Oh, hell. The Lowrys would be offended if my glasses were frivolous. I got my new black-rimmed ones with the delicate gold wire-and-bead decoration and set them out on my vanity table. This morning I’d put on my favorite workday red specs, and I viewed them in the mirror with some satisfaction. They added a spark of liveliness to my unhappy face.

“So, why’m I sulking?” I asked the mirror.

That particular question never got answered, because the front doorbell rang.

What a lot of visitors I was having today, if you counted the deputies coming twice.

Through the opaque oval glass pane in the front door, I saw the silhouette of a woman with a baby carrier in her arms. I assumed it was my friend Lizanne Buckley Sewell, who’d had her baby boy two months before. I disarmed the alarm and opened the door with a smile that collapsed in on itself. I stared blankly at the plump, dark, pretty young woman who stood on my front porch with a perfectly strange baby, who seemed smaller than Lizanne’s infant.

“Aunt Roe!” said the dark young woman. She looked exhausted, and she also looked as if she expected a warm welcome.

I had not the slightest idea who she was.

The next instant everything clicked, and I would have thunked myself on the forehead with the heel of my hand if I’d been alone. I was aunt to only one young woman, and that was Martin’s niece, the daughter of his sister Barby.

“Regina!” I said, hoping my recovery hadn’t been too obvious.

“For a minute there, I didn’t think you recognized me!” she said, laughing.

“Ha, ha. Come on in! And this is little…” Regina had had a baby? It was covered with a blue blanket and wore a red sleeper. Martin had a-great-nephew?