At Cousin Lou's, the dinners had become somewhat less elaborate. There was a downturn in the real estate market, which did not affect Lou too much. He had made his bundle, as he liked to say, thinking of a package shaped something like a baby, wrapped in cloth and cradled in his arms. He had made his bundle and taken it out of real estate some years ago. Unfortunately, he had put the helpless little bundle into the stock market, and though it lived, it suffered, and so did Lou's parties, causing some of the hangers-on to let go. Annie was glad to see that Roberts was not one of them. It did pain her, though, to imagine what he felt when he saw Miranda so often, for he saw her at the Maybanks' house on Beachside Avenue as well as at Lou's. He turned up frequently at the cottage, too. People should not retire, she thought. They should not even semiretire. Obviously Roberts had nothing better to do than follow Miranda around.
But Annie was glad to see him for her own sake. He was quiet and restful as a companion. Annie could sit beside him at dinner, notice the elegance of his long, slender hands as he held a glass or passed her the salt, and still never leave her own thoughts, which were so sad, but somehow almost dear to her. Thoughts of Frederick. Poor man. Foolish man. Poor, foolish, weak man. She could not help but worry about him. They had heard nothing, though, not a word, not about Amber or a marriage or a baby, not about anything. Even Betty had stopped mentioning him, stopped insinuating that there was anything between him and Annie. As for Miranda, she had, at Annie's insistence, never mentioned Amber, Frederick, or the pregnancy again. She had been, briefly, more gentle with Annie, which Annie found both touching and cloying. But now, thankfully, Miranda was off on a cloud as usual.
Off on a cloud as usual, though the cloud itself was new, different. No man, no love affair, no histrionics. Just . . . friendship? Babysitting? A tremendous amount of amateur gardening, certainly. The front yard was all dug up. She had become like some Victorian companion or maiden aunt. Annie did not understand any of it. But Miranda was happy, and that was all that mattered. Although how she would earn a living now that her agency had really disappeared altogether, Annie had no idea. Perhaps she could hire her at the library. The library that was cutting staff . . .
"I saw your sister today," Roberts was saying. He had brought her a glass of wine, and they stood before Lou's big windows. The moon was exceptionally bright. They could see the Sound spread out beneath it. "She was weeding at the Maybanks'."
"Maybe they'll hire her as their gardener."
"I don't think so. She was digging the weeds up very carefully and putting them in a basket. She plans to replant them. In the woods."
"Miranda likes to rescue things." She sighed.
"So do you," said Roberts.
They were silent. The wind was driving silver clouds across the face of the moon.
Annie thought, What a polite man he is.
Roberts swirled the wine in his glass. "Miranda's lucky to have you."
"Oh, what is Miranda going to do?" Annie said, half to herself.
"And what is Charlotte going to do?"
It was only as she walked home in the moonlight that she wondered what he had meant. Perhaps all that talk about putting the ancestral portraits on the auction block was true.
"Roberts is there so often," Miranda said that night when Annie recounted her conversation. "How much business can they have?"
"He's here a lot, too," Betty pointed out.
"I'm sure he goes there to see you," Annie said.
"Maybe Henry is his love child," said Betty.
On one of springtime's bright afternoons, Betty stood in the kitchen of her bungalow and watched a small yellow-and-black bird flitting through the new leaves of a maple tree. Birds were meant to be free, one always heard that. Because they could fly. She remembered Rosalyn comparing Amber and Crystal to birds because they flew from nest to nest, but what did that really mean except that they had no home? Free as a bird. But how free were you if you were required to fly up and down the coast of the same continent, year after year, just as your father and mother did before you, just as your sons and daughters would do after you? That bright little bird--a goldfinch?--was not free at all. It was just another prisoner. With no home.