“It could end up,” said Lulu, “that he gets you an awesomely creative opportunity to go to Coventry to play a surfboard …”

“Skateboard,” corrected Sophie.

“… skateboard, and the way you repay him is by standing him up for Thanksgiving dinner. Have you talked to Mom about this?”

“She and Dad have gone away,” said Sophie. “Remember?”

Fee and David, who had taken lately to going on trips together, had left that morning for a long weekend in Washington, D.C.

“That’s the second time they’ve gone away since the summer,” said Sophie now. “I don’t know what they find to say to each other when we’re not around.”

“They have stuff they want to talk about,” said Lulu.

“Oh, like you know all about it,” said Sophie. “I suppose you’re their personal marriage guidance counselor now.”

“If I had been,” said Lulu, “I’d have told them to stop the family at two children.”

Walking a large retriever down the hill behind Flask Walk the following bleak and chilly day, Lulu found herself wondering with a certain detached curiosity whether she was currently more irritated with Emma or with Sophie. Sophie was the more obvious choice, she thought, because she was close at hand and the wealth of material was great: from Lulu’s missing brown sweater, which had been found stuffed into a pocket of their father’s spare suitcase, which Sophie had borrowed for her trip and at last got around to unpacking, with Sophie claiming she had mistaken it for the lining for Toby’s cat carrier, to her latest idea for Thanksgiving, which Lulu thought so unfair to Jamie and which Sophie apparently did not. On the other hand, Emma’s irritant factor was more personal. It was one thing to walk off absentmindedly with an item of Lulu’s clothing; quite another to try to meddle in her romantic life.

However she might protest to the contrary in public, Lulu did feel lonely at times without a boyfriend, and particularly so since Charlie had taken up with Javier, a quietly handsome young man who looked at Charlie with such naked love that Lulu sometimes felt a corner of her heart would burst with longing to have someone look so at her. But that did not, she thought now crossly, by any means lead to the inevitable conclusion that the man she wanted to look at her must be Tom. Or did it? She thought about Tom now, trying to see him as a potential girlfriend might. He was certainly not an unattractive man—if not exactly handsome, then good-looking enough, in a sandy American way, with broad shoulders, strong, freckled hands, and a kind smile. Lulu had always liked a kind smile. She liked his company, too. They shared both a sense of humor and a mild eccentricity, and it was true that, either despite or because of their age difference, she felt at ease with him in a way she felt with few younger men. But did that mean she could feel romantic about him? He was older than her, she thought, doubtfully, and, in some ways, too similar to her to be intriguing to her; she enjoyed his company, but he did not thrill her as Herr Bhaer had thrilled Grandma Jo all those years ago. And surely, thought Lulu, she deserved to be thrilled as her ancestor had.