PROLOGUE

After it had been raining almost all of July, August finally brought warm, dry weather. “Sunshine,” the man on the radio said, and Megan whis- pered the word, because the sound pleased her. Sunshine. That was what her mother called her, when it was a good day and her voice was a tender singsong. Megan sat in front of the door of the house, under the canopy where the colorful flowers grew, and held the baby-bottle filled with sweet tea. There were flapjacks and slices of discolored brown apple on a plate. The cackling of the chickens wafted above; now and then the nag Sam snorted when the flies annoyed him too much. Far away, the chug- ging of a tractor rose into the immeasurable, dazzling blue sky. A gust of wind blew the hot air away from the veranda and cooled the girl’s sweat- ing body a little.

 

The woman in the car looked at the house. Behind the sunglasses her face was blurred by a square of glistening light. When the man started the engine, she rolled down the window and lifted her hand in a tentative wave. But then the car started moving, rode over the empty ochre- colored ground and disappeared behind the trees that lined the dry ditch. When the engine noise died down and the dust settled, the boy’s crying rose from inside the house, at first whimpering, questioning, finally with the full volume and strength a half-year old is capable of. Megan listened carefully for a while, waiting to see if someone would come and take care

of the annoying creature, but nobody came. All she could hear was the careless flock of chickens and the humming of the tractor, quieter than a bumble-bee.

 

Then the baby stopped crying. He was probably lying there, staring at the ceiling, eyes as large as Daddy’s coat buttons, his face gone all red and more spotted than the skin of the cat. Tobey. A noisemaker and a glutton when he wasn’t sleeping. Toto. “Little Brother,” Mom always said when Megan looked at him and wished someone would stuff him into the trash, along with the stinky diaper and the rattle—which belonged to her—and the pink blanket she had slept on until he showed up.

 

Megan put down the baby bottle, turned to the side, put her hands on the wooden planks and pushed herself up. She waited until she no longer wobbled, then she moved toward the front door, which was open like all the other doors and windows of the house. She heard the wailing of the creature, who couldn’t do anything for himself except make noise. He couldn’t walk; he couldn’t hold a spoon or a bottle; and he couldn’t even clap his hands. Nevertheless, he spent much more time with Mommy than her, Megan, Meggie, Sweetie, who no longer had to be carried around and constantly fed, who could wash her own hands and use the toilet if someone sat her on it.

 

When she reached the door, something held Megan back. She turned around but there was no one there. Then, while trying to cross the threshold, she felt the slight pressure of the strap around the upper part of her body, covered with a thin camisole. She took a step back and saw the rope that hung from the center of her back, which ran in a curved line starting at the floor boards and ending at one of the railing posts. Megan looked at the knot in the rope, ran her fingers over the straps, and finally sat down. In her small, warm head thoughts circled; short, simple ques- tions, the way they were posed in the books her mother read to her from before she went to sleep sometimes. Where do fish sleep when they are tired? What does the sun do at night? She pulled on the leash. Can a girl turn into a dog the way a frog can turn into a prince? She still had all her fingers on her hands. Her feet had not turned into paws.

Megan looked over the place where the sun had extinguished every- thing: the stones, the potholes, the tire tracks. It was quiet. The chickens were dozing somewhere in the shadows, Sam had toddled off to the other end of the pasture where a few trees stood. Then, as if she had called to him, the dog appeared.

 

“Wellie,” Megan said softly. She got up and walked a few paces toward the sun-drenched steps of the veranda, until the rope was stretched tight. The Border collie heard her, wagged his tail and wanted to come to her, but the chain attached to the wall of the barn was holding him back. He tugged at it and barked, and after a while he sat down despite the heat that covered the ground with a layer of shimmering air.

“Wellie,” Megan said again, a little louder than before. The useless crea- ture in the house began to cry again, and now Megan was crying too.