“It reproduces like rabbits,” she would solemnly inform the teenage girls at church, with no clear notion of what that meant or why it made the girls conceal little smiles. Kitty devoted hours of her waning summer vacation to attacking the milkweed that grew riotously throughout the tangle. In the meadow behind the house grew a tangle of goldenrod, Queen Anne’s lace, and blue chicory.

On summer nights of slashing rain and violet-tinged lightning she declared it their “eerie eyrie,” savoring equally the homophone. Church and parsonage alike perched at the top of a sharply twisting driveway on the south side of Shibboleth, New York, so high up over the town that Kitty called it their “eyrie,” savoring the strange word. A strip of gravel bordered by hydrangeas separated the house from the church, which was covered with the same white wooden siding but had no shutters at all its splash of color was a pair of bright red doors out front. Kitty lived in a parsonage with white wooden siding and big green shutters.

What is mid afternoon