I glanced at the post as if I might see him there, then back at her. She wasn’t making sense — not that anyone claiming that my uncle was dead would have made sense to me. Had he been seriously ill and waiting till I got here to tell me?

Then I got a creepy feeling. Half ashes. “Was there a fire?”

“Of course there was a fire,” she replied, stomping up the steps and into the house.

I followed her, images from my dream flickering through my mind. “Were other people there? Were there kids my age? Did someone deliberately set the fire?”

“You ask too many questions, Joanna.”

“Anna,” I corrected quietly.

“What?” She spun around, and I stepped back.

She was a head taller than I, and her hands, though worn, were still powerful, like those of a woman who had spent her life working a farm. I had no problem imagining her snapping the necks of chickens before throwing them in a boiling pot.

“I’m Anna, Anna O’Neill Kirkpatrick. Joanna was my mother,” I said. “She’s dead, remember?”

“Despite what William says, I remember everything that I want to.”

She strode through the dining room. I trailed her, and two kitties trailed me.

“Why aren’t you in Baltimore?” Aunt Iris asked, making it clear she now knew who I was.

“Uncle Will invited me. He said there were some family things he wanted to talk about.”

I saw the color wash up the back of her neck. She shoved the swinging door between the dining room and kitchen so hard, it slammed against the kitchen wall. “He wanted to talk about me. He thinks I’m out of my mind. He thinks I should be committed to the crazy-people place.”

I caught the door as it bounced back at me. The two cats slinked away.

“I’ve been there,” Iris went on, “and I just can’t get along with those people. They’re strange.”