Sadie was beside herself with excitement. Laurie had taken her to the square. “Did you see the red peppers hanging from hooks? They looked like small bananas until I got close, and Laurie said they were red peppers. Imagine hanging peppers like that? They’re just so funny.” She doubled over giggling and tugged on Amelia’s arm. “Did you take pictures of them, Grandma? Please, will you take my picture with a bunch of them hanging on either side of my head, like they’re my hair?” She stuck out her tongue and panted. “Like long doggie ears.” She wagged her head back and forth. “The kids at school will think that’s the funniest thing they ever saw.”

“Yes, of course. We’ll go back there in the daytime, you, your mother, and I, and I’ll take pictures of you and the peppers,” Amelia said.

“Tomorrow?” Sadie asked.

“Tomorrow you’ll go with us on the bus to a place called Taos. There’s a pueblo there I think you might like to see.”

Sadie skipped about the room and flopped on the bed. “What’s a pueblo, Grandma?”

“It looks like a chocolate cake, but it’s really apartments where Indians lived years ago, and some of them still live there. The pueblo slopes some, I think, and it looks like layers of chocolate cake about to topple over.”

“Can I go inside?”

“I don’t think so. They probably don’t welcome strangers into their homes, especially people who arrive by bus for an hour or so.” Amelia sat on a chair and unlaced her sturdy shoes. She rubbed her toes.

Miriam came in from the bathroom, a towel wrapped about her hair.

“I’m hungry,” Sadie said.

“Good Lord,” Amelia said. “I forgot we agreed to have dinner with Ben. You still up to that, Miriam? If not, I can give him a call and cancel.”

“I think it might be fun, if you’re up to it. I’ll slip into something. Sadie, get dressed.” She extracted a hair dryer from her suitcase.

“Who is Ben, and where are we going?” Sadie asked.

“Ben’s a nice man who’s along on the workshop. Look at you, you must change that shirt. It has a stain on it. How about your plaid shirt?”

The T-shirt Sadie wore was half off and moments later she was buttoning the front of the plaid shirt. “I like it that I’m going. Sometimes grown-ups don’t want children along when they go out to eat,” she said.

The waiter set a huge salad bowl and a basket of chips and salsa before them and refilled the adults’ wineglasses. Miriam indicated no more Coke for Sadie, who pouted briefly.

Ben half finished his glass of wine. “What do you think of our instructor? Loading us with work, isn’t she?” he asked Amelia.

“That’s what we’re here for,” Amelia replied.