The face of the pillow was divided into quarters, each containing a picture of the same house in a yard with a tree. Each quarter represented a season. In spring, a robin sang in a tree branch and tulips glowed in the yard. In summer, a child skipped rope in the yard. In fall, the leaves on the tree were a gorgeous mix of red, yellow, and orange, and a jack-o‘-lantern sat on the porch. In winter, a Christmas tree decorated with tiny beads glowed in a window. The snow was done in white yarn, which had been brushed to make it fluffy. In each, the sky had been done in fancy stitches that Betsy knew had names like gobelin and Victorian step, though she did not know what names to call these skies.

There was not a misstep in the stitching that Betsy could see, and the overall effect was lovely. “This is really nice,” she said.

“Her room is full of this kind of thing,” said the woman. “She has a quilt stitched all over with angels. You can borrow this, if you want.”

“I don’t want to take it away from you. What if someone stole it?”

“Oh, likely she’d make me another. She’s good about that kind of thing, though she can be very unfriendly right to your face, too. Of course, if you hit on the right subject, she’ll talk your ears off.”

Betsy nodded. “So I’ve heard. Did she ever talk to you about my sister?”

“No, not once. But your sister came to see her the day she died.”

“She did?”

“Let me think. Maybe it was the day before she was killed I went to my daughter’s. No, the day of because I didn’t hear about the murder till the next evening, on the television news. My cousin Emily came over that Thursday, and sore as I was from the day before, we went out, so it wasn’t till evening that I learned about it. It was a terrible shock, and it wasn’t till the next morning it occurred to me that Miss Potter must’ve been one of the last people to see her alive. And it was a shame, a real shame.”

“Why a shame?”

“Because Father says they went at it hammer and tongs, the two of them. He says he was in the kitchen—Miss Potter’s room is over the kitchen—and while he couldn’t hear any of the words, they was at it for quite a while. Then he says he heard someone coming down the stairs and he went to see, and it was Mrs. Berglund. Miss Potter, he says, stayed at the top of the stairs and hollered after her, ‘You’ll be sorry you talked to me like that! You’ll be sorry!’ But Mrs. Berglund just went on out, never looked back.”

“Could I talk to him about this?”