• • •
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.
It was Hewitt, the butler—the helper, Alice corrected herself. In those clothes, he was nothing like the Wards’ butler in the city. “Family’s having cocktails on the lawn,” he said. “You can join if you like.”
“Thank you,” said Alice—and only then did she notice, peering out from behind Hewitt’s leg, a tiny bright-eyed girl with a thin braid.
“Well, who’s this?” said Alice, and it was the first time Hewitt smiled.
“This is Tessie Jo,” he said.
The girl grinned. Buried her face into the fabric of Hewitt’s pant leg.
• • •
The front of the house was, in fact, the back of it: the lake side. The water looked cold and comfortable all at once, the sort of water that contained warm pockets, hidden springs.
Four adults in high-backed chairs sat on a small beach, facing away from her. Alice didn’t, at first, know who they were; and then she heard her sister’s laugh, charming and warm, a laugh that was often commented upon by others. Delphine had put on a hat that Alice had never seen before, and was sitting next to Peter. From the back the group looked like two couples; only the empty fifth chair said otherwise. In front of them, the little girl—Tessie Jo—ran back and forth across the beach, stopping from time to time to make piles of wet sand.
Peter caught sight of Alice before anyone else and rose from his chair with formality.
“Miss Ward,” he said.
