It wasn’t until the letter to Garland was mailed that I paused one night before I went to sleep, looked up at the constellations I and Garland had viewed together, and asked myself, as if I was another person, Really, what do you hope to accomplish with all this, Corrine Dixon?

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “Maybe I just wanted to keep looking at the stars the way I did that night. Is that so terrible?”

Oh, you want more than that, Corrine Dixon. You want far more than that.

Chapter 4

Late in the morning of the following day, Daisy appeared on our doorstep. I had just risen, sleeping later in the morning than usual even though my mother had come up to wake me earlier. I had groaned and fallen back asleep. Now, dressed in my robe, my hair a mess, I answered the door and faced my grinning best friend, who had cycled over. From the way she was smiling and how perspiring and flushed she was, I knew gossip had run uphill to her this morning, uphill because it came from Emma and Elsie.

“You’d better tell me everything,” she said, her eyes blooming with expectations.

“There isn’t that much to tell, but come in. I’m just having breakfast.”

“Just?” she said, entering.

“Keeping up appearances wears you out,” I told her, deliberately sounding like a sophisticated socialite. She widened her eyes, and I laughed. “Come on, but don’t say a word about anything to my mother.”

My mother stepped out of the pantry just as we entered the kitchen.

“Oh,” my mother said, running her hands over her hair. “I didn’t hear anyone at the door.”

She wasn’t dressed in anything much more than her robe and was still in her slippers.

“It’s only Daisy,” I said. I started to fix myself some eggs.

“Well, I expect you had your breakfast at a decent hour,” she said to Daisy.

“Yes, Mrs. Dixon.”

My mother nodded at me as if she had driven home a terribly important point and then left us, probably to get better dressed before Daisy left.

“So what did they tell you?” I asked as I broke the eggs and began to scramble them. “And how did they get to you so fast?”

“They cycled over about an hour or so ago. Their faces were so bloated with excitement that I thought they would explode, especially Emma.”

“Not so unlike yours right now.”

“Forget me. So? Who was he?”

“Who was who?” I teased, putting the eggs in the skillet.

“C’mon, Corrine. You know who I mean. The man at the gala, the man you ate with and wandered off with?”

“Oh, him.” I shrugged. “Just one of my father’s business associates,” I said. “Do you want some coffee?”