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"Roger--why I didn’t write--"

"You’re not to trouble about it," he said quickly "I’ll be there in a month; we can talk, then Bree, I--"

"Yes?"

She heard him draw breath, and had a vividas he breathed, warlad you said yes"

She couldn’t go back to sleep after hanging up; restless, she swung her feet out of bed and padded out to the kitchen of the slass ofblankly into the recesses of the refrigerator that she realized she wasn’t seeing ranks of ketchup bottles and half-used cans She was seeing standing stones, black against a pale dawn sky

She straightened up with a small exclamation of ihtly, and rubbed her arms, chilled by the draft of the air conditioner Impulsively, she reached up and clicked it off, then went to theand raised the sash, letting in the warht

She should have written In fact, she had written--several times, all half-finished atteht she did Explaining it coherently to Roger was so else

Part of it was the sie to run away and hide froer’s fault, but he was inextricably wrapped up in it

He’d been so tender, and so kind afterward, treating her like one freshly bereaved--which she was But such a strange bereaveood, but certainly--she hoped--not dead And yet it was in some ways just as it had been when her father died; like believing in a blessed afterlife, ardently hoping that your loved one was safe and happy--and being forced to suffer the pangs of loss and loneliness nonetheless

An a in the dark, its siren muted by distance

She crossed herself from habit, and murmured "Miserere nobis" under her breath Sister Marie Ro needed their prayers; so strongly had she inculcated the notion in her class that none of the children had ever been able to pass the scene of an e a small silent prayer upward, to succor the souls of the imminently heaven-bound

She prayed for them every day, her mother and her father--her fathers That was the other part of it Uncle Joe knew the truth of her paternity, too, but only Roger could truly understand what had happened; only Roger could hear the stones, too

No one could pass through an experience like that and not be marked by it Not hione, but she couldn’t

There were things to do here, she’d told hi to finish That was true More iet clear away froht heal, er, there was no way to forget what had happened, even for a moment And that was the last part of it, the final piece in her three-sided puzzle

He had protected her, had cherished her Her mother had confided her into his care, and he’d kept that trust well But had he done it to keep his promise to Claire--or because he truly cared? Either way, it wasn’t any basis for a shared future, with the crushing weight of obligation on both sides

If there ht be a future for them…and that hat she couldn’t write to hi both presumptuous and idiotic?

"Go away, so you can coht," she murmured, anddown, cooling the air enough to breathe coht, but the air was still warh that moisture condensed on the cool skin of her face; s down her neck one by one, da the cotton T-shirt she slept in

She’d wanted to put the events of last Noveh tiain Not as supporting players in the drama of her parents’ life, but this ti

No, if anything was to happen between her and Roger Wakefield, it would definitely be by choice It looked as though she was going to get the chance to choose now, and the prospect gave her a small, excited flutter in the pit of her sto off the rain-iping it casually through her hair to taht as ork

She left theopen, careless of the rain puddling on the floor She felt too restless to be sealed in, chilled by artificial air

Clicking on the lamp on the desk, she pulled out her calculus book and opened it One se of study was her belated discovery of the soothing effects of mathematics

When she had co had seemed a ly immutable Above all, controllable She picked up a pencil, sharpened it slowly, enjoying the preparation, then bent her head and read the first probleic of the figures built its web inside her head, trapping all the rando emotions up in silken threads like so ic spun her web, orderly and beautiful as an orb-weaver’s jeweled confection Only the one s in her lad you said yes, he’d said So was she

July 1969

"Does he talk like the Beatles? Oh, I’ll just die if he sounds like John Lennon! You kno he says, ‘It’s randfather?’ That just knockslike John Lennon, for God’s sake!" Brianna hissed She peered cautiously around a concrete pillar, but the International Arrivals gate was still empty "Can’t you tell the difference between a Liverpudlian and a Scot?"

"No," her friend Gayle said blithely, fluffing out her blond hair "All Englishmen sound the same to me I could listen to them forever!"