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"He's not!" I insisted.

"Okay. Come right back, and if they're having a discussion, leave them be," he ordered.

"I will," I promised, picked up my present from Harley and started for the house.

I knocked on the screen door and waited. It was very quiet. But I thought I could hear Aunt Glenda crying softly. I knocked again and finally Uncle Roy came out to greet me.

"Princess:' What's up? How come you're not with the family?"

"I wanted to bring Harley a piece of my birthday cake. Uncle Roy, Can I see him. please?"

"I'm afraid not," he said.

"Please. Uncle Roy. I won't be able to sleep if I don't see him." He hesitated and then he looked at me and shook his head.

"He's not here," he said. "What?"

"He's done it again." he said. "'Added insult to injury."

"What has he done?"

"Hes run away."

Everyone looked up when I entered my house, but only Mommy immediately saw that I was only seconds away from bursting into a flood of hysterical tears. I still had the plate with the piece of birthday cake in my hand and my present from Harley under my arm.

"What is it. Summer?" she asked, wheeling toward me.

"Harley's run away," I said. I felt the trembling in my chin.

"That poor woman," Grandmother Megan said. "To lose one child and then have this constant trouble with her other child."

She gazed across the room at Aunt Alison, who had fallen asleep in the oversize cushion chair. Everyone, especially Grandfather Grant, was thinking the same thing. Who knew better than Grandmother Megan what it was like to lose a child and be burdened with another's bad behavior?

"He'll be back." Mommy said. but I turned away quickly to hide the first errant tear and then ran for the stairway, not looking back once as I pounded up the stairs and into my room. There. I threw myself on my bed and buried my face in my pillow to stop any more tears.

Moments later. I heard the whirring sound of Mommy's elevator chair and I felt even more terrible. I had caused her to go through the big effort it took to transfer herself and come up here. She did it faster than usual and was knocking on my door in min' utes.

"Come in," I said, turning and flicking the tears from my cheeks.

The door opened and she wheeled herself in. closing it behind her.

"I'm so sorry you're upset on this birthday. honey. Please, don't be," she said.

I nodded, took a deep breath and looked at her.

"Why does Harley have to be so... so unhappy?" I asked her. She smiled,

"He's not as unhappy as he is afraid," she said.

"Afraid? Harley? I don't think he's afraid of anything. That's his problem."

"No," she insisted, wheeling closer to my bed. "I know exactly what he's feeling. He's afraid because he sees himself in a world in which he thinks he doesn't belong. Can you imagine what it was like for me to come here when I was just a senior in high school after having lived in the projects in

Washington. D.C., a ghetto world where drugs and crime were so rampant, you could look out the front window and think you were watching television news.

"It's easier when you're younger and you have a chance to adjust, but to be dumped into another world entirely with little or no preparation..."

"Why did your adopted mother keep the secret about your birth so long?"