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doorway. "Coffee?"
    I pointed.
    Denise and I watched as Bill made his way to the urn. He managed to fill a cup, but his
hands were shaking. He drank where he stood, wincing, and poured another cup.
    "Where's Lydia?"
    "Here I am, darling." Magical Lydia, just in time.
    "I need juice."
    "They're setting up the buffet."
    "Go swipe me a glass of tomato juice. And see if Domingo has any Worcestershire
sauce. Gawd." He sank into the leathery couch and spilled coffee on his bright yellow golf slacks.
"Gawd. I'm too old for this business."
    Lydia had disappeared. She returned almost at once with a juice glass garnished with
parsley and a slice of lemon. "There you are, darling. Just what the doctor ordered. No, don't rub
the coffee in." He was dabbing at his knee. "There, there. Lyddy will take care of it."
    Oh, ick, I thought. I hoped Jay and Janey would have no problems with the sail
board.
    Bill regarded his wife with pitiful gratitude and drank his tomato juice. After that he
seemed to feel better--well enough, at any rate, to acknowledge my existence and Denise's.
    We talked for awhile of the fire burning fifty miles east in the national forest. Bill was
up on the latest details. It was, he reported, a crown fire--that is the huge old-growth timber was
'crowning,' burning up crown and all. Ordinarily a quick brushfire was good for a conifer forest,
because it cleared out the underbrush and killed off some of the insects that preyed on the big
trees, but a crown fire benefited nothing and left only devastation behind.
    Llewellyn, dapper and neatly outfitted in cream slacks and a matching polo shirt, entered
as Bill was describing the fire. They were soon off on reminiscences of the Big One, a fire both
had witnessed years before. There was something constrained in Bill's response to Llewellyn,
though. It puzzled me.
    Jay and Janey came in before I could decide what was going on, and I forgot about it in
the general bonhomie inspired by an inspiring breakfast. Domingo had produced a delicious
frittata.

Chapter III
    We had finished breakfast except for our last cups of coffee when Angharad appeared
with an invitation--ladies only--to view her garden.
    At first I thought she was making a joke, but Lydia's immediate enthusiasm and Win
D'Angelo's protests at being excluded persuaded me otherwise. It seemed they were all
passionate gardeners, innocent of irony.
    I knew Denise was an herbalist. Dennis was always bringing her cuttings and always
making excuses not to drink the teas and tisanes she brewed for him. I'd seen the Huffs' heroic
landscaping at a cocktail party they hosted in May, but I'd assumed they owed the profusion of
spring greenery to Greenthumb, the local firm of landscape gardeners. Not so. Lydia, it seemed,
propagated irises and had once manufactured her own line of herbal cosmetics. Winton
D'Angelo, though Angharad was firm in refusing to let him come, grew prize-winning roses.
    Janey Huff looked as if she'd rather be out on the lake, but she got up obediently when
the older ladies rose to go. I had to follow suit. I like to look at people's gardens, and, since I
moved west, I've begun to learn how to identify the native plants. They're so different from the
deciduous growth of upstate New York I find them fascinating. Even back home, though, I never
tried to grow anything more complicated than a potted fern, and I hate displaying my ignorance.
All the same, I went with the ladies like a meek sheep.
    We strode briskly along the path to the cabin, retracing my steps. Grisly Ted was
standing on the porch as we came up and grunted something that was probably meant as a
greeting. We did not dally to chat with him. The garden lay behind the house in a clearing
protected by a deer fence.
    I had to admit the Peltz's display was impressive. Almost entirely annuals and biennials,
the flower garden was then in the first riot of summer color. Petunias, pinks, cosmos, daisies of
all heights and colors including the Shasta daisy,