“I can’t remember,” said Sophie. Whatever she was looking at appeared to be holding her attention.

Emma picked up Sophie’s mobile phone from the table and handed it to her. Still absentmindedly, Sophie began to punch in a number on her speed dial.

“I’ve invited Tom, by the way,” Emma told Lulu while Sophie was talking.

“Excuse me,” said Lulu. “I believe we’d made a deal.”

“I’m just telling you,” said Emma. “Tom’s family now, even if you’re too pigheaded to make him part of it officially. After that night with Sophie at the hospital last year, he’s definitely family.”

“Oh,” said Lulu. She thought. “Okay, then,” she said. “If you want to invite him on that basis, it’ll be nice to see him.”

“I think so, too,” said Emma. “I like Tom. Have I mentioned how nice your hair looks? Ow.”

“I’ll do it harder next time,” said Lulu.

The following Wednesday, knowing that both of her parents would be out, Lulu paid a visit to the attic. After some searching, she had finally decided on the box she would present the letters in when she showed them to the rest of the family, a capaciously elegant rectangle of sturdy cardboard with a hinged lid, its surface patterned a little like an old book’s cover in warm deep brown, with a faint cream mottling and edges of discreet gold. It was plain, but she thought that Grandma Jo would have approved of its simplicity; when she took it to the attic, she was gratified to see that the letters fitted in quite perfectly.

Lulu knew—and over the last few weeks had become increasingly aware of the fact—that Grandma Jo did not belong to her alone. She knew that she belonged to Emma and to Sophie as much as to her, and to Fee, possibly, even more than to any of them; she knew, too, that the drawings in the battered leather case that had been done by Amy belonged to Aunt Amy, and that the letters from Meg belonged to their cousin Susan, and that it was very nearly time for her to share what she had found with the rest of the family. She would not do it quite yet, she thought, with a funny little pang of loss at the prospect; she couldn’t quite bear to give up Grandma Jo quite yet, but she would do it soon. She closed the lid of the box on the letters and sat for a while, looking at it a little wistfully, realizing that she knew its contents, now, more or less by heart. She had grown to know Jo, she felt, almost as well as she knew Fee or Emma; in a profound and instinctual way that she could not fully explain but that was tied up in some fashion with shared blood and inherited habits, with shapes of hands and falls of hair, with sets of shoulders and expressions of eyes, she felt she knew Jo as well as she knew herself. She squinted at the top of the box, wondering if it might be just a touch too severe to house such a treasure as it did. Maybe she would find a red rose made of silk or velvet to decorate it before she showed it to the family, she thought; she had the idea that Grandma Jo had liked red roses.