"I think the judge will give me home confinement, Lori. After arraignment, until the trial. If I can come home until the trial, will you help me take the plywood off? And wash the windows?"

"Yes, Pa! And clean the house. We can do that together."

"We can. I've been gone a long time, haven't I?"

"Yes, Pa."

"And now, I don't know how long I'll be home. You know I'll have to go to prison."

She nodded. She knew it but she didn't want to know it. "For how long, Pa?"

"No one will know until after the trial. Until I'm sentenced. I have to stop thinking of you as a little girl. We're going to have to make some decisions."

"What decisions, Pa?" She looked hard at him. "I'm not going back to juvenile. I'm not."

"What, then?"

"Cora Lee French wants me to live with her. Until… until you come home again."

"Cora Lee French. The Little Theater singer."

She nodded. "Cora Lee, and Mavity Flowers and two other ladies. In-"

"In that house," Pa said, his light brown eyes wide with surprised. "Would you be all right with that?"

"I… I think so. I don't have to think about… those children." She shivered, but she wanted to make him understand. "They're not there, Pa. They're somewhere else, those children. Somewhere new and bright. They don't care about that place. Even if they did care," she said, "even if they came back sometimes, it would be all right."

"I see," he said, as if he didn't see at all.

"And Cora Lee and Mavity, I would be happy in that big house with them. They even have two dogs, Pa. Two nice big dogs."

Pa smiled for the first time, and hugged her and rumpled her hair like when she was little. And she thought maybe it would be all right. She meant for it to be all right. Maybe Pa wouldn't be in prison very long. Cora Lee said that when you were twelve, life was a tangle of choices. That sometimes you had to make really hard choices, that that's what growing up was all about. Lori guessed that Pa was right, she couldn't be a little child anymore. At least not all the time.

Pots of cyclamens lined the tearoom windows, red and pink brighter than Christmas candy, their colors shutting out the stormy sky. A blustery wind rattled the glass but within the cozy, paneled room firelight blazed. Before the licking flames on the brick hearth, a table had been set with high tea. The aroma of hot, savory party fare, of broiled crab sandwiches and little broiled sausages on toast, and of rum cake and other rich sweets mingled with the scent of brewing tea. The guest of honor sat at the head of the table. She had come directly from the hospital. She wore a red cashmere dress, warm and soft and becoming. Her white hair was freshly washed. She was tucked into a wheelchair, a red blanket over her knees, her oxygen tank hooked rakishly to the side of the chair in the manner of a ranger's rifle carelessly slung from the saddle.

The party was smaller than originally planned, cozier, less formal. Wilma Getz represented Friends of the Library but she did not plan to make a speech. On Genelle's left, Lori was seated where she could see the fire; on her right, with her back warmed by the blaze, was Lucinda Greenlaw. On down the table from Lucinda were Mavity Flowers, Wilma, and Cora Lee French. Down from Lori sat Ryan Flannery and Charlie Harper, both the younger women polished and scrubbed and wearing the first skirts either had had on since New Year's-and Dillon Thurwell, who was all cleaned up, too. Dillon wore a pale blue cashmere sweater, a matching skirt, pumps, and sheer stockings. The ladies were all decked out in party finery and Genelle was enjoying every minute, though she often had to hold up her oxygen mask to breathe at all comfortably.

Genelle watched the waiter, in his white crisp jacket, refill her teacup. This young, strapping fellow looked like he spent his off hours surfing, maybe lived for surfing, supporting his habit with this steady job. It made her both frightened and glad that this young man would be surfing and partying in Molena Point long after she was gone. She watched the three cats, tucked up complacently on the window seat among a tangle of bright brocade cushions. Frowning, she studied the far corner, where the cats were looking, all three very still, their ears sharp, their eyes wide with some secret excitement. Dulcie's green eyes blazed suddenly, then slit closed with a little smile; and Genelle thought that a warmth touched the room more compelling than the heat of the fire, a presence as powerful as had, once, so graced the silver screen. This did not frighten Genelle, but made her glad.

She thought about Patty planning the menu long before she died, and she wished she could eat more to please Patty, wished her digestion along with all her bodily functions had not turned so delicate. Part of the process, she told herself. And she told Patty, You were lucky in that respect. No sense being sentimental. Surely this life, as seen now from Patty's side of the veil, occupied only a tiny moment, a fraction of a second compared to the unknowable eternity that lay beyond.

The waiter went on around the table filling teacups, then turned away. Genelle sugared her tea, breathing in the delicate, steamy scent. Beside her, Lori laid a hand on hers. "It's not as formal as I thought. I didn't want to come, in my jeans and all, and not know how to act."

"Your red sweatshirt is elegant!" Genelle said, laughing. "And your manners are elegant, too. I am so glad you came!" Even laughing made her weak. She took a breath of oxygen, like some old wino, she thought, nipping at his bottle.

"It's Cora Lee's sweatshirt. It smells of jasmine. Cora Lee wants me to live with her after… while my father's away. But now, before the arraignment hearing, until they let him leave the jail, I could stay with you. If you'd want me. If I could maybe help out."

"I'd like that," Genelle said. "Our friends are taking turns staying at night, but you could help a lot. You could read to me, too. And as for your living with Cora Lee, I think that's a fine plan." She looked hard at Lori. "Would you like to live there?"

"I'd love it." Lori grinned. "And I sure am tired of camping in that basement."

Genelle helped herself to oxygen again. "Your pa loves you, Lori. He was terrified for you, he felt he had no other choice than what he did."

"I know. But if he'd told me-"

"What would you have done? If he'd told you?"

"I don't know," she said, surprised. She'd have to think about that. "I guess Pa didn't have much faith in the law to protect me, though."

"Sometimes the law can't do as much as they'd like. Your pa did the best he knew how. And he does love you. No matter where your pa is or what happens, he will keep on loving you." Genelle reached from her wheelchair to put her arm around Lori.

"At Cora Lee's," Lori said, "there's a window seat looking down. On the canyon where… I told Pa it didn't make any difference. But I guess maybe it does."

"Only you can decide that," Genelle said. "Whether you want to live where you can see that gravesite. Only you can know how that will make you feel."

"That's what Cora Lee said." She looked up at the waiter as he offered a tray, and she took four tiny crab sandwiches. "I guess it would be all right," she said stoicly. "I guess you learn to live with stuff." When a second waiter appeared, she took six little sausage sandwiches.

Grinning, Genelle thought, Shell be all right, Lori will be all right. And when she looked down the table at Cora Lee, Cora Lee smiled, watching Lori with true affection. Across the table, Charlie and Ryan shared a satisfied grin.

But Wilma was watching the cats. As was Lucinda. And Genelle understood clearly the look that flashed between the two women and the cats: Joe and Dulcie and Kit were just as pleased for Lori as were their human friends. And Genelle thought, certainly not for the first time, that there was more in the universe, far more, than most folks imagined-or cared to know. She sipped her tea, and nibbled a sandwich, and when again she looked into the shadows, she imagined that she heard Patty laughing.