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“Make stew?” It would be so easy just to let herself be drawn back into the day-to-day, to let it all go. But she couldn’t. And Kate minded terribly that Emmie was making her feel sorry for her just when she wanted to be angry at her.

“They didn’t have big combs, so I thought . . . But apparently, not all French roosters do.”

“Yes, things aren’t always what they appear, are they?”

Emmie bit her lip. “Kate—”

“You told me the Unit was paying for travel and living expenses.”

Emmie ducked her head, looking down at her chickens. “I told you that alumnae were donating money.”

“And you’re an alumna? That’s pure sophistry, Emmie, and you know it.” There was a world of difference between being bankrolled by an anonymous group of donors and having her expenses paid by someone she knew. “Why did you assume I couldn’t pay? I’m not a pauper, Emmie. My family aren’t paupers.”

“I know that,” said Emmie, a little too quickly.

“We’re not poor, Emmie,” Kate said fiercely. But of course they were to Emmie, with her Fifth Avenue mansion and her camp in the Adirondacks and her “cottage” in Newport that was bigger than most apartment buildings. It didn’t mean anything to Emmie that Kate’s stepfather, the police officer, could put meat on the table or lace curtains on the windows; those were inconsequentialities to Emmie, these things that to Kate and her mother had seemed so monumental and miraculous. “I have a job. I had a job.”

Emmie looked at Kate with wide, childlike blue eyes. “Yes, but why shouldn’t my mother pay our way? The cost wasn’t anything to her—she spends more than that each week on stamps!”

“No. It’s not anything to her.” The air stank of chicken excrement; Kate’s boots were sticky with mud and feathers.

Emmie mistook Kate’s words for agreement. “And you know she’s always liked you, Kate. She wanted you to be her secretary. . . .”

“And I said no.”

Emmie’s forehead wrinkled. “I never blamed you for that. I know my mother can be a bit . . .”

“It wasn’t because of your mother.” Kate rather liked Emmie’s mother; there was something about her drive that spoke to Kate. She would have loved to be Mrs. Van Alden’s secretary, to travel with her around the world, helping her to write strongly worded letters to the editors of all the major papers. “I said no because I didn’t want to be beholden. I was your friend, Emmie. Not your project.” There was a horrible moment where Emmie was silent, the only sounds the clucking of the chickens. “Wasn’t I?”

“Of course! You know I would never have got through Smith without you. That’s why I wanted you here so badly. I knew I couldn’t do this without you. And I knew that you—well, you might not have the money to spare, so I thought—I thought that if it were all paid already . . .”

“You shouldn’t have assumed—”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have, but when I started to tell you about the Unit, you looked so skeptical, and I knew you were going to say no. . . .”

And there had been that room. That depressing, cabbage-scented room with its paper shades and fraying coverlet. The very picture of poverty.

Kate pressed her eyes shut, fighting hard to keep her composure. “You might have given me the choice.”

In a very small voice, Emmie said, “I was afraid if I did you wouldn’t come.”

She seemed so small—which was ridiculous, since Emmie was a full head taller than Kate. But she did. She seemed so small and so vulnerable. Kate’s heart twisted.

But then Emmie ruined it all by saying, “And you did have a choice, didn’t you? You had the choice to come or not come. I just didn’t want—I didn’t want the money to be a factor. I just—I knew that you’d be brilliant at it. And the truth is . . . I didn’t know if I could do this without you, Kate. You—you make everything manageable. Even algebra.”

But it wasn’t a choice, not a true choice.

Kate’s throat locked. She struggled to find the words to explain, but Emmie was still talking, faster now, as if determined to get it all over with.

“I know it was wrong to lie to you, Kate. I do. It was just . . . I needed you so badly.” Emmie looked at her appealingly. Kate knew that expression so well. It was Emmie’s hapless face, the one that got people to do things for her. She didn’t do it on purpose. It was just part of who she was. “You’re not sorry you’re here, are you?”

Constantly wet and freezing. Never enough sleep, never enough time. All those different personalities to manage. The challenge of it, never the same from day to day, always a new obstacle to be surmounted, a new battle to be won, a broken truck to be fixed, a reluctant bureaucrat to bully . . .

It was alarming to realize how much she’d come to love it, this strange life here. One could say many things about it, but it was never dull. Kate never felt, as she had in Boston, that she was wasting her time and her energies. It was maddening and rewarding and it suited her as nothing else had.

“No,” said Kate slowly. “I’m not sorry.”

“I was so worried at first that you were miserable and I’d done something terrible by bringing you here, but then . . . you seemed so happy. You don’t dislike it here, do you?”