WHEN Mabel vanished Cora became a stray. Eleven years old, ten years, thereabouts—there was no one now to tell for sure. In Cora’s shock, the world drained to gray impressions. The first color to return was the simmering brown-red of the soil in her family’s plot. It reawakened her to people and things, and she decided to hold on to her stake, even though she was young and small and had nobody to look after her anymore.
