"You see a lot," said Rose. "Let's go up to the house and check out whether Robert SanSouci laid in coffee for our house tour."

They found their way to the kitchen, which was happily not filled with modern conveniences. Rose had hoped the place would be spare and frugal. It was. Like most summer places, it had an unruly collection of kitchenware: a vast array of unmatched mugs; some chipped Fiestaware; dozens of unmatched silver-plate knives and forks and spoons that had been through the dishwasher. There were too many spatulas and colanders, no sharp knives, rusted lobster crackers, and an elaborate, expensive corkscrew, still in a dusty box. Charmed as she was by the place, she was a bit disappointed not to find a coffeemaker.

"Look!" said Lottie. "Here's a note, addressed to you."

She handed Rose a light blue envelope with her name on the outside. Pleased to see the heavy rag envelope was tucked closed, not sealed, she opened it up. The writing was old-fashioned, with calligraphic d's and &'s, and she was fairly certain it had been written with a fountain pen.

Dear Rose, it said. Welcome to Hopewell Cottage.

"He says welcome to Hopewell."

"To both of us?" asked Lottie.

"Just to me so far," said Rose.

"I thought so."

Rose blushed a little, and read the letter aloud.

I hope your journey was not too trying, & that you are reading this on the first of many crystal clear days. Please consider this your home for the month. I took the liberty of stocking the fridge with milk & eggs & a few things I thought you might need. I hope it is not too forward to say that I take pleasure in imagining that the house will please you, & that you-& your friends-will return to it.

Yours, Robert SanSouci.

"He sounds like he grew up a hundred years ago," said Lottie. "And also like he has a little crush on you."

"I'm not very crushable," said Rose quickly. No one had had a crush on her since the twins were born. But standing here, the lady of the cottage, with the light and the air so bountiful, she realized that she might be crushable. Or she might develop a crush.

"I thought that Rule of Robert's Sign meant he never rented it to anyone twice."

"Not so far," said Rose. She folded the letter carefully and put it in the pocket of her bathrobe. "How about some coffee?"

They found instant in a canister on the counter, and there was fresh milk in the fridge. Rose went to fill the kettle with water. The water from the tap was noisy. And rusty.

"It's brown," said Lottie. "Should we drink it?"

"If we boil it, it might be okay to drink," said Rose. "But I can't imagine it will taste any good."

Lottie made no reply. She was deep into a binder called Cottage Visitor's Guide, written in Robert's hand.

"This tells everything!" she said. "What the flowers are, where to get groceries-there's a market boat every Monday! He also tells how to get the generator going if there's a power outage. Oh, I hope there'll be a power outage!"

"I don't."

"Here's the social calendar. Can you imagine, a social calendar? There's so much stuff going on this month. A cocktail party and a kids' play! Robert SanSouci is adorable. Maybe he's gay?"

Rose remembered how he'd looked at her at the City Bakery. "I don't think so," she said. She reached up to the high shelves to see if there was a hidden coffeemaker somewhere. There was not.

Lottie consulted the book. "'The water from the springs is the water you should drink. There will be springwater in the cooler in the pantry.'" She wandered into a little room off the kitchen. "He's got everything in here. He must have come right before we arrived. Use this water, Rose."

They filled the kettle with crystal clear water. "From our own spring."

"Either he was just up here, or he asked someone to get it all prepped for us. Maybe our mysterious ferry driver," said Rose. That would make more sense than Robert's traveling to Maine to put milk in the fridge, surely. The stove was about thirty years old but the electricity was working again and it ticked to life. Lottie picked at blueberries in the fridge as the kettle boiled. "They're so tiny. Is this what everyone raves about?"

Rose tried a small handful. "They taste like blueberry jam." She picked up the kettle before it started to screech. She could tell it would be an aggressive whistle.

"Come on. Let's go upstairs."

They walked up the wide staircase, mugs in hand. She hadn't drunk this kind of instant coffee since she was in grad school. It was better than she thought it would be. When they got to the top they found themselves in a dark hallway with at least a dozen doors, all closed.

"This is so incredible," said Lottie. "Which one do we open first?" She tried a door at the near end of the hall. "Look, Rose, this is the turret!" she cried. "It's round!"

As she walked through the rounded bedroom, Rose was a little surprised that the bed was so haphazardly made up, especially as her little room downstairs was immaculate. But she forgave all when she stepped onto the room's tiny porch, some six feet by four. This vista was much broader; you could see more islands and a gray obscurity far away-a distant island, or a storm way out at sea? She and Lottie stood there, drinking in the sun, the heat, the scent, the million diamonds on the water. And almost at the same time, they noticed that they were not alone.

"Welcome to Hopewell Cottage," said Caroline Dester.

It was a little disconcerting that Rose and Lottie had burst through Caroline's bedroom and onto her porch without even a knock. But Caroline supposed she could forgive them this once, as they might not have realized she was already in residence. She was surprised to see them looking so much younger than she had imagined them, though perhaps that was just because they were not in Park Slope clothes. In fact, they were barely dressed at all.

Caroline herself was having a violent reaction against beautiful clothes and the tyranny they imposed on her. You don't take your clothes to events in her line of business; they take you. When she got to the cottage, she realized, to her relief, that here she could wear her favorite French linen shift and nothing else. It was what she had on right now. She instinctively turned to catch her best light and the sun etched her elegant profile.

"Gosh, I didn't realize you were so pretty," said Lottie.

Caroline shut that line of conversation down. "Our plane was heading this way yesterday," she said; not a lie, since the plane was headed this way, but only because she had chartered it to do so. "So I took the liberty of coming early. It was so thoughtful of the owner not to be here. I chose this room because it has such a charming little porch, don't you think?"

Caroline was laying on the ingenue-speak but she wanted them to know right away who was in charge. Not only did the room have a charming little porch, but it was in one of the two turrets that directly faced the sea. Even with its imposing architecture and tall narrow windows, Caroline thought it must have been a daughter's room, or a maiden aunt's. It had framed prints of roses on the walls and two pink nightstands. She actually had not taken the largest bedroom, on purpose. The other turret room had even more space. She knew Lottie and Rose wouldn't have it in them to kick her out of this room. They could have come early if they'd thought of it.

"We actually thought you might need this room more than we did," said Lottie. "We would have preferred to give it to you ourselves, but now that you've taken it, we're happy."

Lottie was either an excellent liar or was a true naif. Caroline had encountered so many of the former that it would take a lot of convincing for her to believe the latter.

"Are there any other surprises we should know about?" asked Rose.

Caroline hesitated a bit before she spoke.

When she'd arrived in the small municipal airport the day before, she'd had the distinct feeling she was being followed. A couple of charters had landed just before her craft had landed and one of the passengers, an elderly gentleman, followed her to the small parking lot alongside the airstrip.

There were only three cars in the lot, one of which was the Mini Caroline had ordered. Out of another, an ancient champagne-colored Cadillac, stepped a good-looking young man with a competent air. "All set?" he asked, and the elderly gent got shakily into the gleaming old car.

Caroline drove her Mini to the Big Lost landing just in time to make the three o'clock ferry. She was behind the champagne Cadillac almost the whole way.

As she stepped onto the boat, she realized that the young man who'd driven the Caddy was also the ferry driver. He didn't so much as glance at her as she boarded. Unusual, she thought. The driver's elderly passenger was already installed in the boat, taking up almost an entire bench. Not that it mattered, as there was no one else going across. She hadn't brought a lot of luggage, but it was a little tricky getting it onto the boat. She brushed shoulders with a bearded man who was getting off as she was getting on. He was carrying a guitar case and had a tentative air. Please let him not speak.

"Can I give you a hand?" he asked. Caroline acted as if she had not heard him. She pushed her sunglasses up her nose, left her bags on the lower deck, and walked past him up the stairs to the boat's upper level. The guitar player looked after her and mumbled an apology-for what, she was not sure. He had such soft brown eyes and his voice was so deep that she almost replied; then the boat pushed off. As they motored evenly to the dot of land ahead, she barely registered the elderly man from the Caddy, who did not look at her. But she began to notice him when he stood on the dock with her on the other side, consulted a sheet of paper, and walked behind her all the way up to Hopewell Cottage. They both kept a slow pace: Caroline because she kept getting pebbles in her heels; the gent because he couldn't get up the hill any faster. He was dressed for the city too. Nicely cut blazer, khaki pants, white shirt, good collar; pity about the brown tie. When they wound their way to the front steps of the cottage she thought they would surely part ways. She stalled, to give him a chance to walk past her. "I love those purple flowers in the window boxes," she said. "I wonder if you have them at your cottage."

He went up the wide staircase to the front door.

"This is my cottage. And I'm color-blind," he said, and walked in.

Caroline looked up at Lottie and Rose and smiled. "I think you'll find Beverly Fisher most surprising," she said.

Beverly had heard the clomping up the stairs and had at first ignored it. Then he thought better of it. The last thing he wanted was to be disturbed. He craved peace and quiet and utter aloneness after all he had been through. But he could only tolerate aloneness if there were people around.

To keep the others at a fair distance, he had come to the island a day early, imagining, correctly, that the owner or previous tenants would have vacated it by the time he arrived and that he would not need to use the backup bed-and-breakfast he'd booked. That way he would have the pick of rooms and would be able to set himself up exactly as he wished.

Unfortunately, another one of them had had the same idea, but mercifully the Dester woman was as uncommunicative as he was.

The other two he could hear clattering in the kitchen and chattering in the hallways. He did not care for the sound of their voices. While they were safely downstairs he silently slid the small dresser on its bit of old rug in front of the door to the hallway. Now there would be access only from the porch, which had an outdoor staircase to the ground floor. He could come and go just as he chose, and any visitors would have to make a point of being admitted. His room was en suite, as Gorsch used to say, so perhaps he would never see the others at all.

Beverly did not care much for views, being color-blind, but this one seemed to be decent. Friends had often suggested that he and Gorsch visit Maine. "But of course the love of your life keeps you at home," Gorsch would say to him. Not just about Maine, but about everywhere.

Beverly had known Gorsch would predecease him, and he'd been prepared for it. They had buried a lot of dead, back in the eighties. Gorsch had "lived positive," as they put it so commercially, for a very long time. (Beverly hadn't even known about the HIV diagnosis for the first year. Gorsch was a sly one.) By the time Gorsch died, he was ready. All his papers were in order. They were able to say good-bye in a hospice, as Gorsch had desired. All very dignified, like saying good-bye to a cousin he'd see again. It was not actually Gorsch's death that had undone him.

It was Possum's.

Beverly couldn't even conjure the name without leaking tears. Possum had been with him through everything. Or almost everything. He had missed the years when Beverly was himself a kitten, in his Beautiful Boy moment. Back when he'd done drugs with a young Tom Ford and danced with an old Andy Warhol. Possum wasn't even there when Beverly was the toast of the high life of the early nineties, when there were so many men-it was raining men! Possum arrived as a kitten, when Beverly reencountered Gorsch and they mated for life.

They had met as teenagers-boys, really-in the club that was founded by Beverly's great-grandfather. The names of three generations of Fisher men were on the golf tournament plaques and Beverly was to be the fourth. Then a band led by a young Sammy Gorsch took the stage for the month of July and Beverly knew his future would not be what his father had planned.

Beverly flashed on his father's open hand slapping his face over and over and over. His nose bleeding on the shirt and tie he had put on for the Midsummer Dance. A pink shirt and a purple tie that Beverly thought were tan and brown. His mother stood helpless in the background, weeping and begging her husband to stop. But he would not stop.

Gorsch had not been allowed into the country club in New Cotswold, Connecticut. Or rather he was allowed in, but only so far. He was the paid entertainment. "We were like Dirty Dancing, but nobody got pregnant," Gorsch said, many years later, when it was all behind them, or mostly behind them. "I'll never put you in a corner, Baby." Beverly didn't agree about Dirty Dancing. At least that overblown film had a boy and a girl. At that club, a boy and a boy was not just a transgression; it was an abomination.

Beverly and Sammy had made eyes at each other all summer as Sammy played piano onstage. Neither of them knew very much about how to do what they wanted to do, until a night on the dunes when Sammy asked, "Am I too heavy?" and Beverly thought he meant literally, in weight, when what he meant was "Am I going too far?" He couldn't have gone far enough for Beverly. Everything feels good when you are in love.

His father disowned him after that summer he was sixteen. You are not my son.

Sammy disappeared after Labor Day. They didn't meet again till Beverly wandered into a benefit for the Art Song Society at an apartment on New York's West Side overlooking Central Park. That was a long time ago. There was Sammy Gorsch at the piano again. They went home together that night and they stayed together till death did them part.

They shacked up in their first apartment, an illegal sublet on Crosby Street, back when AIDS was in its less horrific phase. Beverly sighed deeply: truth be told, it was all horrific. The first deaths, inexplicable; the next and the next and the next, inevitable. How many blood tests had Beverly had back then? Thank God for his great fear of needles. It made going to the clinic a near-fainting experience, but it had kept him off the hard stuff. Perhaps it had saved his life.

He and Possum had escaped, somehow. And Gorsch had survived for longer than anyone thought he would. The payoff was that Gorsch was a big success. All that pain in his own life made him write tunes and lyrics that were upbeat and funny and cheerful. And popular. His biggest fan site boasted that Sam Gorsch was the Irving Berlin of his day. The day Gorsch died there was a song of his at number one: a nostalgic duet featuring a very old Tony Bennett and a very young boy singer, so childish Gorsch had just called him "that baby." They sang "Blue Willow," Beverly's favorite for so many reasons.

Gorsch was willing to take Beverly on when Beverly was not such a beautiful boy any longer, with no real job and "no dowry," as Gorsch told his friends. And Beverly was happy to be Mrs. Samuel Gorsch, host to his friends, gentle critic of his compositions, keeper of his homes, mollifier of his moods, administrator of his meds-endless meds-as long as Gorsch knew that Possum always came first.

Twenty-two years was too long for a cat to live. Even Beverly acknowledged that. But the money Gorsch had left him allowed Possum the best of veterinary treatment. At one point, Possum had live-in help, just so someone was with him every moment of every day. It was too silly and too indulgent, but what else did Beverly have? He barely stirred from the house in case Possum needed him. He let the correspondence about Gorsch's music pile up, and the money too, he supposed. The East Side place was neglected; the other houses hadn't been opened in at least two seasons.

And then Possum died.

Beverly moved a chair in front of the door along with the dresser. He did not want any of those women to find him here. He just needed a little more time.

"Oh, hello," said a voice. Beverly turned around, startled. Behind him had appeared a small, not unpretty woman with voluminous hair. She looked almost like a child. She must have come up through the porch. The one door Beverly had not secured. "I came up the stairs," she said. "Are you Beverly's husband?"

Beverly's name had been mistaken for feminine since he was born. Certainly being called Beverly had been no boon before he recognized that he was "not like all the other boys," and it held only a certain allure afterward. He silently cursed his parents, again, this time for their antiquated Anglophilia.

"I am Mister Beverly Fisher," he said. "Many people do not associate the name Beverly with the masculine gender, and you appear to be one of them."

"Oh!" said the woman. "Then it makes sense you're color-blind. Twelve percent of men are, you know. I think Jon may be a bit color-blind. He dresses in four shades of green and thinks they're all brown."

Evidently this untidy woman was what Gorsch would have called "an original." The only way to handle her was immediately to shut her down, and he knew just how to do it: a garrulous soul such as she would not be able to withstand sheer indifference. Beverly decided to get her out, and quickly. He was not in his seventies for nothing. "If it's all the same to you-"

"I'm Lottie," she said, not only not taking the hint but apparently not even recognizing it. "The one whose notice you found at the Garamond." She put out her hand. Beverly did not take it.

"The scrap of paper I picked up like so much litter in the courtyard of the club," he said, "could hardly be called a notice."

"Ah, but you called us, didn't you?" said Lottie. She walked boldly into the room. "What a gorgeous room! Such a pretty old-fashioned dresser. Painted green!"

"I wouldn't know, as I'm-"

"Views on three sides and your own bathroom! You're lucky you picked it." She ducked her head back out to the porch.

"Rose!" she called. "Come see this! The other turret!"

The second chatterer, the Rose with whom he had corresponded, emerged through the porch door. She was tall and regal. She looked thoughtful. Perhaps she would not chatter quite so much once she had settled in.

"Oh!" she said, apparently quite taken aback. "Who are you?"

"I am Beverly Fisher," he said.

"Mister Beverly Fisher," Lottie added gratuitously.

"You're a man?" said Rose.

Another ill-bred woman of the modern age, Beverly thought. "Evidently," he said.

"Forgive me." She had some manners, at least. "But you're at the Garamond?"

"A mixed-gender club since the turn of this last century, I believe," he said.

"And his name-" Lottie interjected.

"I think we've covered that," he said.

"And this room. It's gorgeous."

Beverly had to agree. He had felt a momentary twinge when he arrived yesterday afternoon and immediately claimed the grandest room in the house. It was large, and airy and spacious, and it had a small sitting room or dressing room that branched off from the elegantly appointed turret bedroom. There was even a sleeping porch. Certainly it was meant for more than one person, but Beverly felt it would be the correct room for him, as he would rarely actually have to leave it if he chose not to. He'd taken the precaution of barricading the interior doors precisely so he would not have to entertain intruders, though he had missed the one through which these two intruders had entered. He was relieved that the Dester woman had not made a fuss. Good breeding was easy to spot, rare as it was. Madam Lottie was not so well mannered.

"I would have thought you'd wait till we all arrived to choose the rooms," said Rose. She was standing her ground. "It doesn't seem right to me."

"Yes, it's true," said Lottie. She sighed. "We really should have been the ones to give this room up because you need it most. That would have made us feel quite saintly. But we didn't get the chance."

Was she mocking him, or Rose?

"We could sleep up here," Lottie continued. "But we love our little rooms. "They're perfect for us. We don't need all this when we have heaven of our own."

"Nicely put," said Beverly. "Meanwhile, if you'll excuse me . . ." He stood at the open door to the porch, with purpose. Surely they would get the hint now.