Betsy said with artful carelessness, “I thought excelsior was wood shavings used to pack fragile items.”

Margot looked at Betsy with just the beginning of indignation, then both sisters laughed. Margot said, “All right, I’m a shameless booster. Just you wait, in a few weeks you’ll love it here, too. Here’s my bank, and up ahead is Haskell’s, where we turn to go home.”

Back in her cozy living room, Margot sat down in the comfortable chair, opened a kind of wood-framed folding canvas bag at her feet, and took out a large roll of white fabric with needlework on it. She unrolled it to reveal a complex, stylized picture of a field of flowers and small animals, most of which was covered with small stitches. “Last week of the month we work on UFOs,” she said.

Betsy, standing behind the chair, said, “That is obviously not a flying saucer, so what does UFO mean in needle talk?”.

“Unfinished projects. Like a lot of needleworkers, I’m always buying something new and I get impatient to get started on it and sometimes abandon old projects in the excitement of starting something new. So the last week of every month I’ve promised to get out something unfinished and work on it. I started this over a year ago and stopped working on it back in February—but now it’s going to get finished at last.” She smiled up at her sister. “I hope you don’t mind if I work while we talk. Is there something you want to work on, too?”

Betsy shook her head. She’d once done quite a bit of embroidery, which had kept her occupied while her husband stayed late on campus. Not, as he’d said, grading papers or attending staff meetings or conferring with colleagues, but making love to various female students. Betsy had not touched an embroidery needle since filing for the divorce, and she had no intention of ever picking one up again.

She went over to the heavily draped window and began lifting layers—drape, sheer, blind—“How big is the lake?” Of course, all she could see was the gray siding of the condominium across the street.

“I think the shoreline is something over four hundred miles.”

Betsy dropped the drape’s edge and said, surprised, “You must mean forty miles, and I’m surprised it’s that big.”

“Oh, what you saw today was just one bay. The lake is a collection of bays—a collection of lakes, more like. Very untidy and sprawling. It’s hard to describe the shape, but I can show you a map in the store tomorrow. The only way you can see the whole thing is from the air. It’s spring-fed and very clean. Big bass-fishing attraction, we have competitions going all summer long. Draws people from all over the country.” As she was drawn into her needlework, Margot became telegraphic in her sentences. “You fish?”

“No.”

“Sail?”

“Not lately.”

“What do you do for fun?”

“Go out with friends to dances and plays and movies. Body-surf. Read a good mystery or something by Terry Pratchett. Margot, how do you stand it?”