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Then, holding tightly to Suzanne’s clammy hand, she tugged her through the marble vestibule into a circular room dominated by a life-sized bronze nude standing at the foot of a spiral staircase. She heard voices, laughter, music drifting down from the floor above. She glanced at Suzanne, who looked even paler than she had on the way over, her thin face the color of library paste. Annie tightened her grip on the girl’s hand. Don’t you dare flake out on me … Don’t you dare… .

At the top of the stairs, a pair of tall panelled doors stood open at the entrance to a large room filled with

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elegantly dressed men and women, their mingled voices rising above the tinkling of a piano. Annie could feel Suzanne holding back.

“I wasn’t expecting… God, look at all those people …” The girl’s voice dropped to a panicked whisper. “I mean, at school I sing in front of people, but this is different. I had no idea …”

Annie, dropping Suzanne’s hand and taking firm hold of her elbow, whispered, “You’ll do fine. Just remember what I told you … Donato is that tall gray-haired man over there, the one with the bushy mustache.” She pointed him out, recognizing him from a photo she’d seen on the business page of the Times. He was standing by the black marble fireplace, talking to a group of men, one of whom Annie recognized as Stanley Zabar, whose worldfamous upper-Broadway store she regularly supplied with truffles and tiny marzipan fruits. \

She found it odd, how calm her voice sounded … much calmer than she felt. Though she’d skipped dinner, she felt slightly queasy, as if she’d eaten too many cheesy canap้s. But then she forced herself to think how pleased Dolly and Henri would be if she could snag this account.

Annie, placing her hand in the small of Suzanne’s back, gave the girl a gentle push. At the same time, she somehow thought of Laurel, who would be eighteen in just three days, almost the same age as this girl. Laurel was shy, too, but she could be surprisingly tenacious as well. Annie remembered Laurel, at seven, learning to rollerskate, falling so many times that her legs were a mass of bruises, but always she’d pick herself up, make herself keep going. Laurel in this girl’s place, would never let Annie down.

But now ซ-thank God, Suzanne, staggering a bit under the weight of her cumbersome velvet costume, was moving forward. As she crossed the room, people stopped talking and stared, stepping back to make a path for her as she made her way toward Donato. A hum of whispers rose, people asking each other who this creature decked out like a Renaissance princess could possibly be.

Stopping a few feet from Donato, the young soprano

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opened her mouth. At first, no sound came out, and Annie felt her heart lurch. Then the girl’s soprano voice, sweet, lovely, incredibly pure, began to flow forth.

“Ah, tu sais que la nuit te cache mon visage …”

Donate stared at her, his mouth-small and pink under that enormous bushy mustache-dropping open in astonishment.

Annie felt her heart begin beating again. It might work-Suzanne was good. But after this moment of surprise, would the man be charmed … or merely annoyed at the intrusion?

As Suzanne sang her final plaintive notes, a huge empty silence seemed to fill the room. Annie felt herself drifting, weightless. The floor seemed to tilt beneath her, and the beautiful room with its egg-and-dart ceiling, watered-silk walls, and antique tables and chairs the color of fine port rocked gently from side to side. Donato, she saw, still wasn’t smiling; he hadn’t moved a muscle.

Then came the applause, the muted cries of delight … and now Donato was clapping, too, the ends of his mustache lifting in a wide smile. Annie felt the room right itself, and she could once more feel her feet on the ground. Taking a deep breath, she stepped forward and briskly made her way toward Donato.

It’s going to be all right… everything is going to be all right… .

From her shopping bag, she pulled a lovely old Wedgwood soup tureen-one of Dolly’s flea-market treasures-which she’d filled with truffles and bonbons.

Smiling, she handed it to Donato along with her card. “Compliments of Girod’s.”

Then quickly, with as much regal poise as she could muster, she did an about-face and swept out of the room with Suzanne in tow.

Annie, curled in the deep, sway-backed easy chair in Joe’s living room, watched Laurel unwrap the birthday gift she’d given her-a beautiful lacquer box containing watercolor paints and a set of delicate brushes.

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“It’s Japanese,” Annie told her. She remembered the hole-in-the-wall Oriental art store down on Barrow Street where she’d found it, and the elderly Chinese man who had waited on her. When she’d told him it was for her sister, who was turning eighteen, he’d given her a sheaf of handmade rice paper to go with it.

“Oh!” Laurel gasped, staring down at the box, tracing with her fingertip the mother-of-pearl rose on its lid. “It’s … oh, Annie … I love it.”

She was sitting cross-legged on the floor near the couch where Joe sat, her shoulder almost grazing his knee. Now she was twisting around so she was nearly facing him, holding the box up for him to see as if this gift from Annie were something she was offering to him instead. “Joe, look, isn’t it beautiful?”

“Beautiful,” Joe agreed. And then Annie saw that he was looking not at the box, but at Laurel.

Barefoot, in her faded jeans and embroidered Mexican peasant blouse, her bright hair shining about her shoulders, Laurel looked so radiant, so completely, unaffectedly lovely, that Annie felt a stab of envy.

Then it hit her: She’s in love with him.

The room went suddenly bright-the Mission oak sofa and chairs, the Navajo rug and wrought-iron candlesticks atop the low redwood burl table-all of it magnified somehow as if she were peering through a telescope. Dolly, in a swirly-patterned kelly-green dress and silver lam้ heels, like a bright parrot perched on the edge of the chair by the radiator. Rivka, seated beside Joe on the sofa, smiling serenely, wearing a new ash-blond shaitel, and looking impossibly young to be the mother of nine. Joe, in a navy pullover and lightblue cords washed so many times they were almost white, grinning down at Laurel and leaning forward with his elbows propped against his knees.

“I thought you could use it,” Annie said, then cleared her throat and added, “I’m glad you like it.” She quickly looked down, concentrating very hard on the rug, on a black thunderbolt-or what looked like one-that seemed to be zigzagging out from under one leg of her chair. She knew that if she looked at her sister again, she

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wouldn’t be strong enough to stop the black thoughts from rising up again.

“Like it? I love it!” Laurel beamed at Annie. “You always pick the perfect thing … and it’s something I can really use.”

“That’s what sisters are for,” Dolly piped. “It’s up to aunts to give you wonderful useless things you’d never in a million years buy for yourself. Here.” She thrust a small robin’s-egg-blue box tied with a white satin ribbon at Laurel-from Tiffany’s, Annie could see at a glance. “Happy eighteenth.”

Annie smiled, thinking of the little blue boxes like that one stacked inside her own dresser drawer, six of them-each containing a little silver pin or bracelet, a pendant, a pair of earrings-one for every birthday since she’d come to New York. She watched Laurel untie the ribbon and open the box. Inside, in a blue flannel drawstring pouch, was a gold heart locket with a tiny diamond in its center. Pretty, Annie thought, but too sweet somehow, too little-girlish.

Laurel must have thought so too, because even though the smile never left her face, some of her radiance seemed to dim. “You’re absolutely right”—she laughed—“I never would have bought it—I couldn’t have afforded it. But I love it. And I love you for thinking of it.”

Annie, watching her sister get up and hug Dolly, thought how good Laurel was at pretending—Dolly would never guess she didn’t absolutely adore it. If only I could be more like Laurel that way, Annie thought. Less blunt and more gracious … and more generous when it came to showing affection. And with Dolly, especially, Annie still couldn’t quite let herself go a hundred percent-there was always that tiny kernel of suspicion, way down deep, the feeling that Dolly hadn’t told her everything that had happened between her and Dearie. And somehow that made all the wonderful things she’d done for them seem, well, tarnished.

“My Sarah, she has such a locket,” Rivka said, “With a picture of her husband, Yitzak.” She cast a meaningful glance at Laurel. If Laurel were Rivka’s daughter,

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Annie thought, she wouldn’t be going back upstate to finish her second semester at Syracuse … she’d be getting married, settling down. Annie, on the other hand, at twentyfour, was an old maid already.

As if she’d read Annie’s thoughts, Rivka sighed and said, “I still can’t get used to it, you girls living so far away.”

Annie laughed. “You make Manhattan sound like it’s another continent.”

“For you, maybe it’s not. For me, I should have to ride the subway an hour to see my two California shainenkesT’

Annie missed Rivka, too. They still saw each other, but nothing like when she and Laurel had been living in Brooklyn. For the past five years, they’d been renting an apartment in this building, a tiny one-bedroom two flights up from Joe’s.

“Next time, I’ll come to you,” she promised.

“And next time I come to Manhattan,” Rivka teased, shaking-her finger at Annie, “it will be to dance at your wedding.”

Annie felt herself blush, and fought the urge to glance over at Joe.

She watched as Rivka rose from the sofa, brushing invisible lint from her high-necked white blouse and smoothing her stylish, below-the-knee houndstooth skirt. “Now … who wants cake?” She had made it herself, kosher, of course, carrying it all the way here on the D train from Avenue J in a hatbox.

“Do I get to blow out the candles first?” Laurel asked.

“Not until you open my present,” Joe said. He got up and went into the bedroom, reappearing a moment later holding a anall, square package clumsily wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a piece of fat red yarn.

Laurel unwrapped it slowly, revealing a small, handpainted wooden box. Inside was a braided silver band,

“The Indians of Mexico make them,” Joe explained. “They’re called friendship rings.”

Laurel was silent as she stared at it, rolling it between

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her thumb and forefinger, seemingly mesmerized by the light flashing across its surface. With her head down and her hair curtaining her face, Annie couldn’t see her expression.

Then Laurel looked up, a quick glance before looking down again, and Annie saw why she wasn’t jumping up to hug Joe, or even going out of her way to tell him how much she liked it: her eyes were bright with tears and her cheeks stained a deep red. She looked as if she were about to cry.

After what seemed like an eternity, Annie watched Laurel get up, rising awkwardly, with quick, jerky movements, and walk over to Joe. Leaning down, she kissed him, not on the cheek, but on the mouth, carefully, deliberately, lingering a split second longer than was merely polite.

“Thank you, Joe,” she murmured.

Joe looked pleased, Annie saw, but also a bit embarrassed. Had she only imagined that he’d seemed to be returning Laurel’s kiss?

Now the thoughts she’d been trying to shut outnot just tonight, but for months, since long before Laurel went away to college-rose up in her mind.

Images flashed through her head. Laurel, a skinny twelve-year-old, running along the sidewalk to catch up with Joe. Laurel in the kitchen at Joe’s Place, kneading bread dough alongside him. Laurel, nestled up against Joe on this couch, watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers on TV, burying her face in his shoulder during the scary parts.

Then she was seeing her sister-thirteen, with legs up to here and absolutely no coordination-slip in some mud in Prospect Park and open an awful gash in her knee. Blood everywhere, soaking her stocking, her shoe, the grass around her. Joe had scooped her up, and he and Annie had run to the street. And then they had to stand and wait, while Annie waved frantically for a taxi. But when the driver saw all that blood, he started to put his car in gear and pull away. Joe, in a sort of reflex action, reached in and grabbed the cabbie by his shirt, hauling him partway out the window.

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“She’s thirteen. She’s hurt.” He spoke in a soft, level voice. “You’re taking us to Kings County. Now. I’ll pay whatever you need for the cleanup. Do you have a problem with that, sir?”

The grizzled cabbie, his face the color of cottage cheese, had shaken his head. Then, without a word, he had driven like lightning to the entrance of Kings County Emergency, where Laurel, fiercely blinking away her tears, had had eight stitches put in her knee.

But what Annie remembered most about that awful day wasn’t the blood or the stitches … it was the way Laurel, afterwards, had looked at Joe-as if he’d slain a hundred dragons and scaled a tower as tall as the Empire State to rescue her.

She’s in love with him. The thought repeated itself in Annie’s mind, over and over, like some annoying advertising jingle she couldn’t get out of her head. She’d always known it, hadn’t she? The difference now was that Laurel was no longer a knock-kneed kid … and Annie could no longer pretend this was just some adolescent crush.

But that wasn’t what was bothering her now, she realized. What was making her heart bump up into her throat was that it had suddenly, jarringly, occurred to her that Joe might be falling in love with Laurel.

Why not?

At eighteen, Laurel seemed older than most girls her age. Still a little dreamy at times, but so poised and gracious, and adept at doing things, like her artwork and sewing all her own clothes. Sure, I looked after her, but she’s had to fend for herself a lot of the time. “My little wife,” Rivka used to call her. And so what if Joe was thirty-one? Loti, of guys went for younger women. And lately Joe had bften talking more and more about finding a wife and settling down, joking that he’d like at least half a dozen kids. What would be so-Stop it, she told herself, you’re being ridiculous. Sure, Joe loves Laurel, but not the way you think. He loves her the way he’d love a little sister.