There we all stood in the front hallway eyeing each other.

Sina, I noticed, had the identical great false grin plastered on her face as I.

“There now,” said Crying Alice. “Winifred, stand up straight. Wilfred, look alive. Zebediah, don’t slouch. All right, children. I’m off to berate your father. I must talk Fixing Bob out of whatever it is he thinks he is going to do. Be good. Please try to eat healthily. I shall return as soon as I possibly can. Mrs. Whitekraft, may I say that this is contiguous of you.”

“Contiguous?” said Sina. “Well, you certainly can say it…”

“Now, children, let us try to part cheerfully.” At which point Crying Alice broke into hysterical sobs, turned on her heels, and barely made it to her car without flooding the front yard. We could see her bent over the wheel, driving off, her shoulders racked with heaving, shuddering sorrow but her hand waving cheerfully good-bye out the window until the car was no longer in sight.

I had to admire the children, because they looked more or less normal and unfazed by these theatrics and, really, with the example she set for them, we’d no right to expect it.

“Well, then,” said Sina. “That’s done. Dinner at six-thirty.” She turned toward the kitchen, leaving me, as agreed, to show them around.

The children were delighted with their tiny third-floor rooms. The four of us stood in Winifred’s.

“They’re like little dollhouse rooms,” said Winifred. “I got a room of my own for the first time when we moved here from the air force base in Comox. We used to live on base on Prince Edward Island before the air force moved the Argot, the very important plane that Daddy maintains, to the Comox base.”

“Yes, I know,” I said, not bothering to tell her how fast information moves in a small community. “Thus Fixing Bob.”

“Yes, thus Fixing Bob. But Mother said she was tired of living on bases. We’d lived on three so far. And the houses are always teeny-tiny with not enough bedrooms, and the yards are teeny-tiny, and some people object to Mother crying so much.”

“I suppose some might call her Crying Alice,” I said tentatively. “Like Fixing Bob.”

“Oh, how clever you are,” said Winifred. “To think of that right on the spot.”

“Well,” I said, looking down modestly but not arguing, figuring we might as well establish this at the start.

“Flying Bob,” said Zebediah, who had already gone through all the dresser drawers and crawled about under the bed and in the closet and generally examined the room from corner to corner. He was covered in dust bunnies because Sina is a better sculptress than housekeeper.

“Anyhow, that’s how we ended up in dead Auntie Claire’s house down the road,” said Winifred. “Isn’t it, Wilfred?”

“Yes,” said Wilfred, who reminded me a bit of Old Tom, being affable but saying little more than that which was needed at the time.