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filled with a featureless sky over pale smooth water, where a seagull was hanging with wings fixed, like a stopped clock on a wall. She must have slept, for nothing seemed to have changed before her eyes until the seagull became the hands on the clock in the Courthouse dome lit up in the night above Mount Salus trees.
    Fay slept still. When Laurel had to touch her shoulder to wake her, Fay struggled and said, “Oh no, no, not any more!”

Two

1
    T HE ANCIENT PORTER was already rolling his iron-wheeled wagon to meet the baggage car, before the train halted. All six of Laurel’s bridesmaids, as they still called themselves, were waiting on the station platform. Miss Adele Courtland stood out in front of them. She was Dr. Courtland’s sister, looking greatly aged. As Laurel went first down the steps, Miss Adele softly placed her hands together, then spread her arms.
    “Polly,” she said.
    “What are you here for?” asked Fay, as Laurel moved from one embrace into another.
    “We came to meet you,” Tish Bullock said. “And to take you home.”
    Laurel was aware of the row of lighted windows already sliding away behind her. The train gathered speed as swiftly as it had brought itself to a halt. It went out of sight while the wagon, loaded with the long box now, and attended by a stranger in a business suit, was wheeled slowly back along the platform and steered to where a hearse, backed in among the cars, stood with its door wide.
    “Daddy wanted to come, Laurel, but we’ve been trying to spare him,” said Tish, with protective eyes following what was happening to the coffin. Her arm was linked in Laurel’s.
    “I’m Mr. Pitts, hope you remember me,” said the businessman, appearing at Laurel’s other side. “Now what would you like done with your father?” When she didn’t speak, he went on, “May we have him in our parlor? Or would you prefer him to repose at the residence?”
    “My father? Why—at his home,” said Laurel, stammering.
    “At the residence. Until the hour of services. As was the case with the first Mrs. McKelva,” said the man.
    “I’m Mrs. McKelva now. If you’re the undertaker, you do your business with me,” said Fay.
    Tish Bullock winked at Laurel. It was a moment before she remembered: this was the bridesmaids’ automatic signal in moments of acute joy or distress, to show solidarity.
    There was a deep boom, like the rolling in of an ocean wave. The hearse door had been slammed shut.
    “—and you may have him back in the morning by ten A.M .,” the undertaker was saying to Fay. “But first, me and you need to have a little meeting of the minds in a quiet, dignified place where you can be given the opportunity—”
    “You bet your boots,” said Fay.
    The hearse pulled away, then. It turned to the left on Main Street, blotted out the Courthouse fence, and disappeared behind the Presbyterian Church.
    Mr. Pitts turned to make his bow to Laurel. “I’ll return this lady to you by-and-by,” he said.
    Miss Adele took Laurel’s coat over her arm and the bridesmaids gathered up all the suitcases. The old Bullock Chrysler had been waiting.
    It was first-dark in the town of Mount Salus. They turned right on Main Street and drove the three and a half blocks.
    The McKelva house was streaming light from every window, upstairs and down. As Tish passed the row of parked cars and turned up into the driveway, Laurel saw that the daffodils were in bloom, long streamers of them reaching down the yard, hundreds of small white trumpets. Tish lightly touched the horn, and the front door opened and still more light streamed out, in which the solid form of Miss Tennyson Bullock walked out and stood on the porch.
    Laurel ran from the car and across the grass and up the front steps. Miss Tennyson—Tish’s mother—was calling to her in ringing tones, “And he was such a precious, after all!” She folded Laurel close.
    Half a dozen—a dozen—old family friends had been waiting here in the