"Poor Aunt Charlotte is finally poor now, just as she always thought she would be, and now we really will have to auction the portraits and the chairs and the silver spoons, but she thought it would be death duties, that's what she calls them, total affectation, and now the death duties will come while she's still alive, crazy old thing. Well, at least she'll be able to see her fantasy come true, that's one way to look at it..."

Finally, Miranda got hold of herself. She had come here to say something, not to listen, not to sympathize. But disaster had struck. What she had to come to say would have to wait. Leanne was in trouble. She needed Miranda. Miranda would speak to her, patiently, gently, discover the parameters of the disaster, offer advice and hope. "What the hell happened?" she snapped. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Don't blame me," Leanne prattled on. "I told her not to trust him, I told her not to give him a penny, and she didn't, she says — not a penny."

"Give who a penny?" She saw just how far gone Leanne was. She moved the bottle to a distant table, then came back and sat beside her. "Who?" she said again, curious now, impatient. "Who?"

"No, not a penny, not one penny," Leanne was saying. She shook her head triumphantly. "Not one penny — every penny." She took no notice of Miranda. "Not to him, she says. No, not to him, just into an investment he told her about, a nice, safe fund, a friend of his on Wall Street, and he would take only a finder's fee sort of thing, which would all be used for Henry, anyway, and not from her, but from the fund manager..."

A light dawned. Miranda, with foreboding, said, "Kit?"

"And it was a closed fund, but he could get her in, this friend of his. The manager's nephew could get her into this closed fund. She never could resist anything exclusive, the idiotic old bat."

"Leanne, get up." Miranda pulled her to her feet. "You're kind of hysterical, right? So take a deep breath or something."

"She wouldn't let him stay in her house, even to take care of Henry when I was away, locked him away in the boathouse like Mr. Rochester's mad wife — and now it's all gone up in flames. She couldn't bear him, thought he was a fraud, and then suddenly she gives him all her money, and then suddenly, more suddenly, it's gone. It's all gone... I was away for six weeks, and look what happened..." She grabbed a pillow and threw it.

Miranda wondered if this was what she was like when she ranted and raved.

"Stop it!" she said. "You're acting just like me!"

She grabbed Leanne. Leanne struggled. Just for a minute. Then collapsed, sobbing, in Miranda's arms.

Miranda buried her face in Leanne's hair. "That's better," she said.

"Better that I'm sobbing?" Leanne said, her voice muffled in Miranda's shoulder.

"Better for me. I can hear myself think."

"Go to hell."

"Let's take a walk, okay? Outside. Fresh air."

"Fresh air," Leanne repeated dully.

They walked to the water's edge, then up and down the little beach. There was a moon, a sliver of a moon low in the black sky.

"Sober yet?" Miranda asked. But it was she who felt drunk. Drunk with confusion, with need, with impatience.

"Yeah, yeah. That's where you met Kit." She pointed to the spot on the beach Miranda had shown her. "The financial wizard." She took a deep breath. "What am I going to do?" she said softly. "What am I going to do with her? Maybe she'll die before she has to move out, before she realizes what's happened."

"Maybe." Miranda tried to listen, but it was difficult for her to focus. She had come to the house that night with a purpose. It had taken all her resolve to drive up the long driveway, to ring the bell, to follow Hilda into the living room. And now, a catastrophe. "I'm sorry, Leanne," she remembered to say. "I'm really sorry about all this."

Leanne kicked at a pile of shells. "Why are you here anyway?"

The moon was sharp above them, a slash in the velvety black sky. The smell of the sea hung in the cool air. Miranda threw a rock into the water. She stared stupidly at Leanne. She took Leanne's hands in hers. She felt Leanne tremble. Miranda looked at her in surprise. Leanne moved a step closer. Miranda wondered if she was trembling, too. Yes, she was. She was trembling, too. She watched herself from far away, from another life, and thought, This is it, it's all over, over a cliff, feet still running, thin air, high above the hard, jagged earth.

"I wanted to talk to you," she said again. But she didn't talk. She let her fingers move across Leanne's lips, the top lip, the bottom lip. She let her hand move across Leanne's cheek, past her ear, until she held Leanne's head cupped in her hand. She let her hand pull Leanne's head toward her. She let her face move in to Leanne's face, let her lips press against Leanne's lips.

21

Betty died the next week. The infection had gone to her heart. The cottage, so small, loomed huge and empty around Annie and Miranda. The sky lowered.

Miranda wandered from room to room in the cottage in the night, the moonlight tinny and weak. She made her way up the stairs. She remembered the night she had stood at the top of the steps and watched her mother sleep. The night of cicadas. There were no cicadas now.

Her mother had been so small and pale.

She looked at the bed, her mother's bed, empty of her mother.

"Oh, Mommy," she said out loud.

Or was it Annie who had said it? Annie was somehow beside her. They were lying in their mother's bed clinging to each other.

"Mommy," they said. "Oh, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy."

"Now, you see?" said Felicity. "You have provided for your stepdaughters very generously."

Joseph said, Yes, that was true. Betty had left them everything. The apartment and the settlement would all go to Miranda and Annie.

"As it should," he said.

"Well, should, could, would — it's all thanks to you. Thanks to you and your sense of what's right and just, Annie and Miranda are heiresses now," Felicity said. "God bless them."

Joseph nodded. His girls would be very comfortable, it was true.

"I'm so glad I was able to be supportive of you and your relationship with them. Family first, I have always said."

Even so, he asked Felicity not to accompany him to the funeral.

"Family first," she had repeated rather severely, but Joseph did not answer. He poured his own drink that night and took it with him into his study and closed the door.

Annie and Miranda took a break from crying for a cup of coffee. Annie noticed the coffeepot in her hand, the cups she put out, the good ones, the ones Betty liked. She tipped the pot and the coffee flowed in an arc to the cup. Why? she wondered. Why did the coffee bother? The phone rang. It was a cousin from Buffalo. She gave the information: Tomorrow. Riverside. My apartment after. Yes, thank you so much. She really was. I know you do. I love you, too. Her coffee was cold.

"We're orphans," Miranda said. She began to cry again.

Oh, Miranda, must you? But Annie cried, too, and held her sister tight.

They had done nothing that morning but call people on the phone, informing, arranging, crying. They had slept all night curled together in Betty's bed.

They drank their coffee and sat quietly, worn out.

"I'll sort of miss this place," Annie said after a while.

Miranda scratched her head with both hands, pulled her hair violently away from her face, made a peculiar half-sigh, half-groan, and said, "I'm staying."

And then she told Annie.

"And Leanne felt the same way for months, but she didn't say anything, either, because, really, it's, well..."

"Embarrassing?" Annie was shocked. Did things like that happen, just like that? "Just like that?" she said. "Just like that?"

"You think I should have done an apprenticeship? Yes, just like that, just like that, the way any change happens, any realization, any... well, any falling in love."

"I don't do things just like that," Annie said. "I do things gradually."

"Good. Then you can fall in love with a wonderful woman gradually."

"Oh, Miranda, you know what I mean. It's just... well, I'm surprised, that's all. And I guess I feel a little betrayed."

"It's not like I joined the Confederate Army."

"And I'm worried, too," Annie said. "I mean, is this another one of your stunts? Because, Miranda, there's a little boy involved."

A dreamy look came over her sister's face. "Henry," she said.

"You're not doing this just to get to Henry, are you? That would be really sick."

"You know what?" Miranda said, giving her a kiss. "For once, you don't have to worry about me, Annie. You really, really don't."

Annie wondered if that could ever be true. She said, "I guess I'm really happy that you're happy, Miranda.

"Mommy knew," she added after a while.

"Knew what?"

"About Leanne, I think."

"Maybe." Miranda drummed on the kitchen table nervously for a few seconds, her lips pursed, tears running down her cheeks. "Maybe. She knew a lot."

Miranda and Leanne had decided to stay in the cottage together with Henry. "And guess what?"

"What?" Annie was worn to the bone with surprises. What could really be a surprise except death, always a surprise, that inevitable surprise?

"Leanne and I are getting married."

"Oh, for God's sake, Miranda."

Miranda smiled. Innocent. Ingenuous. Enraging.

"I thought you didn't believe in marriage," Annie said. "What, you only believe in gay marriage?"

"I believe in this marriage."

The simple sincerity of her words, the naivete, struck Annie. She could almost feel her mother's finger poking her back, her whispered Go on, be nice, you know how your sister is...

Miranda held up an unopened box of saltines for Annie to see.

"Her crackers," Annie said.

They had a good cry, a noisy one in which they held each other and rocked back and forth like old men at prayer, then reverently, wordlessly, opened the box and ate crackers with almond butter spread on them.

When Miranda told her that she was staying on in the cottage with Leanne and Henry, Annie did wonder what was to become of Aunt Charlotte. Would she have to go on the auction block along with her chairs?

But Aunt Charlotte was going somewhere much more pleasant, and close enough for Leanne to see her every day. She was moving in with Cousin Lou.

"You can't do this," Rosalyn had said when she heard Lou's plan. "You hardly know the woman. This is not an old-age home, Lou."

But Lou was adamant. To take under his wing a woman who, it turned out, was the fourth cousin many times removed of Mrs. James Houghteling was something he could not resist.

"Like family," he said with relish.

Mr. Shpuntov, followed by his attendant, shuffled past them, headed for the kitchen.

"And a friend for your father," Lou said.

"Lou, for God's sake, what are they going to do together? Play handball? This really is the limit. Beyond the limit. We don't even have enough room."

"We will," he said. "Once we move into that lovely old house in foreclosure on Beachside Avenue."

"The Maybank house?"

"The Maybank house. The house I just bought."

The funeral home was not far from the Central Park West apartment where Joseph and Felicity were still living. They were not scheduled to move out until the following month, and he had offered to have people back to the apartment after the funeral.

"Betty would have liked that, I think," he said to the girls.

"Betty is dead," Annie said.

They were going to Annie's apartment instead. The French professor had returned to Paris the week before.

"Well! If Annie's got her place back, and Miranda is staying in Westport with her bankrupt lesbian lover, maybe we should buy our apartment from them," Felicity said when she heard this, remembering how the Cape Cod house had appreciated. "I'm sure they'd be reasonable. I mean, it's all in the family, after all."

"Maybe we should not," Joe had replied.

And so Felicity returned to her search for a downtown loft with a doorman.

Betty had died young enough to have a full house at her funeral, Joseph thought as he entered the funeral home. He wondered if he would have the same opportunity, and felt a bit sorry for himself, believing as he did that he would die so old that none of his friends would be alive to attend the service. He recognized everyone — couples, widows, widowers, second-marriage couples, grown children, grown grandchildren. So many people from his life with Betty. They all greeted him with a mixture of grief and curiosity. How was he taking it? they wondered. Not well, he wanted to answer. My Betty is gone. I let my Betty go. Instead, he gave a stoic smile and a warm handshake here, a lingering and meaningful meeting of the eyes there, a hearty hug, a brave kiss. I let my Betty go, he thought through his tears. And she is gone.