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overhear the conversation.

"I really wish you wouldn't be thinking about that so much, honey."

"I can't help it," I said.

He nodded.

"Well, I'm sorry to say there was never any doubt that she was a very disturbed person."

He looked like he was going to tell me more. I waited, holding my breath.

"Her story was quite fantastic, and there just wasn't any concrete evidence to support any of it. Could it somehow still have been true? Well, I suppose we should never absolutely discount anything. It's so long ago and so much damage has been done to the truth, whatever it is, that it's impossible to make any firm conclusions that will satisfy you--or me, for that matter. It won't change anything now."

"It would for me," I said.

"I meant for your mother." He turned to me. His face darkened with the shadow of his deep thoughts. "I don't know how you can do it or if you ever will, but somehow, I wish you could let it all go, Alice. Be your own person and put it away."

"I don't know who I am, Grandpa. I don't know how to be my own person."

"You will," he said and put his arm around me to squeeze me to him. "Someday, you will. I'm confident."

We saw the car my father and Rachel had rented coming down the road toward the house.

"Why does Rachel hate me?" I dared ask.

We watched my father turn into the driveway.

"She doesn't hate you, Alice," my grandfather said in a tired, frustrated voice. "She's threatened by you. I think you're old enough to understand. You're a part of Jesse that she doesn't want to admit exists. In time, she'll get more comfortable with you, especially when you come into your own. Until then, treat her like thin ice. Don't worry. I'll always be there," he added.

Even if my father isn't, I wanted to add but didn't.

"Hey," my father called to us when he stepped out of the car. "You know how big the potholes are in this driveway already?"

"Really? I never noticed," my grandfather said and winked at me.

I smiled, and we walked back to join them. Rachel walked faster into the house.

"Where you guys been?" my father asked.

"I took Alice over to look at the Bedik property.

Still thinking about buying it all for

development. As an artist, Alice could envision it all better than I can."

My father looked at me.

"So what do you think, Alice?" he asked. "Is your grandfather crazy?"

"No."

"And even if I were, she wouldn't say so," Grandpa told him. They laughed.

"I'd like to see that painting we were talking about before I left," my father told me. "Where is it?"

"In the attic," I said. He flashed a look at my grandfather and then at me, his eyes at first full of trepidation and then, suddenly, brightening with excitement.

"Okay. Let's go take a look."