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awkward this must seem. It is awkward. But your father and I have been divorced for almost a year now and—”
    â€œBut what would Daddy say if he knew?” Maisie insisted. Her stomach was doing that thing it did whenever she got upset, rolling and flipping. The taste of something sour filled her mouth.
    â€œYou have to tell Bruce Fishbaum that you can’t go, that you’re practically married,” Felix said.
    â€œOh dear,” Maisie moaned.
    Their mother fidgeted with her napkin, folding it and unfolding it, smoothing it on the table then folding it again.
    â€œI’m sure nothing will come of it,” she said.
    â€œThen why go at all?” Felix asked.
    â€œOh dear,” Maisie said again, standing up.
    â€œNow sit down, sweetie,” their mother said.
    Maisie’s hand shot to her mouth, but it was too late to stop her from throwing up all over the table and her mother’s wrinkled, copper linen suit.

    That night, as she lay in the four-poster bed with the intricately carved animals and the raw silk canopy, Maisie tried to calm her queasy stomach and her overactive mind, which was racing with terrible images of her mother and Bruce Fishbaum. Maisie and Felix had met Bruce Fishbaum a couple of times when they went to the office with their mother to pick up files or something else that had been accidentally left behind. He was tall and wiry and balding, not at all handsome like their big, burly, curly-haired father. He wore those rectangular glasses that people wore when they wanted to appear cooler than they really were, and both times Maisie had seen him, his ties had had nautical themes: tiny, fat sailboats on one, yachting flags on the other.
    She couldn’t stop thinking of her mother kissing Bruce Fishbaum the way she used to kiss their father, lifting her face up and standing on tiptoes to reach his lips. Worse, she pictured her actually falling in love with Bruce Fishbaum. Maybe even marrying him. Then what? Where would they live? Would they move to what he always called his “perfectly restored historical house on Spring Street,” a place he liked to mention at the drop of a hat? Would they have to share rooms with his two kids, the boy and girl whose pictures on sailboats and in hockey gear grinned out from his desk? Maisie did not want to share a room with Allison Fishbaum, expert sailor and ice hockey goalie.
    All of this thinking made her feel like she might throw up again.
    Groaning, Maisie got up and went into the Princess Bathroom, a Pepto-Bismol–pink confection that made her even queasier. Princess Annabelle had apparently loved this very shade of pink, and everything here—sink, bathtub, shower stall, even the toilet—shone pinkily at Maisie. The tiles on the walls were the same pink, except inlaid on each one was a jewel of some kind. If you stood in the center of the room you could play a kind of connect the dots with the jewels and see they formed a giant crown, an exact replica of Princess Annabelle of Nanuh’s tiara. All that pink and sparkle forced Maisie to get on her knees, hold her hair back in a messy ponytail, lean over the toilet, and throw up some more.
    After she’d finished, she made her way on her wobbly legs back to bed. If they’d been in their apartment on Bethune Street or even upstairs in the servants’ quarters, someone would have heard her being sick and come and held her hair back, given her some ginger ale, and tucked her back in. But Elm Medona was so enormous that no one heard anything going on. Maisie felt lonely and sad and miserable.
    When she heard the door creak open, she expected to see her mother standing there. Instead, Great-Aunt Maisie—dressed in an old-fashioned, ivory silk dress, her hair twisted into an updo, and her Chanel Red lipstick in place—stood illuminated by the moonlight streaming in from the large hall window behind her.
    â€œGet up,” Great-Aunt Maisie