Iris had looked at Ruth and Ruth had looked at Iris. The two of them lived together in the family’s old apartment in Sutton Place, and it happened to be a chill, rainy, hopeless Thursday, and they had been counting the days until Harry would return home from his two years’ overseas assignment in Rome, the standard Foreign Service appointment. Now Europe had declared another war on itself, and Harry wasn’t coming home, and Iris thought she couldn’t stand another New York winter like the last one, all raw and grief-frozen, Ruth going out nightly to anesthetize her sorrow while the empty apartment echoed with memories. Should we go? Ruth asked, and Iris said, But there’s a war on, and Ruth answered, Not in Italy, and at least we’d all be together. What she didn’t say, but what they both understood, was that their parents would have wanted it that way—the three of them together.

The next day Ruth and Iris had walked down to the steamship office and booked passage (second class) for Rome, and when they arrived three weeks later Italy was still so warm and fragrant and vivid, Iris felt like a flower coming to life after a year of winter. She would sit on a bench overlooking the Tiber, say, or a chair in some darling café, and close her eyes to imagine her petals unfurling to the sun. They had taken this apartment on Via dei Polacchi—two bedrooms, a tiny bathroom and a tiny kitchen, and a parlor with a tiny balcony overlooking a tiny courtyard—and every morning Iris opened her eyes to the ancient fresco on the ceiling and thought, I am in Rome!

Because she’d been away for a week, the street looked new—the building just a bit unfamiliar. She’d forgotten that particular smell of stone and paint and sunshine. Spring had invaded every corner, and Ruth had planted flowers in all the chipped terra-cotta pots, so the balcony and the windows had come back to colorful life.

The apartment was on the second floor (Italian style) and Ruth followed behind patiently with the flowers and the carpetbag while Iris climbed both flights, step by step, planting her crutches on each stair before she hoisted herself up.

When they arrived at the door at last, Iris imagined she heard a noise, but still she was perfectly shocked when Ruth swung the door open and everybody yelled SURPRISE!

WHAT A SWELL PARTY! All of Harry’s embassy friends were there, and all their neighbors, and several people Iris didn’t even recognize, and Sasha Digby’s golden head floated above them all. The guests drank wine or gin and tonic and nibbled from the platters of cheese and crackers and prosciutto. Say what you would, Ruth had always known how to throw a real bash.