It may have been the first week of October, but Jerry still refused to put on an overcoat. He’d looked at Winnie like she was crazy when she suggested it, and began a litany of winters in Chicago. Now that was where you learned to dress warmly, et cetera, et cetera.

The high school was lit up on this evening, and their group joined a modest stream of people on the paved path to the auditorium entrance. Bob was at his writing class, although he said he would leave early in order to catch at least some of Winnie’s big night. When she’d protested this—no need, her part was so small—he had said he wouldn’t miss it. Rachel had said nothing. And now, although Rachel was hurrying ahead with the girls, Winnie slowed, matching her steps to Jerry’s labored ones.

The opening reception for “Hartfield Station Stop: A Photographic History” was being held in the Girls’ Gym—the photos themselves were installed along the corridor walls just outside, where two dozen people milled and peered closely at the black-and-white images, plastic drink cups in hand. This left the gym itself strangely empty, its two refreshment tables, podium, and rows of folding chairs all stiffly arranged on the waxed, putty-colored floor.

“It’s not really the Girls’ Gym anymore,” Rachel was saying to Jerry, in the crowded foyer. “What do they call it now, Lila?”

“Everyone still says Girls’ Gym,” Lila said. Unlike Melissa, who had hurried down the hall to a friend, Winnie’s older granddaughter stuck close to her mother.

“Really? What about all the drama, with the name change? What ever happened to that?”

“What’s wrong with Girls’ Gym?” Jerry asked.

“Well, this is the smaller of the school’s two gyms,” Rachel said. “So you can see why people got upset.” Winnie wasn’t at all sure Jerry would see, but he merely took in the information.

“Mom, we’re not going to have to stand up or anything, right?” Lila whispered urgently. “Because of Nana?”

“Definitely not,” Rachel said. “Nana’s going to hog all the spotlight.”

Winnie said, “Honey, what about when you do all those somersaults in the air? Everyone’s watching you then, and you’re always such a cool cucumber.”

“That’s different.”

Winnie knew Lila’s shyness was real and painful, and yet she thought it a complete mystery, especially for such a beautiful girl. Good lord, if she herself had had that hair and that figure back in her own school days!

Rachel and Lila wandered into the gym, to lay their coats along a row of seats—“not in the front!” Winnie could hear Lila hissing—and so she stayed in the hallway, smiling now and again at acquaintances, while Jerry strolled ahead, looking closely at the pictures and reading their captions. He wore a suit and tie, though hardly any other man there did. Earlier this afternoon, they had planned carefully for there to be time for Jerry to take a rest before bathing and dressing. When he had appeared in the upstairs hallway, pink faced, in his sharply creased dark blue suit, Winnie had cried out in dismay.

“But you—you’re so—” She had motioned at her own slacks and turtleneck sweater, now unforgivably casual.

“And I thank you kindly,” Jerry had said. “Now go get shipshape, lady. I’m squiring you, after all.” She had rushed back to her closet, heart full.

It was one of their first public appearances, and though Winnie knew it was a little silly to think that way, she couldn’t help it. Nor could she help touching her pearls every once in a while or patting at the hips of her wine-colored long skirt, which had a matching silk shawl she was thinking about discarding. It was growing warm in here, with more people filling up the hallway. The only thing that she wished different was the faint discoloration along her jawline. Dr. Reynolds had said that it was merely a shift in pigment, not uncommon at her age, and certainly nothing to worry about—or even treat. But Winnie did worry. She hated the darker area that shadowed her left cheek and shaded down to the side of her neck. She hated that she noticed Rachel’s glance skating quickly toward it, and away. She hated thinking that Jerry might find it unattractive, might find any part of her unattractive. It was so unfair. For years and years she had been all alone, with a perfect complexion, and now this. And she was hardly vain at all! Nothing about the rapidly multiplying folds of her skin or her knobby knuckles or even the strange new puffiness around her knees bothered Winnie. But this darkening patch of skin—oh, she hated it. In her worst moments recently, Winnie thought that she would easily trade a higher cholesterol reading, or even a return of the horrible vertigo, if her cheek would just go back to the way it used to look.

Meanwhile, she had lost sight of Jerry, so she moved through the crowded hallway, weaving around clumps of people, touching some lightly on the back as she maneuvered her way.

Most of the photographs were older, black-and-white, although she passed one blown-up blurry image from the 1970s. That was when the station building had been refurbished, with money from local businesses and a group of overly dedicated volunteers who combed the town for donors. Winnie glanced at the picture without stopping: a few dozen long-haired jubilant residents crowded onto the south-side platform, holding up a drooping banner: We Are All Commuters!

There he was, toward the end of the exhibit, where the photographs stopped and the regular high-school bulletin boards and trophy cases began. Notices for cafeteria times, cross-country meet results, and a large poster warning against drug use had been hastily untacked and dropped in a pile on the floor to make room for the exhibit. Jerry had unknowingly planted a foot right on top of the papers, while he studied one of the last photographs. When she approached, he began talking right away, just as if they’d never parted, a habit Winnie had come to adore.

“There he is,” Jerry said. “Looks like he had a hard time of it, your father.” He pointed at the image, a grainy black-and-white photograph that had been blown up and mounted against a white cardboard backing. Winnie had to put on her little silver reading glasses. The caption to this one read, “Early winter storm delays Hartfield Station completion by another three months. Harold Easton, foreground.” And the photograph showed a front view of the half-formed building, no more than an abandoned skeleton, no roof, girders exposed, and an immense pile of construction materials buried under a thick gray blanket of snow. In the far upper corner of the photograph, behind her father, a few bundled-up men were standing around awkwardly and shyly, as people did for photos back then, when it took forever for the image to be processed. Or maybe they were just cold? One had his arm raised, as if to gesture at all the snow.

“My brothers always said they remembered that snowstorm. It must have brought a somber mood into our house, that’s for sure. Sad-looking old thing, isn’t it.”

Jerry studied the photograph some more. “There’s more development in town than I’d thought there’d be. See, there’s the bank building.”

“Yes. It took forever to get the charter. Do you think they have the punch set up yet?”

“And they’d started paving the crossing right there. Any later and he wouldn’t have had the room,” Jerry exclaimed, jabbing a thick finger at the photo.

“Well, I think—”

“They’d already reneged on a promise for a bigger lot.”

“Who had?”

“The township. Says so, on one of those other plaques. They kept offering leases to storeowners, and when the rail men complained, they were told that shops were the way to build the economy, not a station stop.”

“Now that’s ridiculous,” Winnie said.

Jerry bobbed his head from side to side, indicating that there were points to be made on both sides. “In any case, your father had his work cut out for him.”

Winnie laughed. “He was that kind of man,” she said. “He relished it, I think.”

“I would have liked to have known him,” Jerry said.

For a confused moment, Winnie found herself thinking, well, but you must! She forgot, in a tumbled way, how and why it wasn’t possible for her husband to meet her father, and that she wouldn’t ever have the simple, complicated pleasure of observing these two men clasping hands. She was overcome by the sensation that she’d somehow forgotten to make such an introduction happen and felt a panicky urge to rectify the oversight immediately. Though which of her fathers should Jerry—now at least ten years older than Harold Easton at his death—meet? Her childhood father, the over-coated man spied in one or two photographs lining the hallways of Hartfield High School; the man who presided at Sunday dinner, chiding Winnie’s brothers for their unwashed hands, carving the roast into precise, even slices. He must have had so much on his mind then, but he was always gentle at home, always low-voiced and kind to her mother. Winnie could breathe it, right now, the pomade in his hair, the packet of cigarettes in his breast pocket. But if anything, the man Jerry would have met, if at all (which was not at all, of course), would have been late-stage Harold, Harold in his last years, ill-tempered and lonely, uninterested in the newspaper or the meals she and George brought over weekly. They had never had much to say to each other, her father and George, other than the polite usual. Winnie couldn’t help imagining that Jerry’s presence then, while her father lived out his long year of dying, would have brought more…what? More discussion, more understanding, more substance to all those pointless afternoons in the hospital.

Men needed that, she thought now, watching Jerry study the blurry photo of her father. They didn’t admit it, but they needed the company of other like-minded men. Especially as they got older.

“Do you wish Daniel had flown in?” Jerry said now.

“What? Just for this, you mean? No, of course not.”

“Still, it’s nice,” Jerry said, looking around at the crowd, the carefully mounted photographs. (Pestered by the committee, Winnie had provided a number of them, peeled out of her albums in boxes now stacked along one wall in the basement of 50 Greenham.) “The way it’s all preserved here. All these men, their work.”

Down at the end of the hall, Winnie saw Rachel’s head emerge from the gym, and then one of the organizers behind her, Erica Stein, who waved with energy. The presentation would be starting any minute, but Winnie turned her back on them.

“You know, I think it’s a grand idea, meeting with Avery. We’ll just have to keep after him. And having him write down some things, about you. A boy like that shouldn’t be at odds and ends.”

“What? Oh. Avery. Yes, I’ve got a plan for that one.” Though Jerry’s gaze trailed along the photographs, Winnie knew he wasn’t really seeing them.

“Annette will come to her senses,” she said quietly. “This can’t go on forever.”

Jerry snorted. “Annette doesn’t give a fig about what it takes to build something. She only wants to turn a buck.”

“That’s not true.”

“Nothing wrong with it, either! But there will be no ‘TrevisCorp: A Photographic History’ anytime soon.”

“Maybe we should just go to Chicago,” Winnie said. “Go out for a nice, civilized dinner. In person, all of this could be sorted out. With the lawyers in the middle of everything, and all this back and forth—it’s impossible to settle things like a family needs to!”

“That point passed quite a while ago. I filed countersuit on Tuesday, and the board has moved to freeze all company assets while this thing plays itself out.”

“Countersuit against…Annette? Oh, Jerry.” Winnie could hear Rachel’s voice, coming closer. Now she understood all the phone calls of last week, the long hours in his office with the lawyers. Still, he’d never until now mentioned a thing.

“Don’t ‘oh Jerry’ me. She wants to play this game, we’ll play it.”

“I still don’t understand how it came to this.” He had sued Annette? Winnie was unnerved; why hadn’t he told her earlier? And why would he tell her now, she couldn’t help thinking—just as she was about to go onstage?

“How what came to what?” Rachel had appeared. “Okay, Mom, the natives are getting restless.”

“Showtime,” Winnie said, and struck a little pose. She tried to smile. Maybe Jerry’s being so casual was a good sign. Maybe it was just how things were done, in families with all that money.

“Full house in there,” Rachel called over her shoulder. She and Jerry had already started down the hall.

Winnie followed, taking the opportunity to touch the fine-grained bumpy spot near her jaw—yes, still there—while looking over the outfit her daughter had chosen for the evening: those battered clogs she wore everywhere, a baggy sweater and jeans (well, they weren’t exactly jeans, but corduroy slacks that for all intents and purposes looked just like a pair of jeans). This unhappiness of her daughter’s, it was a hard thing to face. And tricky too, to know what to do or say. Rachel never spoke directly about her feelings for Bob, and Winnie—who knew something about the ups and downs of a long marriage—was careful not to suggest anything was wrong. A person’s marriage was her own private business, after all. And so Winnie did what she could, as much as she could, as she always had, even after Bob recovered: she kept the girls’ school schedules on her own refrigerator; she attended recitals and took Rachel’s turn at carpool duty. She brought salads to share at Rachel’s lunch break; she lent her car and her time and her tips for easing a child’s fever. Still, at times Winnie felt it anew, that same sorrow she’d had when Danny and Rachel were children and tripped or bruised or cut themselves; even as she’d rocked, and bandaged, and soothed, she’d mourned with a queasy guiltiness a mother’s knowledge that they would know pain, her babies, over and over again, in the life she had brought them into.

Now Jerry was escorting Rachel—or was it the other way around?—down the hall and into the gym. They were arm in arm, talking about the exhibit. She could see Jerry pointing out different photographs, and Rachel leaning down a little, to listen. A sudden peal of her daughter’s raucous laughter surprised Winnie, as did the comfortable way Rachel pushed at Jerry in a mock shove.

In the past month, Jerry had transferred ten thousand dollars, twice, into a new account that Rachel had set up. On one of her first visits to 50 Greenham, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, Rachel had disappeared with Jerry into his office upstairs, while Winnie showed Lila and Melissa the secret dumbwaiter that she herself had only just discovered. They took turns loading laundry into it, and then funny things—a single shoe, a dozen apples—to rappel up and down three flights of stairs to one another. Then, Winnie had found a pack of index cards, and while Melissa made flash cards for French class, she and the girls had switched on the television to catch the end of Rebecca. Both Lila and Melissa snorted at Mrs. Danvers, thinking the performance over the top and silly, whereas Winnie always found Judith Anderson truly terrifying in this role, icy, slowly unhinged. She tried not to keep glancing toward the hallway leading to the stairs, and just as Manderley burned to the ground, Rachel slid in next to Lila and gave Winnie a calm nod. So, everything was fine. Why hadn’t she expected that? What was the lingering unease she felt, while the credits rolled and a debate about pizza ensued?

Since that Sunday, Rachel and Jerry were in cahoots about all sorts of things. Winnie would stop by Hand Me Down and begin to tell the story of the upstairs fuse blowing twice in one night the week before, for no rhyme or reason—and of course her bedside flashlight batteries were dead—only to have Rachel interrupt, saying that Jerry had mentioned it. And then there was the peculiar way the two of them were about the money, never making light of the loans exactly, but referring to them all the time (except for when the girls were around), the tax issues and investments and debt, all with no awkwardness from either one, as if money was an interesting subject in and of itself, as if Rachel and Jerry were merely puzzling out the best recipe for bread dough…

This instant connection between the two of them—well, it delighted Winnie. (Erica Stein ushered her to a folding chair near the podium.) It did, she insisted to herself, watching Rachel, in the audience, lean casually in toward Jerry and point something or someone out to him. But it was complicated, in a way she wouldn’t have predicted. Rachel was using her hands, those long-fingered, strong hands that reminded Winnie of George, tracing something in the air—a box shape?—that Jerry tried to follow with beetled brows. Winnie guessed that Rachel didn’t know she was seated on Jerry’s bad side, that much of what she said would be lost to him, because he would be too proud to ask her to repeat herself. But there was delight in seeing her daughter there, and her comfort with this man, neither of them paying any attention to her up here on the stage—delight, and anxiety, and satisfaction, all at once.

Rachel did like Jerry, didn’t she? Just for who he was? Winnie told herself to avoid what was coming, but the searing question arose anyway: it wasn’t just about the money, was it?

Stop it, she told herself. She was just rattled by this news about Annette. Winnie looked once more at Jerry and Rachel. She wouldn’t be sitting cozily next to her new daughter-in-law anytime soon.

As Erica gave the opening remarks, Winnie exchanged greetings with the gentleman at her left. Wizened and practically deaf, he somehow let her know he lived with his son in Mount Morris and his cousin—or his late wife’s cousin?—had been the photographer for several of the images displayed. Lord, Winnie couldn’t help thinking, they’re really dragging everyone out of the woodwork.

Now a woman was speaking—a different one, from Town Hall—saying something interminable about the rise of the “bedroom suburb” in the tristate area, the social history of rail stations, and notable architectural features of Hartfield’s own. Winnie had heard it all before, and couldn’t imagine anyone who hadn’t, especially among this retiree-heavy crowd.

“Red Janson, Hartfield stop’s first-ever station agent, was not only dispatcher and ticket seller: he was a postmaster too, and also the town’s locksmith. When you needed those new eyeglasses, Red would tell you if they had arrived. He was known to run card games out of the back office, when things were slow, and would let boys toss pennies onto the tracks—he’d also chase them away if they got in the way. One thing Red never did was hold a train. Not for anyone, not for any reason, big or small. ‘God and the Timetables,’ read a sign over his desk, as you might have seen in one of the photographs—though perhaps Red would not have considered them quite in this order.”

The audience chuckled. Winnie restrained herself from reaching up to touch the darkened patch near her jaw. To distract herself, she read the blue and white cloth banners tacked up to the rafters—state finalists, track and field, 1969. league champions, girls’ soccer, 1976, 1977. Someone, unable or unwilling to locate blue felt, had added 1978 with a marker, the numbers squeezed unevenly into the very corner. Winnie recognized a few names hanging there, above her, from families who had been around Hartfield as long as she had.

Last week, while the man from yet another tree service—four so far, each one eventually declining the job—measured the sycamore’s trunk and took some digital photos, Winnie’s new neighbor Vi Greenberg strolled across the street and stopped to watch. Winnie had waved her in, and Vi had walked slowly across the long, sloping front yard.

“It’s not mealy worms, is it?” she called, as she got closer. Winnie had known Vi and her husband, the retired Judge Greenberg, for years and years. George used to treat the judge for hypertension, and Vi’s mother, in fact, had known Winnie’s slightly—Vi had once shown her a leather guest book with Delia Easton’s name carefully inscribed in her familiar hand. Now Vi’s grandson was a chaplain in the army, serving in Afghanistan; at church, they prayed for him weekly. His wife, on a base in Florida, was pregnant with Vi’s first great-grandchild. “They were in our boxwood, last summer. You just spray this nasty stuff—he’ll know the name of it, I’m sure.” Vi nodded at the tree man.

“No, it’s not mealy worms,” Winnie said. She held her smile steady. “They said Indian summer, but you could have fooled me.”

Vi stared up at the branches that arched wide and high above the two women, in their matching tan pants and weekend shoes. “Aphids?” she said. “This early freeze should take care of those critters.”

The tree man was walking toward them, with his clipboard. Winnie took a deep breath. “Vi,” she began.

“Have to check with my boss,” the man said. “We don’t usually—”

“That’s fine,” Winnie said. She nearly ripped the yellow sheet out of his extended hand. “I’ll be here.”

“It’s just that with something this size—”

“Fine, fine,” Winnie said, urging the man back to his truck. When she turned back, Vi Greenberg had fixed her with a cool and level gaze.

“You remember when we got a bit of Hurricane Caroline?” Vi said.

“Of course I do, Vi.” That was late summer, in 1986. Lila was a baby, and Winnie had spent the night in the spare room at Rachel’s, the window rattling hard against its four silver duct-taped Xs.

“The Harrison’s maple went over—” Vi pointed to the house next to hers. “And then electrical wires set off a fire on the top of two pines, down by Mina Sullivan.” Winnie dug her hands into her pockets, pushing the crumpled estimate down deep. “All I could think, that night, was please don’t let the sycamore go. Any tree on our street but that one. Nobody even lived here then, so maybe I felt I had to stick up for it. In the morning, there were branches everywhere, big ones blown up on our porch, even—”

“I remember, Vi.”

“But when I looked out and saw it still standing, I felt foolish.” Vi let her gaze travel up the tree’s broad trunk, deliberately not meeting Winnie’s eyes. “I thought, who am I to worry about this old warrior? Why, this tree was around before I was born! What an insult, to even picture it coming down.”

Winnie’s cheeks burned a little, up onstage, the way they had when she could say nothing, there under the tree with her neighbor. Vi had smiled then, and pretended to shiver in the cold, and then hurried back across the street to her own house. Winnie tried to push it out of her head, tried to pay attention. The little old Mount Morris man had been introduced, and he bowed his head, one hand raised, for the applause.

Now Erica was speaking at the podium, her voice high and excited: “—as part of the high school’s permanent collection, which I’m very pleased to announce tonight.” This drew the appropriate murmurs and applause, while Winnie tried to figure out what she had just announced. That some of the photos would be hanging in these classroom hallways, for good? For generations of young people to ignore or jostle, or splash soda on, as they ran by? Winnie wanted to laugh out loud, but now Erica had turned to her with an expectant smile…right. She was supposed to say something, on her father’s behalf, and so she took her turn at the podium.

“My father would have been very touched by all of this. Actually, by now he would have been asleep. This is far past a railroad man’s bedtime.” Winnie paused for the obligatory laughter. She wanted to search out Jerry’s glance, but the lights were brighter than she expected and the microphone intimidating.

“My father had just a small part in Hartfield’s station, which was the product of a lot of people’s hard work and the generous nature of the town’s founders. So in his honor, I’d like to thank the organizers of this very flattering exhibition—thank you, Erica—and…” Here Winnie faltered, forgetting completely, if she’d ever known them, the names of the other ladies on the committee, but her general wave in their direction was apparently satisfactory, because the audience went right ahead and applauded. Winnie was relieved. Most of the time, she thought, people knew what they were supposed to do.

“A question? Mrs. Trevis? Could I ask a question?”

Winnie was halfway back to her seat when she stopped, confused. She couldn’t see who was calling out, from the back, though it was a woman’s voice, loud and clear.

“Well, we hadn’t exactly planned on any Q and A…” Erica said. “But if Winnie wouldn’t mind? Just one or two, perhaps?”

So she was back up at the microphone. This time she found Jerry, who gave her a frowning, pleased nod. Rachel, next to him, was whispering to Melissa.

“Mrs. Trevis, hi. Over here.” Now she could make out the person that this bright, aggressive voice belonged to—a college student, perhaps? The girl had dark hair, pulled severely back, and a notebook tucked under one arm. She smiled widely and stopped waving when she could tell Winnie saw her. Then the girl’s clear voice rang out, loud and confident.

“I was just wondering why you plan to cut down the historic sycamore tree on Greenham and Franklin?”

Before Winnie fully understood, Erica Stein was beside her. “This is a photographic exhibit,” she said, shouldering her way toward the microphone.

“It’s a public forum, and I have a right to speak! Isn’t it true, Mrs. Trevis, that you—”

“If you have a question about the train station—”

“That tree is over a hundred years old! It’s a living thing!”

Four or five other protesters, in their twenties and thirties, each in a T-shirt that read tree tribe had stood up next to the first woman, and they were all shouting. Shouting at her.

“Shade! Clean air! Homes for animals!”

“Order, please, or we’ll have to get security! Order!” Erica was hammering at the podium with the flat of her hand, while Winnie just stood there. In her shock, she almost laughed. Was this actually happening, or had she conjured the whole scene by remembering the awkward encounter with Vi Greenberg? How did anyone know about that old tree? Then she remembered: the permit she’d filed at Town Hall two weeks ago.

The audience, after its initial bewildered silence, flurried with movement—some members craning their necks to get a better view of the shouting protestors, others raising their own voices in dismay or disagreement. A hearty “Boo!” came from the little old Mount Morris man who had been seated next to her.

Now, as if on cue, the protestors quieted. Erica did too, wary and relieved. Now maybe they could get back to business.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” the original woman said primly. Then a gleam came into her eye and Winnie realized it wasn’t over. “It’s just that she’s cutting down one of the biggest and oldest, one of the most beautiful trees in town—to build a swimming pool!”

At this, the crowd sucked in its breath, an audible gasp. The woman with the notebook and ponytail glared at Winnie, triumphant. You could hear people in the audience repeating the phrase swimming pool, their voices low with disgust, as if the woman had announced that Winnie planned to put a puppy mill in her front yard.

As if to capitalize on the mood in the room, the protestors were once again shouting, “Clean air! Shade! Homes for animals!” She saw Jerry, struggling to his feet. He was having trouble pushing himself up from the flimsy folding chair, and Rachel was doing nothing to help him get steady, because she was staring at the protestors. Bob, who had just arrived, was asking everyone, “What? What happened?” Winnie saw Melissa and Lila, frozen. It was the look of terror on Lila’s face, though, that made her act.

“Now just a minute, here.” She leaned in to the microphone, and ignored Erica, who said she would handle it. “How am I supposed to answer anything if you people won’t stop to listen?” Her own voice, amplified across the gymnasium, comforted Winnie—she could hear in it a trace of familiar exasperation, but nothing more. No sign of how rattled she felt inside.

“You’ve got questions—no. You have something to say. You’re unhappy about the tree. I understand that, and maybe we can find a way—”

The standing four paid no attention. They weren’t even looking at Winnie anymore, because they were busy shouting, “We speak for the trees! We speak for the trees!” Their voices clashed with hers. Still, one by one the other faces in the audience were turning back to Winnie, and she was the one with the microphone, after all.

“That tree is ninety-four feet high,” she said. “And its branches are almost the same width—did you know that? I didn’t, that a tree’s ‘wingspan’ can be equal to its height.” These facts quieted the audience a little, though Winnie didn’t know why she was saying them, other than to speak something into the microphone in front of her. “And I did see purple finches nesting there. And blue jays, of course, though they’re not so picky. Isn’t that right, Tess?” She had spied an old comrade of George’s, one of his early-rising birder group.

“Now you take an interest,” Tess called back, sassy as ever.

Winnie hurried on, afraid of more comments related to George. All these people in the audience—many had known her for fifty years or more, and now Jerry was sitting in their midst, a total stranger to them. It was hard not to feel on trial. Two of the protestors had stopped shouting, for the moment, as if to hear her out. She cast around for something else to say. “Its trunk is nine, ten feet around—oh! Listen to this. It appears that after two hundred years, a sycamore becomes hollow. But it lives on, hollow or not; did you ever hear that? I read somewhere that pioneer families could even live inside one while they built homes. She caught Lila’s eye and smiled. “Packed in like sardines, you have to imagine.”

At this, Winnie faltered; she was running out of tree facts, and that last image gave her pause. She’d made a faux pas, a bad one; she knew Rachel had to be thinking of her own living situation. In fact, Rachel was sitting still and calm, looking up at her with an expression that read, You’ve made your bed, Mom. Now what?

“Don’t think I haven’t done my homework,” she said, casting her voice across the small audience, her neighbors and town people gathered here. “Due diligence, as my son-in-law might call it.” Bob saluted her, his bald head lit and shining, the brightest thing in the room. The protestors, though, were not appeased. They bent their heads together for a quick conference. Winnie didn’t mind; she realized it wasn’t to them that she was speaking. “These photographs, all this history…” She waved an arm vaguely toward the hallway where the exhibit was mounted. Winnie felt tired, all of a sudden; she should have told her daughter about the pool, about the tree. A tree all hollowed out, living on despite that emptiness, that gutting out. Why had that stuck with her? Why was it so disturbing?

By now the one security guard, a gray-haired man, had ambled over to the chanting protestors. He wore a small smile, as if to acknowledge the sudden starring role of his minor part. He began to shepherd the group toward the door, calmly, a bit wearily, and the protestors didn’t resist. Their voices grew smaller and smaller as they moved toward the back of the gym.

“Some things are more important than the past,” Winnie said into the microphone, but that wasn’t what she meant, exactly. She knew she sounded as if she were pleading to the audience. How could anything she said make them understand? All those faces, some filled with doubt, others with confusion.

The first woman, who had ambushed Winnie, was the last to be led out of the room. “How do you sleep at night, you rich bitch?” she screamed, just before disappearing.

That energy and fury flew directly to Winnie like a sharp slap. “Oh,” she said weakly, backing away from the podium, hand to her jaw, covering the dark patch. Her own distressed exclamation, a low sound, hung in the air, and the unintended push she’d given to the microphone stand touched off a piercing squeal of feedback that hissed around the large room. The speakers whined, drowning out Erica. Most people in the audience had left their seats. Someone was saying something to Winnie, but she shook off the kind hand on her arm, and she ignored Rachel’s worried expression, now right in front of her, blocking her way. Winnie worked her way free of them all, and either he had made it to her, or she to him, but at last Jerry’s thick hand found hers, and they stood still together.

None of it mattered, then—not any suit or countersuit, not this public comeuppance—as soon as Winnie felt Jerry squeeze her hand, once, hard. She returned the favor, and let the tumult go on around them.