“Yes,” she said, in an almost reverent tone. “My grandfather’s great-grandfather, Jerahmeel Copeland, built it for his family. He started the Eastern Central Railroad—it was one of the first to cross the Mississippi. He was a very powerful man—by the time he died, he owned buildings all over Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, as well as vast networks of train lines. Apparently he was scrupulously honest and a real stickler for the rules. Not a very fun guy to be around, according to family legends . . . but he sure knew how to build things.”

“Is everything inside original?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” she said. “The house was built in 1858. Most of it was remodeled and modernized in the 1930s, and since then we’ve just replaced some upholstery and dealt with maintenance issues as they arise . . .”

“Have you lived here your whole life?” I asked.

She leaned back. “I moved away for college, which is where I met John. We got married and he went to law school in Chicago, so we had a place in the city. But things are so busy out there. The world just spins and spins, and we wanted to be a little more still. I always knew I’d come back, and then my father died—my mother had been dead since I was two—so we packed up and came home. Then Agatha came along, and Barrett was a surprise, only a year later.” She smiled sadly. “People say children keep you young, but lately I feel . . .” She shook her head. “It’s a lot of pressure. Emotional pressure. I feel like I have to carry on the family legacy all by myself.”

“So you’re an only child?” I asked.

Her eyes locked on mine. There was a heavy, sad pause. “Yes,” she said, but there was an unspoken story behind her answer.

Something landed on my heart with a gentle thud. Maybe Laura understood me better than I thought. “Me too,” I said. “Well, now I am.”

Her eyes were like tinted glass, her sadness a dark hole behind them. “Yes,” she said softly. “I know.”

We went back to pulling bugs off the twisting vines and dropping them into a bucket of soapy water.

“I was supposed to be a boy,” she said, almost an afterthought. “I’m the first woman to inherit the house. My father’s mother wept at my wedding when she realized there wouldn’t be a Copeland in Copeland Hall anymore.”

“She really cried? At your wedding?”

Laura smiled wryly. “Actually, she sobbed. Grandmother Copeland had a flair for the dramatic.”

“Could you have just kept your last name?”

She laughed merrily. Another joke, how delightful! I could practically hear her saying. “Oh no,” she said. “That kind of thing isn’t done in my family. Anyway, it’s okay. ‘The Suttons of Copeland Hall’ sounds perfectly fine to me.”