One night, when I was eight years old, my mother woke up screaming. I'd seen this woman grab a cast iron pan out of a hot oven and do no more than hiss through her teeth. She once caught the hem of her pants on a barbed wire fence and needed seventy-nine stiches to hold her calf together, and she never once complained or even changed her gait. But that night, her pain was so intense she screamed just like the women in the old black and white movies Jake would make me watch no matter how many times I told him I hated scary stuff.

By the time Jake and I ran to her bedroom my father was already dressed. "Get to bed," he said. His gaze fell on me and, for a split second he froze. I saw fear on his face, and I wondered if he was afraid for his wife or if he was afraid of his daughter.

It took years for that seed to germinate and grow. Standing in the Summerfield Market, staring at the rat poison, the certainty that I held power over him was still a tender sapling, but I knew one day it would be a mighty tree of life.

But that night in my parents' too-bright bedroom, it was just a moment, gone as quickly as it had come. Then my mother was in my father's arms and he was carrying her out of the house.

Jake and I stood side-by-side listening to the sound of bald tires on old gravel.

"Come on," he said, and I expected him to lead me back to my bedroom and tell me to sleep and not to worry and say other stupid things like that, but he knew better. He took me downstairs to the kitchen and he poured glasses of milk for us and we sat at the kitchen table drinking them and not talking while darkness pressed its face against every window. Countless sounds prevent an old house from ever being totally silent. Old houses speak a groaning language known well by those who inhabit them.

When the phone rang, I jumped so hard my milk sloshed over the side of my glass. I dashed to the cabinet for a paper towel to clean up my mess before it could be seen, not realizing until later that, for the first time in my life, there was no one around to see. No one who cared, anyway. I glanced at the window, certain I'd find glowing eyes staring at me as I broke the rules—rules about bedtime, rules about helping myself to food and drinks, rules about cleanliness—but there was only the unrelenting dark.

"Okay," Jake said into the phone. "Yes, sir." While he listened, he cocked his head like a puppy. "She doesn't have to." Another pause. "Yes, sir." He hung up and his small body sagged.

"She's dead?" I guessed.

"What? No, why would you think that?"

I wanted to tell him that I didn't really believe it was so, but I wished it, for her sake. Death seemed wonderful to me, quiet and peaceful and far away from spying eyes and probing fingers. Once you were dead, you never again woke up in the night, screaming.

"She was pregnant, but something went wrong."

Growing up on a farm, I was no stranger to pregnancy. I thought about this new information. "She was skinny."

"I think it was still pretty early, but the baby was in the wrong spot and something went wrong. The doctor had to do surgery to get the baby out, but she's going to be okay."

The summer before, my favorite cat, not much older than a kitten, got pregnant. I'd thrilled at the realization that her fat belly meant more baby kittens on the way, but then she'd given birth to something horrible—not a kitten after all, but a pulsing pink mass that grew still and turned cold in the moments after birth. For the longest time, I'd sat on the barn floor, staring at that awful mess, counting the claws and teeth. It fueled my nightmares for months.

I wondered if my mother had harbored something so horrible in her body, some alien thing that had tried to kill her, something that made her hurt so badly she'd screamed.

Jake's strong arms wrapped around me and held on tight. "You look scared to death. Don't worry, Jess. She'll be at the hospital for a few days and then it'll be just like before."

Lies.

Unintentional lies aren't as evil as genuine lies, but they hurt twice as much because they're so easy to believe.

"Dad says Mrs. Potter's going to come watch us until he can come home," Jake said. That he didn't like the idea of being babysat was clear in the rigid set of his shoulders. At eleven years old, he already saw himself as a man, capable of taking care of both of us, but secretly I was glad Mrs. Potter was coming. She spoke softly and baked things that had no nutritional value and sang songs while she sat at the table. Mrs. Potter was the kind of human that helped me understand not everyone lived in careful terror like we did. She gave me hope for the future. She called me a shining star and told me I was, "pretty as that Molly Ringwald in the movies."

The woman who came home from the hospital in my mother's place was a frail, trembling stranger. A constant sheen of sweat glistened across her forehead and her skin stretched over her bones as if it were a suit, sewn too tight. On the stand beside the bed she kept a neat row of white-capped orange bottles.

"Don't you touch those bottles, you understand me, Jessica Lynne?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"My blood's messed up," she told me. "It's all gone wrong. My own body's turning on me, but those pills keep me from getting all clotted up inside. I need them, but for you, they're poison because your body don't have these problems. You hear me?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Jake watched this exchange from the doorway without saying a word. Thinking back, I can hardly remember a moment in my childhood when Jake wasn't standing in the background, quietly watching. No matter what else happened, Jake was a constant, a North Star shining bright enough to pierce even the cloudiest night.

"Your daddy got rats in his barn?"

My chest hurt with the force of the air I sucked in.

I turned and saw Mr. Summerfield, the butcher, standing in the aisle. He wore a clean white cap and a clean white shirt, but three bright crimson blood splatters marred his apron. Hazard of the job, I suppose.

"No. I mean, I don't know." I gestured at my cart. "I was getting tomatoes and then I guess my mind drifted for a minute there."

"It's been pretty exciting around here with news of not just one but two local kids making it to the big time."

"I'm very proud of my brother. He's worked hard to get where he is."

The butcher's gaze flicked toward the rat poison and came back to me. "Yes. Well. Nice to see you, Jess. I hope you'll spend more time at home. Your dad's not getting any younger."

Why did people say such ridiculous, obvious things? "That's why I'm here. We're celebrating a birthday with him tomorrow."

He scratched his muttonchop and nodded. "That's real good." His mouth opened as if he wanted to continue and then snapped it shut again. "You take care of yourself, Miss Kellerman."

I promised him I'd do that and breathed a sigh of relief when he walked away. In LA, going out could be a challenge. Leaving the house in anything less than perfect hair and makeup was a sure way to end up on the cover of a tabloid in which they'd speculate about your failing physical or mental state. Everyone was careful to eat in the right restaurants and order the right foods and drive the right car and be seen with the right people.

No one cared about any of that here in the land of canned tomatoes, but they'd speculate about you anyway. If you didn't give them something to talk about, they'd make something up, and who better to talk about that the two kids who ran off to Cali-ee-forn-i-yay and made names for themselves? The people in my hometown were dying of boredom. Lacking sufficient excitement in their lives, they'd live vicariously through Jake and me, but that meant I'd be stopped and questioned by every human I encountered.

I saw her picking out tomatoes. Seemed to me she was turning her nose up at the selection. Guess the kind of produce we have in this part of the country ain't good enough for the likes of a bona fide movie star.

I took her money when she put gas in that fancy foreign car. She's lucky she don't put that thing in a ditch. No business driving a car like that in this part of the country in winter.

I saw her looking at rat poison. Now, what's a girl like Jess Kellerman doing looking at rat poison. Make you wonder about the stories you heard, way back when.

Managing to escape from the market without further encounter was a blessing from heaven. For once in my life, I was thankful for the creepy old man who ran the store and never spoke to his customers. Unfortunately, the moment I was outside, a woman with a voice like a sick raven started screeching at me from across the street. I squinted through the biting wind, saw Mindy Peters waving frantically, and dropped my three plastic bags of canned and frozen food plus a freshly-wrapped package of steaks in the trunk. By the time I'd waited for three pickups and a semi-truck to pass by so I could cross the street my toes were already going numb. Mindy held the door for me and I ducked into a paradise of warmth and sweet aromas.

No matter how deep a breath I took, I'd never get my fill. "In all my life I've never been in a place that smelled better."

Mindy waved my words away and bounced around the corner on her toes. There was an old saying about never trusting a skinny cook, but it made sense to me that this woman was as slight as a rail. No amount of buttercream frosting and chocolate chip cookies could overwhelm the number of calories required to move as much as she did. We'd grown up together, her being only a year behind me in school, and she hadn't changed in the least. As a child, she scampered from one place to another, her knees bobbed up and down under her desk in rapid-fire rhythm, her fingers tapped endlessly against the desktops and lunch tables and, when she was walking the halls, against the backs of the books she clutched to her chest. Even her hair was an untamable mass of golden curls that constantly bounced and swayed and danced around her long, narrow face.

"I was going to call you, but then I saw your car at the market, and I thought it would be even better to catch you in person. Look." She plucked three plastic-covered sheets of paper from a rack beside the cash register and spread them on the countertop. "I just printed these off the internet. I think they're about the prettiest things I've ever seen."

On each page was a large picture of a cake made to look like a polished stone. One cake appeared to have a crack along the side, filled with sparkling purple crystals like a geode. The second had the perfect adjacent circles of a Petoskey stone. The third looked exactly like black marble. "They're beautiful," I told her.

She pressed her hands together over her heart and tapped her fingers together. "I know, right? I've been wanting to make one just forever." Then she dashed away through a swinging door and left me standing in front of a glass case full of scones and donuts. My stomach rumbled a reproach for skipping breakfast. Quick as Mindy disappeared, she was back. "Look, I have these green candies. I could use those to make that crystal-like illusion. Or if you want the others, I can do that too."

It dawned on me what she was suggesting, and I bit my lip, trying to think of way to decline politely. "Wow, they really are extraordinary, but I'm not sure my dad would—"

"Your dad?" She threw her head back and laughed sending her curls into a chaotic fit of springiness. "Heavens to betsy, Jess, I'd no sooner bake a cake like this for your father than I'd take the time to make it for my dog, Pete." With the back of her hand, she brushed a tear away from her left eye. "Heavens, no. I already got your daddy's cake all done. It's over here."

Mindy lifted a rectangular cardboard box from under the counter and opened it for me to see. White frosting on white cake. Blue letters spelled out Happy Birthday! As plain and simple a cake as a person could make.

I blew out a sigh of relief. "It's perfect. Thank you."

Without acknowledging my thanks, she closed the lid and leaned both hands on the counter. "But those other cakes, you drove here, right? That car's not a rental, surely."

"That's right."

"If I made one of those cakes, you could take it back to LA and, I don't know, show it to someone. Get them to taste it. You know they'd love it. My cakes are the best you've ever tasted. Admit it."

"Gladly." I'd have liked to taste one just then. Once I'd become aware of my hunger, it drove me to distraction. "If I could pick this whole place up and move it to my neighborhood, I gladly would."

"So you'll buy one? It'll be kind of pricey. That's a lot of work, and the ingredients for something like that don't come cheap, but I promise it'll be the best."

Standing there, blinking stupidly, I couldn't think of a thing to say. She wanted me to buy an expensive cake and drive it to California and, then what? Drop it off at some random television producer's house and hope they mentioned her in their next show? What would happen after that? Everyone in the county already bought their cakes from Mindy. It's not like she could get more business. There were no more customers to attract. Unless...

"You're looking at me like a got a worm crawling out of my forehead."

Her words jolted me as if I'd been doused with ice water. "I'm sorry. I... do you..." The idea was ludicrous. She'd think I lost my mind. Maybe I had. Coming at the topic from the side would make it seem slightly less crazy that going full-frontal. Nervous laughter popped out of me before I could get control. "What do you want, really?"

A line formed between Mindy's scant brows. Curls bobbed around her shoulders when she shook her head. "I just wanted to show off my cakes."

"No, there's more. Everyone wants more than that. I mean, really and truly, deep down, biggest, wildest dream that you never talk about. What do you want? When I was a kid, I wanted to be a movie star, and everyone said that was the stupidest thing they ever heard, but who's stupid now, right? So, I swear to God, I'm not going to laugh at you."

Stillness descended. For the first time in all those years of acquaintance I saw Mindy settle still and silent as the grave. Only her long-lashed eyelids moved, a quick fluttering shadow against her pale cheeks.

"Do you want more people to shop here? Do you want to charge more for fancy cakes? What do you really want?"

"I want out of this town. If I have to spend the rest of my life here I'm gonna shrivel up and die before I turn thirty, and we both know it ain't all that far away."

"Me taking a cake to LA isn't going to get you out of here."

She looked down at her feet. Her knees bent, one after the other in quick succession. It was as if she was trying to run away but couldn't quite find the strength to pick her feet up and go. "Come with me when I go."

Her head jerked up, wide eyes locked on me. "What?"

"Come with me. LA is stupid expensive, and it's lonely as hell. Eight million people standing elbow-to-elbow and none of them really knows any of the others. Everyone wants to be seen with you, but know one cares who you are. You can live with me and keep me company until you make a name for yourself and figure out what your next move will be."

The light sparkled on her tears. "Why would you do that for me?"

Because I'm a selfish ass and I'm never coming back here again, but as much as this was hell for me, it's also who I am. You're part of this place and if you come with me, I might be able to convince myself I didn't bail on everything that made me who I am.

That's what I should have said, but I just shrugged and laughed and made a joke. "I guess I'm a saint and you'll owe me forever."

"I will, Jess. If you do this for me, I swear to God I'll be your slave for life."

"You've got a whole business, a house, all your stuff. I'm leaving in two days."

"I'll be ready. I'll walk away from all of it. God in heaven, I'm sorry for my sins, but I'd sell my soul if it would get me out of this town."

I knew exactly how she felt.