“Grandma Jo again?” said Emma. “You’re awfully interested in her these days, aren’t you?”

“That’s odd.” Lulu frowned at her sister in feigned puzzlement. “I don’t recall having asked your opinion. Remind me again exactly when I did.”

“No need to jump on me, Lu,” said Emma. “I’m the one who’s always been interested in her, remember?”

Not for the first time lately, Emma reminded herself to go gently with Lulu. Mr. Goncharoff had not yet sold his shop, but it was becoming increasingly apparent that one day soon he would, and when that happened, no one, least of all Lulu herself, seemed to have any idea of just what would become of Lulu. Lulu had never been good at showing vulnerability, but Emma knew nevertheless that beneath her younger sister’s carapace of jokes and sarcasm lay insecurities that she herself could not begin to imagine. Emma sighed a little, quietly, to herself. She did not feel she had even nearly finished with her own conversation with their mother; but if hunting for Grandma Jo would help to divert Lulu from the uncertainties facing her, well, Emma was accustomed by now to having her own immediate needs upstaged.

“Okay.” Lulu sat down and arranged the photographs in front of her, like a giant pack of playing cards. “It’s hard to tell because not many people in the family seem to have made notes of who was who. Not organized, Mom.” She glanced reprovingly at her mother. “But this one here seems to be the most likely. It’s obviously of this person’s birthday party, and I’m wondering if it’s Grandma Jo’s.”

“Let’s see.” Fee took the photograph and inspected it: a group of people wearing the fashions of sixty years before, a few of the younger ones in service uniform, grouped affectionately around a bent old woman sitting behind a cake, her face crisscrossed with wrinkles, her long New England chin still defiantly firm, her eyes alight with intelligence across the years.

“I know that Grandma Jo was born in November 1845,” said Fee, “and that she lived to be a hundred, which would call for a big party, wouldn’t it? This is definitely our family—there’s my mom, and there’s my uncle Alan in his naval uniform—isn’t he young! Those two are Aunt Amy’s parents, Aunt Margaret and Uncle Ted, and I guess that little girl with them must be Aunt Amy … yes, she’d be about eight—it’s funny that there are some people you never quite imagine as having been children.” She frowned, thoughtfully, over the image. “I wonder if we can pinpoint the exact date,” she said. “It’s obviously around the time of the Second World War, because of the uniforms … oh, but, look, Mom’s in civilian clothes, which makes it certainly later than 1944 because the women pilots were disbanded just a few months before the war was over—they were told because they were ‘too expensive.’ Mom was mad about that till the day she died. So it’s probably 1945, and it’s not summer, because look at those thick sweaters, and … aha! You see that?” She pointed to a cone-shaped basket set beside the cake holding an arrangement of pears and grapes. “That’s a horn of plenty—it’s a Thanksgiving decoration, so it must be November. November 1945.” She brought the photograph closer to study it. “Do you know, Lulu,” she said after a moment, “you’re a genius. I think this must be her. How very interesting, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before.”