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and hardwood floors, flowered chintz chairs in the living room, a claw-foot tub in the bathroom, a white iron bed in the bedroom, and Blue Willow china in the kitchen. Finally, Hannah had indeed achieved the lifestyle she'd always wanted, one that was the very picture of normalcy, uneventfulness, and security.
    Oh, all right, so her job as the overworked, overextended, overdressed, but egregiously underpaid—not that she was bitter or anything, and not that she'd planned
that
part-director of a tony private school in Indianapolis wasn't entirely uneventful. It
was
secure and it was fairly normal. The events that did take place were episodes that didn't directly affect
her
life and its normalcy, uneventfulness, and security. So that was a big plus.
    Unfortunately, she did have to attend potluck dinners, but no job was perfect. At least she wouldn't be sitting in the back of an old Dodge Dart station wagon eating cold Beef-a-roni from a can, wondering if the police car behind them was about to pull them over.
     
    The radiant and rambling estate of Bitsy and Cornelius Wainwright was made even more radiant by the stretches of gilded light that spilled over it from a sun dipping low in the sky. As she pulled her Honda sedan to a halt in the wide circular driveway among an eclectic mix of Jaguars, Mercedes, and BMWs, it occurred to Hannah that the exuberant Tudor mansion seemed almost to glow, as if it were an enchanted fairy-tale castle. The image was only reinforced when Bitsy Wainwright, a fey, tiny creature with golden hair and emerald eyes, opened the front door to greet her, the decor of the house behind her resplendent in its richness and excess.
    "Oh, Hannah,
so
glad you could come," Bitsy gushed as she ushered Hannah inside.
"So
looking forward to having you." It was then that Hannah recalled how Bitsy Wainwright seemed to have never quite mastered pronouns. Nor had she seemed to ever quite master moving her jaw when she spoke, because all her words seemed to come through her gritted—though perfectly straight and blindingly white—teeth. "Oh, don't step off the carpet," she hastily added when Hannah's foot skirted the fringe of the narrow Aubusson. Hannah's expression must have registered her confusion, because Bitsy quickly clarified, "Sicilian marble. Doesn't take scuff marks well. Bonita would have a fit."
    "Bonita?" Hannah asked, recalling that the Wainwright children were named Devon, Somerset, and Durham. She had often wondered why the Wainwrights had named their children after counties in England. Maybe because, had they opted for counties in Wales, their children would be named Dyfed, Powys, and Clwyd, all of which would look a bit clunky on corporate letterhead someday.
    "The cleaning girl," Bitsy explained. "Came from Guatemala. Practices that Santeria. Mustn't cross."
    Okay, Hannah thought, so maybe the Wainwright home was less an enchanted fairy-tale castle than it was a giant step backward for the civil rights movement. Lots of people got those confused.
    Bitsy led Hannah through the massive foyer and what seemed like hundreds of rooms—never once straying from the carpets—until they arrived in a kitchen that was larger than Hannah's living and dining rooms combined. A kitchen that was also as empty of guests as the rest of the house seemed to be. The reason for that, however, was because the big backyard—or perhaps a more appropriate term in this case would be
the acres and acres of skillfully sculpted grounds behind the radiant and rambling Wainwright estate—
was crawling with people.
    It was downright Gatsby-esque, Hannah couldn't help thinking as she gazed through the windows at the scene, the scores of people standing outside in their finery, sipping wine beneath a purpling sky and trees illuminated with tiny white lights. She could almost convince herself there wasn't another world beyond this one, a real world, one populated by real people who had real problems and could use real pronouns.