Kennet peered at the photograph of seven women, posed in the arched entryway of a flat-topped building. All dressed in identical black dresses with white aprons, all standing sideways with a hand tucked into the apron’s pocket. Marta was at the center of the line, her smile the widest and most welcoming. Her shoulder thrust a hair forward. Her chin lifted a tad more.

“It was strict as boarding school,” Marta said. “Your skirt couldn’t be more than eight inches off the floor. Black stockings at all times, even in the roasting summer. No chewing gum. No cigarettes. No makeup. Hair in a net. Yes sir, no sir, the customer is always right, sir. Lights out at ten-thirty.”

“Did you like it?”

Marta stubbed out her cigarette. “I liked that I wasn’t afraid to try. I liked eighteen dollars and fifty cents a month, plus room and board. That was a bloody fortune, and I sent a lot of it home to Mum. I liked the other girls. I liked some of the regulars—railroad men and salesmen we got to know by name. And I liked Texas for a while, until I realized Texas wasn’t for me at all.”

She told him about the glaring sun and the incessant wind. How it blew your thoughts into a scramble. How it shortened your fuse, tried your patience and occasionally made you feel sad when you had no reason to be.

“How long did you stay?” Kennet asked.

“A year. You had to sign a contract to stay on the job a year. You forfeited half your pay if you broke the terms. So I stuck it out, got another red pin in the map and headed back to New York.” Her fingers rattled in the box, then pushed a red tack into the middle of New York, where the Great Lakes scratched across the topography. “Ithaca was a treat. There’s a lovely Finnish community in the Great Lakes. I worked as a cook on a farm for a year. Chickens this time, not cows. And finally…” She picked out one last red pin and pushed it along the northern border of New York, where Lake Ontario narrowed into a thin blue line and became the St. Lawrence River. “I ended up in Clayton.”

Kennet lifted the VPK Series III to his eye and gazed at Marta though the viewfinder. “Why’d you come here?” He hoped it didn’t sound rude. He was all at once unspeakably glad she’d come.

One of Marta’s hands touched the scarf bound around her hair and the other clutched at the lapels of her pajamas. “Young man, don’t you dare click that shutter.”

“I won’t.”

“Never take a picture of a lady without her permission.”

“I won’t. I promise.”