Excerpt from The Latecomers by Helen Klein Ross, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She led Mr. Tupper through the butler's pantry and, with an elbow (her arms were full of the sheets), pushed the glass plate on the door panel, swung through the door, and took him left past the linen closet so as not to lead his work boots across the good diningroom rug.

As she turned into the hallway, she saw the scrolled brass arms of the dual to be replaced. Bridey hated to think of harm to the wallpaper beneath it. But there was a good wallpaper man in town now, and the decorator from France who'd hung the paper originally had had the foresight to leave an extra roll in the attic.

Mr. Tupper helped Bridey draw sheets over chairs and tables in the hall, then Bridey returned to the kitchen, touched the silver pot to make sure it was still warm (Mr. Hollingworth didn't take hot coffee, due to sensitive teeth), slipped on the gloves, lifted the tray, and again mounted the stairs.

As she rounded the first landing, the hall shook with a great pounding and Bridey was visited by a terrible vision. Mr. Hollingworth's bedroom was just above the spot where Mr. Tupper was working, and Bridey imagined shifts in the old wall causing the ceiling above it to fall and then Mr. Hollingworth's floor crashing through and there would be Mr. Hollingworth, sliding down to the front door, still in his bed.

To steady herself, Bridey kept her hip against the wooden rails that ran along the top of the landing. It was a habit acquired long ago to keep from falling back down the narrow stairwell. The hallway was dim in the service quarters where only she lived now. When Nettie left to get married, Bridey hadn't taken her room, even though it was larger. She stayed in her little room at the top of the stairs with the low ceiling and a window that looked out on the lake. She liked it there. She liked the light.

Last year, Mr. Hollingworth lived in Nettie's old room, moving temporarily from his bedroom to Nettie's because hers was a north room and the darkest. At times, even the slightest light hurt his eyes. Bridey had run up drapes in the sewing room for him, heavy velvet curtains that Nettie, on a visit from Massachusetts, smiled to see - their formality so out of place in a servant's bedroom.

As Bridey crossed from the service hall to the bedroom wing, the pounding in the front hall became louder, and then came a crunch and the sound of falling plaster, by which she knew that the wall had been breached. Bridey was glad that Sarah - who felt any harm done to the house as a blow to herself - was spared this.

Bridey tapped with the toecap of her shoe, seeking the step up. She would tell Mr. Hollingworth that the egg was newly laid by Thisbe. Thisbe was the best layer in the henhouse, her eggs always firm and delicious. Was it an egg from Thisbe? Bridey couldn't recall. She'd gathered the eggs yesterday, not today. But old men, like small boys, needed reasons to believe what you wanted them to believe. Mr. Hollingworth's appetite - what was left of it - was best in the morning. He'd barely touched his dinner last night. He had to eat to keep up his strength. She wanted to make this meal as appealing as possible to him.

To that end, Bridey had prettied the tray. A picture postal from Sarah had come in the morning's mail, sent from a town with an unpronounceable name. The town was built on a mountain and looked made of toy blocks. She'd propped its painted portrait against the bud vase that held a purple anemone, the last flower the cutting garden gave up.

She hoped Sarah had remembered to send a postal card to Vincent at school.

It was Vincent who had named the hen, a few years ago, the summer before he went to school across the lake. How seriously he'd prepared himself for Trowbridge, lifting barbells and eschewing white bread, adhering to a new eating regimen to build himself up.

His incoming school assignment had been to translate the story of Pyramus and Thisbe from Latin to English, and Vincent, after poring over a book in the porch off the library, had regaled Bridey with the tale of two young lovers kept apart by their families. It was all she could do to hide her brimming eyes by training them on the needle she was using to letter one of his handkerchiefs; she had to bite her tongue to keep from telling him the story it reminded her of.

Excerpted from The Latecomers Copyright © 2018 by Helen Klein Ross. Used with permission of Little, Brown and Company, New York. All rights reserved.