The bright red hair was dry now, gathered on the back of her neck in a bun that was magnetized, I judged from the way her flowered pink straw hat kept slipping back, giving her a dizzy off-center look. She had on a white print dress with purple, red and green splotches that looked like a colored plate from a textbook on visceral diseases in a final stage. Her face was heavy and looked as if she’d been crying, and her pale blue eyes searched my face with a tremulous pathetic uncertainty and no sign of recognition at all.
“Are . . . are you Mrs. Latham?” She wavered a moment. “I’m Lena Brent . . . Mrs. Rufus Brent. I’m a friend of Tom and Marjorie Seaton’s.” Her eyes moved down to the framed photograph of my two boys on the pembroke table. “You look so much . . . younger than I’d expected,”
