Some fortunate star, some bright crystalline piece of luck had given me Charles William and Irise as a counterweight to all of that. If it was new, they wanted to see it. If it was interesting, they had to be there. If it was revolutionary, they were for it. So when they came home for Christmas vacation the first thing they wanted to do was go down to Montgomery and visit his cousin who had married a Yankee journalist and was getting crosses burned in his yard.

“Come with us,” he said. “Come on, Dee. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“She brought the cross inside and built a pond around it,” Irise added. “An architect from Sweden designed it for her. It’s got goldfish in it.”

“It’s in their house. In the living room.” Charles William waved his hands in the air. “I have to see it. Come on, Dee. Go with us. You haven’t got anything else to do.”

He was right. All I did all day was watch the maids take care of the babies and go shopping and walk into the kitchen to see what time it was.

“Momma,” I said that night. “Charles William and Irise want me to go to Montgomery with them to see a house with a pond inside it. Can I go? Will you take care of the babies?”

“For how long?”

“Just a weekend. We’ll be back on Sunday. We’re going to stay with his cousin Charles.”

“Let her go, Ariane,” Charles William said. “She needs to get away.”

“We’ll be back Sunday,” Irise put in. “We’ll come right back, I promise.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she began. “I don’t know if you should go off and leave these babies.”

“Please, Momma. I’m so lonely. I’m so tired of everything. I never get to have a bit of fun.”

“All right,” she said. “Okay. You can go, but have her back by Sunday, Charles William. I don’t want to be alone with these babies past Sunday night.”

On Friday afternoon we piled our bags into the trunk of Charles William’s car and started driving. It was a hundred and eighty miles to Montgomery, a four-hour drive.

“She used to be a reporter in Washington,” Irise said. “She went to jail for something that she did.”

“Cousin Charles is a brain surgeon,” Charles William added. “He lets her do anything she likes. He built her the most modern house in Montgomery. He doesn’t care what she does.”

“They had to send their children off to Arizona to go to school,” Irise added. “They sent them both away.”

“What’s her name? Where are we going to stay?”

“Derry. Her name was Derry Maitland, but now it’s Derry Waters. Wait till you meet her.”