chair and asked how she knew it was a chair. When she finally was able to take in that I could not see the things she saw, she said kindly that perhaps seeing the wind made it hard for me to see people properly. I answered indulgently that it might be so, perceiving that her ability seemed as commonplace to her as my ability to see odd things was to me. Of the two abilities, however, Rose’s seemed infinitely more interesting and useful.
Mama had changed since the birth of Rose. All of her moodiness and the last of the stiffness and melancholy of bereavement had been vanquished. She seemed to me both more contented and more steady of temperament than I had ever known her to be, though occasionally she called me in to her at night to tell me with a strange fierce intensity, ‘You are both my daughters.’
‘We are true sisters,’ I would agree, and she would give a brittle laugh as if relieved by my reply. It puzzled me very much that she seemed to need reassurance about my affection for Rose, which would have been apparent to a blind man. In truth I had never for a moment thought of her as anything but my beloved little sister. That the blood of our fathers differed was nothing to me and I told Mama so. Her face softened, revealing a complicated meld of grief and regret and triumph. I found myself wondering if it was concern for Rose that motivated these interrogations, or her own guilt that she did not love her second daughter in the same passionate, possessive way she loved her first. Her love for my little sister seemed to me as extravagant and light and lacking in substance as a great tub of froth, and perhaps she felt it to be so too, and wished to know that someone loved Rose more sincerely. If I was right, then she must have been reassured by my answers.
By the time I turned eighteen and Rose six, Mama began to exhibit some of the strangeness of the days after my father’s death. She took to clutching at my hand and pressing it to her cheek, her eyes devouring my face as if she thought I would vanish. She sometimes muttered to herself in a foreign language, even though she was no foreigner, and her habit of focusing on some inconsequential thing she had seen or heard became more pronounced. Once I saw her stare transfixed at a daffodil pushing up through the earth at the foot of one of the ghost trees, and another time she hushed me savagely so that she could listen to a rare breeze soughing through their branches. Another time she watched the passing of one of the velvet nomads with an expression of enchantment mingled with despair. Once I saw her slap the face of a fish monger in Dusty Town because he offered a certain sort of fish, but a moment later she had given him a golden coin to pay for a different fish and his goodwill. She left him smiling toothily after her, one clay cheek still red with the small imprint of her hand.
Ernst did not notice her strangeness, for although he adored Mama as much as ever, it seemed to me that he did not see her so much as the vision he had fallen in love with, and that was unchanging. Nor did Reynaldo notice it whenever he was home. He was now a sturdy youth and attended boarding school during the week. Silk, who might have had a more subtle and discerning eye, had been some years abroad, completing his studies.
One evening, as we came arm in arm to the dining room to find we were the first down, I asked Rose what she saw when she looked at Mama. It had occurred to me that my little sister’s perceptive vision might give me some clue about the reason for Mama’s oddness of late. Rose answered that Mama was gathering her courage. I was so startled by the kindness and pity in Rose’s eyes that I failed to ask what she had meant.
Then one afternoon, Mama came home from a trip with my stepfather to announce that we were moving again. She had found the perfect place: an apartment that faced onto a park in a larger and more sophisticated town. Relieved that we were not to change countries again, for I now thought of