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with its yellowed foundations, its tattered shrubs, the porch pillars rotting from the bottom up. In the front seat, her great-grandfather placed his hearing aid in his ear, adjusted a button, and winced. Duncan slammed the tailgate on the last of the mattresses and climbed into the truck cab. He turned on the headlights, coloring the gray and white scene in front of him-Justine being passed from hand to hand down a row of neighbors in their nightclothes. "Ho, Justine," he called softly. Of course she couldn't hear. He had to beep the horn. Then everybody jumped and screeched and a window lit up half a block down, but Justine only gave him a wave and headed for the car, unsurprised, because wasn't he always having to honk for her? She was late for everything, though she started out the earliest and the fastest and the most impatient. She was always leaving places the same way, calling scraps of goodbyes and then running, flying, bearing some shaking plant or parcel or covered dish, out of breath and laughing at herself, clutching her hat to her head as she sped along.
       At nine o'clock in the morning, Red Emma Borden was wiping the counter in the Caro Mill Diner when these four unfamiliar people walked in-a man and wife, a teenaged daughter and a very ancient gentleman. Red Emma was about to have a cigarette (she'd been on her feet since four) and she wasn't eager to wait on anyone else. Still, it was nice to see some new faces. She had been born and raised and married and widowed in this town and she was sick of everybody in it. So she puffed up her orange curls, tugged her uniform down, and reached for the order pad. Meanwhile the strangers were trying to find acceptable seats, which was not all that easy to do. Two of the counter stools were broken, just topless aluminum pedestals, and another would tip you off as soon as you tried to perch upon it. They had to cluster at one end down near the exhaust fan. Even then, the old gentleman had a long tail of cotton batting dangling out from under him. But none of them made any complaint; they just folded their arms and waited for her behind four pairs of blue, blue eyes. "Well, now," said Red Emma, slapping down cracked plastic menu cards. "What you going to have?"
       She addressed the woman first-a skin-and-bones lady wearing a hat. But it was the husband who answered. "Speedy here will have everything in the kitchen," he said.
       "Speedy! I barely inched along," the woman said.
       "I thought you had entered the Indy five hundred. And your seat belt flopping out the door, after I took all that time installing it for you-"
       "I will take coffee and three fried eggs," the woman told Red Emma.
       "Sunny side up. And hotcakes, link sausages, and orange juice. And something salty, a sack of potato chips. Grandfather? Meg?"
       Red Emma feared she would be cooking all morning, but it turned out the others just wanted coffee. They had the dazed, rumpled look of people who had been traveling. Only the woman seemed to care to talk. "My name is Justine," she said, "and this is my husband, Duncan. Our Grandfather Peck and our daughter Meg. Do you have the keys?"
       "How's that?"
       "We were told to stop here and pick up the keys for Mr. Parkinson's house."
       "Oh yes," said Red Emma. She would never have supposed that these were the people for Ned Parkinson's house-a tacky little place next to the electric shop. Particularly not the old gentleman. "Well, he did say somebody might be by," she said. "Have you took a good look at it yet?"
       "Duncan has. He chose it," said Justine. "You haven't told us your name."
       "Why, I'm Red Emma Borden."
       "Do you work here all the time?"
       "Mornings I do."
       "Because I like to eat in diners. I expect we'll run into you often."
       "Maybe so," said Red Emma, breaking eggs onto the grill. "But if you come after noon it'll be my late husband's cousin, Black Emma Borden. They call her