Owen Atcheson pulled a large pile of burlap bags from a shelf in the greenhouse. They’d made good progress on the shoreline and had already built up one low-lying portion of lawn with several feet of sandbags. His muscles ached and he stretched hard, thinking of a meeting he had scheduled for tomorrow, his trip later in the week.

He glanced outside and saw Lis, beside the lakefront, filling bags with sand.

Moving silently down the aisle he passed plants whose names he neither knew nor cared to know. A timed watering valve clicked open and filled portions of the greenhouse with clouds of mist that obscured plants and the stone bas-reliefs that hung on the brick.

At the far end of the space he stopped. Portia looked up at him with her hazel eyes.

“I thought I saw you in here,” he said.

“First aid.” She pulled her skirt high, turning away from him and revealing on her thigh a small smear of blood a foot above the back of her knee.

“What happened?”

“Came down for a new roll of tape. I bent over and a fucking thorn got me in the ass. Part of it’s still in there, I can feel it.”

“Doesn’t look too bad.”

“Doesn’t it? Hurts like hell.” She turned around and looked him up and down then gave a short laugh. “You know, you look like a lord of the manor. Very medieval. Sort of like Sir Ralph Lauren.”

Her voice seemed laced with mockery but immediately she smiled in a way that seemed to include him in a private joke. Her face contorted as she dug into the tiny wound with a fingernail lacquered red as the blood that dotted her skin.

Four silver rings were on each hand and a complicated spiral earring dangled from one lobe. The other was pierced by four silver hoops. Portia had refused Lis’s offer of more practical clothing. She still wore her shimmering gold-and-silver skirt and loose blouse. The greenhouse was chill and it was clear to Owen that she wore no bra beneath the satiny white cloth. He scanned her figure briefly, reflecting that while his wife with her boyish figure might be called striking or handsome, her sister was a purely voluptuous creature. At times it amazed him that they shared the same genes.

“Let me look at it,” he said.

Again, she turned her back and lifted her skirt. He clicked on a table lamp and shone it on her pale leg, then knelt to examine the wound.

“Would it really float away?” she asked. “The greenhouse?”

“Probably.”

Portia smiled. “What would Lis do without her flowers? Do you have flood insurance?”

“No. The house is below flood level. They wouldn’t write the policy.”

“I don’t imagine the rosebushes’d be covered anyway.”

“It depends on the policy. That’s a bargained risk.”

“Once a lawyer always a lawyer,” Portia said. He looked up but again could not tell if she was taunting him. She continued, “That porch Lis mentioned? On this part of the yard? I think she’s wrong. I don’t think it got washed away. I think Father tore it down to build Mother the greenhouse.” Portia nodded toward a display of tall orange-red rosebushes. “Lis acts like it’s a holy site. But Mother didn’t even particularly want it.”

“I thought that Ruth lived for her flowers.”

“That’s the way Lis tells it. But nope. It was Father who insisted. My own theory is that it was to keep her, let’s say, occupied while he was away on business.”

“Your mother’s name and ‘mischief’ aren’t words I’d ever put together.” Owen dabbed away a dot of blood and peered into the wound.

“One never knows. Still waters and all. But then, was Father paranoid, or what?”

“I wouldn’t know. I never liked him very much.”

“Ooo, that hurts,” she whispered as he probed, and lowered her head. “When we were young we had Sunday dinner on that old porch. Two p.m. sharp. Father rang a bell and we had to be there on the button. Roast, potatoes, green beans. We’d eat while he lectured about literature or business or space flights. Politics sometimes. Mostly he liked astronauts.”

“It’s really in there, the thorn. Just the tip. I can see it.”

“Hurts like hell. Can you get it out?”

“I’ve got some tweezers.” He pulled out a Swiss Army knife.

She dug into her pocket and handed him a Bic lighter. “Here.” When he looked blank she laughed and said, “Sterilize it. Living in New York you learn to be careful about what you put into your body.”

He took the lighter and ran a flame over the end of the tweezers.

“A Swiss Army knife,” she said, watching him. “Does it have a corkscrew on it, and everything? Little scissors? A magnifying glass?”

“You know, Portia, sometimes it’s hard to tell if you’re making fun of somebody.”

“It’s probably my abrasive big-city attitude. It gets me into trouble sometimes. Don’t take it personally.” Portia fell silent and turned away, lowering her face to a rosebush. She inhaled deeply.

“I didn’t know you smoked.” He returned the lighter to her.

“I don’t. Not cigarettes. And then, after we’d have our dessert, which was accompanied by…?”

“I have no idea.”

“Port.”

Owen said he should have guessed.

“Do you like port, Owen?”

“No. I don’t like port.”

“Ow, Jesus, that hurts.”

“Sorry.”

He put his large hand on the front of Portia’s thigh and held it firmly as he pressed the tiny blade of the tweezers against the base of the thorn. “Keep your hem up, so it doesn’t get blood on it.” She hiked her skirt slightly higher and he caught a fast view of the lace trim on red panties. He pressed harder with the tweezers.

Her eyes were closed and her teeth seated. “No, I can’t stand port either but I am an expert on the subject. I paid attention during dear Father’s dinnertime speeches. Nineteen seventeen was as good a year as the benchmark year… Which was?” She raised a querying eyebrow. When he didn’t respond she exhaled against the pain and said, “Why, 1963, of course. I thought all of you upper-crust gentlemen farmers knew that.”

“I don’t like to farm any more than I like port.”

“Well, garden then.” He felt her thigh quivering in his hand. He gripped it tighter. Portia continued, “A really good 1917 port has a bouquet that’s reminiscent of tobacco. Sunday nights! After the port-and Father’s lecture about port or NASA or lit-ra-ture or God knew what-and after our bolos levados and jam, we kids had nothing to do.” She inhaled deeply, then asked, “Owen, I didn’t really have to be here, did I? I could’ve signed everything in New York, had it notarized and mailed to you, right?”

He paused. “You could have, yes.”

“So, what does she really want?”

“You’re her sister.”

“Does that mean I’m supposed to know why she asked me? Or does it mean she wants my company?”

“She hasn’t seen much of you.”

Portia laughed breathily. “You got that little sucker yet?”

“It’s almost out.” Owen glanced at the doorway at which his wife, if inclined to enter the greenhouse at this moment, would catch them at whatever it was that they were doing. He probed again with the tweezers, felt her shiver. She bit her lip and remained silent. Then he lifted out the thorn and stood.

Still holding her translucent skirt, Portia turned. Owen caught another flash of panties then held up the tweezers, the tip bright with her blood. “You’d think it’d be bigger,” she said. “Thanks. You’re a man of many talents.”

“It’s not too bad. Just a pinprick. But you should put something on it. Bactine. Peroxide.”

“You have anything?”

“In the bathroom upstairs,” he answered. “The one next to our bedroom.”

She dabbed a Kleenex on the wound and examined the tissue. “Damn roses,” Portia muttered, and dropping her hem she started toward the stairs.