“Miss Kingsley,” I say, “we can’t miss.”

ALL RIGHT, SO I like to manage things. I like to take charge of people’s affairs—it’s one of my many talents. Boss lady, Barbara called me, and what’s the matter with that? Someone has to be the boss, or nothing would get done. I’ve managed the careers of dozens of women—a few men, too—and nobody’s complained about the results, at least not to my face. The fact is, most people are too softhearted, or they lack a certain clarity of vision, or they don’t want to make mistakes, or—this is the big one—they’re afraid of what others will think of them. They don’t want to take that kind of responsibility. It’s hard work and requires you to make decisions people won’t like. But I’ll tell you what, there’s nothing like the satisfaction of a plan brought off to perfection, of knowing you’ve led your flock to greener pastures.

It would make a nice, neat story to say that I became this way because of my father dying when I was eleven years old, and my mother sort of absolving herself of any further parental responsibilities because she had her grief to contend with. But I’m afraid I’ve always been a managing person, the kind of girl who brings home animals and organizes the canned vegetables according to the alphabet and puts together the neighborhood stickball teams.

And there’s Iris. I was always protective of her, when we were growing up. There was the time we started at Chapin, a school far above our social standing as it then was, and while nobody dared to snub me they had no trouble snubbing Iris, so I spent that entire first year blackmailing girls to play with my sister and invite her to parties and that kind of thing. Iris never knew. Or when we used to summer with my grandparents in Glen Cove, Long Island, and Iris was afraid of every little thing, sailing and swimming—in the Sound, that is, instead of a nice safe swimming pool—and especially strangers.