The brothers would then be real managers-managers on horseback-not glorified laborers. They would all get out of the miserable shack in which they lived and build a big, rambling ranch house for themselves-already they knew they would call it the Big House, as in those Westerns-where Dagmar would supervise the kitchen and household help instead of being it.

That time had eventually come, although Andreas had not lived to see it, but with human nature being what it was, it had failed to bring perfect happiness. Though none of them would admit it, they had missed the exhilaration of building something from nothing. Maintaining a cattle empire was pale stuff compared to carving one out. Dagmar, plagued by arthritis in her worn-out joints by then, had begun to dream of the days when the ranch was behind her and she could move down the mountain to the warmer, sunnier coast as a woman of leisure. And to be perfectly honest, she couldn’t wait for a house of her own, away from the two meddling, quarrelsome old men she had lived with almost her entire adult life. For peace.

And now she had that, too; she’d had it for almost ten years. Yet here she sat in her gated enclave for the wealthy, in what was surely one of the most beautiful spots in the world, holding a forgotten sardine in her left hand and dreaming, with a faint, wry smile on her face, of the laughter, the irritations, the lively arguments, and the many little trials of life with her brothers. Be careful what you wish for, she thought.

Had it truly been ten years since the terrible night she’d lost them both? In one way, the killing, the fire, and her surviving brother’s escape (if he did escape) seemed as vivid as if they had been a week ago; in another, it all seemed as if it had happened to another person, in another lifetime.