“I did. Georgia wore me out. She’s very nice but . . . perky. Perky people can be exhausting. Don’t you think?”

“You have plenty of hands around here who are willing and eager to help; you don’t have to hire more. Especially if they exhaust you.”

“No. It’s important to me that I take the burden off of you.”

“You’re not a burden, Donna.”

She laughed. “Maybe I haven’t been here long enough.”

“If push comes to shove, I’ll send Earl over more often. He never tires of being a do-gooder.”

“Let the dog come, too. I really like the dog.”

Annie smiled, stood up, and went to the kitchen to fill the kettle for tea. The day had been rather pleasant; despite the uncertainties in life right now, the good mood she’d had first thing that morning had been justified after all.

* * *

She stayed in the cottage for a while, fixing the leftover chowder for dinner; she and Donna ate it with Lucy’s date nut bread, because Donna said she had an appetite. They chatted about nothing and everything as the night grew darker and the clock ticked toward bedtime. And though Annie had elected not to bring up the issue of her birth father—yet—after she’d cleared the table and fixed tea, she introduced a prelude of sorts.

“Can you tell me about my grandparents, Donna? Your mother and father? Only if you want to. But I have been curious.” She’d once asked Kevin, but he’d said he didn’t remember much about them, except that they were nice to him.

Donna smiled. “I never wanted to force that on you. I thought that telling you might be presumptuous.”

“Presumptuous? Why?”

“That it might make you sad. For not having known them.”

“It won’t. At least I don’t think it will. And I’d really like to know. Were they originally from Boston? You grew up there, right?”

“Yes. In Dorchester,” she said. “My dad was a laborer; my mother, a homemaker. They were older than most parents of my friends. I was raised in a three-bedroom, triple-decker. I had a brother, but he was killed in a streetcar accident when he was twelve. His name was Donald.”

“Oh, my gosh. I am so sorry. How awful for all of you.”

Donna stirred her tea. “I cried for a while, but then, because I was a child, I moved on to other things. It wasn’t until after you were born that I was able to feel the sadness. That’s when I began to understand how hard it is to lose someone you love.”

“How did your parents handle it when you told them you were pregnant with me?”