They made their way back to Minerva in a slow, silent procession. Vi came along with them, walking hand in hand with Janelle. Stevie had memorized that sentence from The Great Gatsby that had so transfixed her. She hadn’t meant to—she just read it several times and now it was stuck, running through her head as she looked up: He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass.

She still didn’t know exactly what it meant, but the words scared her. They made her aware that there were echoey hallways inside herself that she had not yet explored, that the world was big, and that objects changed upon examination. These are not the kinds of things you want to think about when your dreams of school and escape and friendship have—at long last—properly exploded. Everything was the last. The last time as a group walking back from the dining hall. The last time touching her ID to the pad. The last time pushing open the big blue door. The last time looking at the weird snowshoe spikes, and the moose head, and David sitting on the saggy purple sofa. . . .

David. Was sitting there. Hands folded in his lap, a massive backpack by his feet, wearing his two-thousand-dollar Sherlock coat and a knowing smile.

“Hey, everybody,” he said. “Miss me? Shut the door. Not a lot of time.”

September 1936

IT WAS VERY ODD SEEING A LAKE GO AWAY. HOUR BY HOUR, IT SANK from view. At breakfast, Flora Robinson had gone out to its bank to wish it good-bye. After lunch, it was not looking itself and had revealed a mossy, slimy border of rock. By four, one could hear a whooshing sound as it continued to sink. Leaves congealed on the contracting surface. By sunset, it was gone.

The lake met its fate because a famous physic had called the New York Times and told a reporter that Alice Ellingham had never left home at all; that she was at the bottom of the garden lake. Albert Ellingham did not believe in psychics, but after four sleepless nights, he told Mackenzie to call up the engineers and drain it anyway. This was not hard to do. The lake was fed by a series of pipes that brought water down from a higher point on the mountain; another pipe ran downhill and into the river. All that needed to be done was to close the feed and open the drain and . . . good-bye, lake.

As went the lake, so did Flora’s life, drained of beauty and fullness. Wherever Flora went, she was “that woman who was there that night,” or “a speakeasy hostess known to the family.” Never what she was—a friend. The friend. Iris’s best friend in the world. The one who actually mourned her. The world may have seen pictures of Iris’s New York relations as they made public spectacles of themselves at the funeral service at Saint John the Divine, of the greenhouses’ worth of roses and irises and the great bunches of lilacs (her favorite scent) that filled the church. There were movie stars who flew in from California to pay tribute to the wife of their employer. Members of the New York Philharmonic played by her casket, and the mezzo-soprano Clara Ludwig sang “Ave Maria.” Everyone wept.

Many photographs were taken of the cortege of Rolls-Royce Phantom limousines with black crepe that wound through Central Park to the luncheon at the Plaza. From there, the mood turned over countless glasses of champagne and towers of finger sandwiches. It was a fulsome summer’s day, with the hot breeze coming in through the windows. The mourners compared dresses and stock portfolios and vacation plans. So many of them had come in from their summer houses. How terrible to face the city in this heat!

Flora moved like a ghost. She did not eat finger sandwiches or drink champagne. She wore black and sweated in it and twice went to vomit. When the show was over, she and Leo walked numbly through Central Park. The day was endless, refusing to give way to the evening. The sky seemed to swell overhead, and a small pack of photographers trailed them at a distance until they left the park and escaped in a cab to Leo’s studio. Leo gave her something to help her sleep.

Months later, she was still that ghost. Now she watched the last of her friend’s lake disappear into a pipe, leaving a big, empty cup of rocks. She shivered and shut the curtains. She turned to George Marsh, who was sitting on the other side of the room, reading a newspaper. He folded back the top and looked over it at Flora.

“Is it done?” he asked.

“It’s done.”

“I was already out there twice. We’ll go over it inch by inch, but I don’t think there’s anything to find in there.”

Flora went into the great hall, where Leonard Holmes Nair was sitting on a divan by the large fireplace. A novel dangled from his fingertips, but he didn’t seem to be reading. His focus was on the second-floor balcony.

“Something’s going on.” He nodded toward the balcony. “For the last few hours there’s been a trail of crates and boxes coming in. Albert’s supervised them all, and they all went to Alice’s room. Some of them were massive. I went to go see what they were but he shooed me away from the door. It’s the most excited I’ve seen him in ages. He was smiling.”

Flora sat next to her friend and looked up. This was a strange, not entirely welcome development. Albert Ellingham soon appeared, leaning over the rail.

“Flora, Leo, come see. Bring George. It’s ready.” Albert was almost giddy. “Come to Alice’s room.”

Flora had not been in Alice’s room since the kidnapping. It was perfectly kept. The lace curtains were drawn every morning and closed every night. Fresh sheets and blankets were regularly put on the bed. The stuffed animals waited in a line. The dolls were dusted and settled in their chairs. New clothes in larger sizes had been brought in every season to be ready for Alice’s reappearance. All of that, Flora knew about. But there was something else now, something that dominated the center of the room, almost filling it. It was a replica of the house she stood in—the Great House, rendered in miniature.

“It was made in Paris,” Albert said, walking around the house and looking in the windows. “I had it commissioned two years ago, and it’s finally arrived. Marvelous, isn’t it?”

Leo tried to mask his horror with a blank stare, but he wasn’t able to pull it off. Albert didn’t seem to notice. He went to the side of the massive toy house, flipped a latch, and swung it open. The interior of the Great House was spread out in front of them, like a patient on a surgical table, insides exposed.

“Look,” Albert said. “Look at the detail!”

There was the massive front hall, shrunk down, its stairs and marble fireplace faithfully re-created. Tiny crystal knobs gleamed on hand-sized doors. There was the morning room with its silk paper and French decor, the ballroom with its motley walls. In Albert’s office, the two tiny desks had stamp-like papers on them and telephones that Flora could have balanced on her thumbnail. Upstairs, the same—Iris’s dressing room in morning gray. Room after room, including the one they stood in now. The only thing the dollhouse missed was a miniature of itself.

“I had them work from photographs, and by God, what a job they’ve done. I told you, Leo. I said when she was born that I would get her the best dollhouse in the world.”

“You did,” Leo said, his voice sounding dry.

“What do you think, Flora?” Albert asked.

“It’s a marvel,” she said, fighting down the rising bile in the back of her throat.

“Yes.” Albert stood, his hands on his hips, regarding the sight as a whole. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

Something in his elevated manner suggested that this dollhouse would somehow change things. Alice was not here, but the dollhouse had come—and if the dollhouse had come, Alice must follow. Giddy, funhouse logic, distorted.

“You know,” he said, “I was building something quite wonderful for Iris as well, for her birthday. She was so enamored of what we saw in Germany, I thought . . . Well. It doesn’t matter now. What matters is that Alice’s gift is here.”

“You know, Albert,” Leo said, looking to Flora and Marsh for support, “I think this calls for a celebration. Why don’t we go downstairs and have something to eat? What do you say?”

“Yes,” Albert said. “I suppose I should eat something. Montgomery can scare me up a ham sandwich or two.”

He clapped Leo on the back to usher him from the room. Flora wanted to leave, but the presence of the dollhouse transfixed her. George was squatting, examining the small furniture from the office.

“Be there in a moment,” she said. “I want to look some more.”

“Do . . . do!” Albert said. “Look away!”

When Albert and Leo had gone, George Marsh straightened up and turned to Flora.

“Look at this,” he said, pointing at the top bedroom.

Sitting on the bed, neatly and in a row, were three china figures—one of Albert, one of Iris, and one of Alice, sitting between them.

“Dear God,” she said.

“Yeah. I wish I could set fire to this thing.”

He must have been feeling the same queasy strangeness, this mockery of reality. That must have been it—this warping—that made her speak so suddenly.

“Alice,” she said. “Do you know? Did they ever tell you?”

“Tell me what?” George replied.

Flora rubbed her hand across her brow.

“It’s a secret, but I thought you would know. They never said?”