Crossing the floor, I nudge her aside. “I can do this. As long as it doesn’t involve cooking, you’re safe.” When she raises her hands and steps back, I continue with the ear she was working on and say to Bill, “Thanks for helping out with the house. It looks good. Is that what you do? Home repair? Property management?”

“Nah. Fixing things is fun. I’m a correctional officer.”

I did not expect that. “Really?” I ask, looking back, but that lazy grin gives nothing away.

“You mean, being on the outside rather than the inside?” he says, summing up my surprise. “It’s true.”

Anne has been clanging metal in a low cabinet. Emerging with the largest pot, she plunks it on the counter. “How’s that for a shock?”

“Hey, Annie, I’m glad.” I pull several pieces of silk from the corn and drop them in the sink with the husks. “I’m impressed. He cleans up good.”

She does laugh at that, kicking sideways to jab Bill’s leg with her foot.

“Fine,” he grumbles. “You win.”

I look from one to the other. “Win?”

“She said you’d be sweet, I said bitchy.”

“Why would you think that?” I ask him.

“Because you always were.”

“Really?”

He nods.

“Bitchy?” I ask in dismay.

He nods again.

“If I was bitchy to you, I’m sorry. Maybe what you took for bitchiness was terror? You did that, y’know, terrified people.”

“I still do. That’s why I’m good at what I do.”

“I’m sure,” I say with a convinced look, then ask Anne, who is opening a large cardboard box, “What’re we having with the corn?”

“Lobster. And cornbread. And grain salad. Is Joy okay with that?”

“Everything but the lobster. Don’t let her see you put them in the pot. She’ll have nightmares when they scrabble to get out.”

“Are you talking about me?” Joy says, swinging into the kitchen. To judge from the red on her cheeks and nose, she got too much sun, but she is freshly showered, has her wet hair in a top knot, and is wearing a tee shirt with a huge fried egg on the front. When she sees my eyes on the egg, she proudly twirls to show me her back, where SUNNY SIDE UP is written in large letters.

“I like it,” I say, but she is twitching her nose and, before I can stop her, she is peering into Anne’s box.