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“So,” said Clara, turning to Myrna. “I have to ask. What’s with the brick?”

“Yes,” said Ruth. “Exactly. I was going to ask but thought it might be rude.”

They stared at her.

“Don’t you mean not rude enough?” asked Gabri.

He’d brought over another pitcher of iced tea and what looked like a scotch for Ruth but was actually also tea and had pulled up a chair to join them.

“I think the brick was a kindness,” said Ruth.

Now their eyes widened. Shocked she even knew the word, never mind claimed to recognize an act of kindness.

“Harriet must know you’re one brick short of a—”

“There it is,” said Clara.

“Either that, or that you’re as thick as a—”

“So,” Clara asked Myrna. “What’s the story?”

“Starving student?” said Gabri. “Couldn’t afford anything, so she gave you—”

“A brick?” said Clara.

“Armand once gave Reine-Marie’s mother a toilet plunger as a gift,” said Gabri.

“But that makes sense,” said Ruth.

No one followed up.

“People give strange presents,” said Gabri. “I once gave Olivier a—”

“Not the doorknob story again, I’m begging you,” said Myrna. “Actually, Harriet collects bricks.”

This did not advance the conversation. In fact, she’d finally, after years in Three Pines, managed to silence them. And then reduce them to monosyllables.

What? Why? How?

It was possible she’d broken them.

“But why that particular brick?” asked Billy, who was not so easily broken. “She seemed to think you’d recognize it.”

“I don’t know. I was going to ask her last night, but she got in after we’d gone to bed and was still asleep on the sofa bed in the living room when we got up.”

“We can ask now,” said Ruth, turning in her seat and shouting, “Hey, you. Jackie O. What’s with the brick?”

Harriet turned to look at Ruth, guessing that was directed at her, though the reference to someone named Jackie O was lost on her.

She pushed the oversized sunglasses up the bridge of her nose and tried to rise.

“It’s okay,” said Auntie Myrna, in a more soothing voice. “You can explain later.”

But Harriet was already on her feet, lurching unsteadily from chair back to chair back, to get herself across the terrasse. Billy rose to give her his seat, but she waved him down.

She recognized the courtesy, but did not want to encourage the view that women were the weaker sex and needed to be protected and coddled. By men.

Though as she swayed slightly, fighting the hangover that was eating her will to live, she wished she’d accepted the offer. If ever there was a time for situational ethics, this was it.