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again.”
    Her husband smiled.
    “I’m serious, Owen.”
    He said to his sister-in-law, “The lawyer for the school? I did a little investigating. Turns out he’s been negotiating contracts on behalf of the school with a company his wife’s got a major interest in. Big conflict of interest. And a felony, by the way. I’m going to offer him four or five to settle.”
    Lis said to Portia, “He makes it sound like a legal tactic. To me, it’s blackmail.”
    “Of course it’s blackmail,” Portia said. “So? But you think this lawyer’ll talk the school into settling?”
    “He’ll be . . . persuasive, I’m sure,” Owen said. “Unless he wants an address change to the Bridewell Men’s Colony.”
    “So basically, he’s fucked.” Portia laughed. She held up her glass. “Good job, Attorney.”
    Owen tapped his glass to hers.
    Portia drained her champagne and let Owen pour her more. To her sister she said, “I wouldn’t get on this boy’s bad side, Lis. He might do to you what he does unto others.”
    Owen’s stony façade slipped and he laughed briefly.
    Lis said, “I guess I just feel insulted. I didn’t even know the school was getting any money in the will. I mean, can you imagine Father even talking to me about it? Undue influence? I say let them sue.”
    “Well, I say let our lawyer handle it.” With her working-girl hair rimmed by the black lace headband Portia seemed miraculously transported back to six or seven—the age at which it first was clear that the sisters would be such different people. This process seemed to continue, by inches and miles, Lis sensed, even tonight.
    Owen poured more Moët. “Never would’ve been a problem if your father’d kept his money to himself and his mouth shut. That’s the moral: no good deed goes unpunished.”
    “Your services expensive, Owen?” Portia asked wryly.
    “Never. At least not for beautiful women. It’s in my retainer agreement.”
    Lis stepped between these two people, bound to her one by blood and one by law, and put her arms around Owen. “See why he’s such a rainmaker?”
    “Can’t make much rain if he doesn’t charge.”
    “I didn’t say I’m free.” Owen looked at Portia. “I just said I’m not expensive. You always have to pay for quality.”
    Lis walked to the stairway. “Portia, come here. I want to show you something.”
    The sisters left Owen stacking the papers and climbed upstairs. The silence again grew thick and Lis realized that it was her husband’s presence that had made conversation possible between the sisters.
    “Here we go.” She stepped in front of Portia and then pushed open the door to a small bedroom, sweeping on the overhead light. “Voilà.”
    Portia was nodding as she studied the recently decorated room. Lis had spent a month on the place, making dozens of trips to Ralph Lauren and Laura Ashley for fabrics and wallpaper, to antique stores for furniture. She’d managed to find an old canopy bed that was virtually identical to the one that had been Portia’s when this was her room years ago.
    “What do you think?”
    “Taking up interior decorating, are we?”
    “That’s the same curtain material. Amazing that I found it. Maybe a little yellower is all. Remember when we helped Mother sew them? I was, what, fourteen? You were nine.”
    “I don’t remember. Probably.”
    Lis looked at the woman’s eyes.
    “What a job,” Portia offered, walking in a slow circle on the oval braided rug. “Incredible. Last time I was here it looked like an old closet. Mother’d just let it go to hell.”
    Then why don’t you like it? Lis wondered silently.
    She asked, “Remember Pooh?” and nodded at a mangy Steiff bear, whose glassy eyes stared vacantly at the corner of the room, where a shimmery cobweb had emerged since Lis had last cleaned the place, twenty-four hours ago.
    Portia touched the bear’s nose then stepped back to the door and crossed her arms.
    “What’s the matter?” Lis