Summary

In “Sister” (37), a seven-year-old narrator explains that her five-year-old sister is sick with mono and staying at her Aunt Nell's house in the bedroom their great-grandmother died in. The narrator worries the room is haunted. She brings June bug shells to her sister to make her feel better and prays for her to come home. She asks Aunt Nell about the night her sister was born, and Aunt Nell tells her about burying her sister's afterbirth in the yard. As she hears the story, the narrator remembers being there and carefully laying rocks down on top of the afterbirth.

In “An Unspoken” (41), an older man named Hal Parker visits his neighbor, a younger man named Corey Lane, to ask him to keep his dog, Major, out of Hal's wife's hydrangea bushes. Corey apologizes. The narrator explains that when Corey's parents, Fred...