She took it from him. She held it for a second against her chest, and I saw her see the letters on the bottom, HESPER V., and I saw her remember the same summer I was remembering.
"Thank you," she said to him. Then, after what seemed like real effort: "Dashiell. I apologize for what I wrote."
"It's okay," he said, though it wasn't, quite, and all of us knew it.
"Hesper, will you take Dashiell around back and show him the..." She stopped. "Show him the yard. I'd like to speak to Sela alone."
Hesper looked at her mother for a long moment. Then she took Dashiell's hand, right there in front of her, and led him around the side of the house, past the trash bins and the camera under the eave, and I heard the side gate squeak, just like she'd said it would.
Ottoline let me in.
I hadn't been inside 14 Larkspur in five years. It was very clean. It had always been very clean. But there was something different about it, something I couldn't put my finger on until I'd been standing in the front hall for a while, and then I realized: it was the smell. Under the lemon of the furniture polish, faint, there was the cool, damp, sweet-sour smell of laundry that hasn't quite dried.
"The basement," she said, seeing me notice. "I've tried a dehumidifier. It's not enough."