Julie even tied a yellow ribbon around a tree in her yard that Sunday afternoon. We set out platters of pastitsio and dolmades and huge bowls of salad salty with olives and feta for parents and my sisters and Jep’s sister, all their husbands and children. We all gathered at the table-for-twenty in Julie’s huge dining room, which reminded me of the kind of hall where a sixteenth-century king would have hosted a warrior banquet. Hal set up card tables for the kids.

Once we were serving dessert, I spoke up.

“Guys, all of you, Stefan has been having the worst time trying to find a job. He’s tried everywhere, and he doesn’t seem to get anywhere. Even the people who say they’re committed to hiring people like him, you know, with his status, say that they don’t have any openings. Please, Andy, Amelia, will you see what you can do?” Amelia’s husband Andy owned three lumberyards. Stefan had worked at one of them every summer in high school.

“Don’t put your sister on the spot!” my mother said.

“I’m not!”

“You are a little,” Stefan said.

“Let me think about this,” Andy said.

“Unkie, take your time.”

Andy studied his slice of almond-coconut cake. “Okay, I had enough time. Stefan, when can you start?”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. You’re a good worker, you already know the ropes, and you’re family.”

“Is the yard open tonight? I can start right now.”

“Well, all these announcements, I have to get mine in,” my sister Phoebe said. She was expecting her fourth child, a boy, in just three months. She was so fit, our sister Amelia said with no small amount of rancor, you couldn’t even tell. Everyone cheered. Phoebe was the youngest of the three of us sisters, just about to turn thirty-six. She graduated the Art Institute in Chicago and was actually a very good sculptor, big bold figures in stone like Sylvia Shaw Judson, and an even better photographer, but she only took the rarest commission. Her husband, Walker, was an architect who made plenty of money and their three girls had the full panoply of enrichments. I was shocked by my jealousy. This could have been our life, a lot of sunshine, a little rain, the years of the green corn turning to gold.