“Amazing. You answered your own phone. No call yet. Listen: what year was your grandmother born?”

“Lucy! I can tell you my son’s birthday, and yours, and my mother’s. Not quite sure the rabbit can produce my grandmother from the hat, though.”

“Have a go.” She was in bubbly spirits and wouldn’t be shaken off.

Alex calculated aloud. “My mother was born in 1942. First girl…boys before that…war got in the way…I think my grandmother was thirty-eight or thirty-nine then. I’d take a stab at around…”

“1903?”

“Sounds about right. A reason?”

“Wait until that dinner you promised me. Later.” She hung up. “You heard, Simon. It’s a yellow-brick road, isn’t it? And the shoes were ruby slippers. Dorothy and The Wizard of Oz. But I’ve no idea about the Madonna’s robe, or the number thirty-four. Alex’s grandmother was older when she had his mum.”

“Aha.” Simon adjusted the angle of the screen to show her what he’d found. Kansas had a sunflower on the flag, which was set on a blue silk background—the color of the Madonna’s cloak. “How many stars does it have, Lucy?”

“Am I supposed to count?” She laughed, followed his finger down the text, reading aloud: “Thirty-four stars in the constellation.”

Simon picked up, “It’s the thirty-fourth state admitted to the Union, it seems. And, as you’ve quickly gleaned, the home of The Wizard of Oz.” He gave her the look of a smug cat that had ousted the dog from a favorite chair. “Looks like Alex is paying tonight, sweetheart. Make him take you to Gordon Ramsay’s.”

Now they refocused on the remaining text. “‘The lady who explained about them defeated her sister in a sizzling final, but it was written by a man, and it’s hard to know how much he understood. Was there no place like home, or was that just what the little girl was expected to sing, garlanded with flowers?’”

“Film, and book. Glinda was the Good Witch, I suppose the wicked one was her sister, and Dorothy got back to Auntie Em saying there was ‘no place like home.’ But the rest is a bit of a mystery, Simon.”

“Strange. I was thinking that part reminded me of the Williams sisters, in sizzling finals—and that their destiny was written by their father. But yours is more plausible, especially in the light of the rest, with Kansas.” He refused to give up, scrutinizing the text while Lucy’s mind wandered out of the window.

Glinda certainly had the good advice, but of course, it was the Wizard’s domain. There is a parallel…

The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good wind and fair weather, till it reached the Line.