Refusing to dignify that with a response, Alice rose from her seat, began looking around the room. If she’d been starving for pictures of Camilla in Richard’s house, she could eat to her heart’s content in Mrs. Flood’s, could just pig out, gorge herself to the point of bursting. Camilla’s image was everywhere, on every available inch of wall space, on every available flat surface. Alice felt overwhelmed by possibility, didn’t know where to begin. With Camilla as a fat-kneed toddler, pink and dimply, as adorable as a kid in any ad? With Camilla as a gap-toothed grade-schooler dressed as a cowgirl for Halloween, gun belt around her waist, ten-gallon hat on her head, hand on an out-thrust hip, pretend sexy? With Camilla as a Teen Vogue teen, vamping for the camera in a polka-dot bikini and heart-shaped Lolita sunglasses, all arms and legs and attitude, sexy for real? Wherever she looked, Camilla, Camilla, Camilla. There was even a framed copy of Camilla’s birth certificate above one of the Tiffany lamps on the end table. She walked over to it. March 28. Camilla was born two months to the day before she was.

At that moment, Mrs. Flood returned to the dining room carrying a tray loaded with crustless triangle-shaped sandwiches and fruit plates and cornichon pickles, tall glasses of lemonade, tinkly with ice cubes. Alice quickly stepped away from the birth certificate and picked up a photo from the windowsill. It was of Camilla, about age fourteen, and Mrs. Flood. (It somehow seemed more polite to Alice to be caught gawking at a photo that the hostess was actually in.) They were in an outdoor setting of some kind, and Mrs. Flood was pulling Camilla to her. Camilla was laughing, the sun glinting off her teeth. “Where was this taken, Mrs. Flood?”

“Please, dear, call me Katherine,” Mrs. Flood said, as she carefully set down the tray on the table, walked over to where Alice was standing. “You can even call me Nana if you like,” she said, smiling shyly.

Alice smiled back.

“Now let me see.” Mrs. Flood took the photo from Alice’s hands, held it up almost reverently. “At a handcraft fair in Mystic I took Camilla to a few years ago. Such a wonderful day. I bought her those wind chimes. They were made out of sand dollars. I thought they were tacky little things, but Camilla said, ‘Nana, I like the sound they make.’”

Alice squinted. “Oh yeah. You know, those wind chimes are still hanging on the back porch of the house.”

A cloud passed over Mrs. Flood’s face. “Are they? Richard got rid of so much, almost everything Camilla or Martha ever touched, it seemed like. The wind chimes must’ve somehow escaped the purge.” She gave Alice a pained smile, then said, “Let’s go eat. Can’t have those cold cuts getting cold.”

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