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scared me. If she got upset, énervée as she called it, she’d scream at us, and once she even slapped me in the face. When I went crying to Mama, she hushed me up and explained that was just how Mamie had been raised, the way things had been done in her family in France. She was a strange, high-strung woman, and I’d once overheard Daddy complaining to his parents that all she wanted from Papy was his money. She did like to travel back to France two or three times a year, and sometimes she spent months going to the most exotic places, without Papy. I always hoped she would invite me on one of her trips, but she never had. She did bring Jimmy and me back some great souvenirs.
    But if Papy’s marriage to Mamie had been kind of a scandal, I’d seen the old newspaper clippings about Mama and Daddy’s marriage that touted their union as a great social success, bringing together the Middleton and McKenzie fortunes. And while all four of our grandparents smothered us with love in their own distinct ways, they barely tolerated each other. And Mamie distrusted Daddy.
    So I watched carefully as Grandmom met Mamie at the door. Mamie’s face was hard and creased, and the bright red lipstick she wore was smeared on so that it went above her top lip and left several specks on her front teeth. “Ian, Evelyne,” Grandmom said. She kissed Papy gently on the cheek. “We are so sorry.” Then she took Mamie by her frail shoulders and kissed her softly on each cheek, French style. That seemed to touch Mamie’s heart, because the hard, pinched expression left her face, and it was replaced by genuine misery.
    Papy grabbed Jimmy and me in his big bear hug and held us close and didn’t say a word. But by the way his chest rose and fell and the horrible, deep sighs that accompanied the rising and falling, I knew he was crying too. Everyone in my life who had always seemed invincible was broken in two.
    Trixie was so organized that she thought of everything, right down to the guest book that everyone signed after they’d expressed their condolences. I was leafing through the book on Monday afternoon when the bell rang once again. Before I could run to hide, in walked my best friend, Rachel, with a huge bouquet of flowers in her hands. “It’s from everyone at school,” she choked out. She handed the flowers to Trixie, and then she took me in her arms and just wept, and I wept, and she smoothed my long hair and said over and over, “Swan, I’m so sorry. So very sorry.”
    Rachel was made for crises. She took me upstairs and we sat in my room, and she talked on and on about everything and nothing and what the rest of our part of Atlanta looked like, how the cars really were lined up for miles in front of each home. She reported the facts without emotion, so it didn’t make me want to cry anymore, and besides, I didn’t have any tears left for the time being.
    â€œIt’s just all over the news, you know, and your dad’s picture with the mayor and all the photos of that plane just smashed into pieces.” She glanced my way and continued. “And they say that they’ll be raising lots of money for the art museum now—people are already giving huge sums in memory of those who . . . perished.” Another glance at me. “You all right, Swan? You want me to stop talking?”
    I shrugged. After a few moments of silence I said, “Rach, will you put on JP?”
    â€œYou sure?”
    â€œPositive.”
    Soon the sounds of flute and harpsichord filled my room. Handel. Sonata in B Minor, Opus 1, number 9. Jean-Pierre Rampal, the brilliant French flutist who had gained international renown, played the Largo, his vibrato so strong and yet so soft and so smooth that it sent chills running up and down my spine. I closed my eyes and pictured mountain peaks and snow and a piercing sun breaking through the clouds. It felt at that moment like JP, as