I saw with interest that one of John Queensland’s daughters-in-law had been brought in to answer the phones and take messages while Mother held the meeting. I knew my stepfather’s sons and their wives only slightly, and as I nodded to Melinda Queensland, I tried to figure out what my relationship to her was. Stepsister-in-law? It looked to me as if I was going to be a stepaunt in a few months, but Melinda had had several miscarriages and I wasn’t going to ask.

Melinda was sitting at Patty Cloud’s desk, which of course was not only orderly but also decorated with a tidy plant and a picture in an expensive frame. Patty’s desk faced the front door, and her underling, Debbie Lincoln, had a desk at right angles to it, in effect forming the start of the corridor down to the conference room and Idella’s and Mackie’s offices. In the square created by two walls and the desks, firmly screwed to the wall behind Patty, was the key board, a large pegboard striped with labeled hooks. The more popular letters of the alphabet claimed two or even three hooks. A person of even the feeblest intelligence could figure out the system in seconds, and every other agency in town had something similar.

I snapped out of my study of the key board to find that Melinda was waiting for me to acknowledge her, and her smile was growing strained as I stared at the wall behind her. I gave her a brisk nod and started down the hall to the conference room. I was in time to sit at Mother’s left, a chair left vacant deliberately for me, I presumed. All the realtors expected me to inherit this business from Mother, and saw my presence in the office this week as the first step in my becoming second-in-command.