My dad had been trying to get me to go over and talk to her ever since he’d found her yearbook picture that I had cut out and hidden under a loose tile in the bathroom. And there was the time he caught me watching her sunbathe up on the roof of her house with this toy space telescope he had bought me. She undid her polka-dot green swimsuit top so her back could get tanned and smoked straight through a pack of cigarettes, like she was a real woman, capable of unspeakable things.