“This is housekeeping,” Zanne said, dropping cottage from the end of it as they came upon yet another one. The doors opened and Letty and Flora emerged, wearing pink scrubs and black sneakers, one lugging a steam cleaner and the other a laundry basket full of folded sheets. Flora issued directives to Letty in Spanish. Zanne raised a hand in greeting, and they stopped.

“Oh, sorry, no, keep going. I don’t want to hold you up. This is my...this is Gaby.”

“Hi,” Flora said. Letty smiled.

“This is Flora and Letty.”

“Hola,” Gaby said.

“Hola,” Letty said back.

They all stood there, smiling stupidly at each other.

“We’ll let you go. Going this way,” Zanne said, thumbing toward the Japanese garden. Flora and Letty rebalanced their loads and then disappeared behind the housekeeping cottage, where another set of stairs led to the main house. Zanne and Gaby crossed a bridge over a koi pond. At the back of the Japanese garden was a larger cottage with a gabled roof like a Shinto shrine. Zanne peeked in the window to make sure it was empty.

“Holly’s art studio,” she said. “She paints.”

“For herself, or...?” Gaby asked.

“Professionally. Well, sort of. She sells to set designers mostly. I guess her work is considered emotionally...resonant.” Horses displaying emotions, especially maternal ones, were always good subjects for movie or TV, Holly had apparently discovered. Her work hung over the mantel in the family comedy, behind the lawyer’s desk in the thriller, in the bedroom of the beach romance. Ted had famously spotted her talent during open studios when she was a student at the California School of Visual Arts, where he was a trustee eleven years her senior. In the current climate, the affair would have been regarded as an abuse of power, but back then people called it a fairy tale.

Gaby hung back by the bridge, her fingers playing with the fabric of her skirt. She seemed stiff, nervous. Zanne slid next to her. She leaned back against the wood railing and nudged Gaby with her shoulder.

“What would you do if you had only one day left to live?” Zanne asked.

It was their ask-me-anything game. They’d played it that first night together as a way to ease the distance between strangers. Except no one ever really stopped being strangers, and the game was a way to acknowledge that.

“One perfect day, or it’s the end of the world and there’s chaos outside?” Gaby asked, playing with the leather cords and cuffs stacked up Zanne’s wrist.

“Either. Both.” She was eager to see where this train of thought led.