Murmur, murmur. A woman’s voice, briefly, and then David saying, “Hope we’re not late.”
“No, no…” and they entered the living room, David leading.
Lily’s first sight of David never failed to startle her. Mentally, she had him fixed at some point in his late teens—his hair still golden, his face still unformed and tentative. But his hair was a darker blond now, straight and floppy and a bit rough-edged, as if he’d waited just a week or two past the time when it should be cut, and his face had taken on a squarer shape. Today he wore faded jeans and a flannel shirt fraying at the cuffs. That was the teacher in him, she supposed. Teachers were notoriously shabby dressers.
The woman who followed him was several years his senior—easily ten years, and maybe more. She was holding the hand of a little girl aged perhaps five or six, and the two of them wore identical expressions: serious, focused, on the very edge of frowning. Kevin and Alice trailed after them. Alice’s own expression was a study.
“Hi, all,” David said. “Like you to meet Greta Thornton and her daughter, Emily. Greta, these are my parents, Robin and Mercy; my sister Lily…”
Greta had light-brown hair, short and crinkly and standing up from her forehead, and she wore a fitted brown wool dress that could have come straight from the 1940s. Emily’s hair was paler, pulled into braids so tight that they stretched the skin at her temples. Her clothes, too, seemed out of date—a dark print dress with long sleeves, and stiff tie shoes and knee socks.
“How do you do?” Greta asked, extending her hand to Robin. She went around the group shaking hands with everyone, even the children, who scrambled to their feet looking embarrassed. Emily didn’t shake hands, but she carried herself with such dignity, following close behind her mother and giving each person an unblinking stare, that she might as well have.
“It’s nice to meet you, Greta,” Mercy said, and Robin said, “Much traffic on I-95, son?”
“Pretty brisk,” David said offhandedly. “Emily, would you like to help with the jigsaw puzzle? Emily’s a whiz at puzzles,” he told the other children. Robin the Girl sat back down on the rug and patted the space next to her invitingly, but Emily circled the coffee table and took a seat on the couch, perching on just the first few inches of it with her back perfectly straight. She reached for a puzzle piece, an edge piece that was nothing but blue sky, and studied it intently and then transferred her gaze to the puzzle.
The men were discussing the absurdity of closing down a whole traffic lane on a holiday. Mercy was asking Greta if she’d ever been to Baltimore. Alice was edging out of the room as unobtrusively as possible—heading off to set an extra place at the table, Lily surmised.
Greta had not, in fact, ever been to Baltimore. “I come originally from Minnesota,” she told Mercy. The way she spoke was not exactly foreign, but it was very stiff and precise, and she pronounced the t in “Minnesota” as sharply as somebody English might.
“And you teach at David’s school?” Lily asked.
Greta transferred her gaze to Lily. Her eyes were a light-filled gray, and they gave an impression of extreme serenity—of imperviousness, almost. “I am the school nurse,” she said. No contraction.
“Oh, a nurse!”
“I have been there a year.”
“So you’ve known David a year.”
“Yes.”
Greta continued gazing at Lily calmly. There was a brief silence, during which a clatter of china and silver could be heard from the dining room.
“Greta, may I offer you a sherry?” Kevin asked suddenly.
Lily and her mother exchanged a startled glance. Cocktails, in the daytime? And sherry! Did Kevin and Alice even own a bottle of sherry?
Greta said, “No, thank you.”
Another silence. Kevin didn’t ask if anyone else wanted sherry. He seemed to have abandoned the whole idea.
“I told Greta that on our trip home we ought to swing by downtown so she could see Harborplace,” David said.
“Oh, yes, you should definitely show her Harborplace!” Mercy said. “Baltimore’s very proud of Harborplace,” she told Greta. Although Lily knew for a fact that Mercy considered Harborplace a glorified shopping mall.
“They have fireworks there on the Fourth of July,” Robin the Girl chimed in, and both of the boys nodded enthusiastically.
Emily leaned forward a couple of inches and laid down her puzzle piece, neatly joining two long strips of sky.
“I’m not sure you want to mess with Harborplace traffic on a holiday,” Morris told David.