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we’ll see about you.”
    Once again, I didn’t know whether to be amused or angry. I wasn’t at the Winston House to be interviewed for a job. I was there as a paying customer. They both stepped aside to make way for my entrance. I picked up my suitcase, hesitated, and then entered the house. Mrs. McGruder stepped forward quickly to close the door behind me.
    I was pleasantly surprised by the brightness and the color scheme of the entrance hall. The walls had apple-green and white paper, divided into broad panels with white molding. The wainscoting was stained dark green. On the floor was a green-and-white-checked rug with a plain border, and against the wall were a settee and two chairs with white woodwork and green upholstery. The white console opposite was beneath a mirror. A green-and-white-lattice plant stand held purple and pale yellow irises. Ahead of us was a white stairway with box trees in green tubs at the foot of it. The air was perfumed with the scent of fresh spring flowers.
    “This way,” Mrs. Winston said.
    I followed them to the right to enter what I thought was a small, rather cluttered sitting room. Every available space was taken up with antiques—clocks, statuary, sepia photographs in old frames, music boxes, and, of course, leather-bound books with yellowing pages. The furniture looked as if it had been there from the first day anyone had moved into the house.
    There were large, comfortable-looking mahoganychairs, a sofa, and two footstools grouped around the fireplace. To the right of that was a table with a lamp, some books and magazines neatly stacked, and two more chairs nearby. Across the way was a tall secretary with a straight chair. The woodwork, walls, and fireplace were a soft gray. The rug was a plain velvet, and the curtains were in a chintz pattern with green foliage. Despite how crowded the room was, it did look cheerful and cozy.
    Mrs. Winston indicated the sofa for me, so I lowered my suitcase and sat. She took one of the chairs facing me, but Mrs. McGruder stood off to the side near the entrance.
    “This rooming house has been in my family for over two hundred years. It didn’t begin as a rooming house, of course. Families were a lot larger back then, but over the years, as our family thinned out, some moving away, we began to take in boarders. I’ve been doing it from the day I was married to Knox Winston. We raised our two children in this house while we had three boarders. They became members of our family. I’m telling you this so you will understand why it is so important to us to know all about the people who want to stay here for however long that might be.
    “Now, I will say, you are the youngest person ever to wish to do so. Naturally, then, we would want to know a little more than usual about you. If this is offensive to you, please be assured that you won’t be hurting our feelings by leaving right now.”
    She didn’t look at Mrs. McGruder. I did and saw her staring at me so intently that I couldn’t help but feel a little intimidated. In some ways, she reminded me ofMrs. Fennel, who had the eyes of someone who could look through your very soul.
    I shifted my legs and nodded. “What do you want to know about me?”
    “Well, for starters, why are you in Quincy?”
    “I wanted to start my own life, and I wanted to start as far away from my father and his current wife as I could,” I began.
    My story seemed to unfold as I told it, emerging from real events as much as from things I invented. My older sister Ava, when she was training me to take over her position in our family, had told me that we have a unique ability to fabricate on the spot. “We do it so well,” she had said, “that we come to believe what we invent.” She’d laughed. “Sometimes it’s impossible to distinguish what really happened from what we claim happened. It’s in our nature to be deceptive, because deception is protection. Whether you want to be a good liar or not, Lorelei,”