Page 27 of Things You Save in a Fire

I stepped back when she released me.

“You made it,” she said then, raising her one good eye to take me in.

“Nice eye patch,” I said.

She touched it, like she’d forgotten it was there, then smiled as if I’d embarrassed her. “A friend made it for me,” she said. Her fingernails had clay under them, as always, and she had a paintbrush tucked behind her ear.

“You found your way okay?” she asked.

“I always do.”

“Thank you for coming, Cassie.”

I shrugged. “There wasn’t really a choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” she said. She half-turned to lead me inside. “Can I help you with your bag?”

The idea was almost funny, as I watched her work her way back up the two little steps. “I don’t think you can,” I said.

Inside, the house was tiny—and not just because everything’s bigger in Texas.

Just past the door was a living room barely big enough for a love seatand two chairs in front of a stone hearth. Beyond that was a kitchen area with a farmhouse table. That was it. Past the kitchen door, out back, I could see a garden, and beyond that, the water. From the living room, a crooked little eighteenth-century staircase crossed in front of a window, up to the second floor. There didn’t seem to be a right angle in the whole place, and the wind outside made the house creak like a ship.

“This place is like a dollhouse,” I said.

She smiled like I’d offered a compliment. “Isn’t it?”

Nothing about any of this felt real. I felt like a live person who’d just showed up in a Disney cartoon.

Yet here I was.

“Can I fix you a snack?” she asked, almost like I was a kid just home from school. She assessed my state. “Or get you a drink? Or would you rather just unload your things and get settled?”

No, she could not fix me a snack. What was I, twelve? “I’ll take my stuff up,” I said.

“My bedroom and studio are the next floor up,” she said, “and the whole attic is yours. It has its own bath, so you’ll have everything you need.”

“Is it always this windy?” I asked.

“Always,” Diana said, like it was a selling point. “Because we’re out here on the jetty. We’re not just near the water, we’re on it.”

I looked around. “This place must be two hundred years old.”

She nodded. “Two hundred and fifty. A fisherman named Samuel McKee built it. He and his wife, Chastity, raised eight children here.”

“There’s some irony there.”

“There are stains on the kitchen floor where they used to pickle the fish.”

Off to the side was a porch the length of the building that Diana used for a pottery studio and shop. She had made up a profession for herself: She was a dishmaker. It wasn’t a real category, and I’d spent my life explaining it when people said, “Huh?” But here in the house, it seemed plenty real. She made dishes and cups and saucers—threw them on theceramics wheel, then hand-painted them with glaze and fired them. She specialized in gardens and animals, bright colors and polka dots. She made whole sets. And the shop was bright and cheery like the dishes. She sold other fun kitchen items to round out the selection—tea towels and aprons and napkins—all in charming patterns and fabrics.

“It’s a terrible living,” she told me once, “but it’s fun.”

I could tell it was fun. Just from looking.

“How did you find this place?”

“Oh,” she said, glancing out the window, “it belonged to Wallace.”

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