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wonderful to finally meet you.” He took her hand between his two, dimpling and showing his teeth. “No need for the weapon. I assure you I’ve been a perfect gentleman when it comes to your granddaughter.”
    “Well, listen to this!” Eunice raised her eyebrows. Nothing pleased her more than a tall, flirtatious young man. “A gentleman! Come have something to drink. You want a soda? I’ll get you a soda.” With her little hand firmly on his wrist, she led Kyle into the kitchen. He looked back over his shoulder, shrugging and smiling as though he couldn’t quite believe the force of his charm.
    Elizabeth turned to her mother. “What did I say? She loves him.”
    “Of course she loves him. He’s a man.” Howie, the only boy, had always gotten the most praise, even before Cassandra fled home, married a man of dubious parentage, and disgraced herself in divorce. Even now, after all her worldly success. “I mean, really. What is the deal with that? Are boys just easier?”
    “Not worth pondering, Mom. It’ll only make you angry.”
    The kettle was whistling when they entered the kitchen, butElizabeth hardly heard it. Her eyes immediately found her grandfather. Framed perfectly in the window, he was floating ten feet off the ground in the middle of a wooden structure she’d never seen before.
    “Mom!” she cried. “How can you let him do that?” Her whole life he’d been a tall man but now he looked tiny in the space between the rafters.
    “Hasn’t he made wonderful progress?” Cassandra asked. She poured the boiling water into a large glass pitcher loaded with tea bags. Steam rose in a column as she stirred, hovering around the strong kitchen lights. “He’s nearly done with the exterior.”
    “Howard!” Eunice called out the door, much louder than was necessary. “Lizzie’s here!”
    “One minute!”
    Using a pot holder, Cassandra set the pitcher on a trivet near the sink. “Don’t touch this, anyone. It’s very hot. But it’ll be iced tea by dinnertime.”
    “You’ll finish it later!” Eunice called to her husband. “Come see Lizzie now!”
    “In a minute, Eunice!”
    “Crazy old man,” she muttered, her lips tightening. She took a can of Coke from the refrigerator for Kyle, who was sitting politely in the breakfast nook. “Hold on, I’ll get you some ice.” She reached over the steaming pitcher of tea to open the cupboard where she kept her knock-off Waterford tumblers. On the way back down, her arm brushed the pitcher’s edge and, jolted, she dropped the drinking glass in the sink, where it broke with a violent crack.
    “Are you all right?” Cassandra rushed over to have a look.
    “ I’m fine,” Eunice crabbed. “But my tumbler! What are you doing leaving that pitcher there?”
    “Christ, Mom, I told you it was hot.” Cassandra lifted the largest piece of glass from the sink. The tumbler had broken right along the crest of one of the diamond cuts. Feeling the tickle of a tiny shard on her fingertip, she began pitching the chunks of glass into the garbage.
    While her mother made a show of cleaning up the mess, and her grandmother stood by stubbornly, virtually blocking the trash, Elizabeth flashed Kyle a look of desperation, which he returned with a sympathetic grimace. The embarrassment had already begun, no more than ten minutes into their visit. “My tumbler,” Eunice repeated into the garbage, this time in a more wounded tone.
    “Well, you’ll just have to buy another one,” Cassandra said. “It’s not the end of the world.”
    “There’s no need to be hostile. You’re the one who made me drop it.”
    “What now?” Howard appeared at the open back door. Leaning into the frame, he mopped his sweating forehead with a grime-stained handkerchief.
    Before anyone could respond, Elizabeth was hugging him. “Been working hard out there, Grandpa?”
    “Oh, I keep busy,” he said, patting the back of her head. If Eunice preferred boys, Howard most certainly