Evie opened the cabinet. The shelves were lined with green-and-white shelf paper patterned like gingham, the edges cut with pinking shears. No pantry moth would dare take up residence in there.

Tea bags were in a mason jar on the bottom shelf. Evie unhinged the clamped lid and fished out two. From the shelf above, she took down a pair of delicate teacups and matching saucers, decorated with pink roses and blue forget-me-nots. So not dishwasher-safe. But then, as she realized when she looked around, there was no dishwasher.

She set the cups and saucers carefully on the table and placed a tea bag in each cup. Inside the refrigerator, on a shelf lined with plastic wrap over paper towels, she found the milk and set it on the table, too.

The teakettle went off, a strident three-tone cadence. Mrs. Yetner pulled it off the burner. She poured hot water in the cups and settled in a chair at the table.

“This kitchen is amazing,” Evie said. “That wonderful old stove. The floor. Do you know how special it is to find a period kitchen so intact? In fact, this whole house . . .” Evie’s gaze traveled past the kitchen’s arched doorway, through to the narrow dining room, and on to the living room with windows looking out over the water. The footprint and floor plan of the house were identical to her mother’s, and yet it felt utterly different with its mahogany paneling and thick cove moldings that belonged more in a manor house than in what had started out as a beach cottage.

“Go ahead,” Mrs. Yetner said. “Have a look around. The tea needs to steep, anyway.”

Evie got up and walked through, pausing to touch one of the fluted columns mounted on a half wall separating the dining room from the living room. A memory flickered. Before the fire, her parents’ house had had columns separating the rooms, too, only theirs had been plainer, not topped with these Doric scrolls—volutes, to use the technical term.

Mrs. Yetner followed as Evie walked to the fireplace in the living room and ran her hand across the cool, voluptuously carved marble mantel. “This is so lovely,” she said. Her parents’ fireplace surround was plain brick that someone, in a misguided effort at redecorating, had painted fire-engine red.

“My father salvaged that from a mansion in Manhattan,” Mrs. Yetner said. “But it’s far too grand for this house, don’t you think?”

“Your father was a builder?” Evie asked.

“He was. And a businessman. And an attorney. That’s him,” Mrs. Yetner said, indicating a framed sepia family portrait on the mantel. “Thomas Higgs.”

“Higgs?” Evie asked. “As in Higgs Point?”

Mrs. Yetner smiled and nodded.

Evie examined the photograph. A man in a suit and tie was seated before the same marble mantel, his slim, severe wife standing behind him. Two children, little girls maybe six and eight, stood rigid and unsmiling beside him. Only the baby sitting in the father’s lap, wearing a long white dress and holding an old-fashioned carpenter’s plane, seemed at all happy to be there.

“That’s me.” Mrs. Yetner pointed to the smaller of the two girls. “And that’s my sister, Annabelle. The little one in my father’s lap, that’s my brother.”

Alongside other pictures on the mantel were an oyster shell and the dark, leathery, helmetlike shell of a horseshoe crab. Propped up at the other end was a small white plate with a decal of the Coney Island Parachute Jump. Beside it was a metal paperweight of the Trylon and Perisphere from the 1939 World’s Fair.

But the keepsake that caught Evie’s eye was a metal miniature of the Empire State Building. Evie picked it up. From its silhouette, Evie realized it had to be old. Its top was stubby, the way the building had looked in the 1930s before its owners abandoned the fantasy that gigantic, cigar-shaped dirigibles could come nose to nose with its mooring mast and disembark passengers onto a gangplank more than a thousand feet in the air.

“You must have gotten this a very long time ago,” Evie said.

Mrs. Yetner blinked, and for a few seconds she seemed at a loss for words. She picked up another framed photograph from the mantel. “This is me and Annabelle again. A little bit older.”

Evie looked closely. Two young girls stood barefoot on a beach. Their long skirts and the scarves on their heads were being whipped around by the wind. Each had her arm around the other’s waist.

“Which beach is this?” Evie asked.

“Right down the street, if you can believe it. There used to be a beach there. Saltwater meets freshwater. It was lovely for swimming.”

Mrs. Yetner put the photograph back. Evie was still holding the little replica of the Empire State Building. Cast out of pot metal, what must once have been crisp details now blurred and melted, almost like candle wax. When she looked up, Mrs. Yetner was staring at it, too.

“I used to work there,” Mrs. Yetner said.

“Really?”

“I bought that the day I interviewed for the job. Kept it because I thought it brought me good luck.” There was something in Mrs. Yetner’s expression that Evie couldn’t read.

“When was that?”

“Oh, my, who remembers?” She gave a vague wave. “End of the war.”

“I ask because I work at the Historical Society, and we’re mounting an exhibit about some of New York’s great fires. And one of them was when a World War II bomber crashed into the building. That was back when the building looked like this.” Evie held out the souvenir. She went on, trying not to sound too excited. “So of course I’m wondering if it’s at all possible that you were working there when . . .”

She was interrupted by the doorbell. Mrs. Yetner turned sharply, her eyes wide. There was a sharp rat-tat-tat, then a man’s voice. “Aunt Mina?”

Mrs. Yetner turned back to Evie. She plucked the little statue from Evie’s palm and dropped it into her own pocket. “Would you mind getting that?” she said, adjusting her pearls and smoothing her sweater. “Sounds like my nephew has arrived.”

Chapter Nine

Mina didn’t like where the girl’s questions were going, not one bit. So for a change she was happy to hear Brian’s voice. He’d told her he was coming by Saturday. That was today. But, as usual, he hadn’t bothered to say when exactly he was going to show up. He never stayed for tea unless he was trying to pitch one of his can’t-miss schemes.

Once he’d tried to get her to invest in vitamins. Another deal had involved leasing oil rights in Namibia. Namibia, for goodness’ sake! When she’d questioned him about it, he didn’t seem to know where the country was, aside from “somewhere in Africa.” Now he was on and on about some real estate scheme. She usually tossed Brian some sort of bone to get him out of her hair.

As the girl went to get the door, Mina scuttled into the living room. Where had he left those papers he’d wanted her to look at? Sure enough, there they were, under today’s newspaper on the lamp table.

She heard the front door open. A pause. Then, “Well, hello there.” Brian’s deep sonorous voice. “And who are you?”

“Just a neighbor. My mother lives next door.”

Brian was always at her about how forgetful she was becoming, so the last thing she wanted was for him to come through and find the papers she’d promised to read sitting exactly where he’d left them. Mina tried to stuff the papers into the drawer of the mahogany coffee table, but they wouldn’t fit.

“Really?” Brian said. A long pause. “Your mother lives in that house?”

Longer pause before the girl said, “Your aunt is in the living room, waiting for you.”

Mina was glad that the poor girl didn’t think she needed to apologize for the state of her mother’s house. Certainly not to Brian. She shoved the papers under a sofa cushion, then she sat on it and pulled the crocheted afghan over her. Ivory jumped into her lap and started to purr.