“You be careful,” Gladys scolded from the kitchen. “That doesn’t look safe.”

“I’m fine. I have to do ten of these on each leg in sets of six, Pat said so.”

Gladys made a face. She heard those words, Pat said so, half a dozen times a day. Not that she was complaining. But it was strange how Arbutus had changed in that month in the hospital. Gladys wasn’t sure she liked it, but of course that was wrong. The people there had helped Arbutus heal Up so that she could come home. And because it was a hospital stay, Medicare was covering most of the cost. Which made it even more aggravating that Arbutus had got this bee in her bonnet about selling her house.

“I promised Pat I wouldn’t give Up the exercises and I haven’t.”

Gladys grumbled as she worked at the stove. Arbutus would be in a leotard next.

“There is no point in being such a sourpuss,” Arbutus said, switching to swinging her other leg. “You brought your troubles on yourself.”

This was about their only topic of conversation anymore. But Gladys was having none of it. “I did not try and burn the hotel down, I’ll thank you to remember!”

“Madeline didn’t, either. She singed one wall, and it was an accident.”

“Some accident! She stole my keys! She’s just like her mother. Completely irresponsible.”

“That’s a crock of beans. She made a mistake.”

“She got drunk and deliberately set the hotel on fire!”

“She got tipsy and forgot those candles were burning. It could happen to anyone.” Gladys could hear Arbutus counting beneath her breath between sentences.

“As if you ever took a drink in your life.”

“You know what I mean. Things happen.”

“You’re too forgiving. I’m not like you.”

“I know that,” Arbutus said, her voice laden with meaning. “Truer words were never spoken. Imagine how it would be if you were.”

Gladys glared down at the sauce she had simmering, powerless to make any retort. Arbutus’s forgiveness for selling Grandmother’s kicksled came with a price.

“It was a hard day for Madeline,” Arbutus said. “You weren’t there to hear Tracy, you were already outside. It affected her, it really did. It’s not been easy for her here, not since the start. She’s had a lot on her mind.”

“She was here to look after you, nothing else.”

Arbutus rolled her eyes, kept counting leg swings. When she’d finished she said, “I told you to tell her about Walter right away.”

Gladys didn’t answer. She had lunch to fix.

Arbutus started in on her arm exercises next, pumping them slowly Upward, like she was lifting weights. “Would you have given her the keys if she asked?”

Gladys refused to answer that too, she knew a trick question when she heard it.

Arbutus came and sat down when she’d finished. “She’s not like her mother, Gladys, and you know it. And even if she was, so what?”

Gladys rustled around in the cupboards getting dishes out.

“Look at that picture she painted of Us, she wouldn’t have done that if she didn’t care.” The picture was propped Up on the bureau in Arbutus’s room, and Gladys had looked at it more often than Butte was to know. Arbutus snagged a fried apple out of the dish Gladys sat on the table and Gladys swatted at her hand. “It’s Us but in a way it isn’t Us. It’s more than Us. Don’t you think?”

Gladys finished putting lunch on the table. A piece of baked fish, broccoli with cheese sauce, a loaf of nisu to go with the fried apples.

“I still say you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face,” Arbutus said after they’d said grace.

Gladys didn’t want to talk about it. “I guess Emil figures he’s safe, these days,” she said. “Hasn’t heard any more from that zoning board.”

“His plan worked, then.”

Gladys speared a piece of fish off the platter and laid it on her sister’s plate. “Seems to have. Though I wouldn’t rest too easy if I was him. I still think Cal Tate’s got plans for that land Up there.”

“Probably. I think I’ll like the apartments, though. Unlike Emil. It’ll be nice having the shoveling looked after, and people just down the hall. Less to worry about.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Gladys warned. “Once the hotel sells, you’ll wish you had your house back. I wish you’d listen to reason.”

“I’ll be fine. My mind’s made up. I’m tired of worrying.”

Gladys rolled her eyes but kept still. Arguing with Butte was a waste of breath.

Arbutus ate a little more, studying Gladys all the while, and then she said, “Nathan says Madeline’s still got her apartment listed with him.”

“Well, good for her.”

“She hasn’t withdrawn her offer on the hotel, either. It’s contingent on her place selling, is all.”

“La-di-da. I won’t sell it to her.”

“Well I will. And if you won’t, you’ll have to pay a big fee.”

“What?”

“We drew Up all those papers with Nathan, remember? Once you list with real estate you have to accept the offer if it meets your price, or else you have to pay a penalty. My realtor in Crosscut said the same thing, she said make sure you’re sure, you can’t just change your mind.”

“Nathan wouldn’t dare.”

“Of course he would. I told him he should.”

Gladys slammed her fork down. “Arbutus Hill, I don’t believe you.”

Arbutus shrugged. “Business is business.”

Gladys stabbed a chunk of broccoli and ate it. Then she said, “It’ll never happen anyway. She’ll think better of it. It doesn’t make any more sense now than it ever did. She probably just forgot to withdraw that offer. She’s forgotten everything else—bills, candles, asking for permission to make herself at home in the hotel. You watch, next time you talk to Nathan it’ll be different.”

“I don’t think so.” Arbutus applied herself to her lunch, and gradually Gladys relaxed. Then Arbutus said, “Oh, by the way. I invited the fellow who wants to buy my house to brunch on Wednesday.”

“Doesn’t that sound fun? They were talking about it on the morning show the other day. It’s later than breakfast and earlier than lunch—”

“I know what it is.”

“I thought we could have that egg pie Verna brings to church.”

“Quiche,” Gladys said flatly.

“Yes, that’s right, quiche. Pete’s a friend of Madeline’s from Chicago, did I tell you?”

“And just when did all of this come about?”

“Yesterday, when you were at Mabel’s. He stopped by, and I gave him some coffee. I invited him then. I told him we’d like to have Madeline come too, it’d seem funny to him if she didn’t, and besides, I’d like her to.”

Gladys stared at her sister, speechless.

“Bad gas, maybe,” Pete Kinney said.

“She fills Up down in Halfway. I told her Umpteen times that gas is old, you don’t want it, but she won’t believe me.”

Madeline sighed.

“Well, I did tell you.”

“Yes you did.”

“As far as the knocking, it could be a number of things, I’d have to take a better look at it, give it a drive.”

Gladys sniffed. Obviously it was bad gas, but it was civil of Pete not to insist.

“Would you like more coffee, or some juice?” Arbutus offered, smiling prettily.

Pete gave her a keen, pleased look. The look of a man who has taken a fancy. Gladys felt both proud and vexed. Well past seventy, crippled Up, and her sister was still wrapping men around her finger quick as a wink. “I would,” he said to Butte. “More of this good coffee would be just the thing.” Then he recollected himself, included Gladys. “I’m pleased to meet the both of you, by the way. It’s good of you to have me in to eat. It’ll be a treat to have some home-cooked food, my daughter gets after me for not fixing myself better meals.”

“Speaking of which.” Gladys got Up to check on the quiche. Leave the lovebirds alone for a minute. She didn’t know whether to be glad or mad. Madeline followed to fetch Pete’s coffee. They eyed each other warily and didn’t speak. When they returned Pete had scooted down the couch close to Arbutus’s chair and they were chatting with animation. Gladys and Madeline glanced at each other and then away, but before they could stop it there’d been a flash of Understanding between them—is this what it looks like, and how nice if it is.

Pete liked the quiche, the seasoning Gladys Used, what was it? (Salt and pepper and a little paprika, nothing special, she said, frowning with pleasure.) He loved Gladys’s bread, and the wild blueberry jam. He remembered a neighbor lady from when he was a boy who’d made cardamom rolls at the holidays, he hadn’t had anything like it since. She was Scandinavian and painted her porch roof blue like the sky and swept off her sidewalks every morning with a broom. Pete patted the Formica table in an appreciating way, admired the cookstove, complimented Gladys on her flowers and the neat shape she kept her house in. He liked McAllaster, he said, he and his wife had always told each other they’d maybe retire here one day. “It was a dream of ours. Seems wrong to me still that we never did do it. We had good times here.”

Arbutus was nodding, her face sympathetic. “You miss her.”

“I do. She wouldn’t want me to mope, so I don’t. But the world’s a little lonely, on your own.”

“My Harvey, my second husband, was the same way. He couldn’t stand to think of me downhearted. And I haven’t been. But there’ve been lonely times.”

They smiled at each other in a way that left the rest of the world out.

“Thank you for a delicious meal and your kind hospitality,” Pete said after they’d finished and he was at the door. Arbutus invited him to come to supper the next night if he was going to stay in town.

“I’d be pleased to if you’re sure it’s not an imposition.”

Of course not, Gladys assured him stiffly. He shook all their hands, saving Arbutus for last, and held hers a little longer than he might have.

Just as he pulled out of the drive they heard a siren wailing. Gladys went to call Mabel Brink, as she did every time the ambulance went out, because Mabol had a scanner. Arbutus went in the parlor and turned on the television to catch the tail end of her favorite program. Madeline went to the kitchen sink and ran dishwater and Gladys was taken aback, but decided not to stop her. Not Until after she’d made her phone call anyway.

Two minutes later Gladys set down the phone and went into the kitchen, feeling dazed. “Mabel says it’s a car accident down the highway. I guess they think it’s Randi, with those summer kids she’s been running around with lately. It’s bad, she says.”

Madeline looked as shocked as Gladys felt. “What kids? The last I heard she was working for Paul and at the bar, how would she have time to run around? And what about Greyson, did Mabel know?”

“She didn’t know. With Randi, I’d have to think. Jo Jo Finn’s out of town, and Fran Kacks put her back out last week, had to tell Randi she couldn’t sit anymore. Maybe he’s at the Trackside, but—” Gladys shook her head, full of trepidation.

“I’m going to go see,” Madeline said, wiping her hands on her jeans and heading for the door. She looked apprehensive but resolved. She was going to do something, and Gladys was relieved.