Some lemonade, she thought as Easterly came into view once again on the ascent. She’d get something cool, and after a little hydration, she’d be ready to go back at it.

Parking the mower under a dark-leafed magnolia, she had to smile as she dismounted and went right in the front door with grass clippings stuck all over the sweat on her bare legs. Previously, there had been a limited number of ways staff had been allowed to enter the mansion. Two doors. That was it—and both of them were in the back of the house. If that had meant someone like herself or Greta had had to walk all the way around, in the heat, because they had been pulling weeds in the ivy beds or the urns out front? Too bad.

At least she didn’t have to worry about that inconvenience anymore.

Although, that being said, she did take her work shoes off and leave them just inside on a mat—and not because some English butler like the one who had quit was going to give her a hard time. Nope, it was again because she was it for housekeeping.

As she moved through the cool interior, her skin goosebump’d all over. The house had had central air added only about ten years ago, and the HVAC upgrade was certainly appreciated on a day like today—although she also knew she was going to come to regret this respite. As relieving as it was to get a break from the heat, going back outside was going to be a bitch.

But she’d been worried she was about to pass out.

Passing by the formal parlors, with all their grandeur, she opened the wide door by the dining room and entered the staff portion of things—and it was as if she were in a different house. Gone were the oil paintings and the silk wallpaper, the drapes and the Orientals. Now the walls were painted a crisp clean white and the only adornment on the floorboards was a coat of varnish well-scuffed by footfalls.

The controller’s office was on the left and she put her head in. “Hey there.”

Greta von Schlieber looked up from the desk. In front of her, the open laptop and piles of papers were everything Lizzie would have hated to deal with. The German, however, found great peace in making order out of bookkeeping chaos—and after Rosalinda Freeland’s untimely suicide, and the subsequent firings of almost all the staff, there was much to do in the land of paper clips and staples, documents and forms.

“Guten Morgen,” the woman said as she took off her pink reading glasses and replaced them with a pair of tortoiseshell distance lenses. “How are we doing?”

With the accent, “we” came out with a “v” and there was an “-ink” at the end of “doing”—and the familiar soundings of both made Lizzie want to tell her decade-long friend what was going on about her possible pregnancy. But no. If Lane didn’t know, nobody else was going to.

“It’s hot out there.”

“Ja. I finish processing these dismissals, I go and trim hedges around the pool house. Then I deadhead the pots.”

“After Lane’s done with the board meeting, I’m meeting him down at the hospital to see Miss Aurora.”

“I heard that the calls have been made to family? I have been speaking to the former staff to make sure they get the unemployment and one of her nieces told me. I go after I am finished with work.”

“It’s really sad.”

She hadn’t seen Lane for more than two seconds before he’d left for the trustee meeting—because apparently getting Max home in the middle of the night had been a thing. But Lane had told her there was something he wanted to talk to her about, and she wondered what it was. He had certainly seemed distracted and unhappy, although that was, sadly, nothing new—

A bing-bong sounded out high on the ceiling, and Lizzie looked up over her shoulder. “Someone’s at the back door. I’ll get it.”

As she hurried into the kitchen, she averted her eyes as she passed by the door to Miss Aurora’s suite of rooms. God, the prospect of cleaning out Lane’s momma’s things from that space—or having the woman’s family come and do that—seemed both surreal and inevitable.

When she opened the back screen door, there was a young guy in a blue uniform and a hat. Behind him, in the courtyard, a van with the name of a local delivery company was parked and running.

“I got something for a Mr. Richard Pford here?” the guy said. “Can you sign for it?”

“Yes, sure.” Lizzie took the manila envelope and then scribbled her name on a clipboard. “Thank you.”

“Thanks, ma’am.”

She was closing things up when she remembered that technically Gin’s husband had moved out, and she tried to flag the van down as it pulled away, but the vehicle didn’t stop.

Fine, she’d leave it on his bed for whenever he came to pick up his things. Besides, knowing Gin’s love life, it was likely that the two would reconcile after Lane’s sister got back from dropping Amelia off up north. Gin had a way of getting what she wanted, and she had wanted to be married to Pford.

Although how she could stand being anywhere near that nasty piece of work was a mystery.

Then again . . . money.

The lemonade was every bit as refreshing as Lizzie had thought it would be, and the idea of going back out to the mower was as unappealing as it had first seemed like a great idea. No matter, however. It was time to get showered and changed and meet Lane down at the hospital. Besides, she’d gotten the left half of the lawn done. Maybe at the end of the day, she could finish the other side.

As Lizzie didn’t have time to drive the John Deere all the way back to the grounds-keeping outbuildings, she settled for running it around to the rear courtyard and leaving it in the shade by the garages. Then she forced herself to take a handful of pretzels up with her to the second floor, dropped the envelope just inside Pford’s room, and got herself showered and dressed in khakis and a fresh polo.

She was once again down in the kitchen and texting Lane for his ETA at the hospital when she was struck by an impulse. Going over to Miss Aurora’s door, she hesitated.

Her first instinct was to knock, and how crazy was that. It wasn’t like there was anyone in there.

Opening things up, her heart ached at the memory of when she had come in and found the woman on the floor by her bed, unresponsive.

As with Miss Aurora’s workspaces outside, everything was in its place, not just tidy but vacuumed and dusted as well, and although the furnishings were modest, you couldn’t help but want to have good posture and your hands tucked into each other as you stood inside the space. There were two BarcaLoungers against a bay of windows, a TV across the way, and a galley kitchen with a sink, a little stove, and a refrigerator. Naturally, there were no dishes left out in the drainer, and a hand towel had been precisely folded and hung on the oven door’s handle.

Boy, it felt all wrong to be in here without an invitation.

Moving quickly, she went over by Miss Aurora’s chair, to the shelves that ran up to the ceiling. There were over a hundred pictures in frames old and new on them, the photographs ranging from elementary school snaps to college graduations, from smiling summer-camp candids to serious-faced lineups around Christmas trees and at church altars. Many of them featured basketball and football players in mid-jump or mid-tackle, and a couple even had players in NFL and NBA uniforms, the subjects ranging from Miss Aurora’s brothers and sisters, and their children, to Lane, Gin, Max, and Edward.

Lizzie had come in with the thought of taking a couple and bringing them to the hospital, so if Miss Aurora had a moment of consciousness, she could see the faces of some of her most beloved people. But now, confronting all of the pictures, Lizzie became overwhelmed.

Reaching out, she took a picture of Lane off the third shelf up. He had been twelve or thirteen at the time and grinning cheekily into the camera. The hints of his adult good looks were all over his face, his features already showing a proclivity to that strong jaw, his eyes flashing with his flirtatious nature.

If Lizzie was carrying a son, he would be just like this at the same age.

Suddenly obsessed, she began searching for more photos of Lane, and she found at least a dozen or so. She followed them chronologically, watching him grow up . . . until she got to the last one, when he’d graduated from U.Va. Now, he was in a cap and gown, and had Wayfarers on, his handsome assurance making him look like something out of St. Elmo’s Fire, even though that had been well before his time. And he had his arm around—oh, that was Jeff Stern.