I took a seat, wondering how to coax some information out of her. I wasn't even sure what I wanted to know, but I considered it a bonus to be alone with her. She was wearing the same cutoffs I'd seen her in before. Her legs looked solid, her bare feet tucked into rubber flip-flops. Her T-shirt this time must have been an XXL, the front emblazoned with a painted design. She moved from the ironing board to the kitchen table, where she sat down across from me and began squeezing a tube of paint in a Jackson Pollock-type design on the front of a new T-shirt. Dots and squiggles. Hanging from a knob on one of the kitchen cabinets was a completed work, its lines of paint puffed out in three dimensions. She caught my gaze. "This's puff paint," she said. "You put it on and let it dry, and when you iron it on the wrong side, it puffs out like that."

"That's cute," I said. I got up and moved closer to the kitchen cabinet, taking a moment to inspect the finished product. Looked dreadful to me, but what do I know? "You sell these?"

"Well, not yet, but I'm hoping. I made this one I got on, and whenever I go out everybody's like 'Oh, wow, cool T-shirt.' So I thought since I wasn't working I could set up my own business."

My oh my. She and her sister Lorna, both driven by the entrepreneurial spirit. "How long have you been doing this?"

"Just today."

I took my seat at the kitchen table again, watching Trinny work. I began to cast out my line. Surely there was something I could wheedle out of her. To my right was a stack of travel brochures, touting Alaskan cruises, ski holidays, and package tours to Canada and the Caribbean. I picked up a pamphlet and began to scan the copy: "The world's last unspoiled paradise . . . stunning white beaches . . . deep azure lagoons . . ."

Trinny saw what I was doing. "Those are Berlyn's."

"Where's she going?"

"She doesn't know yet. She says Alaska looks good."

"Are you going, too?"

She made a disappointed face. "I don't have the money."

"Too bad. It looks like fun," I said. "She doesn't mind traveling alone?"

"Nuh-uhn. She likes it. Not all the time, but if she has to, she says. She did the one trip already, in the fall."

"Really. Where'd she go then?"

"Acapulco. She loved it. She says she'll take me if she goes back."

"That's neat. I was in Viento Negro last summer, but that's as far south as I've been."

"I haven't even been that far. Berlyn's always liked to travel. I don't have the same bug. I mean, I like it and all, but there's stuff I'd rather do."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Buy clothes and stuff."

I tried another tack. "Lorna's death must have been hard. Are you doing okay with that?"