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can have happened? He’s not due ’til June.”
    Mrs. Doherty’s face was impassive. She stood before Sibyl, holding the coat and hat over her arm. Behind her eyes flickered a measure of sympathy, held at a far remove.
    “Not to worry. We’ve got the sheets well changed. But the girl’s been wanting to know what time she’s to have supper for ’em.” Mrs. Doherty always referred to the cook as “the girl,” for reasons Sibyl never could fathom.
    “It’s not the sheets that have me concerned,” Sibyl said without thinking. She was always saying more than she should. The housekeeper was silent, and in her silence was agreement. Sibyl watched, but the woman’s narrow face gave away nothing—no illuminating details that might shed light on her brother’s appearance at their door, unannounced, untelephoned, uninvited, in the middle of the week.
    “You’ll be stopping by the kitchen, then,” Mrs. Doherty said, in the neutral tone that was simultaneously an observation and a suggestion. Sibyl noted the comment, reassuming the surface of a woman unfazed.
    “I’m sure Betty has it all well in hand,” she said with a determined step down the hallway, as if to suggest that she had known all along that Harlan was coming home, had planned for it, had taken it up with the kitchen staff, and that if she had neglected to inform the housekeeping staff, it was her privilege as lady of the house.
    “Yes, ma’am.” The chill comment followed behind her in the darkness. Mrs. Doherty knew better.
    Sibyl hurried to the kitchen, choosing the most easily solved of her fresh problems. She pushed open a heavy door and met the delicious aroma of roasting chicken. Through the savory haze of kitchen air, cloudy with flour and aglow from the gas fixture over the work table, Sibyl observed Betty Gallagher, striped cotton back turned, castigating one of the occasional girls as she crimped the edges of a soggy-looking pie.
    Betty, to Sibyl’s occasional discomfort, was Sibyl’s exact age. She was plumper than Sibyl, healthy-looking, russet skinned with a smattering of freckles, as though her cheeks were spattered with cake batter. Her hair was dark red-brown, and frizzy, tied off her brow in a pouf. Sibyl thought her an ally in the house, and Betty provided one of the few sources of humor to be had within doors. If that humor was tinged with an unbecoming undercurrent of anger, Sibyl tried to overlook it.
    “Betty!” she called from the doorway, and the hubbub of the kitchen ceased, with another of the occasional girls, a pale waif in a stained pinafore, actually freezing with her arms raised over a mixing bowl, as though caught in a game of tag.
    “. . . by God, your ear’ll get boxed so hard you’ll be spitting blood!” Betty finished upbraiding the cowering girl at the coal stove. As soon as the rebuke left her mouth Betty noticed the abbreviated silence in the kitchen, and turned.
    “Forgive my interrupting,” Sibyl ventured from the doorway.
    “Out,” Betty commanded the unfortunate girl, indicating the garden door with a jerk of her head, and the girl ran off with a squeak. Betty wiped her floured hands on her apron and approached Sibyl, casting her eyes sidelong at the other underling.
    “Don’t stand there gawking,” she snapped to the statue at the kitchen table, who unfroze and, with her head down, set batter mixing, eyes averted.
    “Too much work, on the dough,” Betty remarked, her exasperation tinged with defensiveness. Sibyl gathered that Betty wished to be very clear where blame for the pie should go. “But don’t worry, we’ll get it fixed. You’ll want supper at seven thirty, then?”
    “Mrs. Doherty tells me that Mister Harlan’s arrived,” Sibyl said, watching Betty for clues. News traveled quickly along the back stairs, and most of it found its way to the kitchen sooner rather than later.
    “So he did,” Betty said, wiping her forehead with the back of a wrist and leaving a smudge of flour