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ready, on the off chance some senator or congressman should call and want a place for the weekend. The quarters were given to Anna with the caveat that if somebody important were to want them she'd be bumped out to share space with the seven-year-old in a bed shaped like a racecar.
    Since that had yet to happen, Anna was pleased enough with her living arrangements. In the second tier, the superintendent's quarters took up two of the old casemates. Like the office, inside it was square, modern and white. To either side of a comfortable living-room-cum-kitchen were two large bedrooms, each with two sets of bunk beds and a small bath.
    What elevated it from adequate to grand was the "porch." The prefabricated box that formed the living space took less than half the width of the fort's second deck. The other half was original, with broad, high openings framing views of the Gulf, the lighthouse on Loggerhead Key and every sunset.
    Only two picnic tables sat between Anna's front door and an uninterrupted view to the end of the world.
    "I'm home," she called as she opened the door to her apartment and banged her snorkel and fins past the screen. Theoretically she was supposed to confine herself to the bunkroom on the left, but she'd opened the door to its mirror image on the other side of the kitchen to make the place larger and more interesting. It had yet to get her forgiven for denying access to the outdoors.
    "I'm home. It's me. Come out," she called hopefully. Just as she was beginning to believe he'd reconsidered her reprieve and decided to extend her punishment, Piedmont came trotting out of the forbidden suite, his yellow-ringed tail held high, the end curved just enough to be stylish.
    An amber-eyed yellow tiger, found treed by a Texas flash flood, Piedmont probably hadn't a drop of Siamese blood in his veins, but he had always been extraordinarily vocal. As he trotted over to Anna's feet he sounded so much like a fussy old man carping about his day that she laughed and picked him up to rub all the right places under his chin.
    She'd wondered whether it was a kindness to drag him to the middle of the ocean but, once the trauma of cat travel was over, she'd congratulated herself every day on the wisdom of her decision. With a cat in it, a home was never empty. Echoes, like mice, were frightened from the corners, and loneliness, though still possible, had blunter teeth.
    Mutual admiration firmly established, Anna carried the cat over to the sofa. The living-room-kitchen area was rectangular, with stove, refrigerator and sink along the wall overlooking the parade ground. The "living room" was a chair, couch and coffee table arranged before a huge picture window onto the shaded brick of the casemate and the ragged-edged brick "window" with a view of Loggerhead. The furniture was a cut above standard issue-this was, after all, the Superintendent's quarters-made of light-colored wood with white canvas cushions. On the low coffee table was Anna's promised loot: letters from home and the much-discussed box from her sister, Molly.
    Unable to enjoy anything till sweat, salt and sand had been rinsed off, Anna showered, slipped on a short rayon dress-a trick she'd learned living through Mississippi summers-and sat on the sofa with Piedmont at one elbow and a glass of iced tea on the end table at the other.
    Unopened boxes. Packages that came through the mail. Parcels wrapped in brown paper. She'd always loved them. For a few seconds she just sat enjoying the anticipation. Piedmont meowed and butted her in the ribs, then walked prickly-pawed across her lap, slinking his fat tail beneath her chin.
    "You think there's catnip treats in there for you?" she asked, and he meowed again. "Okay. We open it." From long-standing love, she and Piedmont pretended to understand one another's language. After so many years together, maybe they did.
    Molly was a belt-and-suspenders sort of woman and had bound the package round with fiber strapping tape