“About a week after the funeral, Pops produced a handwritten will from Sweetheart’s dressing table drawer that left all her personal jewelry to Patsy along with all her clothes.

“We were gathered in the kitchen when he read out the words, ‘For my only girl, my dearest, sweetest girl.’ Pops then gave the will to Patsy and he looked away, and his eyes had that same flat metallic look which I had seen in Big Ramona right after Little Ida died.

“That look never went away.

“A trust fund was also left to Patsy, he mumbled, but there was a formal bank paper to deal with that. He produced an envelope of little Polaroid photographs which Sweetheart had made of her heirlooms, identifying each with writing on the front and back.

“ ‘Yeah, well that trust fund is next to nothing,’ Patsy said, shoving the photographs and will in her purse. ‘It’s one thousand a month and that might have been big money thirty years ago but now it’s small change. And I can tell you right now, I want my mother’s things.’

“Pops took the pearl necklace out of his pants pocket and pushed it towards her, and she took it, but when he drew out the wedding ring, he said, ‘I’m keeping this,’ and Patsy just shrugged and left the room.

“For days and nights Pops did little or nothing but sit at the kitchen table and push away the plates of food set before him, and ignore the questions put to him, as Jasmine and Lolly and Clem took over the running of Blackwood Farm.

“I had a hand in the running of things also, and very gradually, as I conducted my first tours of Blackwood Farm and did my best to exert a charm over the guests, I realized that the crazy elation which had carried me through Sweetheart’s vivid funeral was breaking up.

“A dark panic was reemerging. It was right behind me, ready to take over. I kept myself as busy as I could. I went over menus with Jasmine and Lolly, tasting hollandaise sauce and béarnaise sauce, and picking patterns of china, and chatting with guests who had come back to celebrate anniversaries, and even cleaning out bedrooms when the schedule demanded it, and driving the tractor mower over the lawns.

“As I watched the Shed Men lay in the late spring flowers—the impatiens and the zinnias and the hibiscus—a desperate sentimental fury possessed me. I clung tight to the vision of Blackwood Manor and all it meant.

“I went walking down the long avenue of pecan trees out front, looking back at the house to treasure the sight of it and imagine how it struck the new guests.