He filled one of the gray jugs with fresh water and brought it over to Beverly. "Try it," he said. "Cup your hands."

Beverly did as he was told. Jon poured the water into his hands and he recoiled just a bit from the shock of it.

"It's so good," said Jon.

His wrists were almost numb from the cold as he lifted the water to his mouth. This was water you could taste-tangy, iron water that pierced his right eye with cold.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

Lottie reflected on her August sojourn. This was already their third Saturday at Hopewell. So far it had been shockingly marvelous. In fact, she was afraid that she would tempt the gods if she enumerated all the things that had gone right on Little Lost Island. Jon and she had had a ton of sex, for one; here she was, doing laundry. She actually loved doing laundry on the island. The washer and dryer were not in a dingy basement as they were in her apartment building in Brooklyn. There were no quarters to scrimp together. She didn't have to wait to get into a machine.

No, here the laundry room had a view of the trees and the path down to the springhouse. She could just dump her laundry in a pile near the washer and do it at her leisure. She even picked up Beverly's laundry and did his, as she was quite certain that he was not a laundry doer himself and he would be embarrassed to admit it. I am Dobby the house elf, she thought, but liberated.

The cottage had a long, squeaky clothesline on a pulley that seemed to have been installed before Lottie was born but still worked if you applied a little elbow grease. She pulled the sheets out of the washer and put them in the garish plastic basket so she could hang them on the line.

She knew even as she was romanticizing the hanging out of sheets that she was romanticizing the hanging out of sheets. But it was hard not to. Clothespins were just not a big part of life in Park Slope. And they were such a clever invention. There was a basket of them in the laundry room and then another bag of them out by the line. She debated the merits of the two kinds of clothespins that she encountered: the very old-fashioned kind with the button cap and a split up the middle-no metal, no spring, just wood. She liked them the best. They didn't always hold the clothes so well, though. But they were so smooth and kindly. They were kind clothespins.

The other variety, more modern, vintage rather than antique-those she knew about already. They were good for small things, especially. She liked to hang her bras from the line. Now that she was having sex again she thought they looked saucy instead of forlorn.

The sheets were the best. They were big and clumsy to get situated on the clothesline, but once she had them set up properly, they billowed in the wind and bleached in the sunshine like sails. And when they were dry and back on the bed, they smelled like the outdoors.

Today's was a sheet load. Two and a half weeks here and a lot of the visions she saw when she arrived had already come through. Jon was here, and Ethan, so her most important predictions had come to pass for herself, which was nice for her but not so nice for everyone else. Rose had blossomed like the rose she was, and Lottie was rooting for Fred and was still very sure that Rose would invite him up, maybe even today.

She tugged on the line again. Beverly seemed to have a crush on Jon, or at least he was flirting with him just the tiniest bit. That was good for both of them. There was nothing Jon liked more than attention, and he got it from Beverly and then gave it back in return. The mess of letters and e-mail printouts in the suitcase had been reduced to neat piles, and only two of those piles comprised really tough challenges. Beverly promised to answer one of them a day with Jon's help, and they had made a good start. It gave Beverly an excuse to talk about Gorsch. He really needed to talk about Gorsch, Lottie thought.

She pulled another sheet from the basket and tossed it over the clothesline. She straightened it out and pinned it to the sheet before it, taking care to economize on pins, even though there were hundreds of them.

"I think Jon has actually been fired," she said aloud. He hadn't been able to get on the firm's network yesterday, either on his phone or at the library terminal. If we were home I would be a wreck, and he would be out of his mind. "I'm glad we're here."

She gave the line another tug and listened to the impossibly loud chatter of the brown squirrels in the high pine trees-no, spruce (she was learning)-overhead. Squirrels were just not this noisy in Prospect Park. It was like they were a whole different breed here. In fact, they were.

They'd have to leave this place eventually. Real life would rush in. She wondered what they would do to pay the mortgage. And tuition bills. Bartending was good money; a start.

The fitted bottom sheets were a pain to hang up and a worse pain to fold. Lottie usually just rolled them up into a ball and stuffed them in the tiny linen closet at home. She'd had a German boyfriend once who insisted that fitted sheets were an abomination, and would not lie down in a bed that had one on it. He had been sleeping with his former girlfriend the entire time they were together, so she went out and bought herself two deep-pocketed fitted sheets the minute she'd booted him out of her tiny Alphabet City apartment. But he was probably right about fitted sheets.

All these sheets reminded her of ex-boyfriends. Only one of them was good at doing laundry-he had, in fact, taught Lottie how to iron shirts: sleeves first, then collar, and then the reward of the body of the shirt. That was before Jon and his neat white boxes from the dry cleaner. He wouldn't have to wear those shirts if he'd been fired. They could just hole up here and gather mussels and huckleberries (she knew the difference now between them and blueberries) and eat off the land.

Of course, the house wasn't heated. Or insulated. It would be bitter here in the wintertime. Romantic, but bitter. Plus, they didn't own the cottage. A small wrinkle.

Lottie shook out the last sheet from the clothes basket. Rose had seemed romantic yet angry when she got to this place, but now she just seemed romantic. Romantic without an object of her affection. Lottie had no doubt that Robert SanSouci was coming here because he had an interest in Rose. He wanted Rose, married or not. But did he really want Rose, or just someone to take care of? All men want that. All people want that.

I am a philosopher here. Dobby the house-elf philosopher.

Caroline was only too happy that Beverly had by now taken over the kitchen almost entirely. His meals were simple, delicious, and effortlessly prepared. All day yesterday he was simmering lobster shells on the back burner and that night they had a lobster bisque that she would never forget. Beverly in the kitchen was different from Beverly everywhere else in the house. A dictator, yes, but no moping here.

"If you're not going to help at all, and I'd rather you didn't," Beverly said on Saturday evening, "then you might at least set the table." Just as Caroline's voice could never be anything but honey, Beverly's manner was never anything but peremptory. It was just the six of them, again. Caroline was still dangling the author on the thread of her texts; she'd found a place, in a corner of her third floor, where she could get a little bit of service. She wondered if she should tell the others she'd be having someone come up. Her own summer visitor.

The sunsets took their time here; even now at seven thirty it felt like daylight would never end. The low, sharply angled sunlight streamed through the western windows into the kitchen.

"Shall we eat in the dining room tonight, Beverly?" asked Caroline. It would make a change from the old spindle-legged table in the kitchen.

"Dinner will be on the table at eight o'clock," he said, "and I don't care what table as long as everyone is seated and everyone is appreciative." They'd had a little trouble with getting Lottie seated.

"Then I think we shall migrate to the dining room," said Caroline. She was already picturing herself there with Mike McGowan. She wanted him to love the cottage as much as she did.

She had been to town twice to text him before she found the hot spot. He was clever and ardent and he said he was writing a part just for her. She liked the idea of a writer. She hadn't had one before.

They had barely been in the dining room at all. It was musty. If this were my place, I'd take down those curtains for a start, Caroline thought. There were two walls of windows, one looking south, the other east. Very wise to have the dining room out of the fierce light of the setting sun. She liked this old architect more and more.

She reached for a chair so she could get the curtains off their rails. They were clearly additions from the sixties-brown and orange wide-weave affairs with overlarge flowers on jungle-like stalks. The chair didn't budge. A further pull determined that it wasn't stuck to the floor-it was just inordinately heavy. There wasn't a stick of furniture here that was flimsy or made to be worn out. They built for generations when they made things back then.

She dragged the chair to the first window and lifted off the curtain rail. Much better. As she stood there looking out from on high she could see the mountains off in the distance. If the trees were not in leaf you could see so much more. "How would it be to be here in the winter?" she called to Beverly.

"Very cold," he said. "There's not a shred of insulation in this house, if you'll recall."

Of course that was true. Still, as Caroline dragged the chair from one window to another, she thought of fires in the fireplace and a dusting of snow on the ground. "It would be pretty, though," she said. "We could have tons of people. They could sleep in that big Hogwarts room and pretend they're kids."

"If you wanted them to freeze to death," said Beverly. "Where did Rose put the garlic?"

Caroline didn't answer. Now that the curtains were down and sequestered in the sideboard, the room was much more alive. It needed air, though.

She tried to get the windows open, but only two of them would move at all, and not without a struggle. It took all her strength and a lot of maneuvering. "Fuck, this is hard," she said. "Why doesn't anyone take care of this place?" The window opened with a shriek.

"Caroline, what on earth are you doing?" asked Beverly. He came in from the kitchen with half a peach in his hand. "Isn't that best left to young Max? This is dripping. And peach juice stains." He disappeared back into the kitchen.

"I'm getting some air in here," Caroline called. She followed him in. "What are you making tonight, Beverly? You are a talented old fellow." She gave him a kiss on the cheek. He brushed it off. They all liked to give him kisses on the cheek to see if he'd let one stick.

"Nonsense," he said. "Gorsch was the talented one."

She pulled up a stool. Also heavy, but mobile. "Tell me about Gorsch," she said.

"Oh, there's nothing much to tell. We were great friends for many years."

Is he not out of the closet? Caroline thought. How sweet to think that he's keeping something private. How did anyone keep anything private? "Did you cook for him?"

Beverly measured balsamic vinegar into a cup and poured it into a small saucepan, which he set on the stove. "Yes, I cooked for him. Not this sort of thing. Gorsch liked simple stuff. Overcooked meat and potatoes, mostly. But you don't want to hear about that."

"I do want to hear. How did you meet?"

"Are you setting the table or interrogating me?"

"Both," said Caroline. "Are you simmering? Can you come into the dining room with me? I need your opinion."

"I'm reducing, so I suppose I can come in for a moment." He adjusted the heat. "How I despise an electric stove."

They went through to the dining room and Caroline was already cheered by what a difference it made to have the curtains down and the windows open. The room was not dreary at all.

"No plates?" said Beverly.

"They must have better stuff than what's in the kitchen. What's in here, do you think?"

She opened a sticky door to a dark cupboard or closet or pantry. She did not even know the words for these storage places. There were no closets in the bedrooms, but downstairs there were cupboards all over the place. She had learned by now that most of the electricity at Hopewell Cottage was governed irrationally, so she waved a hand in front of her into the dark of the closet and sure enough it hit a string that connected to a lightbulb, which was a nice, regular one, and not a twisted fluorescent. It gave off a dim light.

It wasn't Aladdin's cave, but it was full of treasure. The wooden shelves were filled with crockery. Stacks of dinner plates, luncheon plates, chop plates, bowls. They must have been collected and added to over time, as none of the plates were particularly standard.

"Oh, blue willow pattern," Beverly said, barely loud enough for her to hear.

"What's blue willow pattern?" said Caroline.

Beverly took the plate out of her hand. He held it for a long time. He was barely aware of Caroline next to him until she asked, "Wasn't that the name of Gorsch's big hit?"

He looked at the blue-patterned china: three figures crossing the bridge, the two birds flying, touching wings. "You know the story?"

Of course this exquisite but callow girl would not know the story.

"I don't," said Caroline.

"Two lovers adored each other," Beverly said. "But they were unsuited."

"Sad."

He traced his finger over the crackled glaze. "This is an old one," he said. He flipped the plate over. "You see?"

She looked at the smudged stamp on the back of the plate. "Is that good?"

"England is always good when it comes to china and gardening," said Beverly. "That much they should have taught you in elementary school."

"I was on set."

"No excuse." He turned the plate over again. "The princess grew up in a palace. See the palace? It's hard for me of course because-"

"-you're color-blind."

She mocked but he would not rise to her bait. Not this time. "Indeed. The princess's mother adored her, but as I say, the father was a different matter. The father had chosen someone else for the princess to marry."

"Typical," said Caroline. Beverly did not smile.

"But the princess knew she was not cut out for a life with a suitor of her father's choosing. She loved another, but he was not welcome. Not welcome at all." He concentrated on not allowing his hand to shake.

"Who did the princess love?" Caroline's low voice.

"She loved a boy."

"The wrong boy?"

"Very much the wrong boy."

"Where are they on this plate?" Beverly watched her scan the willow-pattern plate for the two lovers.

"You won't find them there," he said. "They tried to escape the father's wrath by sailing away in that boat. But the father and his two younger, loyal sons were ever in pursuit."

"Not a very nice family," Caroline said.

"The gods showed them mercy, and turned them into birds," Beverly finished. "They mated for life."

"What a beautiful story," she said, her eyes tracing the image on the plate. "It must be quite ancient."

"It was made up," said Beverly, "by the china maker. To sell plates."

"No!"

"It was. A beautiful ruse. But it bore some similarity to . . ."

"Someone close to you?"

"A little, yes." He touched the bridge of his nose.

"You mated for life?" asked Caroline.

"Gorsch made a song of it. The story's in the verse, not the chorus, so not everyone knows it. 'Blue Willow.'"

"I know that song," she said. She sang in a quiet voice: Two lovers, Their flight of innocent grace.

One palace, A vast impregnable place.

Gorsch would have written songs for this voice, Beverly thought. He closed his eyes and listened to her sing. She had pitched it just right.

Father, brothers All intent on breaking the pair.

Willow tree blows skyward As the birds float on air Blue willow . . .

She didn't sing the chorus. Beverly let her last note fade to silence.

"My sauce will be reduced to nothing if I don't get in the kitchen. You might do better to lay those plates out than to stare at them."

Caroline leaned close. "Before you go."