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Allalie.”
    “She played pool?”
    Fentrice laughed. “Toward the end of her life that’s all she did. She seemed to have lost interest in everything else.”
    There were yellowed newspaper reviews on the next few pages, chips from their corners missing. “Scintillating,” the headlines said. “Stunning.”
    Molly stopped her aunt from paging ahead. “Look at this, a clipping from London. Did you play there? What was it like?”
    “London, let me think. No, I can’t remember. It was all so long ago. …” She turned the page. “Magicians Dazzle at the Paramount,” a headline said. “Hey,” Molly said. “It’s the article from the Tribune .”
    “Why so it is,” Fentrice said.
    “He said he made it all up. Andrew Dodd. He said that he couldn’t remember anything when he got home.”
    “Poor man. Drank too much, as I remember.”
    “He said he gave up drinking after he interviewed you.”
    “Well,” said Fentrice, “I guess we did something right after all.”
    “There’s another picture of Thorne. She must have been with you in Oakland.”
    “She must have been.” Fentrice turned the page to a black-and-white photograph. “See this baby Callan’s holding? That’s his daughter, your mother Joan. He was so proud of that child.”
    “My God,” Molly said, struck by several emotions at once, sorrow and love and curiosity and even anger at the mother who had died and left her.
    “Here she is again,” Fentrice said, pointing to a photograph Molly recognized. It showed a woman kneeling to talk to a child. “And that’s you. You were two years old, I think.”
    “You know, I think I remember her. I can see her kneeling, just like this. But then I wonder if it’s this picture I remember. You gave me a copy when I went away to college.”
    “That’s right, I did.”
    Fentrice’s bridge group visited the next day. Lila got out biscuits and the china tea service and set them on the table, then retired to the kitchen. Fentrice poured the tea.
    These women had come to play bridge for as long as Molly could remember. There were three of them, all unmarried like her aunt. Vivian and Lillian were sisters who dressed alike; as a child Molly had had trouble telling them apart. They used to hug her and pinch her cheek hard enough to hurt. “Oh, how sweet!” they would exclaim to each other, far too loudly. They smelled of face cream and too much makeup. Molly had quickly learned to keep her distance from them.
    There had always been something odd about the third woman, Estelle. Now that she was grown Molly could see what it was: Estelle was a little slow, confused by the simplest things, flustered even by the ritual of pouring the tea. Her teeth were straight and perfectly white—dentures, Molly realized. Her dress was loose and shapeless, like a sack, but she was festooned with jewelry, dangling earrings, massive necklaces, rings that covered her fingers up to the knuckles. She had always worn heavy black glasses, the lenses growing thicker over the years; now they looked like goldfish bowls, the eyes swimming behind them. Estelle was also, Molly remembered, the best bridge player of the four of them.
    “Goodness, Molly,” one of the sisters said when they had settled to their tea. “Look how she’s grown!”
    “How sweet she looks,” the other sister said.
    “Hi, everyone,” Molly said. She never stayed for the bridge games, had never even learned how to play. “I think I’ll go out for a while, see how the town’s changed.”
    “Be back by dinner,” Fentrice said.
    Molly stepped out the front door. Odd, she thought, that three such strange old women should all live in the same small town. Four, really, counting her aunt. Did the kids call the other ones witches too? She couldn’t remember, recalled only the hurtful comments about her and Fentrice.
    “Molly?” someone said. “It is you! Hey, Molly!”
    She looked up. A woman pushing a baby stroller came toward her. “Christine?”