blue shutters and those fish-scale shingles around the roofline. Daddy would have admired the flower beds. We shivered as we climbed the steps. It was summer, but we hadn't had any sleep to speak of, and it was early and damp. We were cold. After the third time Mel rang the doorbell, we tried peering in the windows, but the blinds were pulled tight. She looked at me and said, “Maybe there's nobody here. Maybe they've taken her off to the hospital.” Another shiver made her teeth chatter. “Wouldn't your sister have told you that?” “I don't know,” Mel said. She rang the bell again. I tried out the porch swing. This was, after all, my grandmother's house. “Shh,” Mel said when the chains creaked. I got right up again, but certain things still interested me. I'd never thought of Mel's mother as someone with a porch swing. I said, “Maybe you should call Clare.”
