And hadn’t Gramma shown Lucy how special her long blue-black-purple skirt could be? There was that time in the front yard, in winter (the most special, secret time, when Lucy swore on her heart and hoped to die that she wouldn’t tell Mother or Daddy what she’d seen), and the other time, when Lucy had scooted along the floor while Gramma was napping she’d lifted up the hem of the night skirt and curled up in a little ball under the heavy fabric.
As she made her way down the stairs in the darkness of evening toward Gramma’s room, Lucy remembered how she had been able to see only a faint haze of light, like trying to look through the stacks of screen windows resting against the house, the day Daddy changed the windows in early summer. But the more she’d looked, the better she could see—only
