Lulu placed the sketch and the piano music carefully on the shelf by the letters box, sat down on the armchair, and turned on the lamp. Then she opened the envelope—it seemed to have been opened before—and began to read.

Boston, November 1945.

My dearest great-great-granddaughter,

I dreamed about you last night. Now some may say the old dame’s gone crazy at last, that the second glass of wine with the cake and ice cream at her hundredth birthday bash yesterday, the one that caused Cousin Henry to frown so ominously and shake his head in foreboding, has sent her clear bananas, and who’s to say but that they’re right? Nevertheless, I did dream of you, and the dream was so strong and so real that I can’t help but pick up my pen—a stout sturdy Waterman, a far cry from the flimsy quill pens I used to run through at such a rate when I was a girl—to send you a greeting. And if anyone who isn’t you should chance to pick this letter up to read after I’m gone, and shake their head and think, The old dear’s nutty as a fruitcake, then I’d remind them that the letter weren’t addressed to them in the first place, and add that I’d thank them kindly not to go snooping through other people’s correspondence because it ain’t polite. (Ha! The old girl may be crazy, but she’s no more dumb than she ever was—sprinkle that on your Thanksgiving turkey and chew on it.)

Here’s what I dreamed. I dreamed that my granddaughter Jojo married that decent fellow Bob Chamberlain who’s lately come a-courting—always liked that family, you knew where you were with them—and that Jojo had a daughter who was like me, and that the daughter had a daughter who was like her. Couldn’t get a name, couldn’t get a face, had the feeling you lived somewhere far away—our family always did like to go adventuring—but you were mine all right, awkward, and stubborn, and fierce, and funny, and, yes, I can say it to you as I never could say to my stern young self all those years ago, just wonderfully loving, and kind, and good.

I wonder what your world will be like, great-great-granddaughter, sixty-some years from now? Will you travel everywhere in motorcars with wings instead of wheels and fly to the moon on rocket ships for weekends? Will the ladies dress like men, as seems to be the fashion now, and the men like ladies, for turnabout is fair play and I’d like to see some of them wrestling with stockings and girdles and garter belts morning after morning? Will all disease be cured and all war be banished and every single person equal to every other person, with no one poor or humble or looked down upon? I’d like to think it, but after a century spent living among these dear flawed creatures called men and women, I ain’t betting the barn on it.