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maneuvered herself down to the floor, one knee at a time and felt the rough press of the rug against the palms of her hands. The glass dome had cracked. Close up, the flowers looked scarcely worthy of display, the petals melted out of shape, their pinks and apricots and mauves bleached almost white. It wasn’t right that wax flowers should fade. That was the point of immortelles. That they should remain beautiful.
    She lifted the case onto Querios’s chair, hoisted herself back to her feet, and as she straightened up caught sight of a woman she half-recognized, in the mirror over the mantelpiece. Her hair had begun to show silver strands not long after Catherine was born. This year, the two white streaks at the front had become broad stripes. A portent of things to come. On bad days, she thought she looked as if she’d been struck by lightning. On better ones, she tried to consider it distinguished.
    Emmeline felt sometimes that something inside had faded with her hair, some quality of imagination that had once been vivid. At Catherine’s age, she too had been a dreamy girl, with a head full of longings for la belle France inspired by her brothers’ language tutor, Monsieur Pierre.
    Replacing the flowers on the table, she turned the crack toward the wall, slowly rubbing off the fingerprints with her cuff. It made her uncomfortable, her own daughter thinking that she knew more of lifethan Emmeline did. And Catherine appeared determined to help herself to more of it even as she became increasingly contrary about what she ate. Emmeline was worried about her. She must talk to Querios.
    She rang the bell again and added her own voice.
    “Hannah Smith! Where are you?”

FIVE

    “Doctor’s attending today, miss,” Lovely said, escorting Anna back to the bedroom after breakfast. “Mrs. Makepeace says you’re to wait here. I’ll be up for yer soon as he’s ready.”
    “Thank you, Lovely. I’m hoping he’ll help me.”
    Lovely sniffed and wiped her nose on her cuff.
    “Daresay you are,” she said, pulling the bedroom door closed behind her and locking it.
    Anna felt too impatient to sit down. She had been in Lake House for one week and felt she could not tolerate another day. Another hour. She pulled one of the rough brown blankets off the bed, wrapped it around herself and went to the window, leaning her elbows on the sill, feeling the cold air streaming in around the edges of the frame.
    The view was the only comfort the room offered. In front of her was a spacious downward sweep of grass with an ancient oak that stood to the right of her window. The tree’s shedding leaves created the impression of a rich, golden shadow in a circle underneath it. Beyond the lawn, marked off by iron rails, was a sheep field and at its boundary a row of breeze-tossed willows leaned out over the fringes of a body of water. It could have been a river but from its stillness she took it to be a lake, a cool reflective eye staring up at the sky, filled with it. On the other side of the lake were woods and open land and on the far horizon, beyond everything, the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, small and softly round, as if fashioned from cloud.
    Anna’s eye was drawn again to the bridge beyond a thicket of trees farther along the shore of the lake. It was a white bridge, stretchingfrom one side of the lake to the other, delicate and ethereal, its three shallow arches a row of half-moons that seemed to float on the surface of the water. The bridge was the most beautiful she’d ever seen, like something from a painting or an illustration for a fairy tale.
    As she stared out, a girl in a red cloak appeared from the direction of the house. She wove a path across the grass, her head bowed, moving in an erratic line. She was about to collide with the railings when she stopped and raised her head. As she turned toward the gate, Anna saw the reason for her strange progress. The girl was reading a book.
    She passed into the field and continued