Lis tossed Binty a crust of bread and turned her attention to chopping celery and green onion. Added them to the eggs along with mayonnaise, a shake of mustard, and yes, though she didn’t need to be reminded, a squeeze of lemon. She mixed it all together, added salt and pepper, then scooped a dollop onto a finger and tasted before assembling sandwiches, cutting them in quarters, and stacking them on a plate along with a half-dozen strawberries she’d picked up at the Piggly Wiggly. Local berries wouldn’t be in for another eight weeks or so.

Lis took off her reading glasses, anchored them to the top of her head, and carried the plate out onto the porch. It was an unusually warm January day, warm enough to sit out. A spectacular pair of camellia bushes bloomed in the front yard, one loaded with hot pink blossoms and the other white. The ground beneath the bushes was thick with periwinkle. In a matter of weeks, the air would be heavy with the sweet scent of wisteria that would hang from the sinewy vines that draped gracefully across the front of the porch, and by May mosquitoes could be so thick that sitting on the porch would be a nonstarter.

A police cruiser emblazoned with BONSECOURS POLICE in peacock-blue lettering across the side slowed as it approached the house. Lis stepped across to block her mother’s view. The cruiser window rolled down and Deputy Police Chief Frank Ames waved.

It wasn’t so much that Miss Sorrel didn’t approve of Lis’s seeing Frank, because she probably did, despite the fact that Frank was turning sixty and Lis was forty-six. He’d been a family friend since Lis was little, ever since he was a rookie on the police force. It was more that Lis cherished what little privacy she had in what was still a small town, living as she was under the same roof as her mother with her mother’s best friend, gossipy busybody Evelyn Dumont, right next door.

The cruiser continued past as Miss Sorrel rocked gently in the glider and sipped sweet tea from a glass dripping condensation. With her powdered face, spots of rouge on each cheek, and lipstick carefully painted on, Miss Sorrel was starting to look like one of the porcelain dolls she so prized. That, despite the un-doll-like creases that ran from the corners of her lips down either side of her chin, the crinkles that radiated from the corners of her eyes, and the skin that had started to lose its grip on her fine-boned skull.

Lis set the plate of sandwiches down on a metal TV table.

“Lovely,” Miss Sorrel said. “Thank you, darling.”

Darling. Never Elisabeth or Lis or Lissie. Safer not to risk Janey’s name popping out.