“I wanted to bring a few other treats, just little things,” Aurelia continues with a wistful pang, groping for a benign connection. “But I didn’t have any more room. The suitcase was getting too full of chocolate chips and molasses and fluoride toothpaste. I can’t imagine why they don’t sell such common items in England. So peculiar—” She glances at Sylvia for a nod, any signal, of friendly commiseration. Sylvia keeps her eyes on the road. Aurelia moves on. “—but my true preoccupation was that box of dishes. I never took my eyes off it from the time I left Wellesley until you picked me up from the train station. I was afraid one of the stewardesses on the plane or one of the porters would kick it, though I labeled it ‘fragile’ on every side.”

“Mother,” Sylvia replies, trying to let her genuine gratitude for her mother’s gifts soften the annoyance she feels at yet again having to express her gratitude, “I really do appreciate all that you brought for us. I love the dishes especially. You know I always wanted them.”

“You always liked that forest green border,” Aurelia notes with satisfaction. “It’s hand-painted, you know. I think the color caught your artist’s eye.”

“I think you’re right.”

“And they’re quite valuable now, also. They’re nearly antique. I doubt you could buy a set like that at all, even if you’d kept your job at Smith.”

“I’m sure they’re irreplaceable, Mother.” Just ignore it, she tells herself.

“I would have given anything for a job like that,” her mother sighs.

Sylvia doesn’t respond, gripping the wheel.

“And I was looking at your garden. There’s a nice sunny spot to plant the corn right by your trellis of broad beans,” Aurelia says.

“Mother, it’s July. It’s too late to plant corn.”

“Oh,” Aurelia says, her voice pinched with disappointment. “Well then, you can save the seeds and get an earlier start next year.”

“Right,” Sylvia replies automatically, watching the road. Always—something she could do better. Some way that she’s let her mother down. They are driving alongside the Roman walls of old Exeter and out toward the banks of the river, which they will follow north and west for much of the trip home, along the same route across Devon that Vespasian’s legionnaires had followed, hundreds, no thousands, of years ago on this road. She feels its pull under her, fundamental, innate. An ancient path; they’d been following it all her life. Whatever she did, whatever pearl she dropped at her mother’s feet, it would never be enough.