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spoke of her family. Dabrowski has to be Polish.” She smiled at Maitland but indicated that she didn’t need a refill.
    “Polish!” Fanny said. “How lovely! I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who was Polish.”
    Ava turned her attention to one of the framed photographs on the coffee table. They seemed to be waiting for her to say something else and when she didn’t, Josephine turned her head and spoke to Maitland in a low voice about supper.
    T here were photographs everywhere, on all the tables in the room and on the bookshelves; the paneled wall around the fireplace was covered in them. Ava stood up and slowly made her way around the room clutching her unfinished drink in her hand, stopping to peer at the images. Some were in color but most were in black and white. A good many were of Fanny and Maitland in their younger days: standing in front of Niagara Falls, landing in a seaplane on Puget Sound, on the beach at Cannes, sitting in a café in Provence. Their life together seemed to have involved a great deal of travel. And drinking. There were photos of them in the Adirondacks, a cocktail table displayed prominently in the foreground; Maitland dressed in evening clothes holding a cocktail shaker and two glasses; Fanny, in a very short skirt, balancing a martini glass on her nose. Mixed in with the gay travel photos were Victorian family portraits: sepia-tinted prints of somber, bearded men and women in long white dresses and huge hats. Ava picked up a photo of three young girls, startling in their prettiness and resemblance to one another. They wore white dresses and large bows in their hair, which fell in ringlets down their backs.
    “My sisters and I,” Josephine said. “Celia, the baby, was Will’s grandmother. She died when Will’s mother was still a girl.”
    “She was lovely,” Ava said. “You were all lovely.”
    “Oh, don’t look at those old things,” Fanny said. “It was so long ago I can scarcely remember.”
    “Not so long ago as all that,” Maitland said gallantly, and Fanny, pleased, gave him a coquettish smile. They were so sweet with each other, married all this time and still acting like newlyweds. Ava hoped she would be so lucky. As if reading her thoughts, Will, sitting across the room with his empty glass resting on one knee, caught her eye and smiled.
    She picked up another photo, this one of a young woman dressed in a shimmering dress, her hair parted smoothly and coiled at the nape of her neck. She was very slender and lovely, but her eyes were cold, and there was a haughty expression on her face, as if she knew and disapproved of the photographer. Ava recognized Josephine, a much younger Josephine, her chin tilted slightly upward, eyes heavy-lidded, caught somewhere between an expression of boredom and reproach.
    At that moment there was the sound of a door closing and then a female voice called out, “Hello! Anybody home?”
    “We’re in here,” Will called; he and Maitland stood and a moment later two women appeared in the doorway. They were both well dressed and appeared to be roughly the same age as the aunts, and Ava was struck again by the smooth, beautiful complexions of these Southern women. It made her wonder if there was a mysterious Fountain of Youth hidden somewhere on the grounds, something secretive and transforming known only to the women.
    Will introduced Ava to Alice Barron and Clara McGann. Alice was Maitland’s widowed sister, and she lived next door with her son, Fraser. “I grew up with these two,” Alice said, indicating Fanny and Josephine. “We were girls together.”
    “We were all girls together,” Clara said. Her skin was a pale mocha color, and her eyes were green. She held Ava’s hand for a moment, gazing at her curiously. “The resemblance is remarkable,” she said.
    “I noted it when she first came in,” Josephine said.
    “What?” Fanny said, excited by their tone. “Her resemblance to whom?”
    “Delphine,” Alice