“I didn’t hate it. And I still do it, too.” Flo thinks of the chance she had to go with her father and his girlfriend, Abigail, to Manhattan instead. She had to choose between ocean or museums, a big house with other kids or adjoining hotel rooms (clicked shut at bedtime till morning). All that seems insignificant now. As always when absent, her father has become mild and soothing. She could call him, take a bus back to DC. He isn’t leaving until tomorrow morning. How much could a bus ride cost?

“I did speak to her.” Marie-Claude turns around to see if Flo will still listen. Flo doesn’t look up from what she is doing: dropping flimsy American coins from one hand into another, then back into a pouch. “I asked her if she was enjoying the ball.” Marie-Claude laughs. “I didn’t know what else to ask!”

“Did you speak French or German?”

“German, I think. But she didn’t reply in a voice. It was more like telepathy. But she didn’t want to chat. She moved right past me, back to her old route around and around the rose garden.”

“This isn’t the same story.”

“I’ve never told this story to you before, so I don’t know what you were expecting.”

When she told it to her husband, there were two ghosts. She had wanted him to see what they’d become. She described everything carefully, their movements, their fingers, the shapes of their mouths. We mustn’t become them, Robert, not yet. But he didn’t understand. He had stopped wanting to understand her.

“Mom, you’re lying. You always do this.”

“What do you mean, I always do this?”

“Change things around. Lie about the truth.”

“I’m not lying, Florence.” And Marie-Claude sees more clearly the scrolled, unbloomed rosebushes, the small pool, more rosebushes, and the woman traveling through. “I have never lied to you.” Each time around the far edge, the woman lifts her skirt so it doesn’t catch on a spigot. “I am not the liar in this family.”

“Yes, you are. You lie all the time.”

“Flo, I do not.” For comfort, she knows she can turn to Tristan, who, still asleep, holds a comic book and her sunglasses in his lap. “Name one lie I’ve ever told you.”

“You said we could take Belle with us. You promised we could.”

“I thought Bill and Karen would bring their dogs, but they didn’t, so I couldn’t very well ask to bring ours. We’re guests. It wouldn’t have been right.”

“But you lied. You said one thing and did another.”

“Flo, that was completely out of my control. That’s not a lie.”