“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” Bessie replied. She pulled in a deep breath and let it out. “But as I said, it was a very long time ago.” She closed her eyes, trying to conjure up Harold’s face. “You know, I almost can’t remember what he looked like—not really. I have a photograph of the two of us together, playing in the water at the swimming hole on Pine Mill Creek. When I think of him, that’s how I picture him, smiling and happy, still just a boy. I never think of the way he must look now, gray-haired and wrinkled and maybe even bent and stooped.” She sighed reminiscently. “Sometimes I think how different my life would have been if we’d married. We would’ve had children. And I wouldn’t have—”

“Oh, there you are, Bessie, dear!” came a bright voice at the kitchen door. It was Leticia Wiggins, hobbling down the back steps. She was moving carefully, leaning on her cane with one hand, holding on to the banister with the other. Leticia had fallen the year before and broken her wrist. She didn’t want to do it again. “Maxine and I have finished our canasta game. I won forty-two dollars!”

“Forty-two dollars!” Verna raised her eyebrows. “My goodness!”

“It’s just pretend money,” Bessie said in a low voice. “They started out gambling for pennies but now they’ve made up these colored paper bills. And they can never agree—”

“Forty-two?” Maxine Bechdel snapped, coming down the stairs behind Leticia, her white hair gleaming. “Don’t be ridiculous, Leticia. It was only thirty-two. You added wrong, as usual.” She peered nearsightedly at Bessie’s guests. “Oh, it’s Elizabeth and Verna! Hello, girls. We haven’t seen you for a while. Mind if we join you?”

Liz put her glass down and stood up. “Somebody can have my chair,” she said. “I’m afraid I have to go. It’s thundering, and I need to get home and close my windows.”

“I’d better be on my way, too,” Verna said, standing up. She put her hand on Bessie’s shoulder. “Thanks for sharing all that family history with us, Bessie.”

“You’re welcome,” Bessie said, reaching up to clasp Verna’s hand. She shook her head with a wicked grin. “I’ll bet old Miss Hamer doesn’t have an idea in her head that she’s harboring a couple of vaudeville dancers. But that’s what comes of letting those naked ladies bloom in her front yard.”