“ ‘A hundred thousand dollars,’ he said calmly. And then he said, ‘Two hundred thousand dollars, Patsy Blackwood, on the day that it’s born and you sign it over to me.’

“Patsy rose from the table. She shot up and backwards, glaring at him. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me that yesterday!’ she shouted. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me that this morning!’ She made her hands into fists and stomped her foot. ‘You crazy old man!’ she said. ‘Damn you.’ And she turned and flew out the kitchen. The screen door banged shut after her, and Pops bowed his head.

“I came into the kitchen and stood at his side.

“ ‘She’s already gotten rid of it,’ he said. He bowed his head. He looked utterly defeated. He never said another word about it. He went back to his silent ways.

“As for Patsy, she did lie sick in her room for a couple of days during which Jasmine cooked for her and took general care of her, and then she was up and off in her new van for a series of country jamborees.

“I was very curious. Would Patsy immediately get pregnant just to make two hundred thousand dollars? And what would it be like to have a baby sister or brother? I really wanted to know.

“Pops set himself to solitary tasks around the farm. He painted the white fences where they needed it; he clipped back the azaleas. He laid in more of the spring flowers. In fact, he enlarged the garden patches and made them more brilliant than they’d ever been before. Red geraniums were his favorite flower, and though they didn’t last too long in the heat he set out plenty of them in the beds, and he stepped back often to get perspective on his schemes.

“For a while, a brief while, it seemed that somehow things would be all right. The joy had not quite fled Blackwood Manor. Goblin behaved himself, but Goblin’s face mirrored my tension and my mounting conflict. The fear was winning over my mind.

“What was I afraid of? Death, I suppose. I longed to see Little Ida’s ghost but it didn’t happen, and then there was Big Ramona saying that people didn’t appear to you once they’d gone to Heaven, unless they had a powerful reason for coming back. I wanted one last glimpse of Little Ida. I knew Sweetheart wasn’t going to appear, but I had some peculiar faith in Little Ida. I wondered how long she’d been dead in my bed.

“Meantime, Blackwood Manor went on.

“Big Ramona, Jasmine and Lolly ran the kitchen to perfection as they had always done, handling the tours with equal aplomb, and Pops progressed to a rampage of repairs and renovations to keep himself exhausted all the time, so that he was in bed, out cold, by eight o’clock.