Two

I met Phoebe’s father and stepmother two years before I met Phoebe. Mark and Lizabeth Pickersley-Smythe. “Smythe” pronounced so that it rhymes with “writhe.” Make of that what you will.

More than two years ago, Mark and Liz and their twin baby boys had joined the church I serve as minister. Mark and Liz were in their early forties which made them old to be starting a family, but with all the wondertechs working on fertility, it wasn’t unheard of.

Mark had the easy grace of a natural athlete, too, and though he hadn’t played college ball, it was only because an injury stopped him. He’d had the offers. I knew because John Redman told me. In the first couple of months after they joined, I had about fifty women in my church tell me Mark was a good-looking guy, in more detail than I cared for, and the oldest of these could have been my grandmother. She’s the one who told me that Mark looked “So fine, I could eat that boy with a spoon.” I didn’t need to hear that.

Lizabeth was different. All that came effortlessly to Mark had clearly been labored for in Liz. Even with the adjustments I suspected a surgeon had made, she wasn’t a beauty. Some might call her handsome. I don’t know. She just didn’t fit together well. Her button nose didn’t fit the strong bones of her face—and her eyes were on the small side. Just as she didn’t have her husband’s looks and grace, neither did she have his way with people. She could get people to do what she wanted them to—she was aces at that, but she couldn’t make them like her. And looking back with all I know now, I know Liz was lonely. That maybe she had always been lonely. I felt uncomfortable and edgy around her, and instead of taking the time to know her, to understand where those words were coming from, I avoided her. I failed her in that way.

At the “get-to-know-you” session in the new members’ class, Liz told us she had gone to work at a failing packaging company (which meant they made cardboard boxes if I understood right) straight out of grad school. Within three years she was running it; in ten, she owned it. She sold to the big boys months before the economic free fall that left a number of church members with half the retirement funds they had had months earlier. She got married and had the twins, and bought a house in the Sweetwater neighborhood. Homes there start at a million and a half; when she told us what their neighborhood was, she was telling us how much the house cost. And there was nothing about how they got married, and they had twins and they bought a house. I’m not saying the pronoun thing meant all that much. It was interesting, that’s all.

“Now it’s time to enjoy the life I worked for,” she ended brightly.

It was one of the more self-congratulatory speeches I’d heard, and I found Liz off-putting right there at the beginning, but Lizabeth’s frank and unself-conscious enjoyment of her achievements went some way toward disarming me. Finally one other brave soul in a skirt and cardigan spoke up.

“I guess I’ll go next. My name is Melinda Turnipseed, and yes, that’s my real name.”

There was relieved laughter all around. Nobody else in the circle said more than they had to, including Mark, who said only that he’d met Lizabeth through work and was glad to know us. He had a soft, self-deprecating way of speaking that didn’t match his expensive suit. Lizabeth’s eyes were on him, bright and approving and possessive. She gave a nod when he’d finished, the kind you’d give a well-coached kindergartener. For all her off-putting ways, though, I have to give Liz credit, too. Liz labored for our church.

•   •   •

Lizabeth took to church volunteer opportunities like a CEO with time on her hands, which is what she was, and if she was high-handed in her dealings with the other volunteers (which she was), she was also effective. Shortly after the Pickersley-Smythes had placed membership, I’d begun to hear stories from Rebecca, my secretary.

“Your new couple, the Pickersley-Smythes . . .” Rebecca over enunciated the complicated last name—everybody did. It wasn’t a name that rolled off the tongue.

“. . . they’re stepping on toes.” Rebecca had tapped on my door and walked in without waiting for an answer. I was working on my sermon, but I looked up. She stood in front of me, her arms crossed over her bosom.

Rebecca stands about five foot five, but she’s got the bosom of a six-footer. Since she’s slim-hipped and slim-legged, I never feel like there’s quite enough surface area tying her to the ground. She looks precariously balanced.

“Let me clarify,” Rebecca said. “She’s stepping on toes. Lizabeth. I only hear good things about Mark.”

Mark played golf with the men’s golf fellowship and tennis with some of the die-hard tennis players, and both groups had reported that he could sub as a pro at the Bridgewater Country Club. He was that good.

“So, whose toes?” I asked.

“Katherine isn’t heading up the bookstore ministry anymore.”

“She’s not?”

“No,” Rebecca said, “Lizabeth Pickersley-Smythe is. She said we were paying too much for the books, and selling them for too little. She has a contact who can get them for us cheaper.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “And how’s that working out?” I highlighted a scripture that clarified the point I was trying to make in Sunday’s sermon.

“She can get the books cheaper, and it’s too early to tell if we can sell them for more than we were.”

“Weren’t we selling them at our cost?” I thought the idea was to get helpful books and CDs and DVDs into people’s hands.

“Lizabeth did a big sell on how profits from the bookstore could help fund our food distribution program; then she called for a vote—something that has never been done at a bookstore ministry meeting. Everyone was so wound up that she carried the day. Katherine e-mailed this morning to say she was stepping down, due to scheduling conflicts.”

“But you don’t think Katherine quit because of scheduling conflicts.” I pushed away from the keyboard.

“I think Katherine decided that any schedule that included Lizabeth meant there was going to be conflict.” Rebecca pulled aside one of my guest chairs and sat down. Rebecca almost never sits down in my office.

“What do you want to tell me, Rebecca?”

“A couple of things,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want you to think I’m gossiping.”

Rebecca doesn’t gossip. I have a lot of respect for her judgment. When there is congregational news she thinks I should know, she tells me, and only me. Even though Rebecca actually attends the Baptist Church across the freeway, not our church, she hears more than I do. Now, the way she goes about telling me things, that’s something that could be improved on. She’s a tad circuitous.

“All right.” I shut my laptop.

“Okay.” Rebecca settled in her chair and adjusted the back cushion. “Well, Lizabeth has reorganized the church kitchen, which I think has needed reorganization since long past. But Lizabeth didn’t say a word to anyone. She must have checked the kitchen out at the last Ladies’ Bible Class luncheon, because two days later, Lizabeth shows up and by the time she left, around five or so, the kitchen was done. Every lid without a pot got thrown out. Mismatched Tupperware, gone. Those grills that fit the old stove but don’t fit the new? Gone. A place for everything and everything in its place.

“That woman cleaned around the fridge handle with a toothpick. I saw her do it. I was about to get myself a grapefruit seltzer and there she is, she takes a toothpick, puts it in her mouth and nibbles the tip so it’s frayed, then dips it in a mayonnaise jar lid where she’s poured Pine-Sol, and careful, careful, she cleans all around the fridge handle where the handle meets the door.”

“With mayonnaise and Pine-Sol?”

Rebecca leveled her eyes at me.

“Bear. It was a clean jar lid. She was using it like a little bowl. One she could throw out later. And she has laminated a how-to sheet, how everything is supposed to be cleaned and stored, put it in a magnetic frame and put it front and center on the freezer door. And she’s labeled every single drawer and cabinet in the kitchen. ‘Paring knives and peelers.’ That’s a for-instance.”

“So, that’s a good thing, right?”

I was looking for the problem here. I mean, Lizabeth wasn’t smoking in the girls’ room, or anything, right?

“Yeah, it’s a good thing, Bear, everything Lizabeth puts her hand to is done well. That’s who Lizabeth is.”

“Okay . . .” I said.

“Thing is, she’s not exactly a team player. It’s not like she doesn’t ask for everyone’s input, but that’s all for show, like some kind of management ploy she learned in grad school. She takes in all the ideas, points out their pros and cons—and she’s great at this, Bear, leaves each speaker feeling heard and appreciated— then she does a recap, calls for a vote, and, surprise! It’s Lizabeth’s idea that wins the vote, hands down.” Rebecca slapped the top of my desk for emphasis.

“But her ideas are voted on . . . ?” I asked.

“I just said so,” said Rebecca.

“And her ideas are best?” I linked a couple of paper clips, added a rubber band to the chain.

Rebecca stared at me long enough for it to get uncomfortable. Then she got up from her chair and headed out of the office.

“Right. Whatever, Bear. I’m letting you know you’ve got a barracuda swimming with your guppies. Do what you want to about it.”

So even back then I knew that Liz was a force to be reckoned with.

I just figured there had to be room in the church for the overcontrolling.

Then that overcontrolling woman had an out-of-control teenage stepdaughter dropped in her life. Turned out, Mark had a daughter from his first marriage. This was a surprise because no one I’d talked to had mentioned either an ex or a daughter.

Two years after Mark and Liz joined our congregation, Jenny, Mark’s ex-wife, died, and Phoebe came to live with Liz and Mark and the three-year-old twins. Phoebe moved in with Mark and Liz the same month I got shot—not my fault, in spite of what some people had to say about it—so it was a few weeks before I met her. That business on TV where the guy gets shot and he bounces right back up, ready for more action? Not so much. It was Annie who told me about the new addition over at the Pickersley-Smythes.

“When I married Mark I did not bargain on having his scarecrow of a daughter come to live with us, I can tell you that.” That’s what Annie told me Liz had said to her. Get what I mean about the things that come out of Liz’s mouth?

“What did you say back?” I asked Annie Laurie.

“Not a thing. I stood there gaping like a gaffed fish, Bear—I couldn’t get my jaw back in place. That girl’s mother had just died and she has come to live with her dad, and Liz acts like she’s just learned she struck a bad bargain.”

It wasn’t a good beginning, and it didn’t get better.

My first look at Phoebe was when Jo, my youngest, brought her home after school. I wouldn’t have called Phoebe a scarecrow. But I understood why Liz had.

I was home that April day, still recuperating. I had been back at the church office and in the pulpit within three weeks, but I wasn’t yet back at my old schedule, so that afternoon I’d been in our front yard giving Baby Bear some air when a fire-engine-red Ford F-150 jacked up on monster tires came to a sedate stop in front of our house. I knew that truck. It was Alex Garcia’s. Which meant that Alex had driven Jo home from school. I didn’t like Alex driving Jo anywhere—she was just fourteen, though until recently, Alex had been driving Jo all over the place. That was something Alex and Jo had not shared with me and Annie, or he wouldn’t have been. Alex was sixteen and a junior while Jo was only fourteen and a freshman. We’d found out that Jo had been sneaking out her second-story window to the garage roof where she would drop into the backyard and slip out the back gate to meet Alex. I wasn’t happy when I found out about it. You’re hearing the understatement, there, right?

When I finally released Jo from being permanently grounded (do you know private citizens are not allowed to buy those ankle-bracelet things they put on at-loose criminals?), I had stipulated that Alex could drive Jo from the high school to our house—that was a journey of all of one-half mile, and it was on residential streets, no stoplights and only two stop signs. The concession still made me feel like an appeasement monkey. But a man’s got to have some peace in the house.

On this particular day, Jo hopped out of the truck and dropped to her knees to greet Baby Bear who acted like he hadn’t seen her in a year, and said, “Hey, Dad! This is Phoebe Pickersley. Her parents go to our church.”

A long gangle of a girl descended from the passenger side. She clambered out backward, her booted foot feeling for the running board, and then turned to face me.

This was Phoebe.

There’s my Jo, a tiny five feet two inches, slim as a sprite, in jeans and a T-shirt, her dark hair flowing to her waist, and Alex, closing in on six feet, blond, blue-eyed and tan, and then, next to them, stood Phoebe.

Phoebe was nearly as tall as Alex. She was breastless and skinny in a boneless, sexless way, an impression enhanced by her short, choppy haircut and the black dye she had covered it with. I knew it was dyed because she had about an inch of pale, blonde roots showing. Phoebe was fighting the androgynous look with heaps of makeup. Her nose and one eyebrow were pierced, and a constellation of tiny silver earrings rose from her earlobe and up around the auricle of her left ear.

She had big blue eyes and a weak chin and round, red cheeks—a childish face. That made her piercings seem especially brutal. Her clothes were like nothing I’d ever seen before. I don’t even know how to describe them—like a smashup between a biker babe and an elf, maybe. With her long, skinny limbs and exotic coloring, she looked like a tropical insect set down in suburban Texas.

I wrenched my eyes off Phoebe and bent down to kiss the top of Jo’s head.

Jo said, “She’s Mark Pickersley’s daughter, Dad. Her mom died, and now she lives with her dad and stepmom. Lizabeth is where the ‘Smythe’ comes from, but Phoebe doesn’t use that.”

This girl was the same age as my two. I said, “Ahh, gee. I’m sorry, Phoebe. That’s hard, to lose your mom and then have a move on top of that.” Wholly inadequate. Any words would be in the face of that kind of loss. “So, are you at Clements with Jo and Alex? What year are you?”

Baby Bear had given the new girl a thorough smell inspection and now did Phoebe the courtesy of inviting her to play Steal the Sneaker. He did this by pulling at her bootlaces.

Phoebe took hold of Alex’s arm to keep her balance and waggled her foot, trying to shake Baby Bear off. “I’m a junior. I’ll go back to Torrance to take my finals, but I have to finish the year at Clements. Dad doesn’t want me driving back and forth, and Liz says she doesn’t want Dad commuting four hours a day to take me and pick me up. I’m only putting in days here. I can’t have any more absences or they’ll, like, make me repeat my junior year. They’re making this huge concession since Clements is in a different district.” She gave her left foot another little kick. Baby Bear was pleased with her encouragement and gave a play growl, mouth full of laces and butt in the air. “I wanted to stay at Torrance. I could have, too, if my dad had let me stay with Grandpop DeWitt. He moved into my old place. That’s what I should have done.”

I said, “Torrance High School?” Torrance High School is close to Hobby Airport—forty minutes away if there wasn’t any traffic, but we’re talking Houston and its outskirts—there’s always traffic. Mark really could spend close to four hours a day driving if he had to drive Phoebe to and from school. And Torrance isn’t only miles away—it’s a world away from the green and affluent campus of Clements High School. Torrance is, at best, a struggling high school. According to a U.S. News & World Report article, it’s a dropout factory. It serves a population that has never been given much voice in Houston politics, and I couldn’t imagine anyone with options choosing to send their kid there. For a man who lives in a million-dollar house to send his daughter to Torrance—I couldn’t see that. It made me reassess what I knew about Mark Pickersley-Smythe, above and beyond the whole hyphenated-name thing.

I said, “Huh,” because nothing better came to me.

Phoebe nodded, sucked her cheeks in and looked over my head.

•   •   •

“I was in the magnet program at Torrance. Science and mathematics. Top of my class.” Now Phoebe was gazing into the thicket of azaleas at the corner of the house.

Okay. I nodded my head. Jo and Alex had abandoned me to this awkward conversation and were romping with Baby Bear. Jo named the dog, by the way. Not me. I didn’t name that dog after myself and when Jo did, my protests got me nowhere. It was bad enough when Baby Bear was a puppy, but at least he looked like a baby then. Baby Bear, like all Newfoundlands, got big. His weight, at five years, wavered between 180 and 185.

“I hear good things about Houston’s magnet schools,” I said, wondering if I could excuse myself and go do something else. Anything else.

“I’m going to the Air Force Academy after I graduate. It’s in Colorado. Colorado Springs.” She addressed this to the front door.

I nodded. I knew where the Air Force Academy was. I didn’t think the Air Force Academy was all that big on piercings.

Jo grabbed the strap of Phoebe’s backpack and pulled her toward the house. Jo can be abrupt—when she’s no longer interested in a conversation, the conversation is over. Baby Bear romped alongside, leaving me and Alex alone in the front yard.

Alex shuffled his feet. “Mr. Wells? Phoebe wants to go to dance class with Jo. I could drive the girls. It’s only two point eight miles from here.” He grinned up at me. “I googled it.”

I was shaking my head before he finished.

“No, Alex. I’ll take Jo to dance. I’m going that way anyway.” I was going that way because I was taking Jo to dance class, not Alex. I led the kid into the house and poured him some tea from the pitcher Annie keeps ready-made.

Alex leaned his butt against the kitchen counter. I sat down at the kitchen table. We were silent, listening to the girls rummaging around upstairs in the room Merrie had left behind when she started her first year at Texas Tech.

“And how are you doing, son?” You have to say something.

Alex scooped a spoonful of sodden sugar from his tea and ate it.

“Mr. Wells, I’d be a whole lot better if you’d let me take Jo out now and then.”

“She’s fourteen, Alex.” Jo wouldn’t turn fifteen until September. Not that Alex didn’t know this.

“Jo says her mom was dating at fourteen.”

I mulled that over. Merrie, my eldest, had a boyfriend when she was fourteen or fifteen. My memory was that they went out in groups. And her guys weren’t as intense as Alex—Alex is so intense about Jo. I didn’t like it.

“Then I don’t know what her father was thinking.”

Alex put his glass in the sink and filled it with water. “You know I’d never let anything happen to Jo. I’m not going to take her anywhere bad. She’s got the cell phone.”

“Son, you took her out without our permission. I’m not happy about that. I don’t want to beat you over the head with it, but that wasn’t right.”

“I know, and I didn’t . . .”

He trailed off. He wouldn’t say anything bad about Jo. It hadn’t been his idea for Jo to sneak out of the house; it had been Jo’s.

I held my hand up. “Alex, we’ve been through it. It’s not happening. I’ve got nothing against you. You’re welcome here anytime it suits Jo, as long as either Mrs. Wells or I am at home.” I stopped to give him a meaningful look. “But as far as Jo and the truck goes, well, it goes as far as this house here. No farther. So. How’d you meet Phoebe?”

Alex opened his mouth but closed it again when we heard the girls clattering down the stairs. Jo had her shoe bag in her hand—my mother made it a hundred years ago to hold Jo’s ballet slippers. Phoebe clutched a worn pair of Merrie’s cast-off black ballet slippers to her chest.

Jo saw a protesting Alex to the door and we piled into my car, girls in the backseat, me and Baby Bear in the front seat.

From: Walker Wells

To: Merrie Wells

Do you remember how old you were when you had your first real date? Was it that Chris guy?

From: Merrie Wells

To: Walker Wells

Are you giving Jo grief over Alex? He’s a good kid, Dad.

•   •   •

Jo was full of Phoebe stories that night at dinner.

Phoebe had studied dance with a Russian instructor. Gyorgy taught her some new exercise techniques she could share with Jo. On hearing that Jo had been accepted into the prestigious School of American Ballet summer program and would spend the upcoming summer in New York, Phoebe revealed that the only reason she wasn’t doing the very same thing with her summer was because she wasn’t interested in classical ballet, it was “too regimented” for Phoebe—a girl who aspired to the United States Air Force Academy—but she wished Jo the best. Phoebe had been to New York City a hundred times, so she could tell Jo all the cool places to go. Phoebe would probably spend the summer hitchhiking through Costa Rica, but she could access the Internet from anywhere on Earth, so she could keep in touch with Jo while poor Jo was slaving away in hot, sweaty New York City. Or Jo could follow Phoebe’s blog, instead. She’s been getting a lot of interest from literary agents over the blog.

Annie Laurie had begun listening with an interested smile, by the time Jo ran out of enthusiastic comments, the smile was gone and Annie had an eyebrow raised in the position referred to as “askance.” I hadn’t looked up from my plate once.

Annie poured herself some wine, and said, voice carefully neutral, “What did Madame Laney think of Phoebe’s dancing? Is she going to let Phoebe join up?”

Jo twined the fibers of a spaghetti squash around the tines of a fork and smelled it. “Is there butter on this?” Jo is thoroughly vegetarian and leaning toward vegan. My daughter is a sixth-generation Texan and practically vegan. I think somebody snuck in some California blood somewhere along the line.

Annie said, “A little. Not enough to make a difference—maybe a tablespoon for the whole squash. What did Madame Laney say?”

Jo put the bite in her mouth and held it there for a meditative moment before chewing and swallowing. She looked a question at me before turning back to her mother.

“Didn’t Dad tell you about the fall Phoebe had right outside the studio? She tripped on the curb and fell on her knee. She couldn’t dance today. She’s going to have to go easy on the knee for a week. Madame Laney said Phoebe could sit in on class today. If she wants to dance, Phoebe needs to bring Madame a letter from Gyorgy, saying what level she is.”

Annie Laurie looked from Jo to me. I offered Baby Bear a strand of underbuttered squash and declined to meet her eyes. Baby Bear made a big deal over the single, flavorless strand.

•   •   •

Over dishes that night Annie said, “What’s up?”

There was only a dab of that squash stuff left. I shoveled it into Baby Bear’s dish. Annie took the serving dish from me and told me to sit down, and I was happy to. The scar on my belly didn’t look like a big deal, but I still felt achy and tired by early evening. I eased down into a kitchen chair and rubbed the wound on my belly. Sometimes it itched.

“Is her door closed?”

Annie looked at the ceiling. Muffled music reverberated. “It’s closed, Bear. She’s working on her algebra sheets.”

I sighed. Merrie had been taking pre-AP Geometry at Jo’s age.

“You haven’t met Phoebe . . .”

“No,” Annie Laurie agreed, “that’s why I’m . . .”

“She’s a little different.”

“Mother Teresa different or Lady Gaga different?” She fitted a cabinet door back in its frame and bumped it with a knee to get it to stay. I’ve fixed it twice but the screws are stripped. Which means filling old holes, drilling new holes . . .

“Just . . . well, more Gaga than Teresa. I don’t know. No, that’s not true. Okay. Here’s what I’ve heard, either from Jo or from Phoebe herself.”

Annie Laurie put the last pot away, picked up her wineglass and rested a hip against the sink. “I’m listening.”

“She says she’s top of her class in the math and science magnet program at Torrance High School—that could be true. She could be smart.”

Annie did her eyebrow thing. “Torrance? Mark Pickersley-whatever had his daughter going to Torrance?”

“That’s what she says.” Baby Bear insinuated himself between my thighs and I gave his ears the long, slow massage he likes.

“Hmm.

“She says she’s going to the Air Force Academy.”

Annie jerked her head back a little. “Hmm, again.”

“Well, yeah. If it’s true. You haven’t met her, Annie. Remember that visit to the Academy a couple of years back? Everybody so clean-cut they squeaked when they walked? That’s not Phoebe. I mean, I’ve never checked the requirements for the Air Force Academy, but I do know you have to have a letter of recommendation from your senator or representative, and I can’t see Kay Bailey Hutchison having her picture taken shaking hands with Phoebe. Phoebe looks more like that girl with the dragon tattoo than a cadet. It’s not going to happen, and I don’t care if she’s Richard Feynman smart. So there’s that.

“Then we hear she’s got a personal dance instructor, a Russian, and she could have gotten into The School of American Ballet summer program only she didn’t ‘choose’ to, and she’s hitchhiking through Costa Rica. Solo. While she writes some award-winning blog. You think her dad would let her hitchhike through Costa Rica?”

Annie tipped the last of her glass into her mouth. “Maybe. He let her go to Torrance High School.”

I snorted.

“Couldn’t be any more dangerous.” Annie smiled at me and rinsed her glass under the faucet, swirling the stem and letting the water fountain up.

“The dancing thing . . .”

“Yes?”

“She’s not a dancer.”

Annie set her glass down and considered me.

“Let’s move into the family room. You’ll be more comfortable.”

She gave me a hand up, not that I needed one; it was a friendly thing to do, that’s all. We settled next to each other on the sofa. Baby Bear, after making his token attempt to join us on the sofa, settled at our feet. I put my feet on the coffee table and Annie let me. I’m getting away with a lot while I’m convalescing.

“Tell me why you don’t think Phoebe could be a dancer.”

I pulled Annie close to me and tucked her head under my chin.

“She’s too tall . . .”

“Dancers are getting taller, Bear. The kids are getting taller.”

“I think she’s taller than Merrie.”

“Cynthia Gregory is pretty tall.”

“I don’t know who Cynthia Gregory is, but if she’s a ballet dancer, I’m betting she’s not five feet eleven, like Phoebe.”

“Okay.”

“But that’s not the main reason.”

“Okay.”

“The main reason is that the girl doesn’t move like a dancer. Phoebe’s ungainly and awkward.” I caught Annie’s look. “No, I’m not being ungenerous or too hard on her. Merrie moves like an athlete. Jo moves like a dancer. Phoebe moves like, like she’s put together wrong.”

Annie scooched to the edge of the sofa so she could lean her back on the sofa arm and put her feet in my lap. I slipped her sandals off and began rubbing her feet.

“Like she’s not comfortable in her body,” I amended. “And that ‘fall’ right before dance class? I saw it. I was waiting in the car for them to go inside. Jo was leading the way so she didn’t see it, but Annie, that was the most contrived fall I’ve ever seen. It was Keystone Kops contrived. I’ll tell you what. I bet Laney saw the farce through the window. That’s why she wants some kind of verification from this Gyorgy guy. Get off the couch, Baby.” See, what Baby Bear’s attempts to get on the couch tells me is that when I’m not home, someone is letting that dog on the couch.

“She’s only a kid, Bear.”

“Annie, do you get that I don’t care whether or not Phoebe can dance? You’re not hearing me say I don’t like her—I’m not saying I do like her; I’m withholding judgment.”

“Sure you are,” said Annie, then, “Ow!” I had accidentally popped one of her toes. She pulled her feet away from my hands and tucked them under my butt.

“I guess I’m kind of wondering what her interest in Jo is,” I continued. “I mean, she’s two grades ahead of Jo . . .”

“Alex is two grades ahead of Jo . . .”

“Move your feet, you’ve got too many bones in your feet.” Her feet were cold, too. They’re always cold. “Broad-minded though I try to be, I wouldn’t be thrilled if Phoebe’s interest in Jo is the same as Alex’s interest in Jo, and I didn’t pick up anything like that.”

She shoved her feet farther under me. “That’s not what I was saying, Bear. How did you make that leap from what I said? So maybe it isn’t Jo at all. Maybe it’s Alex she’s interested in.”

I leaned back. All right. It could be that. And that might not be a bad thing. Annie Laurie and I had been much happier before we knew about Alex’s infatuation with Jo. Ignorance really is bliss. Sometimes. Sort of. It’s not like we’re all paranoid about boys being around our girls—Merrie, with her blonde good looks and athletic body, had certainly gotten more than her fair share of male attention. It was the intensity of Alex’s feelings, his fervor, that had us unnerved.

Alex uses the word “love.” In front of us. In a challenging kind of way. As in “I am in love with Jo” and “I am in love with your daughter.” Annie tells me not to dismiss Alex’s feelings, and I try not to, but I do not want to hear some guy say he’s in love with my fourteen-year-old daughter. I want him to sit in the family room and talk football for a respectful period of time, and then go to whatever group activity they have planned. I’m fine with the boy having feelings, but I don’t want him sharing those feelings with me. And if he says it to Jo, I want him sitting on his hands while he does so, you get me?

So it wasn’t altogether unwelcome to entertain the thought that someone else might be trying to hone in on Jo’s territory.

Still. Alex is a good kid. Good grades, doesn’t smoke (I’d know if he did—he wears that blond hair to his shoulders and I’d smell it on him), his pupils are always the right size (yeah, I check, this kid spends time with my baby). And Phoebe was a complicated person in a complicated situation, and . . .

As much as I didn’t want Alex to be trouble in Jo’s life, I didn’t want any more trouble in Alex’s life. He’d been through too much already. And Phoebe looked like trouble.

Sometimes when it looks like a duck and it sounds like a duck, it is a duck.