58.

1991.

“This is unacceptable,” Grandma Pencil said. “I should file criminal charges.”

“Of course you should,” McKenna said. “It’s a robbery. It needs to be reported.”

Grandma stood on the hearth, studying the empty space on her fireplace mantle. When she looked at McKenna, her eyes pulsed with rage. “Don’t get smart with me,” she spat. “I won’t have two traitors in my family.”

She stepped down, clumsy in her Adidas sneakers. She’d purchased new shoes two days earlier because her other pair vanished. Now, her Pope John Paul I Commemorative Plate, made of porcelain and inlaid with gold, was missing.

The week before, it was an antique Royal Bonn vase. The week before that, the framed photograph of herself with her father, standing at Victoria Falls. This one particularly stung. Once Grandma realized that it was gone—really gone, not coming back—she had wept on the sofa for nearly an hour. McKenna comforted her, reassured her that it had just been misplaced, that it would turn up eventually.

Grandma had composed herself, and then telephoned Murray. “That beast,” she said, “is eating my personal property. Tell her I will be watching. I won’t sleep. I lived on two hours a night for four years. I will catch her, and when I do, I will not hesitate to use force.”

What ever Murray told her had placated her for the moment. A few days passed, and she began to question her own perceptions. “Was that the original photograph? I think it was a copy, wasn’t it?” The next day: “I wouldn’t have kept such an important picture on the end table, would I?”

“There are bowls of food everywhere,” McKenna agreed. “I don’t think you would have risked getting crumbs on the original.”

“But it was out here, wasn’t it?”

“There’s a lot of pictures in this room, Grandma. Honestly, I couldn’t say.”

Then came the commemorative plate. Afterward, Grandma stayed awake for three full nights. She sat in the recliner, motionless, shrouded in darkness, waiting for an invader who never arrived. During the day, she slept like a log.

This was the next phase of Audrey’s war. This was the retaliation Grandma had brought upon herself after Misty died.

It would continue for nearly four years. Her good silver. A brooch. Her toaster. Her wedding dress, dragged downstairs from its box in the attic—the empty box left boldly on the kitchen table. On more than one occasion, all the snack bowls disappeared. Family photo albums. The solid silver rosary, a gift from the nuns.

Not all at once. It followed no pattern. No way of predicting it. There were gaps—days, weeks, even months would pass. But it always started again. At first, Grandma almost lost her mind. Her daughter had died. She’d been exiled from her daughter’s house. Granddaughter McKenna had moved into the spare bedroom and now they shared bathroom, refrigerator, TV, everything. Grandma became jittery. She couldn’t keep food down. She took lots of hot baths and stopped drinking her beloved tea. McKenna would come into the kitchen to find Grandma supine on the floor, hands clasped in prayer, her face lined with anxiety and sorrow. The nuns visited. They cooked dinner, led her in hymns, told her to tough it out. They assured her that nothing the monster ate could affect her core self, her spiritual self.

McKenna also tried to help. She held Grandma. Prayed with her. Voluntarily stayed awake all night and watched the house. She told Grandma she’d reported the robberies and that the house was now under police surveillance. If Audrey was the perpetrator, McKenna said, she would be caught. She would be punished. “But honestly, Grandma,” McKenna said, “I don’t think even Audrey would be capable of this.”

The police never caught her. Nobody did. Nobody could prove Audrey had anything to do with it. Doors and windows never showed signs of forced entry. Footprints in the snow were too numerous and jumbled. Murray insisted again and again that Audrey didn’t leave the house at night—“For Pete’s sake, she’s fourteen!” He even sent big, strong Toby to stay with Grandma and McKenna for a week. It didn’t help: During his visit as a guardian on the sofa, Grandma’s coffeemaker vanished.

Grandma sunk so low as to suspect McKenna. “This all started right after you moved in!” she screamed. “Why don’t you go? You bring trouble. Get out!”

After a heated discussion, during which Grandma collapsed in tears on the bathroom floor, McKenna said, “I forgive you, Grams.” They hugged. McKenna smiled.