Essie felt like that now: dead, but somehow, walking—playing, smiling, cooking, picking, clapping, shouting, singing, and, in the nighttime, lying down—just like a living person, so all were fooled. Or maybe none were because the dead recognized one another, in scent if not in sight. She wondered then what Isaiah might see, if the reason they were no longer friend-friends wasn’t because Amos occupied all her time and kept her fastened to the clearing, but because the living and the dead could never mix without some grave omen coming to pass.
