EARLIER, BEFORE ALICE had arrived to help her with the terrarium, Henrietta had sifted carefully through the shelves of her extra closet before settling at last on the wonderful old red dress. She knew the color didn’t suit her complexion, that the cut emphasized her bony chest and did nothing for her shape—but she liked trying to imagine how the woman who’d once loved it had felt. Vivid, perhaps a touch scandalous. Proud of her . . . dark hair, Henrietta decided, masses of very dark hair. Against her own gray it was at least cheerful, which everyone needed this year, and just silly enough to render her intellectually invisible. In the dress she was a foolish old woman, safe enough for anyone to talk to.

Now, disguised as a mobile Christmas ornament, she watched Charlie return from his errand upstairs and then, with his uncle Jasper, work together to charm Mrs. McCallum out of her bad mood. Of all her students, even including Bernard with his remarkable bowls and platters, Charlie was the best. Not the quickest but the most insightful, able to see deeply into problems and make connections. He could spend a whole day collecting samples and then study far into the night when that was needed, and while anyone would know him as a Durand—he shared with his uncle his blocky figure, his long pointed nose, and excellent manners—he still surprised her. Unlike his father and uncle, he seemed to value his gifts very little.

“How is Jeffrey doing?” she heard Charlie ask.

Instantly Mrs. McCallum brightened. Her son was so much better, she said; he was staying in Miami with two friends from his former platoon, planning to breed horses for the track. Charlie smiled and Jasper offered a story about another friend, also recovering well from a wound he’d gotten in France. No one mentioned the men from the village—all of them Henrietta’s former students—who’d been killed, or died of the influenza, or been wounded so badly they were still in hospitals far away. For a minute the room dimmed as she remembered Izzy, returning from the Civil War so many years ago. One hand missing, the other crippled, and his mind crippled too: how young she’d been (how grown-up she’d felt) when, coming home from school, she’d spied on him and the other wounded veterans sitting in the square! Astonishing that she’d lived long enough to witness another group of shattered men, another party where guests talked about anything but those men. About, now, how relatively fortunate Jeffrey had been; how long it had taken—was still taking—for men to find work. By the time they were done, Mrs. McCallum looked almost happy. Charlie shared that social ease with most of his family but didn’t seem to grasp that his intellectual gifts were his alone.