whisper. She was ninety-one years old now. And the great virtue of almost never speaking 
was that when Ancient Evelyn did, everybody stopped to listen. If she wasn't mumbling, 
that is.
  
  There were times when Mona hated Aunt Gifford for her fears and her worry, the constant 
look of dread on her face. But nobody could really hate Aunt Gifford. She was too good to 
everybody around her, especially to her sister, Alicia, Mona's mother, whom everyone 
regarded as hopeless now that she'd been hospitalized three times for her drinking and it 
hadn't done any good. And every Sunday without fail, Gifford came to Amelia Street, to 
clean up a bit, sweep the walk, and sit with Ancient Evelyn. She brought dresses for 
Mona, who hated to go shopping. 

  "You know you ought to dress more like a teenager these days," Gifford had volunteered 
only a few weeks ago.
  
  "I like my little girl dresses, thanks," said Mona, "they're my disguise. Besides if 
you ask me, most teenagers look tacky. I wouldn't mind looking corporate, but I'm a bit 
short for that."
  
  "Well, your bra cup is giving you away! It's hard to find you sweet cotton frocks with 
enough room in them, you know."
  
  "One minute you want me to grow up; the next minute you want me to behave. What am I to 
you, a little girl or a sociological problem?  I don't like to conform. Aunt Gif, did it 
ever occur to you that conformity can be destructive? Take a look at men today on the 
news. Never in history have all the men in a nation's capital dressed exactly alike.  
Ties, shirts, coats of gray. It's appalling."
  
  "Responsibility, that's what I'm talking about. To dress your age and behave your age. 
You don't do either, and we're talking about two contrary directions of course. The Whore 
of Babylon with a ribbon in her hair just isn't your garden-variety teenage experience."
  
  Then Gifford had stopped, shocked that she'd said that word, whore, her cheeks flaming, 
and her hands clasped, her bobbed black hair falling down around her face. "Oh, Mona, 
darling, I love you."
  
  "I know that, Aunt Gif, but please for the love of God and all we hold sacred, never 
refer to me as garden-variety anything, ever again!"
  
  Mona knelt on the flagstones for a long time, until the cold started to bother her 
knees.
  
  "Poor Antha," Mona whispered. She stood up, and once again smoothed her pink dress. She 
brushed her hair back off" her shoulders, and made sure that her satin bow was still 
properly pinned to the back of her head. Uncle Michael loved her satin bow, he had told 
her that.
  
  "As long as Mona has her bow," he'd said this evening, on the way to see Comus, 
"everything is going to be all right."
  
  "I turned thirteen in November," she'd told him in a whisper, drawing near to hold his 
hand. "They're telling me to turn in my ribbon."
  
  "You? Thirteen?" His eyes had moved over her, lingering just for a split second on her 
breasts, and then he had actually blushed. "Well, Mona, I didn't realize. But no, don't 
you dare stop wearing that ribbon.  I see that red hair and the ribbon in my dreams."
  
  Of course he meant all this poetically and playfully. He was an innocent and wholesome 
man, just really nice. Anyone could see that.  But then again, there had been a bit of 
blush to his cheeks, hadn't there?  After all, there were some men his age who did see a 
thirteen-year-old with large breasts as just one species of uninteresting baby, but 
Michael didn't happen to be one of those.
  
  Well, she'd think a little bit more about strategy when she got inside the house, and 
close to him. For now, she wanted to walk around the pool. She went up the steps and out 
along the broad flagstone terrace.  The lights were on beneath the surface of the water, 
making it a shining blue, and a faint bit of steam rose from the surface, though why it 
was heated, Mona didn't know. Michael wouldn't swim in it ever again. He'd said so. Well, 
come St. Patrick's Day, whatever the temperature, there would probably be a hundred 
Mayfair kids in there. So best to leave the heat on.
  
  She followed the terrace to the far end, near the cabana, where they'd found the blood 
in the snow, which meant that a fight had taken place. All clean now and swept, with only 
a little sprinkling of leaves.  The garden was still down a bit from the snows of this 
mad winter, so unusual for New Orleans, but due to the warmth of the last week, the 
four-o'clocks had come back and she could smell them, and see their tiny little blooms in 
the dark. Hard to imagine all this covered with snow and blood, and Michael Curry 
floating under the surface of the water, face bleeding and bruised, heart stopped.
  
  Then another scent caught her - that same strange smell she'd picked up earlier in the 
hallway of the house and in the front parlor where the Chinese rug used to be. It was 
faint but it was here all right.  When she drew near the balustrade she smelted it. All 
mingled with the cold four-o'clocks. A very seductive smell. Sort of, well, delicious, 
she thought. Like caramel or butterscotch could be delicious, only it wasn't a food smell.
  
  A little rage kindled in her suddenly for whoever had hurt Michael Curry. She'd liked 
him from the moment she laid eyes on him. She'd liked Rowan Mayfair too. She'd longed for 
moments alone with them to ask them things and tell them things, and especially to ask 
them to give her the Victrola, if they could find it. But those opportunities had never 
come.
  
  She knelt down on the flags now as she had done before. She touched the cold stone that 
hurt her bare knees. The smell was here all right. But she saw nothing. She looked up at 
the dark servants' porch of the main house. Not a light anywhere. Then she looked beyond 
the iron fence to the carriage house behind Deirdre's oak.
  
  One light. That meant Henri was still awake. Well, what about it?  She could handle 
Henri. She had figured out tonight at the supper after Comus that Henri was already 
scared of this house, and didn't like working in it, and probably wouldn't stay long. He 
couldn't quite figure how to make Michael happy, Michael who kept saying, "I'm what's