My mother rarely mentioned the neighbors, but I supposed she and this woman might have chatted now and again.

“For now. Just the summer.” Walking through her garage door and into the kitchen, I was struck by the smell of her house. A combination of Windex, cigarettes, and kitty litter. “I’m sorry—I don’t know if we’ve met before. What’s your name again?”

“I’m Mildred. But you can call me Mil. Mildred is such a miserable name. You’re Lily, right? Your mother has told me all about you.”

“Yes.” I blushed. I wondered what my mother had told her. Chances were that any achievements my mother had bragged about were now out of date.

“Now sit there, and I’ll be right over with something to drink. I bet you miss the city. I used to go up there every fall and spring for the fashion shows.”

“You did?” I didn’t mean to sound so surprised.

“For a long time I owned a boutique on Pacific Avenue, back in the fifties and sixties. Oh, I carried the best stuff. Furs, beaded handbags from Belgium, Ceil Chapman dresses, the most drop-dead gorgeous shoes. Marilyn Monroe once bought a sweater from me when she was in town. Poor thing didn’t know it was still pretty cold here in May.” She eyed me up and down, a wry little smile coming into her face. “I still have a ton of the stuff upstairs, if you ever want to look. My grandkids all live in Washington so they’ll never get to see it.” I could picture the closets packed with thick velvet dresses. Beaded cashmere cardigans. Tweed suits in pastel colors. “Had to sell the store off, though, in the seventies. They were saying things were bad then, that the casinos would turn it all around. And get a load of them these days. Now there’s no one to turn them around. Anyway, while you’re here, you should come upstairs and have a look at some of these things. Follow me.”

“Oh, really, thank you, but I couldn’t.”

“Oh, come on. You’d make an old lady’s day.” She got up and left the room, and it seemed I had no choice but to comply. It made me nervous to watch Mil go up the stairs, though for a woman her age she was pretty quick on her feet. She opened the door to a room she must have used as a spare bedroom. It had a green chenille bedspread and a large art deco dresser, the top crammed with old perfume bottles, and I suspected no one had visited in a while. The vanity mirror was furred with dust.