Chapter 1WilliamFond du Lac, Lake Aral, VermontAt exactly three-thirty William Carteret parked beside his sister Pony's car at the lake house. He'd been driving since two, and now the sun was falling behind the mountain, and everything -- the house, the lawn, the shore, and half the lake -- was in shadow. A stiff wind was kicking up whitecaps on the water. A handful of sailboats scudded quickly, their small white sails crowded together as they headed for the last race buoy.William stretched and walked down to the water, as he always did first thing. Someone was still on the beach on the opposite shore, where they had the afternoon sun. He envied them over there, the Nicelys, the Garners, the Wrights, and their neighbors, for the long slow afternoons filled with late light and the lazy wane of day. Here on the Carteret side, they had the early-morning sun, and if you asked William's father, Jasper Carteret III, he'd say they were better off because of it, that being on the western shore meant being early risers; it meant being industrious, disciplined, and, although this was not spoken, superior.
William turned and headed toward the house, a big old gray dowager of a place, three stories tall. The house looked tired. It needed a new roof, a thought that depressed him because it would mean an assessment from his father. He and his sisters -- Pony, Tinker, and Mira -- would all have to pitch in to help pay for it. Pony wouldn't be able to come up with her share, so he and his other two sisters would have to carry her again. Maybe he'd bring it up with her while he was up here, or maybe not. Probably not. There was no getting blood from a stone.
Something in one of the upper windows caught his attention, an orange shape moving to one side of the pane. "Pony?" he shouted, and immediately she was plainly in view, waving to him. Had she been there all along? Watching him? Something was going on. She'd called him that morning and told him in that rapid-fire way she had that he needed to come up to the lake, and it had to be today. She had the place all to herself. Well, she and her son, Andrew, who was only a baby. But the point was, no Daddy, no Tinker, no Mira. Pony had just come up and let herself in, and they didn't even know about it.
"So there!" she'd said, meaning she'd blown off the whole sign-up sheet, the careful summer schedule that Tinker had come up with after their mother died.She vanished from the window. A moment later, the screen door flew open, banged against the side of the house, and slammed shut. Pony came at a run, a blur of bright orange T-shirt and white shorts across the lawn, her long dark red hair streaming behind."Oh, Jesus, William," she said, wrapping her arms around his neck. "You came."She was the youngest of his three sisters, his hands-down favorite. She was lean and tall, and she had the kind of energy that made her light as air.
She hugged him, freed herself, hugged him again. She had a broad face, high cheekbones, and a perfectly straight and slightly prominent nose; it was the kind of nose, their father said, that came from generations of breeding. Her eyes, though, those were the main thing about Pony. Big hazel eyes always alert, always taking everything in, eyes that darted quickly and constantly."Wouldn't not." He glanced about, looking for evidence of someone else, but saw nothing.She took a step back, taking him in, grinning. "Come inside.
Andrew's taking a nap." She dragged him by the hand across the lawn to the porch and into the cavernous living room with its three big faded blue couches arranged around a massive stone fireplace where the last coals of a fire still burned. The baby's toys were scattered across the floor. William recognized the orange Tonka truck that had once been his, and Matchbox cars, also his from childhood. Even some of the girls' dolls were in evidence. Andrew's clothes and diaper.