It was a very spread out community, she thought. As private as you wanted it to be, and evidently some liked it very private indeed. Given the real estate listings she and Liam had seen over the last six months they were willing to pay a high price for it and the taxes that came with it. She wondered what that charismatic Victorian reprobate, Albert Blewes, would have thought of his namesake. He would undoubtedly have become a realtor if he lived today.

She arrived back in town, braked at one of the four stoplights Blewestown boasted (Newenham still had none) and turned left to go down the hill. About halfway down she saw a person who could only be the infamous Sybilla Karlsen, because she was old, female, and naked. She pulled over to the shoulder and got out, slipping her jacket from her shoulders. “Hello,” she said, smiling. “Are you Sybilla?”

The old lady, terribly thin with translucent skin and white hair standing up in a corona around her head, looked around. “Oh, hello,” she said, beaming. “Who are you?”

“I’m Wyanet Chouinard,” Wy said, slipping her jacket over Sybilla’s shoulders. A pickup honked as it flashed by way too fast and Wy had just enough time to give the young man driving it a death glare before it was past. “But please call me Wy. You met my husband earlier this week. Liam? Liam Campbell?”

“Oh my yes,” Sybilla said, allowing herself to be shepherded to the Forester and ensconced in the passenger seat. “What a nice young man. So handsome and so gentlemanly. He gave me a ride home.”

“Yes, he told me. He enjoyed meeting you.” Wy fastened Sybilla’s seat belt.

Sybilla tutted. “I hate these infernal things. They clutch at you so.” She smiled up at Wy. “I can think of more pleasant ways to be clutched.”

Wy grinned. “So can I.” She went around and got in. On impulse she said, “May I take you to lunch, Sybilla?”

Sybilla smiled beatifically. “Oh my yes, I’d love that—”

“Wy,” Wy said. “Or Wyanet, if you like.”

“What a lovely name.”

“It’s Lakota Sioux.”

“And are you?”

“No.” She hesitated, as Sybilla was of a generation that could find what she said next problematic. “I’m actually part Yupiq.”

Sybilla looked delighted. “Really? Yupiq? We don’t see many Yupiq in Southcentral. Sugpiaq, of course, some Tlingit, and a few Athabascan. But I don’t remember meeting a Yupiq before now.”

Wy thought of her maternal relatives in Icky. “Only half.”

“Close enough for government work,” Sybilla said firmly.

Wy laughed. “Let’s stop by your place first and you can dress.”

Sybilla looked down at Wy’s jacket. “Oh my yes, this jacket certainly won’t do for dining out.”

What would do was a trim wool suit that looked very Jackie O., albeit it was now two sizes too large. Sybilla even had a pillbox hat to match that she anchored fiercely to her scant hair with two enormous bobby pins, and a pair of pumps dyed robin’s egg blue to match the suit and hat which kept falling off because they were too big now, too. The attendant on duty, highly amused once Sybilla had been restored safely to her, advised Wy on places to eat and thus it was that Wy took Sybilla to the restaurant in the three-story hotel perched at the very end of the Spit, built entirely without fear of tsunami. The dining room was at the water’s edge with real cloth napkins and tablecloths. Not bad for rural Alaska.