“You all right, miss?” the driver asked Alice—noticing in the rearview mirror, perhaps, the green hue of her face.

She was, she told him. Fine.

“Look straight ahead out the front window. Try rolling your window down some,” said the driver. But she hadn’t brought a headscarf, and her hair flew wildly about her face the moment she did.

She rolled the window back up.

•   •   •

Alice kept her eyes closed until she felt the car slow, heard the road beneath them shift from pavement to dirt. She opened them to find they had reached a long private drive. To her left was a series of working farm buildings: a dairy barn, a granary, a slaughterhouse. A woman and child stood out front of them, staring, not waving.

And then, at last, the Preserve: stands of tall pines that threw the earth into shadow, sloping lawn where others had been felled. At the top of the lawn was, she surmised, the house the driver had described.

Self-Reliance, said a little sign that they passed as they approached. The building itself was colossal. Its central structure was three stories tall, built of rough logs. Delicate wooden carvings descended from its overhanging roof and garlanded the shutters that framed its large windows. Two wings sprouted from its sides; a portico covered the drive. Gardens abounded, brimming with cultivated flowers designed to look wild. Scattered around it were smaller outbuildings, one a sort of miniature version of the house itself.

“My word,” said Delphine.

The most shocking thing about it, thought Alice, was how far it was from anything else. How much work it would have taken to build such a compound in the middle of the woods. The Van Laars had placed the house atop a rise in the land, so that everything near Self-Reliance was also beneath it. Like Olympus, thought Alice, to whom such references did not normally occur.

The driver inched forward until the car met the grass and then rolled to a stop. It was only then that she noticed Peter, standing still as a buck in the shadow cast by the house. Waiting for them.

He stepped forward. He was even taller than she had remembered. Older-looking too. A hint of silver was in his hair, lit up brilliantly by sun as he strode across the lawn.

The driver hopped out. They waited a beat, until they realized he would not be opening their doors.

Peter was close now, and the knot inside Alice exploded into riotous pulsing nerves that threatened to chatter her teeth.

What would they say to one another, she wondered. What on earth was there to say to a grown man? Throughout her school years, she’d been surrounded only by girls. She reminded herself that dancing with Peter had been all right; the ballroom of the Waldorf had been dark and loud and there’d been little need for conversation. But here, in the broad light of day—everything was different.

Delphine rescued her.

“What a journey,” she said to him, happily, stepping out of the car. “I thought we might never make it.”

All around them, the smell of sap in sun. Beyond that, fresh water: the lake.

Peter smiled, hands in pockets, his gaze at their shoes.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said. And he held out two hands for their suitcases, which the driver gladly relinquished.

•   •   •

It was Delphine he walked alongside as they approached the house. Delphine he addressed when inquiring about the weather in the city, activities they liked. Alice trailed behind them, feeling more and more childish.

“Have you been to these mountains before?” he asked, and Delphine said that they had, once, when they were very small.

“Do you remember, Bunny?” she asked Alice—who reddened at the name.

Peter turned slightly, waiting for her reply. The truth was that she didn’t, but admitting this would make her seem even younger in comparison to her sister. And so she said she did.

“You’re familiar with the flies, then,” said Peter.

“What, these?” said Delphine, waving a hand in the air, parting the small swarm that had gathered around their heads.

“Yes,” said Peter. “Blackflies. They’re usually gone by now, but June was cold this year. I guess they wanted to make your acquaintance,” he said, and at last he looked right at Alice and smiled. His teeth were bright. A small thump of excitement descended from her throat to her abdomen.

She smiled back at him: an act of bravery.

It was then that an arrow sailed by, three inches from her nose, coming to a halt in the bark of a nearby tree.

Alice froze.

Peter blanched.

Delphine, unaware of what had just transpired, turned back to them, smiling pleasantly.

For a moment, no one spoke. Then a small child came running toward them, shrieking his apologies, very close to tears.

“Oh no, oh no,” the boy was saying. “Is anyone gotten?”

It was a camper, Peter explained, after comforting the boy, admonishing him, sending him on his way.

“A camper—at what camp?” said Delphine.

Peter inhaled, as if preparing to begin a very long story. And then, thinking better of it, he said he would tell them at dinner.

“Remind me if I forget,” said Peter.

•   •   •

All the windows in the house were open. Fans rotated slowly in each room. The whole place smelled of cut lumber, like something newly built. They were shown to their rooms by a person named Hewitt, who seemed to serve as butler, but whose roughness and attire gave him the air of a cowboy. He wore his hat indoors. He was silent, wiry, forty or so. Every age above twenty-five seemed interchangeable to Alice at that time. She had wondered—was still wondering—who else would be at the house. She had speculated with Delphine on the train.

“Peter’s parents?” she said, and Delphine had shrugged. Maybe.

“Does he—live with them, do you think? In Albany?”

Delphine considered. “George had an apartment,” she said. “Before we got married, I mean. But it was really his father’s.”

“Did you ever see it?”

Delphine smiled. “Yes,” she said. Only afterward did Alice understand her implication.

•   •   •

Her room was large and lake-facing, with a four-poster bed and a patchwork bedspread. It had a full-length standing mirror in which she inspected herself, putting two hands on her cheeks and pressing them in (she believed, in those days, that her face was too full), imagining what she looked like to Peter. She was often told she was pretty—prettier than Delphine, in fact, her one triumph over her sister. But she thought of herself as stupid, and was fairly certain others did too. And unfunny, unwitty. Being humorless, she thought, was even worse than being dumb.

A knock at the door startled her so much that she yelped.

She opened it, still breathing hard.