“I’ll be fine,” Anna had promised her aunt, her voice filled with more certainty than she’d felt at that moment. The unknown stretched ahead of her, but she had a job and a place to stay. What more could she need? She told Aunt Alice which dresses to pack, which pants, which blouses, which shoes and stockings, which underthings, which jewelry, and finally, which art supplies, including her easel. She knew she was creating a good deal of work for her aunt, packing all that up, but Aunt Alice didn’t utter a single complaint.

“As long as you’re safe, Anna,” she said. “That’s all that matters. Do you have enough money?” As if her aunt had money to spare.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said. At least she was fine for the time being. She didn’t know what she would do if her sketch wasn’t accepted—how humiliating that would be—but she’d worry about that when and if it happened.

“Now tell me all about you,” Miss Myrtle said once they were back in her living room, sipping tea again and eating more slivers of the pineapple upside-down cake. Anna watched Miss Myrtle put teaspoon after teaspoon of sugar in her tea until she thought the teaspoon would stand upright on its own in the cup.

She told Miss Myrtle about losing her father to pneumonia even before she’d had a chance to know him, and that she’d recently lost her mother after a brief illness. The “brief illness” was a lie, but she wasn’t ready to go into detail about her mother with anyone.

“Why, you’re all alone in the world!” Miss Myrtle exclaimed, her graying eyebrows pinched together above her kind eyes. “No gentleman in your life yet? You’re so lovely.”

Anna shook her head. “Not yet,” she said. “I do have an aunt. And a couple of cousins. But I’m twenty-two, and it’s time for me to make my own way.”

“You must be very strong,” Miss Myrtle said.