Opal rearranged the candlesticks and then strode to the archway leading into the dining room, where Alice, bent at the waist, was holding the dogs by their collars. Charlie, usefully, was nowhere in sight, and for a couple of minutes Opal made small talk about the dogs and the various adventures of Alice’s sisters.

She kept her tone bright, polite—which, she knew, intimidated many girls—before asking directly, “What do you think about Charlie’s plans for next year?”

“I think whatever he does, he’ll do well at it,” Alice said. Her eyes, fixed on the dogs, were hidden from Opal.

“Charlie is wonderful at everything, isn’t he?”

“Everything,” Alice agreed.

“He’s like his father that way,” Opal said. “I imagine you wish he’d stay closer to home.”

“Whatever he does is fine,” Alice said.

“But you’re fond of him,” Opal insisted.

Alice, scratching under Olive’s collar, said, “We’ve been friends since we were tiny.”

“That’s true of most of his friends, isn’t it?” Opal said thoughtfully. “But one of his gifts, I’ve always thought, is his way of making each person think he or she is his best friend. It’s a bit deceitful, since he can’t be best friends with everyone—but still it’s charming. You probably think he’s closer to you than to anyone else.”

Alice whispered something to the dogs and then released them. They darted toward the kitchen as she straightened. “Charming?” she said. “He must get that from you.”

Opal stared at the girl’s stocking feet: she might have been ten; she should have been harmless.

“You’ll need that locker downstairs,” Alice added. She left, presenting Opal with her slim, straight back, her simple braid.

MOST OF THE guests were gone by the time Henrietta let the clamoring dogs through the kitchen door. She was ready to go as well and had already put on her coat and her boots, but then Jasper’s friend Leo Marburg, the chemist the Durands had hired just before everything collapsed, had started talking to her as he buckled his own boots, and when Jasper offered them both a last drink only to find that the bottle had disappeared, they’d followed him into the kitchen. As the dogs streaked across the snowy yard and circled the gazebo, she learned that Leo had rented a place in town—a cottage, in a pleasant grove of hazel trees.

“I’m glad you found something,” she said. Behind her the dogs stopped, sniffed, and crossed the path behind the gazebo, poking at the base of the whitened cliff. “But I hate that so many people have already sold up and left town.”