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herself and pressed her feet a little deeper into the plush carpeting. She ran her hand across the glove-leather seat. Money, she thought. It ain't even real, not like dirt or grass. But if you don't have any...She turned her head slightly and peeked at the three people in the back seat, people so different from her they might as well have been two-headed or made of glass, people who'd never once in their entire lives had to worry about the cost of groceries, paying their rent, or whether they had enough money to buy medicine for a sick child. What must it feel like? she wondered.
    A passing County Sheriff's Department car reminded her that she had more than money to worry about. She began to slip lower in her seat, then realized the law would no more look for her in a car like this than they would expect to find her in a convent. A fiery shaft of summer sun, in an otherwise cloudy sky, flashed through the trees and bounced off a highway sign. A good omen, she decided.

THREE

    T he country house sat on a rise overlooking a duck pond. A huge bed of pink, white, and yellow flowers lay on the far side of the pond, between the pond and the pinewood forest that seemed to ring the whole property. The highway was totally invisible. Not even the noise of passing cars and trucks could be heard. The briny smell of the sea in the air told her they'd crossed that invisible border between inland and shore. The pine trees whispered about their arrival.
    The house was nowhere near the size of the house in town. This was a wooden house, painted a lavender-gray made even more delicate by the deep green of the grass and the pine trees around it. A screened porch extended around three sides of the house. White wicker chairs and small tables were placed casually around the porch and added to the touches of white that framed the doors and windows and shimmered on the wheelchair ramp. The gabled roof and woodland setting made Blanche think of fairy tales. But the house didn't have a fairy-tale air. The house was anxious, as though something of which it did not approve had taken place on its premises, or was about to. Blanche wondered if it was her arrival or something else. She rooted for something else. There could be no harder task than working in a house that didn't like you. For as long as she was here, she needed to keep a very low profile. She hoped the house would cooperate.
    Blanche lined up behind the members of the family as they filed up the short ramp to the front porch. Grace was onceagain careful to keep Mumsfield away from the old lady in the wheelchair.
    The inside of the house was cozier than the house in town: deep sofas and big old rattan chairs with rose chintz covers and cushions, worn leather hassocks, dark green woven rugs, and large photographs of people in old-fashioned dress on the whitewashed walls.
    Grace took Blanche up the back stairs to a small room furnished with a single bed, a four-drawer dresser, a bedside table, a lamp, and a straight-backed chair. Murky-brown linoleum covered the floor, the same linoleum she'd encountered in many such rooms. No doubt there was a store somewhere that specialized in murky-brown linoleum and scratchy sheets for the help. “It's a pleasant enough little room, don't you think?” Grace had the nerve to say.
    “Well, it ain't going to spoil me, that's for sure,” Blanche told her. She might have to sleep in this mousehole, but she'd be damned if she'd act grateful.
    Grace chose not to address the issue. “I'll be waiting in the kitchen when you've changed.” She closed the door firmly behind her.
    The room overlooked the back garden, the shed at its foot, and the pinewoods beyond. There was an older black man in a baseball cap working in the vegetable garden.
    True to Grace's prediction, in the shallow clothes closet there were two washed and starched gray uniforms with white collars and cuffs and small white aprons to match. Blanche was delighted to find they were a size