“Looking for that cat, were you?” Betty smiled and winked at her when Rose came back inside.

“Yes, I thought I heard her.”

“She hasn’t been around for the longest time,” Betty said, and turned to Rosalinda. “She was looking for that cat, Mrs. A. The one that hangs around on our block.”

“Moved on to a classier neighborhood, most likely.” Her grandmother sniffed. “One of those places north of here. Ostentatious, palatial, ugly things. Unsightly.”

“Oh . . . oh, I hope not,” Rose said, thinking of Hatfield, the turreted brick palace where the princess lived. Had September stayed back there? Had the cat wanted to live in a real palace?

“Rose, dear,” her grandmother said, “give me a report on those winter herbs. I sowed them a month before those lettuces.”

“Oh yes, sorry, Gran.” She walked over to the table. “Well, the parsley does need thinning. And . . .” She bent over the tray next to it, where very vigorous seedlings were crowding each other out. She blinked. The robust herbs looked exactly like the sprig she had seen tucked into the buttonhole in the man’s jacket in the locket picture. “What are these, Gran? Their label seems to be missing.”

“What are what?”

“They have needles like miniature evergreens.”

“Oh, rosemary. I named your mother Rosemary. Rosemary for remembrance. How is your mother now, Rose? Just plain Rose.” A frail giggle escaped.

“My mother?” She felt a lump swelling in her throat. “My mother is dead, Gran.” She blurted this out. She had not meant to say it that way. It sounded so harsh. She wasn’t angry, but she wished her grandmother could just remember that her mother was no more.

“Oh dear . . . I forgot. And here rosemary is for remembrance and I forgot. If that’s not irony for you, I don’t know what is.” Then in a sad voice, her grandmother began to trill.

“There’s rosemary and rue. These keep

Seeming and savor all the winter long.

Grace and remembrance be to you.”

She turned toward Rose as Betty led her away.

“That’s from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Act Four, Scene Four,” Rosalinda called back over her shoulder.

“Your grandmother knows her Shakespeare, Rose,” Betty said.

As well as the equinox, Rose thought. What an odd person Rosalinda was! Or perhaps it was her brain that was so odd—like a Rubik’s Cube of some sort, full of twisty puzzles of time and fragments of memory.

“And!” Rosalinda’s voice boomed. The moon just rising showered light through the greenhouse cupolas. Momentarily Rose felt caught in a dazzling crossfire of splintering moonlight.

“And what?” Rose called back.

“Where rosemary flourished, the woman ruled.”

“Who said that, Gran?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes, how should I know?” She laughed gaily now.