"I'd settle for five romances," Suzanne added, giving Ivy a sly look, "if you'll take the other one and stop thinking about Tristan."

Ivy didn't reply.

Suzanne got in her car, closed the door, and reached across to unlock the passenger-side door. But before Ivy could open it, Beth caught her hand.

She spoke quickly, quietly: "You can't forget, Ivy. Not yet. It would be dangerous to forget."

In the back of her mind, Ivy felt that prickling feeling again.

Then Beth yanked open her own car door, hopped in, and drove away fast.

Suzanne glanced in the rearview mirror, frowning. "I don't know what's gotten into that girl. Lately she's been hopping around like a scared rabbit. What did she just say to you?"

Ivy shrugged. "Just gave me a little advice."

"Don't tell me-she got another one of her premonitions."

Ivy remained silent.

Suzanne laughed. "You've got to admit, Ivy, Beth's flaky. I never take her 'advice' seriously. You shouldn't, either."

"I haven't so far," Ivy said. And both times, she thought, I've been sorry I didn't.

"Yo! Romeo! Where art thou? Rooo-me-ooo," Lacey called.

Tristan, who had been following Ivy down the wide center stair of the Baines home, stopped at the landing and stuck his head out an open window.

Lacey smiled up at him from the middle of a flower bed, the only piece of Andrew Baines's property that hadn't been overrun by the hundreds of guests with their picnic blankets and baskets. A Caribbean steel band was warming up on the patio. Paper lanterns hung from the pines around the tennis court; beneath them tables were laid out with refreshments.

Long before Tristan met Ivy, long before Andrew surprised everyone by marrying Maggie, Tristan had come to this annual party. He remembered how huge the white clapboard home had seemed to him as a little boy, with its east and west wings and double chimneys and rows of heavy black shutters-like a house that would be pictured in his mother's New England calendar.