“I thought maybe you’d take me along.”

“Oh, Stephanie,” I said disgustedly, “go get yourself another job.”

“I can’t. They won’t let me.”

“Your parents? How can they prevent you? You’re not a child.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Let me get this straight. Do they want you to stay here, or is it just that you want to stay?”

She hesitated. “They’d like me to stay here with you and keep you living in the house. I’d like to be with you somewhere else.”

“Why are you so fond of us?”

“You’re different from the people I’m used to. At dinner you talk about things—books and music, things like that. At home we never talk at dinner.”

I didn’t think our table talk was all that cultivated, but I let it pass. “You can stay for another week or so, Stephanie,” I said, “then we’ll examine the problem again.”

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Caine.” She clutched my hand. “And will you think about my going back East with you too? Maybe just to travel with you, if nothing else.”

I agreed to consider it, but I had no intention of taking her along. She was beginning to seem seriously neurotic to me, and I didn’t want to be responsible for her. At that time, my determination to leave hadn’t diminished in the least, even though I wasn’t making any headway with the Scarsdale tenants. Mr. Shaffer was just as adamant as his wife about giving up the lease.

Compounding the problem was the fact that Jack was settling in on the farm. He had apparently put the Duff-­Stephanie episode out of his mind and was writing a book. It was to be a novel, about the advertising business presumably. We never discussed it, and I haven’t looked at the four or five filled yellow legal pads he left.

I know now I should have called the real estate man and insisted that he find us another place, no matter what the cost. If nothing was available in Scarsdale, then we should have gone somewhere else, maybe to my sister’s in Albany. She has a big house and no children, and while I can’t say she would have been eager to take us in—we have never really gotten along—she would have accepted the situation if I had presented it as an emergency.

Then it was mid-­August and the school year was almost upon us. Something would have to be done soon. I assumed that Duff’s and Franny’s records had already been transferred to Cainesville, and reversing the process might take some time.