Anna Brody had cut her hair again, but this time it was extra short, like Mia Farrow’s in that movie where she gave birth to the devil. Anna wore a big-collared cream blouse under a powder-blue cashmere sweater, caramel-colored slacks, and no makeup. She appeared nervous, jittery, as if highly caffeinated. (This didn’t seem like the same woman who’d had lunch with me two weeks earlier.) She didn’t look me in the eye. Instead, she focused on my forehead as she whispered, “It’s been a while.”

Anna didn’t make eye contact with me the entire time all four of us were in the vestibule, nor did she later in the sunroom, where we sat around a glass table as her maid served tea and a tray of bitter Italian cookies. In fact, during the entire forty-seven minutes I was with her, she looked at me only once, and only at the end, and only because I made her.

It was all very polite at first. Pamela Wyeth-Bacon had never been in the mansion, and she gasped and praised and fawned over the spaciousness, the colors, the curtains, the Biedermeier tables, the 1920 English stove, the Tuscan-style emblature.

I hadn’t been in the house since Anna had done her newest redecorating. Needless to say, it was always exquisite, but now it was more so.

While the three of them discussed the “situation,” I reviewed the most recent draft of the proposed description. Whoever had written the copy had done a wonderful job. In my opinion, One of the most striking and distinct features . . . was a phrase that could not be overused. It could apply to the hand-carved moldings and the ornate tin ceilings and the one-of-a-kind Honduras mahogany circular staircase and the truly grand parlor entrance hall with its huge pocket doors and marquetry paneling with black walnut inlay. It was true that her bathroom floor sparkled with a mosaic of muted green and yellow encaustic tiles, and how could she object to a border of limestone frames the bathtub or quibble over serenity fills the finished space . . . ?

“Something’s missing,” Anna said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “This copy seems pretty good to me.”

“I don’t mean the brochure. The house.”

We were confused.

“Something’s wrong with my house.”

The ladies objected, but that was all part of Anna’s power. The more you complimented her, the more it appeared to hurt her.

“Maybe you could find another house,” Anna said. “A better house.”

Abigail laughed, clearly terrified at the thought. I began to feel sorry for Abigail and Pamela. They were trying to please Anna, and there was to be no pleasing.

Anna leaned toward me and said, “Let them use yours.”

Now she was being cruel. (Only later did I realize she was being sincere.)