“Well, but neither did Aunt Amy,” said Emma. “She doesn’t exactly fit into that category today, does she?”

“No, she doesn’t,” agreed Fee. “And she didn’t back then, either, which was something I used to admire immensely about her when I was growing up. She was the girl in the room, you see, who didn’t sit quietly in the corner with the other girls. She was the one who dared to get out of her chair and live her own life in the way she chose. The one who followed baseball, and talked to men about politics, and never learned to cook, because she was too busy taking over her father’s business when he died, and running it at a profit, I might add. The one who shocked her friends’ mothers to bits and made the more conventional girls laugh at her and make fun of her behind her back, and didn’t give a damn. She was a huge influence on me, and she was someone I’ll always be grateful to, because she was the one who showed me it was all possible.”

“Okay,” said Lulu. “I get that part. But I don’t see what about this made her life so very difficult.”

“She was odd,” said Fee flatly. “She was unusual. She was ahead of her time, which meant that for much of her life she was doing these interesting things that she did all alone. And I don’t know if any of you have ever felt odd or unusual, but it can be quite lonely and it can be quite hard. When I started waking up to women’s rights, I had my friends in the collective, and a whole community of women out there to back me up and be friends with. Aunt Amy had no one. It’s not easy to have other women disapprove of you when you’re not even doing anything wrong. And those men who liked talking politics and baseball and doing business with her? I don’t think that fifty years ago it so much as occurred to any of them that a girl who liked talking baseball and politics was also a girl who might welcome a little bit of romance in her life. She never married, and she told me once that she’d have loved to. And she never had children, and she’d have loved that, too.”

There was a pause.

“Bet she’s changed her mind about the last part,” said Sophie quietly.

Fee looked around the table and sighed again.

“I’ll give her the weekend to get over her jet lag,” she said. “And then I’ll call her to talk about things. She shouldn’t have said what she did, but I don’t want to be at loggerheads with her, because she doesn’t have much in the way of family, poor soul. You three—four, actually, because Charlie, you’re certainly part of the family by now—are lucky to have each other, because you never have to be lonely. Amy’s known a lot of loneliness, and that’s been hard for her.” She stopped speaking and smiled at Sophie. “But it doesn’t excuse bad manners, and I’m glad you stood up to her, Sophie,” she added. “It was the right thing to do, and it must have taken some doing, because I know how intimidating she can be.”