“Why don’t we all sit down,” Liza said flatly.

“Yes,” Anna said, and her voice was a match for the rest of her, calm and modulated, like the playing of a distant flute. She sat down opposite Liza Burack and made the table a symmetry.

For a time, no one spoke. The rattle of their cutlery was loud in the silence.

Covertly Travis watched the girl eat. She kept her eyes downcast, took small portions, used her knife and fork daintily. It occurred to him to marvel that the Buracks had taken in another boarder. He remembered his aunt and uncle being intensely private people. Family people. Times were bad, he thought; they must need the money. But where had she come from?

“I’m from Oklahoma,” he ventured to say. “Near Beaumont.”

Her eyes were on him very briefly. “Yes,” she said. “The Buracks told me you were coming.”

“You from around here?” “Not too far,” she said. “Working in town?”

“I work here,” she said. “In the house. I do sewing. I—”

“For Christ’s sake,” Creath said, “leave her alone.”

Travis was mortified. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Anna Blaise smiled and shrugged.

Something wrong here, Travis thought. Odd and wrong. But he went about his eating.

“Didn’t make but a dent in that pot roast,” Liza said with a sigh when they were finished. She rose, moaning a little, and picked up the big china platter. Anna stood up unbidden and took her own plate, Travis’s, Creath’s.

There was the sound of clattering in the kitchen, a gush of running water.