Let Gillian travel from California to Memphis. Let her marry and divorce three times in a row. Let her kiss every man who crossed her path and break every promise she ever made about coming home for the holidays. Let her pity her sister, cooped up in that old house. Sally did not mind a bit. In Sally’s opinion, it was impossible to exist in the world and not be in love with Michael. Even the aunts had begun to listen for the sound of his whistle when he came home from the hardware store in the evenings. In autumn, he turned the garden for the aunts. In winter, he put up the storm windows and filled in the cracks around the foggy old windows with putty. He took the ancient Ford station wagon apart and put it back together, and the aunts were so impressed they gave him the car, as well as their abiding affection. He knew enough to stay out of the kitchen, especially at twilight, and if he noticed the women who came to the back door, he never questioned Sally about them. His kisses were slow and deep and he liked to take off Sally’s clothes with the bedside table light turned on and he always made certain to lose when he played gin rummy with one of the aunts.

When Michael moved in, the house itself began to change, and even the bats in the attic knew it and took to nesting out by the garden shed. By the following June, roses had begun to grow up along the porch railing, choking out ragweed, instead of the other way around. In January, the draft in the parlor disappeared and ice would not form on the bluestone path. The house stayed cheery and warm, and when Antonia was born, at home, since a horrid snowstorm was brewing outside, the chandelier with the glass teardrops moved back and forth all on its own. Throughout the night, it sounded as if a river were flowing right through the house; the noise was so beautiful and so real that the mice came out of the walls to make certain the house was still standing and that a meadow hadn’t taken its place.

Antonia was given the last name of Owens, at the aunts’ insistence, in accordance with family tradition. The aunts set about spoiling the child immediately, adding chocolate syrup to her bottles of formula, allowing her to play with unstrung pearls, taking her into the garden to make mud pies and pick chokeberries as soon as she could crawl. Antonia would have been perfectly happy to be an only child forever, but three and a half years later, at midnight exactly, Kylie was born, and everyone noticed right away how unusual she was. Even the aunts, who could not have loved another child more than Antonia, predicted that Kylie would see what others could not. She tilted her head and listened to the rain before it fell. She pointed to the ceiling moments before a dragonfly appeared in the very same spot. Kylie was such a good baby that people who peeked into her stroller felt peaceful and sleepy just looking at her. Mosquitoes never bit her, and the aunts’ black cats wouldn’t scratch her, even when she grabbed for their tails. Kylie was a peach of an infant, so sweet and so mild that Antonia grew greedier and more selfish by the day.

“Look at me!” she’d cry, whenever she dressed up in the aunts’ old chiffon dresses or when she finished every pea on her plate. Sally and Michael patted her head and went about taking care of the baby, but the aunts knew what Antonia wanted to hear. They took her out to the garden at midnight, an hour too late for a silly infant, and they showed her how nightshade bloomed in the dark, and how, if she listened carefully with her big-girl’s ears, which were much more sensitive to sound than her little sister’s ever would be, she could hear the earthworms moving through the soil.

To celebrate the baby’s arrival, Michael had invited everyone who worked at the hardware store, which he now managed, and all the people on their block to a party. To Sally’s surprise they all showed up. Even those guests who’d been afraid to hurry past their front walkway on dark nights seemed eager to come and celebrate. They drank cold beer and ate icebox cake and danced along the bluestone path. Antonia was dressed in organdy and lace, and a circle of admirers applauded when Michael lifted her onto an old picnic table so she could sing “The Old Gray Mare” and “Yankee Doodle.”

At first the aunts refused to participate and insisted upon watching the festivities through the kitchen window, like black pieces of paper taped against the glass. They were antisocial old dames who had better things to do with their time, or so they maintained. But even they couldn’t resist joining in, and when at last everyone raised a glass of champagne in tribute to the new baby, the aunts shocked them all when they came into the garden for the toast. In the spirit of a good time, they threw their glasses onto the path, not caring that for weeks afterward shards would appear in the earth between the rows of cabbages.

You will not believe how everything has changed, Sally confided to her sister. She wrote to Gillian at least twice a month, on pale blue paper. Sometimes she would misfire completely, sending her letters to St. Louis, for instance, only to discover that her sister had already moved to Texas. We seem so normal, Sally wrote. I think you might faint if you could see us. I really and truly do.