Bobby Putnam shook his head. Then he spoke with some animation about the search teams, the Coast Guard patrols, and the lackadaisical police department. They looked for her for a week. Nothing, he said.

Everyone in Boston discussed the case, shaking their heads, refusing to believe it of her. Yes, she was troubled, but this wasn’t like her. Lilian never said how it was exactly right, and that it fit Irene Putnam perfectly, one part of her at least, but why should she? They wouldn’t have understood Lilian any better. Now and then the idea was revived that she had run off, and was still alive somewhere, but Lilian knew better about that too.

Within the year Bobby Putnam was married again, to one of the Lothrop cousins from Sherborn, a riding intimate of Sis Sedgwick’s who didn’t have the least interest in art.

48 • The butterfly

48 • The butterfly

LILIAN WATCHED the men on the tennis court, high noon, the voices of the spectators low in the summer air. Gilbert, in a sun hat and limp shorts, held his racket loosely waiting for a serve. Behind him through a net was a field of Queen Anne’s lace, goldenrod, and bay bushes with a path cut through to a house farther back. Three children appeared, carrying rackets as large as themselves, and stopped in dismay when they saw the court occupied by grownups.

It was the semifinals of the Island tournament. Gilbert’s partner, Cap Sedgwick, bent at the waist like a long insect, intent on every shot, looked flushed with exertion. Their opponents, a father and son, the younger about seventeen, both with a redhead’s complexion, were people Lilian had never seen. Guests of the Amorys’, someone said, from New York. They were winning.

There was a low rumble from the area of the green benches while the teams switched sides. Lilian sat a little apart, wrapped in a sweater, preferring not to chat. Since Gilbert’s improvement, her attention had been taken up by the children, and yesterday Sally and Fay had gone on their first real trip away, visiting their Finch cousins in Camden where Edith had family, woodsy poets and retired lawyers, and the big house with only quiet Porter organizing his bug collection was larger and more still. Small changes made a big difference in her life. It was no wonder she was thinking so often of Irene.

She found it turned her thoughts in the direction of herself. She’d woken early that morning, and later, there’d been a card from Tommy Lattimore in Greece, and a letter from Jane Ives in Spain, putting her in mind of faraway places. She daydreamed, and became absorbed by a butterfly jigging by.