In the kitchen the clatter settled down and the long, slow cooking began. Louise and the old woman strolled out into the side yard where the early camellias had started to bloom. The spoon player leaned up against the porch post and dozed off with his arms flopped over his bony knees. Lily wandered around the edge of the lake where the ducks were beginning to settle down for the night, standing on first one foot, then the other, tucking their heads under their wings. There was that good pond smell, and the smell of old towns in the fall of the year—piled-up leaves, dry rot, sasanquas, the last of the ginger lilies and the first of the tea olive. Then there was something else—the deep, rich smell of roasting duck.

“There’s just enough,” said Louise, ladling out dark gravy. Somehow she and the old woman had rummaged out of all that clutter an elegant table setting for four—a white linen tablecloth with a corded monogram, big Blue Willow plates, thin water glasses with chipped gold rims, and in the middle a bowl of sasanquas, pink and ruffly. The whole thing was just beautiful, all blue and white and rosy, and they stood and looked at it for a minute, that peaceful gleaming place smoothed out of all this mess. Then the spoon player said, “I can tell we’re gon’ eat,” and they did.

It was way past dark by the time they had sopped up the last little driblets of gravy, washed the dishes, and flung the duck bones out into the bushes. “Y’all are welcome to spend the night,” said the old woman. Then she trailed off down a dark passage, mumbling something about clean sheets.

But there’s nothing like cooking and eating the native food of a place to make you feel as if you belong there, and Louise wanted to explore this old town where she now felt so at home. “Let’s go walk around the lake,” she said. “Bring the flashlight, sir, you can tell us the stories.”

There were no streetlights in this left-behind town, and from the edge of the lake they could barely see the houses straggling along the street like the old, dried-up shed skin of a snake. But across the lake one light was shining out of the broken-out windows in the tower of the Chautauqua building.

“Look, Louise,” said Lily. “The path of light!” And sure enough, there it was like a wrinkled yellow ribbon stretched out across the black water.

“Well, I’ll be,” said Louise. “Just like in the story.”

The spoon player stepped out and turned to look at Lily. “You could swim across that.”

“That’s just what I’m fixing to do,” said Lily, and she took off her shoes and stepped out of her skirt.