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everything we eat—she should have warned us ‘especially if he gets there first’.”
    â€œRotten old Errol!” Tessa echoed Timothy, a faint smile breaking through.
    â€œRotten to the core,” I agreed. A trail of greasy egg fragments stretched across the table from the empty plate, across the floor and under the stove. As we gazed at the mute evidence, there came a tremendous belch from beneath the stove.
    â€œPerhaps it will disagree with him,” I said hopefully,
then rescinded my hopes. “Errol—” I called sharply. “Come out. You can’t be sick under there—” I dashed over to open the back door. “Come on—outside! Quick!”
    There was no response from Errol. I left the back door open—the screen door was still closed but could be opened quickly enough—and walked over to the stove.
    â€œErrol?” Silence. I crouched and looked under the stove. He was curled up into a tight ball and out like a light, plainly exhausted by the night’s excesses.
    â€œIs he all right?” Timothy asked doubtfully.
    â€œYour cooking didn’t kill him, if that’s what you mean.”
    I straightened up. “I should think he’ll sleep for most of the day now. We can forget him for a while. Now … what’s in the pantry for breakfast?”
    Â 
    Fortunately, the children did not remember their Uncle Patrick. I was hard-pressed to hide my shock at the sight of him as I opened the door; they never could have managed it.
    His cheekbones jutted out from the dark hollows under his eyes; his short-sleeved shirt and trousers had been bought for a larger man; his eyes had a haunted look and his painful smile did not quite reach them.
    We may both be widows soon. Perhaps the thought could be read too easily in my own eyes. Celia caught my arm and drew me to one side.
    â€œIt’s nerves, that’s all,” she said urgently. “Just nerves. The business, is going through a bad patch right now. A lot of businesses are. If we can just last through the summer …”

    Patrick had gone into the living-room while we hung back in the hallway. Now he appeared in the doorway and looked at Celia questioningly.
    â€œYes, dear, we’re coming,” Celia said, too brightly. We followed him into the living-room.
    â€œIt’s good to see you again, Rosemary,” he said. He looked around the room with vague dissatisfaction, as though there were someone else he would rather see. I remembered that I was in his cousin Nancy’s house and wondered if he were missing her already. “The kids, too. They sure have grown, haven’t they? What are they now, six and eight?”
    â€œTime goes on,” I said. “Timothy’s nine and Tessa is seven. Y—” I broke off just in time. You’ve changed, too. If he realized it, he wouldn’t appreciate being reminded of it.
    â€œWe thought we’d drive you around the lake this morning,” Celia said quickly. “We’ll stop at Camp Mohigonquin and collect Luke and his friend Dexter—they’re joining us for lunch. That will give you a chance to see what it’s like and have a word with Greg Carter, he’s the Camp Administrator and Senior Counsellor, about enrolling Tessa and Timothy as day campers.”
    â€œI’ll have to think that one over,” I said firmly. “It’s much too soon to make any sort of decision. We’ve only just arrived.” With distance and the passing of time, I had almost forgotten Celia’s tendency to arrange every moment of everyone’s life for them. Her success in getting me over here had evidently gone to her head. I would need to keep reasserting my intention—and right—to order my own life and the lives of my children, even though
she was more familiar with this strange new country than I was.
    â€œOh, all right.” She acknowledged grudgingly that a warning