Acting in the theater had been a deep pleasure for Olivia, and she had been wonderful at it. Her high forehead, delicate jawline, and clear eyes gave her the look of a Nordic Madonna. Her fair hair fell in fine ringlets about her face. She pierced the darkest roles like an enchanted princess entering an evil forest. Even painful parts shielded her from life. When she was in a play, she felt ensconced in the story, protected and fearless. She played Lyubov Andreyevna in The Cherry Orchard with tragic abandon, Irina Arkadina in The Seagull with manic force, Nora in A Doll’s House with a frightening, childlike power. Her specialty was nineteenth-century women, but she was also known for more contemporary heroines. She had worked with Albee, and Kushner had reportedly loved her. When she met Ned, though, and had the children, gradually she built a new story around herself—the story of her family, like a house that sheltered her. She needed little else. With no natural ambition, only talent, Olivia drifted away from her acting career. Ned and the children were enough. Now, stripped of a husband, her little boy dead, her daughter increasingly uncommunicative, she found herself exposed and heartbroken. And also, just plain broke. The payments she had been getting from the family trust had dwindled to a trickle. She had called her old acting agent, and he seemed enthusiastic. But, despite having returned to the maiden name she was known for (and, in a rare act of defiance, changing her children’s surname to Van Camp, erasing the last traces of the husband who had erased himself), she got no offers. Never a proud person, she had gotten a job in a yarn shop in Edgartown, but she felt so approximate about everything, and people were so exacting. She made mistakes with change, flustered, unable to concentrate on any task, permanently embarrassed. She had lost her confidence, she supposed, and was quietly fired by the genteel Japanese lady who owned the shop. “Don’t take off your coat, please,” Mrs. Namiki had said softly one morning as Olivia arrived for work. She didn’t hold it against the woman. She went into the shop the very next week and randomly bought a skein of orange yarn, even though she didn’t knit. Mrs. Namiki blushed and gave her the employee discount.

Hull had already helped himself to a vodka tonic and was sitting on the porch, looking down at the stubborn arrangement of the child, who lay cruciform before the melting cake, waiting for customers. A car approached and Lara raised her head. When the driver didn’t stop, she dropped it back down again and stared at the shifting clouds, her palms facing the sky.

“What is going to become of that girl?” Hull mused.