"She's missing and I thought she might have come here."

"And why would she do that?"

"Well, because she thought, uh..." Harper stopped, unable to find a way to explain.

Mary opened the door wider. "Come in."

Harper gazed quickly around as she stepped inside but saw no one. "Have you seen her, then?"

Mary, closing the door, said, "Yes." She waved her hand to indicate that Harper should follow her. "Fascinating girl. We've been having a wonderful time."

"You mean she's here now?"

"Yes. She's out by the pool." Mary walked rapidly through the kitchen toward the back door. Harper followed in a state of confusion.

"Such a quick intellect and a feisty spirit," Mary said. "Reminds me of Chelsea when she was young...and impressionable."

"Is Chelsea here?" Harper asked, remembering suddenly.

Mary stopped abruptly and turned to face her, the amusement gone from her face. For the first time in all the years Harper had known her, she looked old. Deep lines creased each side of her mouth, and her dark hair was spattered with gray with one dramatic lock of silver swept back from her forehead.

"Chelsea hasn't been here since April," she said. "Are you going to tell me you didn't know that?"

Harper, stunned, shook her head. "I-no, I didn't."

Mary studied her for a long moment, her expression flat and unnerving. Then she turned and pushed the back door open, leading the way to the pool where Sarah was lying in a lounge chair, wearing a skimpy pink bikini and reading a book. If Harper hadn't expected to see her niece, she wouldn't have recognized her. For one thing, her hair was now bleached blond and quite short. Harper had never seen her without long hair.

She had turned into a woman overnight as well, it seemed. No wonder they're having all of this trouble with her, Harper thought, taking in the long legs, ripe bosom and flat, tanned stomach. She was a voluptuous creature. She looked up from her book and broke into a wide smile.

"Aunt Harper!" She sprang from her chair, ran up and flung her arms around Harper, then stood beaming at her, her expression that of an excited child. A tiny diamond in the left side of her nose sparkled as she moved. "You guys are back."

"I got home yesterday," Harper said, confused by the "you guys."

"Is Chelsea here? I want to meet her."

Harper glanced at Mary, who averted her eyes.

"Have you been here since Tuesday?" Harper asked.

Sarah nodded.

"No Disneyland?"

"You know, I had no idea Disneyland was so far away! I went to the library and looked it up. Besides, I used up my life savings coming out here, so I had no way to get there. I decided to find Chelsea instead. I figured she'd know where you were. That's how I ended up here. Mary said I could wait for you here. I've been having a great time. Mary's a painter. Did you know that?

She does these amazing impressionistic scenes. She promised to paint me. Don't you think that would be cool? Oh, and the things we eat around here are just amazing. I've had so many things I've never had before. We had caviar! And Mary let me have a glass of champagne last night."

Harper cast a sharp glance at Mary, who shrugged. Sarah was still speaking, rapidly, excitedly. "Oh, God, Aunt Harper, she knows so much about literature. Have you seen her library? I could just die. Nobody has a library anymore. I love it. I could live in there for years."

Harper looked from Sarah to Mary, exasperated.

"What could I do?" Mary asked, adopting a mocking tone once more. "The little orphan came calling. She had nowhere else to go, poor thing." Mary stepped toward Sarah and put her arm around her shoulders. "And since she was a relative of my good friend Harper, I had to take her in, didn't I?"

Harper felt herself growing angry. As calmly as she could, she said, "Mary, can we go inside and talk?"

"Of course." Mary gave Sarah a squeeze, then released her, saying, "Go back to your book, darling."

Mary offered Harper a seat in the living room. The walls were still covered with that incongruous collection of art, including the painting of Chelsea, which was hanging where Harper had first seen it, above the fireplace. It had been six years since she had been in this room.

"What did you want to talk about?" Mary asked shortly. Her expression was unfriendly.

"What the hell is going on here? What have you been doing with my niece?"

"What do you think I've been 'doing' with her?" Mary asked defiantly. "Discussing the finer points of iambic pentameter?"

She looked incredibly pleased with herself.

Harper leapt out of her chair. "She's only sixteen!" she exclaimed.

Mary, her voice perfectly calm, said, "Too young for iambic pentameter? I think not."

Harper, confused, said, "What?"

"Surely you're familiar with iambic pentameter?"

Harper realized that Mary was playing with her, which made her even angrier. She forced herself to speak calmly. "Why have you kept her here?"

"Kept her? God, Harper, you make it sound like I abducted the girl. I hope that, despite what it sounds like, you aren't accusing me of anything improper."

Mary's glare was challenging. This antagonism was upsetting to Harper. There was a time when she had hoped she could be friends with Mary. Now they were practically enemies.

"No," Harper said, sitting again. "I'm not accusing you of anything. I just don't understand what's going on."

Mary's expression relaxed. "Sarah showed up at my door Tuesday afternoon, looking for you, babbling incoherently. She assumed she would find you wherever she would find Chelsea, she said, and this was the address she had for Chelsea." Mary pursed her lips. "Well, I assumed the same thing. I assumed you and Chelsea were together, that she had gone to you as soon as I turned her out. It's what she does."

"I haven't seen her," Harper said softly. "I didn't know she had moved out." She felt awkward talking to Mary about this, but Mary was the best source of information she had at the moment.

"You and Chelsea, then, you're split up?"

Mary looked at Harper dispassionately. "She's no longer living here. But if I should want her to come back, she would do it in an instant. All I have to do is ask. You know that, don't you?"

Mary's voice was calm, but forceful.

Harper dropped her gaze to her hands in her lap.

"But why are we talking about Chelsea?" Mary said, her tone lightening. "I thought you wanted to talk about Sarah. I decided to invite her in, and she just stayed. Nothing very mysterious about it. I did consider that it was a sort of joke on you at first, but, then, after a few hours, I was just enjoying her company."

"I'm still confused. Who does she think you are? I mean, in relationship to Chelsea?"

Mary shrugged. "I believe she has some idea that I'm her aunt or something like that. I don't know. To be honest, Harper, we haven't been talking about Chelsea."

"So what have you and Sarah been doing, other than drinking champagne and eating caviar?"

"It was just a tiny glass. No harm in it. She deserves to sample the finer things in life. We've had quite a bit of fun. We've been listening to music and talking, mostly about poetry and fiction.

And, yes, iambic pentameter. She showed me some of her writing.

She's not very good, but she is enthusiastic, and she's well read."

"How good could she be at sixteen?"

"Right. My students are usually a little older than that, and that particular couple of years can do wonders for them. But she has this poem called 'Passing Through,' which is dreadful and utterly irredeemable, full of puerile rhymes and heartwarming sentiments. You decide for yourself, but you'll agree with me.

Said she wrote it on the train on her way across country." Mary clasped her hands together with an air of solemnity. "Are you going to take her away now?"

"Yes." Harper stood and walked toward the kitchen. Mary followed.

"You couldn't maybe leave her here for a couple of days?"

she asked.

"Why would I do that?"

"Why not? She's enjoying herself. She loves to read, and I have books. She told me there isn't a book anywhere in your house. What kind of travesty is that?"

"I'll take her to the library," Harper said.

It occurred to Harper, listening to the beseeching tone in Mary's voice, that Sarah was providing a much-cherished bit of company for her. Harper needed to get her home, though, and tell Neil that his daughter was safe and under her protection.

Well, Harper thought, steeling herself, if Mary gets lonely enough she can do as she boasted and reel Chelsea back in. She pushed through the back door to the patio.

"Sarah, get your things together," Harper called to her.

"We're going home."

Sarah looked up from her book. "Okay," she said, sitting up and slipping on her wrap. "I'll be back to visit," she said to Mary.

"I want you to show me that meter thing that Ovid and Homer used."

"Dactylic hexameter," Mary reminded her.

"Yes, that. I didn't even know it had a name."

"And Virgil," Mary pointed out, "in the Aeneid. That's why it's sometimes called the heroic hexameter, because it was used for the heroic poems."

"The epics," Sarah said.

"The epics, yes." Mary smiled approvingly.

Sarah held out the book she'd been reading toward Mary.

"Keep it," Mary said. "I have another copy." Her voice was gentle. She was in her element instructing young women in the arts, Harper knew. Sarah must seem like the ideal accidental visitor to her. In just three days, they seemed to have formed a genuine friendship.

"I'll get my stuff from my room," Sarah said, looking from Mary to Harper before slipping into the house.

Mary turned to Harper and said, "She's a sweet girl. What are you going to do with her?"

"Send her back to her parents. What else?" She turned to go back in the house.

Mary caught her arm and said, quietly but emphatically, "Harper, while you have her, teach her something."

On the way home, Sarah talked nonstop about her trip out on the train and about her stay at Mary's house, which started to sound like the most fabulous few days any girl had ever had.

"We went out to lunch yesterday with a friend of Mary's. Her name is Catherine Gardiner. She's wicked cool. Do you know her?"

"Well, yes, I do. In fact, I made a documentary about her.

She's a famous poet."

Sarah looked astonished. "Really? I didn't know she was famous. You have the most amazing friends! At lunch, I just sat there with my mouth open, listening to the two of them talking.

They don't talk like other people. They talk like they're in a play or something. I've never heard a real-life conversation like it."

I would have liked to have been at that lunch myself, Harper thought. It had been Mary who had introduced her to Catherine Gardiner and who had suggested her as a subject for the documentary series. Harper had been grateful for that. She had been interested in the eccentric poet ever since first hearing about her association with Hilda Perry so many years ago. Harper was amused at the thought of Sarah at lunch with the two of them, these odd, intriguing figures of the modern art world.

"And then they quoted poetry at one another, right there in the middle of dessert!" Sarah continued. "I tried to remember it, but mostly I can't. Something about Julia's clothes."

Harper smiled. "Whenas in silks my Julia goes," she recited, "Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows that liquefaction of her clothes."

"Oh, my God, Aunt Harper! That's it!"

Harper understood Sarah's amazement. She herself could remember a few times hearing professors speaking in that strange literary tongue, a banter of wits which bore no resemblance to ordinary conversation. Their speech was a kind of game, like chess. Chelsea had absorbed some of that from Mary, and Harper admired and enjoyed it, though she herself was unable to play.

She had the knowledge for it, but not the skill.

"I hope you got a picture," Harper said, "because you just had lunch with two prominent artists, and there are a lot of people who would have paid money to have been in your place yesterday."

"I've never even heard of her. I feel like such a freak. I'm sure they both think I'm a total spaz."

"I think Mary believes you're worth saving."

Sarah then spoke about the places she had traveled through on her way from Massachusetts to California and the strange characters she encountered. That was just as intriguing to Harper, though in a different way, since the people she had met in train stations, while also colorful and interesting, were often people at the opposite end of the spectrum. They were equally alien to Sarah, whose life up until now had been sheltered, even cloistered in the bosom of her nuclear family.

"You should write all of this down," Harper suggested. "So you'll remember. All the details of your adventure."

"Oh, I have been! I have a journal. I've taken notes of 'my epic journey' across the U.S.A."

Sarah quit talking for a moment as she contemplated that thought, which she was obviously savoring deeply.