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with shock as a soft voice sounded just at her shoulder. Herb’s sister Holly stood there with a big grin and one eloquently arched eyebrow. She wore a red wool suit with a Christmas wreath of diamonds, rubies, and emeralds on the lapel.
“I was straightening my seams,” Anne insisted, striving for dignity even though, the one time she’d met Holly, she’d liked her immediately.
Holly’s glance whisked up and down Anne’s figure. “They’re straight as rulers, Anne. But let me warn you, my mother is a rat terrier disguised as a human. If she can get you by the throat, she’ll shake you till you’re dead, so don’t let her take hold. And don’t look so shocked. I’ve had to live with the woman all my life, remember.” Holly linked her arm through Anne’s. “You’re the first woman my brother has dared to bring home, did you know that? I can tell he loves you, so I would be hugely disappointed if you let the old battle-ax beat you down.”
“I love Herb, too,” Anne whispered as they descended the stairs.
“Chin up, then,” Holly ordered.
The living room swept across the entire side of the house, with a fireplace at one end and, at the other end, windows full of sky and sea in daytime but draped with heavy velvet now. Enthroned in a wing chair by the fire sat Herb’s mother, in a white wool dress and pearls. She looked like she was chewing nails.
Anne smiled tremulously. “Hello.”
    “Would you like a cup of tea, Mrs. Wheelwright?”
    “What?” It was with effort that Nona abandoned her memories. Where was she?
    She was still in the living room of the Nantucket house, but in the present, or what other people thought of as the present. After the war, Holly had married and moved to Montana, where she and her husband raised cattle, horses, and several unruly children. Holly had happily given up all claims to the Nantucket property long ago. She and her family never enjoyed coming east. Nona and Herb had visited them several times over the years, impressed by the spacious, bustling, western life Holly had chosen for herself.
    Now Holly was dead. She’d died—my goodness—fifteen years ago. Holly’s husband had died not long after, and their children remainedin the area where they’d grown up. Nona seldom saw them, but they were dutiful in sending cards on her birthday. Nona kept a birthday book and always remembered to send them birthday cards, too.
    And Nona’s beloved husband, Herb, was dead. He had passed away five years ago.
    But Nona wouldn’t allow herself to brood. She was reasonably fit, active, and lucid, and she was not alone. She had Charlotte’s engaging company, and Glorious to brighten her life and take care of her.
    Any moment now her family— her family—her children and their children and all their noise and turbulence and demands and excitements—would scatter into this house like a flock of gabbling geese, and she would have no more time for little voyages into the past.
    Nona had to think of her family, had to think of their comfort and appetites and emotions. She had to focus.
    “Yes.” Her voice, not so often used these days, was dry and croaking. To her Jamaican housekeeper, she said, “Yes, please, Glorious.”
    At that moment the telephone rang and, as Glorious hurried off to answer, Nona heard the first automobile pull into the drive.

Three
    H elen decided she wouldn’t make coffee. She was trying to figure out, without resorting to a visit to her doctor, what was causing her headaches. They troubled her almost daily now, sometimes operating with a fierce viselike action, squeezing her temples, but usually they were mild, weighing down her skull with a kind of bovine heaviness. Today she would go without caffeine and see if that helped.
    Slipping a silk wrapper over her nightgown, she padded barefoot down the hall, down the stairs, and through the quiet house into the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of orange juice and sipped it standing at the kitchen sink,