For lack of peers, Megan is reduced to having to speak with adults. Megan can't believe that she actually wants to speak with Lois. A good rousing fight would be fun. Karen ("Bio-Mom") is great, if not slightly clued out (Well, she did miss two decades). But there remains an awkwardness between them. A jealousy? Emotionally, they are both the same age; both need attention from Richard, Lois, and the others. Yet on some deeper level they just don't connect. They're too much the same and each poses a form of competition to the other. They're wary.

Blond walnuts; a blush; a smile before she closed the door.

It's a rainy day: Karen and Wendy sit in Wendy's kitchen discussing a small party soon to be held on the day after Christmas—a party celebrating Karen and Richard's engagement. The ceremony is to be small: immediate friends and family only. No dates allowed; no strangers. There isn't too much to plan, so it's fun for Karen and Wendy to arrange things. Wendy's life is so stressful; she enjoys having a girly-girl break. A dress? That's Pam's department. Food? Endive with cream cheese, prosciutto and melon. "What happened to food?" Karen asks. "Food used to come in a box or a can. Now there's dozens of everything and it's all so fresh."

Their coffee cups run low. God bless NutraSweet. There is a pause at the end of their chat, a pause that indicates that a change in conversational gears is now possible.

"Wendy," Karen asks while looking out the window at some of Linus's old monsters standing beside the garage, "have you ever noticed— Wait." Another pause. "Have you ever noticed our lives are maybe …"

"Maybe what'?" Wendy's tone of voice almost says, Please don't. Please don't talk about this."Well, I mean, I know my waking up was like a million-to-one shot. And I can't explain that, but even still—"

"But even still what?"

"Well, we all seem to have more … not coincidences—more like spooky things in our lives than most people do. I mean, don't we?"

Wendy's reply is dry and therapeutic: "When did you start feeling this?"

"The day I woke up. That's a good start: We all ended up at the hospital that day. What are the odds of that? And I'm noticing that we all ended up returning to the same old neighborhood like so much undeliverable mail. I bet we probably couldn't escape Rabbit Lane even if we tried."

Wendy's unsure where to go with this. "So you think this all means something more, do you? Something big?"

"Yeah." Karen pours more coffee, eager to do such a mundane task with her new stronger arms. The liquid shakes. "Then there's these visions I've had."

"Oh?"

"Wendy, listen up. I'm serious. You're a doctor. Listen." Karen tells Wendy of the images she saw, how she believes it was no accident that she went into a coma in 1979. Karen then asks, "Haven't you ever seen anything weird that wasn't real life, but wasn't a dream either?"

Wendy enters a form of trance. "I…" She pauses. "I saw Jared. Years ago. He came and talked to me. Back when I was lonely, back before Linus and I were married. He'd told me I wouldn't be lonely forever. He said he was doing what he could. He was real; he was there. I was in love with him back in high school. You knew that, right? Even now I'm still in love with Jared. In my own way. Of course, I love Linus, too. Oh, these feelings are complex."

"We all knew about you and Jared," Karen says. "The worst kept crush in school. But he was such a dog, Wen—I mean, he'd hump anything in a bra like he was a Great Dane going at the sofa."

"But Jared wasn't just a crush. I was in love with him. I've never doubted that. Ever." Wendy remembers what had really happened—the sleepover with Jared's older sister, Laura, walking into the sauna while looking for soap, opening the door to find Jared naked, eyes closed, his butt roasting on the cedar. She remembers the brief second (a second and a half?) before Jared knew she was there, the smell of salt air in her lungs and Jared's skin melting like cake frosting, his balls like two blond walnuts, his member turgid, and the embarrassment afterward, slamming the door shut. She remembers avoiding Jared's eyes for weeks afterward, blushing if she even saw him far down the school's corridors. And then came October 14, 1978, the day Jared snuck up behind Wendy and whispered, See you after the game. Meet me in the parking lot. I've got a bag of candy to give you. And then came the collapse on the football field followed by the thousand passionate nights that never were to come Wendy's way. And she's never told anybody, because who would believe it? Because she is only Wendy: dutiful, sexless, brainy, and almost a tragedy (in her father's eyes) had Linus not happened along. Romantic beauty is for others. She wonders if she entered medicine only so that she might see naked men's bodies with impunity. This thought frightens her.

"Do you still ever speak with him?"

"No. He's gone. I don't know if it was even really him. It was probably in my head. I work too hard. I don't get enough free time. I still try to talk to him sometimes, but he's never returned. Real or not, I miss him."

"To me, Jared feels like just a year ago," Karen says. "But for you, Jared's gone for almost twenty years. And the feeling has never gone away?"

"Never."

The phone rings, but Wendy doesn't answer. There's a silence between the two. Wendy says, "Off the record? I think, yeah, all your vision stuff means something. But who's to say what? There's no pattern, no direction, no relationship."

"Let's just keep our eyes open, agreed?"

"Agreed."…

20 AFTER AMERICA?

Ten days before Christmas, Lois and George approach Karen, who sits by the living room TV watching a tape of The Thornbirds. Karen intuits that their approach will be taxing in some way.

"We'd like you to do that TV interview, dear."

I knew it. "Which one?"

"I don't like that tone of voice, Karen. We're only thinking about the best interests of you and Megan."

"Explain that to me, please." She remotes off the TV.

"They're offering a good deal of money, dear," George says. "You could certainly use it. Megan, too."

"You could put her through college on it," Lois adds.

"Oh, puh-leeeze. I think we should all know by now that Megan is not and is unlikely to ever be college material."

Thus begins an hour-long tussle, after which Karen finally agrees to do a network TV interview for an astronomical sum of money, to be taped in three days—on the condition that the money be put into trust for Megan until the age of twenty-one. "And you're not allowed to tell her how much, because I can just imagine her killing time until she gets a big bundle to blow."

Almost instantly, lawyers are phoned, moneys are negotiated, and people from both American coasts descend on Karen's doorstep for a Thursday shoot. As Karen's friends are intimate with almost every aspect of TV production, they mastermind lighting schemes and color effects and are bossy with their imported colleagues as they protect Karen. Pam instructs Karen on posture (where possible), deportment, breathing, pacing, makeup, and styling. Their competence is a wonder to Karen; for the first time, she understands that her friends have actual skills. Richard and Hamilton "danger-proof" the Christmas tree while Linus stands lost in his own world, mentally rearranging the furniture to best visual advantage.

My friends know how to put a good face on a bad situation, Karen thinks.

"I wouldn't be nervous, Kare," Pam says while applying a Christian Dior 425 foundation. "TV isn't about information. It's about emotion. People will be hearing your words, sure, but first they'll be checking out your skin and hairdo."

"Then I'm up shit creek."

"Piffle. You've got good skin and bones and people will probably feel cheated if you don't look a bit weird. Which lipstick do you want?"