“Thank you,” Aunt Vivian said in that impeccable voice, more lockjaw than the toniest Long Island heiress. She dropped Pepper on the grass like a sack of unwanted potatoes and turned to lift Little Viv out of the cart. Iris ran forward to help Tiny. From inside the house, the boys came thundering onto the drive and stopped dead at the sight of the three blond girls in their neat matching dresses and Mary Jane shoes. Kip scratched his head. Jack scuffed his bare feet on the gravel.

“Boys! Come say hello to your cousins!” Iris called out.

“My God,” said Aunt Vivian, by way of greeting, “it’s like the OK Corral. How are you, darling? You look wonderful, all pink and plump. You’re not with child again, are you?”

“Of course not!” Iris gasped. She glanced at Philip as she returned Aunt Vivian’s embrace.

“Good. Nothing spoils your summer like a bun in the oven. This must be Cornelius.”

“Kip!” said Kip stoutly, holding his ground.

“Is that so? Kip it is, then.” She shook his hand and turned to Jack. “And this is little John.”

“It’s Jack, you old biddy!” Jack shouted. “Ma’am.”

“Jack! For shame!”

“No, he’s absolutely right. I am an old biddy, as far as a three-year-old boy’s concerned, anyway. Thank God the older fellows take a more liberal view. So this is Honeysuckle Cottage, is it? Very attractive.”

Aunt Vivian shaded her eyes with her hand and took in every detail of the rambling stone house, the overgrown garden, the distant view of the sea. In her mind, she was probably calculating its worth—a habit the Schuylers would have considered unspeakably gauche, if they knew. Maybe they did. They hadn’t exactly welcomed the courtship, after all. The Walkers might have done well in the postwar boom, but they’d lost most of their fortune in the Crash and Aunt Vivian shouldn’t have stood any chance with one of the original Knickerbocker families, the very definition of old New York society. Lucky for her, though, Uncle Charlie was apparently afflicted with the romantic streak that was the downfall of many a Schuyler man, and he had fallen in love with Aunt Vivian at some party during the winter season of 1935. By June, he was absconding regularly from the Schuyler compound in East Hampton—The Dunes, they called it—to the Walker family home in Glen Cove, in order to improve their acquaintance away from disapproving eyes.