As sole trustee, Birdie could rename it the Birdie Bassett Foundation, and the thought of that made her smile for the first time all day. She'd been snubbed and overlooked so many times for so many years, it was bittersweet to think of the power she had now. But she didn't know where to start.

Birdie Bassett was thirty-seven years old. She'd married Max when she was only twenty-six and he was seventy, a crazy thing, but not unheard of. For the eleven years they were together people would talk over and around her at dinner parties, as if she were still the temp who'd filled in at his home office after his previous secretary went on vacation with a handful of his dead wife's jewelry and never came back. Birdie's stepchildren, both older than she, had loathed her from the start and never tried to hide it. Still, she would never have dreamed of begrudging them their wretched houses and wretched furniture.

The Bassetts lived on Park Avenue, in Palm Beach, and Dark Harbor, off the coast of Maine. Max's bequeathing her the Bassett family enclave in Dark Harbor was a truly appalling move. In Florida all types mingled with relative ease. Even among the social set whose roots in Palm Beach predated air-conditioning, May-December relationships between the socially unequal were common. Lovely blond women of any origin, the young second wives of ancient gentlemen, were part of the scenery, a social set of their own. But Dark Harbor was another story. The houses were handed down from generation to generation, and new people just weren't welcome. Next message.

"Hi, Birdie, it's Al Frayme. Just calling to reschedule our lunch. By the way, the funeral was beautiful, and I thought you were very dignified in a difficult situation. Do you have time for lunch this week? I'll take you anywhere you want to go. Sweets. Paris. Tahiti. You name it."

Birdie smiled again. Sweets was downtown in the Fulton Fish Market, close to the Wall Street lawyer's office where she'd been earlier. The phone rang, distracting her from the rest of her messages.