‘He won’t talk with me about it. And that’s not like Daddy. Did you know that Ted asked him to leave?’

‘No,’ Diana said. ‘He simply told me he’d decided to move out.’

‘Mary won’t talk about it either. She just goes on as if nothing had happened, as if nothing were wrong.’

‘I don’t know your sister.’

‘I know you don’t,’ Laura said, flushing. ‘She’s always been very close to Daddy. Do you think you might talk with him?’

‘What would you want me to say?’ Diana asked.

‘I don’t really know,’ Laura said sadly, ‘but I don’t think it’s right, not for either of them. They’re both acting as if the other one didn’t exist. I know he misses the children. He always wants to hear about them.’

‘What’s to prevent them from coming to see him?’

‘I don’t know. They may have been told not to,’ Laura admitted.

Diana studied Laura. Their mutual distaste for this conversation gave Diana a new, hopeful respect for the young woman, usually so pathetically anxious to please.

‘You’re afraid of making me angry, aren’t you?’ Diana asked.

‘I suppose I am,’ Laura admitted.

Diana’s relief that what troubled David was still his younger daughter rather than his move to this house made her feel nearly recklessly generous.

‘Why don’t I have a talk with Mary?’ Diana suggested.

Laura could not hide the alarm on her face.

‘I may be the only one of you who isn’t afraid of Mary,’ Diana said. ‘We might even like each other.’

‘Oh, Aunt Diana, Mary can be terrible!’

Diana paused to catch her breath after making her long, slow way up the steep path through the garden. She was nearly drunk with roses. Surely there must be an easier way in, probably from the back alley. But what a lovely place it was, she had time to observe as she looked back down on the way she had come and then up over the trees to the mountains, the air on this summer day nearly as clear as the air of the desert, everything in sharp, clean focus. Diana rang the bell.

Mary opened the door, her pretty face puzzled but tentatively welcoming. She was not as tall as Laura, fuller-bodied, more declaratively attractive. Diana smiled.

‘Do I know you?’ Mary asked.

‘We’ve never met,’ Diana said. ‘I’m Diana Crown, your aunt.’

‘Oh!’ Mary exclaimed, surprise catching her off guard. ‘Well, come in.’

‘Thank you,’ Diana said and moved with as quick deliberation as she could, her cane claiming the door sill.

Mary led her down the hall to the living room, full of light and flowers.

‘You have quite a hand with roses,’ Diana said.