Part 1

The map arrived on a Tuesday, folded inside an envelope addressed to my mother. She had been dead for three months, and I had not yet learned how to stop looking for her handwriting in the post.

I was clearing her apartment above the bakery when I found it. The envelope bore no return address. Inside was a child's drawing of our town: a crooked blue river, a bridge made of six pencil lines, a red square labeled LIBRARY, and a green circle around the bakery.

At the bottom, in careful letters, someone had written: PLEASE TELL JUNE I FOUND IT.

My mother's name was June. Mine is Mara Bell. I had come home from Portland to sort her things and sell the building, a task my younger brother had described as practical and my mother's oldest friend had described as premature.

I turned the map over. On the back was a list: one shell, two buttons, a silver bird, a key with no door.

The bakery bell rang downstairs. A girl stood outside the locked glass door, holding a sketchbook against her chest. She looked about nine, with dark curls escaping a wool hat. Beside her was a man in a weathered green coat.

I opened the door. “We're closed.”

The girl looked past me toward the stairs. “Is June here?”

My answer caught in my throat. The man placed a hand on the girl's shoulder, not restraining her, just letting her know he was there.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “June was my mother. She died in January.”

The girl stared at me. “But she said she'd write.”

The man introduced himself as Theo Price. His niece, Ivy, had spent last summer in town while he repaired the old boathouse. My mother had met her at the library, where Ivy attended an art program. They had begun exchanging maps of small places: the best bench for watching rain, the corner where the first crocuses appeared, a step behind the bakery that stayed warm in the sun.

“I thought June had moved,” Theo said. “We only just came back.”

I held out the map. “She didn't get to see this. I found it upstairs.”

Ivy took it and traced the green circle. “I found the bird. She wanted me to find it before they take the bakery away.”

I had signed a preliminary sale agreement the previous week. The buyer planned to convert the ground floor into offices. The sale would not be final for another month, but the sign in the window already said UNDER OFFER.

“What bird?” I asked.

Ivy opened the sketchbook. On one page she had drawn a small metal bird with a bent wing and a round eye. Beneath it was an arrow pointing toward the river.

“June said it belonged to someone who didn't have a home,” she said. “And if I found it, we could find the door.”

Theo gave me an apologetic look. “They were always making up stories.”

I thought of the key with no door. My mother had owned a drawer full of keys, none labeled. My brother had already told me to throw them away.

“Where did you find the bird?” I asked.

“In the wall by the boathouse. But I put it back. June said not to take things until you knew who they belonged to.”

The river ran two blocks behind the bakery. I had not walked there since the funeral. I had avoided the familiar places because I knew exactly where my mother should have been standing in each of them.

I looked at the sale sign, at the child holding her sketchbook, and at the staircase still crowded with boxes.

“Can you show me?” I asked.

Ivy nodded. Theo hesitated only long enough to lock his bicycle to the rail. Together we walked toward the river, while the map fluttered in Ivy's hand and the green circle over the bakery slowly softened in the rain.