“It’s more like a pie than a cake, but sometimes it’s vice versa. You never know how the bottom crust will turn out—it’s usually burnt,” Aunt Martha chimed in.

My grandmother admitted she never made the bottom crust the same way twice; her being a reader had not carried over to her chores in the kitchen, where she wrote nothing down and there were no cookbooks. The bottom crust was flour and sugar and butter, in unspecified amounts and proportions, and Nana threw in some vanilla or rum—or the sherry no one but the infant emeritus drank. Now, since Granddaddy Lew was reliving his infancy, my grandmother hid the sherry from him.

All Little Ray ever said about the unnameable dessert was that the burnt part tasted better with vanilla ice cream on it. She said this to the snowshoer, offering him a swig from the bottle they were sharing. Aunt Abigail, who’d been counting the bottles, chose this moment to say: “Five beers! That’s a lot for you, Ray.”

“We’ve been sharing the beer—I’ve had two and a half,” my mom told her.

“That’s still over your quota, Rachel,” Aunt Martha chimed in. “That might explain all the kissing.”

“It doesn’t matter where you stay in North Conway, Rachel—you should carefully consider the sleeping arrangements,” Aunt Abigail said.

“The sleeping arrangements and the kissing!” Aunt Martha chimed in.

“I can make my own sleeping arrangements,” my mother told them. My aunts gave me their most redoubtable look. I felt incriminated, as if I were positive proof of what came of Little Ray’s making her own sleeping arrangements.

By the time my grandmother returned to the dining room, no one was talking. We were silently eating the deep-dish blueberry thing, with vanilla ice cream on the burnt bottom crust. “Girls, girls,” my grandmother admonished her daughters. Nana didn’t need to hear them to know when they’d been fighting.

My grandmother looked tired and defeated. Real life was not as sensibly or purposely constructed as one of her favorite novels. Mildred Brewster loved all the foreshadowing in Melville and Dickens. She’d not foreseen she would be changing her damaged husband’s diapers, and putting him to bed, when there was intelligent company for supper and the unnameable but edible dessert was on the table. On top of that, her children were at war with one another.

“I’m so sorry to have missed a single minute of your company, Mr. Barlow,” my grandmother announced. “I was looking forward to talking about books with you.”

“I wish someone had read Moby-Dick aloud to me, Mrs. Brewster,” the snowshoer replied. “I might have paid closer attention and not found it such hard going. I envy Adam his experience.”

“No one envies Adam!” Aunt Abigail cried.