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"Who knows? Maybe he's crawling in the sand looking for shells. Don't pay attention to him. C'mon," she said. "We'd better get back."

"I'll be right along." I said, staring at the easel.

"Don't be long." she advised, and started toward the house.

I continued down to the easel and stopped to look at what was on it.

A picture had been sketched in, the painting of it just begun.

It was a picture of someone standing in the entryway of a house. He was looking out at a young woman who resembled me. I thought.

In the ocean seen behind her, a woman was drowning.

It all put a chill in my heart. "Hey!" I heard.

Linden was coming up over the hill in front of me. I turned, and, with my heart thumping like a flat tire. I ran up the beach to the walkway. I didn't stop running until I reached the Ionia where everyone was enjoying the desserts. They looked up surprised.

"Are you all right. dear?" Bunny asked immediately.

"I... just need to use the bathroom." I said, and hurried inside, their confused and surprised faces turning to follow me.

In the bathroom. I looked at my face in the mirror.

"Go home. Willow De Beers," I told that face. "You're trying to get back something that never existed and probably never will."

"I can't." I replied. "I've got to try."

Why? I thought,

The first word most babies uttered was Mama.

I was almost nineteen years old. and I had yet to say it once.

That's why.

9

A Night for Romance

.

"I'm not sure I'm doing that." I said when

Bunny jumped up as soon as Thatcher returned to tell him I was staying at the house. "Oh, of course you're sure," she declared as though she knew my mind better than I did.

Lord and Lady Thomas and the McClusters had left. and Thatcher's father had gone into his office to phone someone about the golf game he was planning for the following morning. Bunny had been showing me around the house, especially where I would stay.

"Look at the size of these rooms!' she cried. "And how far away the guest suites are from our bedrooms. Why, we won't even realize you're here, and you'll have as much privacy as you wish."

That was not an exaggeration. The rambling structure did seem to go on forever, and the rooms were enormous by any standard. The bedroom she suggested for me was, according to her, designed by Addison Mizner himself.

"He wouldn't do a house unless he could put his stamp inside as well as outside." she said.

The room was easily twenty feet by forty, with its own sitting area, large-screen television, stereo, and secretary desk--hardly what anyone would think of as a guest bedroom. It was done in soft, warm colors: salmon and beige and a pale green she called celadon.

Bunny pointed out a beautiful vase in a sort of turquoise glaze. "That's his signature color. Mizner Blue, "It's as if he left his fingerprints," she declared, and then whispered. "It makes the house more valuable. Someday, we might buy it. We're leasing with an option to buy."

I nodded and continued to look about the room. The ceiling-high windows were draped in salmon silk, and a pair of French doors opened to a balcony that looked out at the sea.