“Okay, that’s enough. Pass me the children and go put some dry clothes on, Carol.”

When I walked past the seating area Hugh’s head was bent and he was pinching the insides of his eyes with his thumb and index finger. He was laughing, not crying.

“Don’t you say a word,” his mother said to him.

Margaret was coming out with towels as I was going in. She gave me one and said something that I didn’t understand until I’d gotten to the front stairs. “Cover yourself now” is what she’d said.

In front of the standing mirror in the corner of my room, I understood. My wet clothes, a pink tank top and white shorts, were transparent. I had been nudie, just like Stevie wanted. But the body in the mirror didn’t entirely seem mine. The breasts were fuller, risen suddenly like an ad for biscuits. And through the shorts and underwear my crotch was a dark triangle. I recognized nothing about this body. It felt to me that the mirror itself, more like a looking glass, really, in its old-fashioned frame, had conjured it up, that I hadn’t had this body before I’d moved into this room.

I went down to eat dinner in the pantry with Thomas and Margaret in the darkest, baggiest clothes I’d brought. I sat with my back to the dining room, so the Pikes didn’t have to see me when Thomas pushed open the swinging door. Kay did not call for me that night to take the kids upstairs, even though I could hear them fussing throughout the meal.

I thought perhaps Mrs. Pike would send me home before breakfast, but the next morning she was particularly attentive and kind. She asked me how I’d slept and showed me how to use the little egg cutter to lop off the top of my soft-boiled egg. She proposed that she take me and the kids to the beach club for lunch, and Kay could have some time to herself. She could make an appointment for her at the hairdresser’s if she liked.

But Kay said she wanted to take the kids to a place called David’s Animal Farm, just over the New Hampshire border. I’d never heard of it before.

“Why on earth would you go all that way on such a beautiful day?” Mrs. Pike said.

“It sounds fun.”

“I hired Cara so you could get a break.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean, so you can have some grown-up time.”

“I know what you meant. But I want to be with my children on our vacation.”

We ate our soft-boiled eggs in the silence that followed, everyone except Elsie who had Cheerios on her tray.

Hugh pushed through the swinging door and laughed at us.

“The egg cups!” We were eating from little figure eight–shaped porcelain cups that matched the plates, pink flowers, gold rims. “Ah, isn’t it good to be alive in 1905?” He reached for the silver egg cutter and pretended to go after Stevie’s nose.