Definition of nefew

(Frieda Arkin, "The Light of the Sea," in The...)

It was not as_though she noted clearly that her nephews had not been to see her for ten years , not since their last journey eastward to witness their Uncle_Izaak being lowered into the rocky soil ; that aside from due notification of certain major events in their lives ( two marriages , two births , one divorce ) , Christmas and Easter_cards of the traditional sort had been the only thin link she had with them through the widowed years .

`` My nephews will be coming_down '' , she said that evening as Angelina brought her dinner into the dining_room , the whole meal on a vast linen covered tray .

What hope lay_in the nephews , she asked the intensifying light out there , with one married to a barren woman and the other divorced , having sired two girl children , with none to bear_on the Packard name ?

Or it might have been the absent nephews she addressed , consciously playing with the notion that this was one of the summers of their early years .