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In the van, Suzi told her mother that it really hadn’t been Grandparents’ Day at church after all, but that Nance had pretended to some people at church that she was Suzi’s grandmother. “I think she’s confused,” Suzi said. “Maybe she’s getting Alzheimer’s.”

“Oh God,” her mother muttered, like it was the end of the world or something.

When they drove by Nance’s house, her bottle green car was in the carport.

“Should we stop?” her mother asked Suzi. “Should we go in and make sure she’s all right?”

“Let’s go home,” Suzi suggested. “My knee’s really hurting.” Crazy old bat. It was a shame, really, because she’d gotten rather fond of the old thing. But what if she’d pulled this sort of stunt in Italy somewhere?

When they got home, her mother spent twenty minutes talking to Nance on the phone, or, rather listening to Nance talk, and murmuring consoling phrases, like “I’m sure it was” and “She’ll understand.”

The hell I will, thought Suzi. What would possess somebody to behave like that, after she’d introduced Suzi around as her granddaughter? Was this the way Nance would treat her actual granddaughter? Good thing she didn’t have one.

When her mother finally got off the phone, her face looked thoughtful. She told Suzi that Nance was very apologetic and said that it would never happen again.

“Why’d she do it?”

“She got upset, thinking about her daughter,” her mother said. “Her daughter died. Did she tell you?”

Suzi was pleased to report that she knew all about Helen, who’d died of cancer.

“I guess her Helen loved donuts, and Nance got overcome with memories being in Dunkin’ Donuts,” her mother said. “That’s no excuse. But she said she’ll make it up to you and hopes you’ll forgive her. I’m just telling you what she said.”

“She just left me there.”

“I know, I know. But people do crazy things when they’re sad.”

“I’m sad, and I don’t do crap like that.”

Her mother sat down in a kitchen chair like the wind got knocked out of her. “You’re sad?” she said. “What’s wrong, honey?” Like, you’re not allowed to be sad.

Duh, she wanted to tell her mother. Why do you think? You only care about Ava. It was too awful to say aloud, and her mother would just deny it anyway. “My knee, duh,” Suzi said, glad she had a go-to pain source that her mother had to acknowledge.

“Oh, yes, that,” her mother said, sounding relieved. She glanced out the window into the sunlit branches of Granddad’s beautiful live oak tree as if she wished she were outside instead of in here. “Nance has been so nice to all of us, so helpful. She’s adopted our family. I hate to just cut her off.”

“I’m not going to just cut her off,” Suzi snapped. Her mother would look for an excuse to cut anyone off. “She wants to take Granddad to church with us next week.”

“Oh, really?” her mother said. “I’m sure he’d enjoy that.”

Anything to take the old man off her hands. Suzi had said the right thing once again.

“I guess we could give her another chance,” her mother said.

Before Nance/Marylou actually met Wilson, she hadn’t realized how complicated, and potentially unsatisfying it could be, trying to enact her revenge. She hadn’t even considered the possibility that Wilson might be losing his marbles, might not remember what she required him to remember.

On the third morning she read the New York Times to him, or pretended to read it, the two of them were sitting alone in his little den, drinking cups of coffee that Caroline had brought in; and he asked her if she was the one who’d sent him the package, which gave her hope that he did, finally, grasp the situation.

She said that, yes, it had been she who sent him the package full of photocopies of documents and letters from the government study, linking her and Wilson and Helen.

He asked her why she’d sent it to him.

She said to remind him of what he’d done.

He gave her that blank face. At least he was wearing his hearing aid today and had put on trousers with a short-sleeved button-up shirt tucked into them, instead of his usual bathrobe and pj’s.

“You’re as bad as a Nazi,” Marylou explained to him.