Twice Burned
by
Kit Craig

copyright 1995

WE HAVE our instruments laid out.

Look at my twin shrinking from the task at hand.  No.  Horrible!

Doesn't she know we have imperatives?  Yes, horrible!  My eyes bore
into hers.  Exactly.

We are alone in the latticed gazebo, where it is private.  Far from the
house.  We sit on the floor, regarding the sacrificial item.  Because
of the badness yesterday there is trouble in the big house, and we are
in danger.  A sacrifice is in order.

We are the queen of Amadamaland.  We do certain things to protect the
kingdom.

And what are we doing exactly?  This is one of our dark little
secrets.

Hers, mine.  My twin grimaces and tries to squirm away as though she
has a choice in this.

Can't she see we are the same person?

Whatever I will - happens.  My hands dart out.  She shrinks but does
not fight me.  I knot my fingers in her hair and twist until the
knuckles gouge her scalp.  You like this.  Admit it.

No I don't like it, she cries, or is that me crying?  I dowt!

Oh yes we do.

We do.  We both know it.  Gouging, I gouge with my knuckles until she
starts to cry and I twist her hair until she stops crying and we
resume.  She relaxes into it.  The sacrifice.  There, that's better.

She smiles at me.

Mmm, es, we are one in this.

A new voice jars us.  "My God, what are you doing?"

Alarmed, we cry, "Janem!"

We cry, "Shut up, Emjane, we have to do this."

"Whatever it is, stop it!"  Then we see her oh yes, the mother
streaming downhill like a flight of banners.  Look as she clears the
patio steps behind Grandmother Archer's house.  See her sprinting
through the grass in her bare feet, Vivian the crazed and glorious.

Beautiful in anger.  Poor Vivian.  Here comes our mother with her black
hair wild and the silk kimono flowing.  Her sleeves flash like pennants
and her voice is' huge, "Jane!  Emily!  Whatever you're doing, stop!"

Jane, Emily.  Those are peasant names.  Mother, don't you even know
us?

We are jade and Emerald, the queen of Amadamaland, separate in some
ways, yes, but always, listen!  Always one person.  Us.

In her rage, our mother is a thundercloud -we know that look.  When
she's angry she forgets we are the queen and treats us like ordinary
citizens, like Children.  "Stop it or I'll have to .

What are you trying to do to us, Mother?

But the hill is long and our mother far away, so we pretend not to
hear.

Poor Vivian.  Nothing she does matters.  There is only us.  When she is
dead, there will still be us.  jade and Emerald.

"Jane," our mother cries in that big voice that means we have
displeased her, "Emily!"

Fool.  You don't even know us.

Queen jade, we are, the queen of Amadamaland.  We are her beautiful
twin, Queen Emerald.  Working quickly, we deal with the sacrificial
object.  And prepare to meet our mother.  We will blink, all
innocence.

Who, us?

In Amadamaland, we can be who we want.  With Vivian, we have to keep
our secrets.

"Girls!"  Vivian Archer's voice is big enough to fill the distance
between them, but her daughters act as though they don't hear her.  She
is shaking with anger.  How could they?  How could they do such an ugly
thing?  How could they call attention to themselves like this, after
all her warnings?

Mother has sent her outside to tell them it's over.  Next week they
leave the genteel, musty safety of St. Margaret's for separate girls'
boarding schools on the East Coast.  "Farmington for Emily, I think,"
Meredith said today.  She means Miss Porter's.  "And for our Jane,
Ashley Hall."

Torn between rage and regret, she sobs.  If only.  If only this had
come down differently!  But Vivian can't escape the evidence, the
bloody piece of silver, slapped into her hand like an ultimatum.  If
only the girls' riding teacher hadn't found the wretched thing.  If
only her girls would answer her.

there's an explanation."  If they'd only look at her, "Oh, Mom, don't
be silly.  Of course They are so beautiful, really, all sunlight and
charm.  They are so lovely.  And complex.

Then she homes in on the scene below.  What they are doing down there
in the gazebo.  Everything in her quakes.  My God.  What are you?  What
is this thread that runs through the generations?

She runs and runs without coming any closer.  It's like being in the
old nightmare, where she screams her lungs to ribbons and nobody
hears.

The hill behind her mother's house is long, the velvety grass is
spongy, her twin daughters see her coming.  They will finish with the
object on the floor of the gazebo before she can get close enough to
see what they are doing.

What have they got down there?  Their movements are swift and
furtive.

Panting, Vivian rummages through memory.  Did they have somebody to the
house to play today, did they?  A girl from school?  The gardener's
daughter?  And if they did, where is she, anyway?

If she asks, they will look up at Vivian with that bait-and-switch twin
cleverness and say, "Who, us?  Why, what do you want, Mother?"

Then her sly, beautiful daughters will turn away from her, basking in
each other.  At fourteen they still use that secret baby language that
excludes the world outside the charmed circle of lifelong pairing.

They use it against Vivian like a weapon.  "Eemo.  Elmo.  Ey nay.  Mo
no Amadamaland letternay.

Einel!"  Their language conceals the meaning but makes clear their
intentions, Well, janem, Emjane, what are we going to do with her?

What does it matter?  She's only the mother.

The worst part is she understands.  She too was born a twin.

Below, her girls keep on doing what they are doing.  Everything
distances them.  Unlike most fourteen-year-olds, who run wild in jeans
and T-shirts, Vivian's girls sit in the gazebo in flowered Laura Ashley
dresses with their long hair pulled back in contrasting ribbons.  They
insist on quaint ruffled slips and tucked dresses straight out of
Little House on the Prarie.  What are they pretending here?  Who are
they trying to be?

if only you would yell at me.  if only you would get dirty.  Diamond
hoops nip their earlobes and their legs are covered with pale
stockings.  The shoes are pale leather, unscuffed, unmarred.

Her girls have golden skins, and they have Steve Harriman's angular
body.  Their hair is light and full, like Steve's.  They have Vivian's
eyes, but with a difference - a glint that suggests that there are some
things even a mother can't know.  The brows curve like elegant, dark
wings, and the hair is so thick and smoothly combed that even a high
wind can't disturb it.  The girls are always exquisitely groomed,
perfect.  Their profiles are perfect - left and right, Jane and Emily,
unless it's Emily on the left, with Jane facing her.

One is slightly taller, but Vivian cannot to this day say which, it's
as if from one day to the next, the ratio changes.  She thinks she
knows who has the triangular smile, but they don't hold still long
enough for her to make certain.

She needs to know, she needs to know which one is Jane and which Emily,
and which girl put the silver charm underneath the hurt child's saddle
and brought all this down on them.  Isn't she their mother?  She makes
them wear colored watchbands to keep them straight - red for Jane, blue
for Emily, but she knows they switch.  Twins love to confuse, Vivian
thinks, just the way Zane and I ...

Vivian shakes herself, why is this so sinister?  Sometimes when she
tries to go into their suite, when she opens the door a crack, they
freeze, as if she's caught them in the middle of something.

Frowning, they rise with their arms folded, like - like queens.  She is
threatened by the heaped cartons, painted like castles with towers and
drawbridges.  Massed dolls in gowns, in helmets and bucklers reproach
her.  She knows better than to go any further.

If she tries the girls slip into the hall and flank her, laughing.

"Mom, if you come in you'll only try to make us clean up."  The' i r
tone is light, loving.

"Plus, Mom, the queen is indisposed."

"Oh Mom, come on downstairs with us.  We're going to sneak in the
kitchen and make brownies."

This is how they head her off, with charm.  "And if you show us your
old school pictures we'll let you lick the spoon."

Laughing, she lets them turn her away from the door and hurry her
along.

Yet at the same time there is something running underneath, a dignity
as firm as bedrock.  Do not think for one minute that you can oppose
us.

She knows better than to try.

Now she has to.  She lingers on the hillside because she can't bear to
begin.

They all know she has come running out of the house for good reason.

Still the twins move slowly, as if enchanted.  Their hands linger over
the paisley scarf, ready to whip it over the thing between them.  But
they look so sweet, playing in the gazebo, like porcelain figures on a
gilded music box perfect, remote.  If they see Vivian on the hill, they
give no sign.  If they hear her calling, they pretend not to.  They are
sitting flat with their thighs touching and their feet splayed,
recklessly double-jointed, just like Vivian when she was little.  Like
Zane.  In the gazebo, when Zane and I and poor Kurt Graver were
little.

In the gazebo when we were grown and Kurt and I made love.  It stops
her heart.  God!

Again Vivian feels the sick, sweet tug that brought her home to the big
house on the cliff in the first place.  She remembers the tangle of
opposing forces - dark and light, yang and yin, good and evil, that
drove her and her twin brother.  Which was good and which was not?

Nobody knew.  She can't for the life of her say which side she
represents.  She and Zane could not know and now, oh God, history
re-creates itself down there in the gazebo at the bottom of the hill.

Once burned, she thinks, and is afraid to think, once burned, twice
burned.

Oh God.  Vivian is transfixed.  The implications overwhelm her and root
her on the grassy hillside, rapt and fearful.  In the next
generation.

She gropes toward complete memory but her perception is blurred,
faulty.  She won't or can't make herself remember.  All she knows is
that it began down there in the gazebo, the funny latticed bandstand
her grandfather built in the last century when a string trio played
while the family had tea.  She had a twin brother then, a boy with her
face and the same black hair and skin so white it seemed translucent.

They used to lose themselves in their matched blue eyes, Zane fixed on
Vivian's image, Vivian on Zane.  What he thought, she knew.  It was
wonderful, terrible.  Her mother Meredith shook when she held them.

They used to play down there exactly where her daughters sit now, on
the weathered, silvery floor of the gazebo, spinning stories with Kurt
Graver, the chauffeur's son, they were so happy.

Until it ended in fire and blood.  Kurt went to the hospital and things
were never the same again but they played, they did.  When Kurt came
back from the hospital they went on playing as if none of it had ever
happened.  But twinhood has its imperatives, the wicked thing that
surfaced in Zane grew.

Then they were twenty and she and Kurt-she thinks it was love-like
nothing she'd deserved to feel.  But all at once instead of two lovers
there were three in the gazebo-Kurt like a thunderbolt.  It did not end
that night.  There were tears and reproaches, outrage and blood.  The
end came on the cliff.  Memory beggars her.

Vivian chokes on it.  The horror.  The grief that followed.  Pain and
fear obliterate the rest, but somewhere deep she knows it's what makes
her so afraid.

Now Zane is dead and Kurt has shut himself into the apartment above the
garage and won't talk to her.  She still cries for Zane.  They were the
same person.  He was Vivian, she was Zane.  Alike in everything.  Even
though her twin brother has been gone for all these years she misses
him.  It's like having a second self ripped out of her side.  All these
years later it's still raw.

After Zane died she spent a long time in the hospital.  When they put
her back together and released her she moved east.  For a few years she
managed to pretend that the evil thing between them, whatever it was,
had died with Zane.

She built a new identity, working in graphic design, everything
ordinary, some nights she didn't even dream about Zane.  She pretended
her life was changing.

Then she met Steve and all her clocks struck midnight.  It's time.  She
fell in love with bright, restless Steve Harriman but she used him hard
because in spite of everything, she was compelled by the flicker of
pattern.  What was he - planning to marry some sweetfaced girl from the
office?  No matter, Vivian swept down on him like the wolf on the
fold.

He was astounded, flattered, dizzy, crazy drunk on her, it happened
fast.  And they did love each other.

Steve thought marriage would bank the fires and leave coals burning
steadily.

He was so pleased when he found out she was pregnant.  How could she
explain that the children he wanted were not the ones she was
carrying?

Whatever drove Zane had come to live in her.  Caught underneath her
heart, it still contains him.  And she sees it in her daughters.  Emily
and Jane.

Jane and Emily.  When they were born she went into a depression.

Having twins of her own, she has recreated the pattern.  It grows,
demanding completion.

Poor Steve!  Did he notice how strange it was when Jane and Emily were
born?  Caesarian birth.  They were simultaneous.  Good, she thought.

Nobody'sfirst.  Nobody has to dominate.  Exactly the same weight and
length.

Only the hospital bracelets told her which was Jane and which Emily.

Perfectly formed.  Steve was so proud!  And she?  They were sunny,
beautiful, but when she looked into them she saw Zane flickering.

They grew.  Darkside, lights'de, hopelessly entangled.  Looking into
their eyes, Vivian saw herself.  In their crib the twins' faces
shimmered in uncanny comprehension, Don't look too closely.  Your eyes
will burn right through to the retina.  She already knew they weren't
ordinary.  She prayed, Please let Steve see only the ordinary.

He did, she thought, until they were almost two.  Then Vivian found
Steve staring into the crib with such concentration that it frightened
her.

Babbling, she tried to distract him.  "Aren't they beautiful?"

"I don't know," he said.  Vivian saw they were not asleep.  They lay
entwined, communicating without speech.  Steve shook his head.  "Their
rages.

The silence.  It's weird.  I think we ought to have them tested."  She
saw her loving partner - their father withdrawing - something's
wrong.

No, she thought.  This is the way it is.  "Steve, they're only
babies!"

That night she woke trembling - could not figure out why, exactly, but
got up and went into the babies' room.  Steve was standing over the
crib again.

When he heard her low cry, the face he turned was tragic, haunted.

"They're not "They're wonderful!"

The girls were both awake, lying head to tail, watching her with those
sly, sweet, terrifying smiles.

She loved her husband.  She loved the twins.  Like a tigress protecting
her young, Vivian savaged Steve and stole the children.  I loved him, I
did.

But I had to do itfor their protection.  The next morning she cleaned
out their bank account.  She left that night.

She took everything he cared about and disappeared.

No.  I did itfor his protection.

It was late when Vivian reached the house where she grew up, pulling
two little girls in their new dresses.  She was surprised by how big
the place was, how imposing the carved front door seemed when you were
not sure of your welcome.

As a child she'd taken it for granted - that everybody lived like this,
that she belonged here.  She prayed, Please make her want us.

Her mother answered the door herself.  "Who's there?"  With her white
hair down and her pale blue eyes glazed with confusion, Meredith looked
old for the first time.  "Oh my God."

"I'm back," Vivian said.

"I see."  Shivering in the chill of the California night, Meredith
Archer filled the doorway, guarding against the incursion.  Her look
said, Please don't make me do this again.  At first she didn't see the
children.  Shaken, she was too busy trying to close the door on
Vivian.

She's neverforgiven me, Vivian thought.  She's neverforgiven us.

Never mind that it was dark and the taxi was already plunging down the
drive in the cold drizzle, slithering over wet gravel.  There was a
little battle over the front door.  "I love you but I can't have you, I
just can't have you."

The women pushed against each other.  Vivian was stronger.  After
fifteen years, she was home for good.  "I've changed," Vivian said not
quite the truth.  This was the truth, "I need you."

"Go away."  Zane's death changed the old lady forever.  It was clear
from her face how it had been.  The velvet bathrobe hung on her, the
fingers gripping the door were all bone and knuckles, as if her loss
had somehow leached her flesh away.  The tissue-paper skin of her face
crumpled.  "I'm begging you."

And Vivian?  She was used up.  Everything inside her shook.  She was
like a building about to cave in on itself in a slow, agonizing
implosion.  "And I'm begging you."  She whispered into her mother's
ear, "I'm sorry about Zane."  She was.  She wasn't.

Meredith drew herself up, trembling.  "I'm not."

Then Vivian pushed them forward, the twins, her treasures.  Jane and
Emily.  They were only two years old.  They were drowsy, flushed.

Raising their arms to her, they looked like little flowers.  "Aren't
they pretty?"

"Oh my God."  The children smiled at her.  Rocked, Meredith could not
breathe.  She barely squeezed it out.  "They're beautiful."  She
finished with a sob.

"But I begged you not to havechildren .  . ."

Vivian wept.  "But you wanted me to be married."

"I thought Steve would be good for you!  I thought he could help you
change your life."  Meredith mourned for both of them.

Vivian's voice came from somewhere deep, "So did I."

". . . and now .  . ."  Looking at the children, the old lady began to
shake.  "Twins.  You never told me."

On one side Jane curled her hand around Vivian's index finger, on the
other, Emily clung with exactly the same pressure.  They were like
little generators with Vivian the connector, she could feel the current
running through her.  "Mother!  I'm not the same."  This was only
partly true.  How could she explain?  Hope pushed her into a lie.  "I
promise.  It won't be the same."

Tilting Vivian's head, her mother leaned forward, staring into her face
as if studying it under a close lens.  It was strange.  The pause
stretched to snapping before she said quietly, "I'd like to believe
that."

Vivian took the gaunt, elegant old woman's hand, gripping until all her
diamonds bit her fingers and she cringed.  Glaring, she bore down.

"You have to."

Something between them cracked and split open.  Her mother's voice came
as if out of the tomb.  "Oh, my Vivian!"  And with her face softened by
love, she stood by and let them in, Vivian first, followed by the two
beautiful daughters, Jane and Emily, or was it Emily and Jane?  "We'll
manage together."

As she looked at the two children, her breath shuddered.  "We'll do the
best we can."

Then one of the children spoke - some little thing - and she got down
on her knees and pulled them close to her.

Later Vivian heard Steve had hired a private detective, but a year
passed and nobody came to the Archer house.  In the end she did send
word back, I'm at Mother's.  It's over.  Please don't try to see U.S.
And her beautiful girls looked up at her with the smug smiles of the
well-cared-for.

Until now, it's worked well enough.

Money helped.  So did privilege.  Everything the girls could possibly
want was provided, a beautiful suite on the third floor schoolroom,
playroom, bedroom with four-poster beds under flowered canopies, paired
cocker spaniel puppies, Chestnut and

Cinnamon, matched ponies to ride on the grounds and in the hilly woods
just beyond the stone walls, a perennially changing cast of servants,
hastily paid off to avoid recriminations.  Only Billy Graver, who had
been with the family from the beginning, stayed on.  And Kurt is here,
although she never sees him.

No.  Can't.

What Vivian and her mother could not manage, quiet, constant Billy
Graver did.  Kurt's father.  It's ironic.  They've spun out the years
in a fevered attempt to keep the girls happy, quiet.

("Do what you have to," they said to each new tutor, and to the sisters
at St. Margaret's when the girls got too old and restless to be taught
at home.

"Just be careful not to make them angry.") They imported friends for
the girls, on a rotating basis.  Children came to the house for
birthdays and special occasions, select guests at carefully planned
parties.  (Vivian remembers the high hum of anxiety as she tried to
control the little outsiders, her own voice rising, "Oh please.  Please
don't do that."  She looked into her twin daughters' faces and saw
Zane.  It made her beg.  "Oh please don't do anything to upset them.")
It worked well enough, or she thought it had.

Until today.

NOW THEY ARE at the moment.  Her breath catches in her chest.

Her girls!  It's not their fault.  It's that idiot girl in their riding
class, the child got hurt when the runaway horse threw her.  What did
she say to Em or Jane, to bring this down on herself?

Vivian is still trembling from the confrontation.  The girls' riding
teacher stalked into the library with her hair pulled back so tight it
stretched her face and her tweed coat flapping.  She looked angry
enough to crack open the house like an egg carton and spill the twins
out and smash them.

"The child will be in the hospital for weeks.  When we finally caught
the horse we found this ammed under the saddle."  It was still bloody
from the animal's flesh, a silver charm.  jane's, or is it Em's silver
stegosaurus.

Vivian didn't have to see the bloody piece of silver to know what had
happened.  The fools.  What could they have been thinking?

"It belongs to one of your daughters."

Foolhardy, careless.  Giving in to anger like that.  Hasn't she warned
them?  She thought she could protect her twins from the world.  Or the
world from them.  Now this single stupid, vicious act has brought down
outsiders, threatening the charmed circle.

The teacher was waiting.  Vivian said, "That poor child.  Tell her
we're terribly sorry."  What did she do to make them ang7y?

"If you can't control your twins, I'll have to notify the
authorities.

There's something strange about your girls.  Something's not right.

You need an evaluation."

"We'll take care of it."  Meredith's voice struck Vivian cold.

The woman failed to catch her tone.  "There's something strange about
your girls.  They're .  . ."  The riding instructor's words were blunt,
ugly.

"Capable of anything.  You have to do something."

"I think we'll find a new riding instructor."  The perfect lady,
Meredith rose smoothly, glaring until the teac er oo e away.  "That will
be all."

"You have to do something."

"I said, that will be all," she said, and without lifting a hand she
forced the woman backward, into the hall.  "And thank you very much for
coming."  Dignified and brilliant, she stood until the door closed.

Then she turned to Vivian and her face opened like a chasm, she was
beyond exhaustion.

"Neither of us wants to do this, but it's time.  Maybe in separate
schools .  .

"Mother, we can't!"

"They can't stay in school here."  Meredith was all used up.  "I will
not go through what I went through with you and Zane.  I love them just
as much as you do, Vivian, but we can't handle them."

Vivian was already weeping.  "Please, Mother.  One more chance."

"I can't go through that again.  And I won't let you go through it.

Not for our girls, not for anyone.  They're.  . ."  she doesn't know
how to describe this, "not good for each other."  Meredith produced
letters from Miss Porter's and Ashley Hall.  Acceptances.  "They're at
that age.  There's the added problem of boys."  There is also the
unspoken.  The Archers have stayed above the law so far, they've
managed to protect the twins and cover up what they had to, but the
girls are too old to be content here.  They are beyond tepid parties in
the garden with little friends from school.

Vivian said shakily, "I suppose we can't keep firing people."

"And we can't go on like this.  It's all arranged."  (It is - the tests
Mother had them take last winter, "In case we decide to spend a year
abroad."

They did brilliantly.  She made calls to her friends in the East.

Everything taken care of.  Except breaking the news.) "God, Mother.

Behind my back.  How could you?"  At this charge, Meredith's tears
sprang.  Still Vivian sobbed.  "You can't send them away.  I love them
too much!"

"If we love them, we have to separate them."  Meredith sighed.  "Our
resources here are limited.  I'm not strong.  You're only one person.

Oh lord, Vivian, we can't let the same old story keep retelling
itself.

If we can just split them up .  . ."

This was bitter.  "You don't understand twins at all, do you?"

Her mother's voice dropped.  "I understand better than anyone."

There was a long pause in which Vivian considered, herself/ Zane,
Jane/Emily, the past and the potential.  "I tried so hard."

And before Vivian could turn the conversation Meredith issued her
ultimatum.  "It's time to break the news."

A crafty, secret part of Vivian can't stop running after other
solutions, but they have no choice here.  Together, the twins become a
unit bigger than the two parts.  She dipped her head in
acknowledgement.  We have to separate them.  Then all her breath came
out in a sigh.  It was almost a relief.  "You did this.  You tell
them."

"You know I can't."  Meredith's eyes filled.  "They'll put their arms
around me and talk me out of it, or else .  . ."  Her face darkened as
she reflected on the or else.  "Let me send Billy with you."

"Mother, they're not going to .  .

"You never know."

"They're my children."

Unexpectedly solicitous, Meredith followed her to the French doors,
saying in a sweet voice, "If there's any trouble .  .

"Mother!"

"Just be careful."  Meredith grabbed the battery phone, clutching it
like the ultimate weapon.  "Please."

This is today, Mother.  They are not me.  Or Zane.  This is nothing
like the other time.

Vivian is right about this, but not the way she thinks.  There will be
variations in the pattern.

Weaving a charm, she tells herself, And they are not like us.

Something small collides with her ankles and pulls her back to the
moment - one of the twins' miniature cockers, furry and compact as a
little meatloaf, solid and warm against her.  The warmth of living
flesh arrests her.  "Oh, Cinnamon!

Where's Chestnut?"  Recovering her balance, she looks down at the
animal, then up.

The sun is out, it's Thursday.  Reality staggers her.  Caught in
midflight, Vivian hesitates, lost somewhere between rage and terror.

The brute ugliness of necessity makes Vivian groan aloud.  My own
girls, and I have to be careful how I approach them.  In spite of
everything, she loves them.  "Girls!"

Twin heads swivel.  Blue-eyed, they regard their mother.  Something
makes her think of the little princes in the tower, waiting for bad
king Richard to have them murdered.

Mother, what are you trying to do to us?

Vivian shakes herself.  This is going to be worse than she expected.

"Nothing," she says aloud, even though they haven't spoken.  They know
without being told.  Another proof, she thinks.  Another proof that
they are different.

She does not know what to do.  Brightly, she lies.  "Nothing."  If only
they wouldjump up, laughing.  If only they'd come up to the house with
her for ice cream, and be pleased by what she has to tell them.

They sit quietly.  If the cards fall the right way this will be
nothing, grinning, they'll rise and start kidding with her.  They'll be
bubbling, delightful, just ordinary teenagers.

They are waiting.  And they are more than ordinary.  They are twins.

If only she could turn this moment.  If only she knew how to make it
change!  Don't they know what's at stake here?  Can't they see what she
and Mother have been trying to do, with their private school and extra
tutors and symphony subscriptions and riding lessons, plans around the
clock?  Can't her beautiful, foolish girls see that everything they do
is studied and weighed against their future?  "Girls."  She notes the
quick movements, the furtive air as Jane - or is it Em - whisks the
scarf over the object on the floor between them.  She lifts her
voice.

"I have something to tell you."

"Yes Mother?"

Vivian recognizes the looks in the faces they turn to her.  She
groans.

"Oh God."

Somewhere just out of her sight the old mystery is unfolding, Twin
pairs of eyes study her and Vivian would like to keep her voice even,
to match the quiet calm with which her beautiful daughters regard her,
but she can't.  She hears it quaver.  They are quiet, regal, she could
be just anybody standing out here in the grass, excluded, helpless.

"Tell me you're not doing what I think you are."

Neither of them answers.

"Never mind," she says with her heart breaking.  She's close enough to
leap the steps and dart in and lift the cloth before they can stop her,
but she won't.  She's afraid to know what they are hiding.  Instead she
mounts slowly and sits down on the wooden bench that lines the
octagon.

The girls get up and sit on opposing benches.  It's as if they are all
three riding through the garden on a beautiful little ferryboat.  "You
probably already know.  Ah.  You probably already know .  . ."  This is
so hard!  She clears her throat.  "You know we can't go on like
this."

Neither responds.

Without having to explain, Vivian takes the silver stegosaurus out of
her pocket and tosses it on top of the paisley scarf, if it clinks
against whatever they've covered up, she thinks, that will be a sign
things aren't quite as bad as we think they are.

Instead it lands without a sound.  What's under there?  An inanimate
object, or one that has stopped moving.  She does not ask, she just
begins.

"Even you can see, it's time for some changes."

They look at the bloody charm with mild curiosity.  "Why, what's
that?"

Her voice shakes.  "You know what it is.  It came from your
bracelet."

Their faces are bright and their voices sweet.  "Not my bracelet,
Mother."

"I promise, not mine."  If only she could believe them!

She wants to, but she knows better.  "My darlings.  It's too late for
excuses.  It doesn't even matter which of you did it."

Their eyes brim, their mouths tremble.  "Neither of us did it,
really."

"We would never do a thing like that."

"The least you can do is to be honest.  Emily?  Jane dear?"  They
altered silence is worse than their denials.  "Please."  Vivian has her
seem to sense that they are passing a landmark here, and their
imperatives and she forges on.  "If you'lljust tell me, maybe I .  .

But they do not speak.

When nothing happens she starts over.  love you, but your grandmother
and I ...

We've tried so hard, but now.  . ."  She gasps.  "We have to do
this."

The girls' faces are like porcelain, but as she speaks she sees
fleeting darkness rush across the smooth surfaces like stormclouds
across a quiet landscape.

There's nothing for it now, no way to turn them back into her little
girls again so she can keep them close, shejust keeps talking.  "I'm
sorry, but we do."

She sees their paired heads swivel until they are facing, Jane fixed on
Emily, Emily on Jane in the troublesome old push-pull that hums
underneath all her daughters' silent communications.  As her belly
quivers, they strike a balance and when they turn back to Vivian, it is
as one person.  They bestow strange, sleek smiles on her like matching
Buddhas.

My God.  "Your grandmother and I..."  She is weeping now.  "It's all
decided.  We can't go on this way."  Their eyes widen.  Meeting the
incredulous blue stares of her twin daughters, Vivian is staggered by
foreboding.  Gasping, she finishes.  "We have something different
planned for you."

Neither speaks, but their paired looks make her shudder.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING about Carroll Lawton's life is that she was
orphaned at ten, and sent to Jenkins, Florida.  She's spent her life
since then trying to ignore or overcome it being the best, marrying
Steve.  She wants to go to live in Steve's life.  She wants to surround
them with family and never have to be that lonely child again.  Still
she is conditioned by the early loss.  It lies at the bottom of her
need to be strong and good at what she does and it lives at the heart
of her best writing.  It makes a part of her hold its breath each time
Steve goes out the door and not relax until he comes back again.

Carroll lived at 553 Arbor Street with her aunts from the year her
mother died until she married Steve Harriman.  She was ten years old
and she had just run out of parents.  Talking about life on Arbor
Street, her dead mother used to make the place sound like Tara.  Poor
Violet.  She was probably homesick and trying to bring it all back.

"When we went out people used to tell my father, You have a beautiful
family."  Grariddaddy wanted a house big enough to entertain the
world.

The place used to be full of people all the time," she'd say, as if
Carroll could see what she saw and feel just as good about it, the
parties, the Dickensian Christmases.  "All the boys loved to come over
and dance in the music room."  Listening, Carroll used to feel guilty
for being an only child and fatherless, and living in two rooms.

Then Violet died and Carroll was sent to Arbor Street to be brought up
by Violet's sisters.  It was definitely not Tara.  Coming into the
front hall with her books and the Teddy she'd outgrown but could not
abandon, she was surprised by how shabby the place was and how awful
she felt.  Cut loose, feeling abandoned by her dead mother, she
promised never to forget what it felt like to be little, and never to
let anything like this happen to her children.

They tried to be nice.  The aunts, grinny Aunt Laine, fat Patsy and
lazy Suzy Larrabie circled her in the dusty old front hall in their
Fabulous Fifties clothes and high heels.  Behind them, just in from the
nearby office where he sold insurance, Uncle Peyton lingered with a
grin that made her squirm.  They didn't know what to say to her.

Finally Aunt Suzy found exactly the wrong thing to say to a little girl
who's trying to pretend everything's OK and she's doing fine in spite
of what's happened to her.

"You poor little thing, first you lost your father and now your
mother!"

She does not recommend growing up without a parent.

Grown now, and married about ten minutes - no, ten months Carroll is
bent on creating what she never had, a real family.  It's taken her
some time to come to this decision.  Marriage is wonderful, terrible,
surprising, right for her.  She loves living with this lover, partner,
friend who closes his arms around her so tightly that their bones
fuse.

If her life is ticking like a time bomb or an alarm clock just about to
go off, Carroll has no way of knowing it.  Still, she ought to be aware
of certain warning signs, the mystery that lies in the bed between
them, as palpable as an extra person, the sweet, guilty feeling Carroll
has that for the first time since she was orphaned, she's too happy.

And she's also a skilled reporter.  Slight as she is, she carries
herself with that jaunty reporter's self-confidence.  Born pretty,
Carroll has learned how to look tough and capable, she keeps her red
hair short and her jaw squared.  She's the master of the
don'tmess-with-me look, and when she goes on a story she gets
results.

She worked for eight years on the Jenkins Dispatch before Steve came to
town to sell off property left to him by a relative.  They met one
night at the old Yacht Club down by the sleepy river.  She walked into
the dining room with bright, aggressive Charley Penn, publisher of the
Dispatch.  They were there to make policy on a local scandal she'd
uncovered, who to question, what to reveal.

Something drew her eyes to the sliding doors.  She looked out and saw
this new man at the porch rail, looking down at the sluggish water.  He
was not like anybody in Jenkins.  The whole time she and Charley were
deciding whom she should interview and whether to name her sources in
the series, Carroll was watching the outsider.  He paced in jeans and a
safari vest, instead of the traditional lightweight business suit,
unlike the southern men she knew, he was tall and restless, wired.  He
turned and caught her looking.

They knew each other at once.  How to manage the introductions was
never at issue.  They managed the introductions.  He was an architect,
here to see whether he could do anything with his late uncle's
property.

When he said he was in town for the week it seemed like a long time, by
the time he left it was not nearly long enough.  Sitting at her
terminal in the newsroom or standing in a dirt patch interviewing some
farmer, Carroll could still see him.  Steve had a wonderfully untended
look - collar too large, as if he'd just lost weight, hair too shaggy,
expression too guarded.  There was something going on behind his eyes
that cast long shadows.  It was as if a part of this man had been torn
out a long time ago and he was still mending.

He held her so tight their bones collided.  "Is it OK to say you're
what I need right now?"

She didn't say it was exactly what she needed to hear.  "You make me
sound like a megavitamin."

"For the heart," he said, but he was laughing.

She had the idea that he was telling her more than he meant to.  They
couldn't stop talking.  He knew all the last lines to her
halfremembered poems.

Everything they said to each other meshed, they were like two widely
scattered jigsaw pieces destined to be pulled out of the jumble and put
together.  When he said goodbye at the end of the week Carroll wanted
to leave with him, but she didn't.  She was not about to risk her
career for a maybe thing.  He tried to convince her it wasn't
"maybe."

He told her there were better newspapers in Connecticut.  He made it
clear that sooner or later he was going to marry her.

It took him a year.

Carroll left Jenkins to come north with Steve Harriman, she wasn't
sorry to say goodbye to the aunts or Uncle Peyton, but the rest was
hard.  She hated leaving the Dispatch.  They were interviewing Russell,
some squirt from Harvard, to take her place in the newsroom.  She
realized with a flicker of resentment that this Russell would finish
her series.  But she loved Steve so much that she'd come to the point
of no return - that spot in the air over major oceans when it's too
late for the pilot to turn back and there's nothing left but to go
forward.  Steve?  She'd traveled so far in love with him that she
couldn't live without him.

Charley Penn said, "One phone call and you have your job back."

Violet's death had taught her never to say never but she said it
anyway.

"Oh I won't be back, Charley."

But he looked at her from under that bush of hair that went prematurely
white when he was thirty.  "One phone call," he said.

It was only when they came back from the wedding trip and Steve went
back to work that she realized she really was out of a job.  Everywhere
she goes, the story is the same, Your resume looks good, we like your
clips.  You know as well as we do that newspapers are collapsing, not
expanding.  We'd love to hire you as soon as our jobs get unfrozen.

She keeps hearing Charley, One phone call.

To her surprise, she hears other voices.  Alone in the house, she keeps
seeing lonely little Carroll opening doors on empty rooms on Arbor
Street, Where is everybody?  She keeps hearing the silent reproach in
Violet's sweet voice, "Everybody loved to come to our house because
there were so many of us, and we all had friends."  The day stretches
before her like taffy and when it finally gets to be six o'clock and
Steve comes in the door ,it snaps like a rubber band, leaving a
surprising hush in which she hears the words as distinctly as if
she's spoken them, Always wanted children.

She waits until they've eaten.  She waits until they've finished
cleaning up and then, pulling him into the living room, she says
tentatively, "Maybe we should do the kids now, while I'm unemployed."

Once she says the words, it's as if she's decided.  It sounds right to
her, where we've been heading.  Let him build houses.  I can build
lives.

She does not expect the response she gets.  Steve turns in distress.

"Kids."  A number of expressions cross his face - none of them
expected.  "Oh, Carroll."

Why can't she hear the bomb ticking?  She thinks this is a momentary
problem, she touches his arm.  "What's the matter?"

"Nothing about you, OK?  It?s something about me."  When Steve turns to
look at her she sees a strange shadow flickering, a dark hint
superimposed on his face like the negative of a bad photograph.

Something I'm not tellingyou.  "I just."  It takes him a minute to
bring out the rest.  Looking into Carroll's face to see how she's going
to take it, he says, "Can't right now."

She thinks Steve really does want her children, but there is a strange,
jagged edge of distress running along just beneath the surface of all
these conversations.  If there is something ticking in Carroll's life,
with the big hand on the clock closing on the designated mark, if it's
just about to detonate, happiness has made her deaf.  No.  Dumb.  She
finds herself listening for something she is aware of, but can't yet
identify.  His untold story?  The faint sound of ticking?  She doesn't
know.  "Is there a problem?"

He turns his back so she can't see his eyes.  She can't know what makes
Steve so guarded and wary, or what makes him reluctant to talk About
his life before they met.  "I love you but I can't tell you."  He's
like a dog that's been badly burned - shivering with the cold but
afraid to get any closer to the fire.

She is swift.  "There's a lot of stuff you haven't told me."

When he turns she sees he's almost blinded by pain.  "No there
isn't."

With an effort, he corrects himself.  "Yes there is, but.  It's not
about us."

"Everything's about us."

He shakes his head violently.  "Not this!  You're the best thing that's
ever happened to me.  It's like being outside after years of .  . ."

He can't finish.  Instead he pulls close and holds her as if this
contact can draw out the pain.  "Please trust me."

Which is where they leave it.  I can wait, Carroll tells herself.  It
can wait.  But she knows it can't wait much longer.  One of these
nights when they make love she's going to pull Steve even closer and
talk to him softly, passionately, drawing him along the path to
revelation.  Part of her wants to know the truth and the other part is
afraid to find out.  You love him.  If he can't tell you, you can
wait.

It can wait, she tells herself uneasily.

She can't know that in the life he's tried to leave behind, nothing
stays where you put it.  And nothing waits forever.

Then in the night the phone rings.  As Steve struggles up out of sleep
to answer it, Carroll draws her knees to her chest and shakes with
dread.  They are at the brink of something.  Hearing Steve murmur into
the phone, she understands that even if she knew what was going on, it
wouldn't stop what's happening.  Even knowing what happened to disturb
his sleep and make him so wary, she wouldn't be able to help.

Nothing she can do will protect him from his past or prevent this.

Nothing could possibly prepare her.

"I see.  When?"  He's talking to somebody he knows so well they don't
have to use names.  Steve that she loves so much but doesn't really
know is muttering, "Wait.  I'm taking the phone into the next room.

"Steve."  Trying to empty her head of dreams so she can focus, Carroll
reaches for him.  "What."

"Go back to sleep."  Gently, he disengages her fingers.  "I can't talk
about this here."

Hurt, she says, "I see."

"No."  He pulls her up in the bed so they can kiss, those forearms cut
into her back, like blades.  "You can't possibly see," he says, and
with a final tightening of the arms, he sighs and releases her.  He
takes the phone in the other room.

She turns on the light and for reasons she can't even guess at, gets up
and dresses, jeans, sweater, sneakers.

When Steve comes back from the phone in the kitchen, his expression is
beyond interpretation.  He is ashen, trembling.

Carroll thinks she's ready for anything, her in her jeans and her
purple Reeboks, combing her short red hair with her fingers.  She
expects him to tell her there's been a fire at the studio, or they have
to go to some relative's bedside, but his silence arrests her.  "My
God, Steve!

What is it?"

He just stands there with his hands hanging at his sides like dead
weights and his face empty.  "I thought it was over.  I thought I'd
never have to tell you."

Everything is different.  There's something about the order in this
pretty room, the lovingly placed ornaments in the house, her sense of
comfort, of expanding love and, what, safety, that seems threatening
now.  Your fault, for being too happy.  If you're too happy, something
will come along and take it away from you.  She has the idea that all
their lovingly settled arrangements are trembling, this house, their
lives, everything she and Steve Harriman are together, all these
elements she takes for granted arejust about to shift and crumble.  Is
this the warning tremor before a major earthquake or the stillness that
presages a tornado?

"Tell me what?"

He can't seem to answer.

She finds it hard to breathe.  Has her father been killed in a wreck
again?  Has her mother just been rushed to the hospital and is someone
coming to tell her the worst?  Is the sky falling?  Her heart rushes
ahead, Oh, Steve!

What's happened, to make you look that way?  What's the matter?  What
in God's name is the matter?

Therefore when Steve goes on, what he has to say astounds her.  He says
quietly, "You said you always wanted children."

She whirls.  "Steve?"

"Oh look, if I'd had any idea.  . ."  He takes her hands, gripping so
hard her knuckles grind.  "Sometimes you get what you want and it turns
out not to be what you wanted."

Alarmed, Carroll backs away but he's hanging on so tight she can't get
free.

"Something's come up.  I have to go to northern California."

Crazily she says, "No you don't."

"Their mother's been killed."  He's looking into her face but it's
clear it's not her face he sees.  "Oh Carroll, my kids have lost their
mother."

She finds he's let go of her.  In shock, she says in a hushed voice,
"Your kids."

"I thought I'd never see them again.  I made a promise."  That kind,
blunt face she loves so much is stiff with pain.  "I wanted to tell you
but I couldn't."

Rage flashes.  You never even told me you were married.  "Kids!"

"Girls.  My twins.  She was in a bad way, so I had to promise."  This
is killing her.  "Who was?"

"My wife."  In that second his face blazes.  "Vivian!  Something about
having twins just staggered her and she was crazy.  Crazy enough to
take them away with her.  Crazy with worry.  Then when I tracked them
down, her mother..."  He does not explain, hejust finishes.  "It was
part of the settlement.  Complete secrecy.  I couldn't tell you."  He
looks destroyed.  "Now Vivian is dead and I have to."

"You can tell me anything," she cries.  "Anything."

"This is not like anything.  It's - something I can't explain.

Something else.  I was so sure it was over for good " Steve is upset
and angry, loving and conflicted, somewhere behind all the confusion of
expressions crossing his face, there flickers an unfamiliar little
light she recognizes asjoy.  "My twins!  I thought I'd never see them
again."

"And you never .  She's trying to go with this, but too close to the
surface, the betrayed, ten-year-old Carroll is clamoring.

"Oh God."  His face is bright.  "But now!  I have to go."

". . . even told me."  What he has just said registers.

"When?"

"As soon as I can get a reservation."  Dressing, he's swift and jerky
as a cartoon character.

She can't just let him go, there's too much unresolved.  "I'll go with
you."

"You can't."  He's trying to be gentle.  "I'm going somewhere you can't
go."

She doesn't mean to beg, it just happens.  "Oh Steve, please."

"I can't."  Stuffing his wallet into his back pocket, he looks up.

"This is hard enough for these poor kids."

"I know something about poor kids," Carroll says, and she is ten years
old again.

He's too busy explaining to hear what she's trying to tell him.  "if
Vivian was right-if Meredith is right, this may be harder than you
think.  I have to go without you.  Oh look, Carroll, you'll meet them
soon enough."  Then he hits her in the face with it.  He doesn't ask,
he tells.  "They're coming to live with us."

What she finds hard to take is the fact that in this spurt of decision,
Steve looks happier than she's ever seen him.  Her hands drop.  "I
see."

"My girls.  Jane and Emily.  They're little blondes, but they have
Vivian's eyes."

"Vivian!"

Steve's face shines so brightly she has to look away.  Even his voice
is bright.  "My wife," he says to Carroll absently, as if he's
forgotten her.

"Everything is different now."  Then her Steve, whom she thought she
knew, says in that disproportionately joyful voice that doesn't match
the hour or the circumstances, "After everything I have them back.  My
beautiful daughters."

"Twins."  She thinks with grim humor, One thing too many.

"After making me promise not to see them, their grandmother's begging
me.

She's getting old and she knows she can't..  ."  A rushing shadow dims
the light in his face.  He's filled with things he isn't telling her.

"I know this is a lot to ask."  For the first time he sounds
uncertain.

"I hope you'll like them."

Orphans, she thinks.  You poor little.  . . "Of course I'll like
them."

But it's too much, she hears herself accusing, "You knew I wanted kids
and you never told me you had kids."

He is too distracted to answer.

With the jittery air of a man getting ready for a party, he's already
packing, rummaging for extra socks, leaving her alone with this.

She'll never know why it hits her the way it does or why when the words
come out they are so bitter.  "You never told me about Vivian."  And
without knowing how it happens, she finds herself both here in this
beautiful room she and Steve have made and at the same time back in the
front hall on Arbor Street in Jenkins, orphaned all over again.

Stricken, she says something she'll regret for the rest of her life,
Carroll Lawton, wife of Steve Harriman, who she loves and who she
thought she knew, so hurt that she strikes blindly.  This is how she
reproaches him, "It makes everything that was ever between us into a
lie!"

Then she says more, she says such terrible things to him that it will
be hours before she can even take them out and examine them, much less
find a way to make it right.

Trying to make it up, Carroll dismisses the cab and drives him to the
airport in the still part of the night that falls between insomnia and
waking up anxious.  Even though Steve is ready to jump out of the car
and send her back to bed, she insists on coming in with him.  Early
losses make you afraid of more losses, she thinks uneasily, or is it
more vulnerable?  It's as though she senses time running out and can't
get enough of him.

She's glad the plane is late.  It gives them some time together not to
mend, exactly, because she can't drag herself back to the bad moment in
the bedroom long enough to figure out how to apologize -just a chance
to be with him.  Sitting on one of the generic impossibly conformed
plastic seats that turn airport waiting rooms into torture chambers,
Carroll seizes a last few minutes with Steve.

Beached in the harsh fluorescent light with coffee in paper cups and
his legs stretched out in front of them, Steve just begins.  "You'd
have to see her to understand why I loved her - something behind the
eyes that compelled you.

She made me forget who I was, and how crazy she was.  If it was
crazy.

Maybe it was just - fated."  He hesitates, bemused.  He can't find a
way to sum it up.

"You'd have to know her to understand.  We were married for a while,
and when she left, it was ... Never mind.  It was already over."

She knows it isn't.

"Her name is Vivian."

Her voice is harsh.  "You told me."

Shaking like a dog, he corrects himself.  "Was Vivian.  Her mother
called from the hospital near the house.  Meredith Archer.  She was
calling about Vivian."

"What happened?"  She's not sure she wants to know.

"She couldn't tell me.  Meredith could hardly talk.  Poor old lady,
this was one thing too many, on top of the rest."

He is raising more questions than he answers.  The rest!  She puts a
hand on his arm as if to slow this narrative down so she can look at
the parts, but it's as if he's talking for himself.

knows.  They got Vivian to the hospital but it was too late, but that
"She didn't tell me what happened.  I'm not sure she really wasn't why
she was calling."  Steve is trying to line up the details so I he can
make sense of them.

"She called to get me to promise to take the children."

Carroll understands this perfectly - what happens when a parent dies.

"The children.  Of course."

He says, "It's more complicated than you think."

"Aren't you glad to have them?"

"I think so."

His uncertainty staggers her.  Carroll says firmly, "Jane and Emily."

"That isn't all."  In falsetto, he mimicks something heard a long time
ago but still remembered, it sounds like a secret code.  "janem.

Emjaiie.  Did you ever look into kids' faces and know they were
different?"

She was afraid he'd go on, afraid he wouldn't go on.

"But I loved them.  I really did.  When she took them away I spent two
years looking for them.  Hidden in plain sight - Meredith's money made
it work.

Then Vivian decided to let me see them after all - at her mother's,
playing in the grass.  They were happy there - I don't know.

Different.  They were so happy that when Vivian begged, I promised
never to see them again.  It broke my heart but I loved them enough to
agree."  He seems to know there is no way to explain this.  "For their
sake.  I had a hard time getting used to the idea, but when I did, you
know what?"

"No."

He is battered by forces she can't see.  "It was a relief."

"But they're your kids."

He takes her hands.  "This is going to be hard for you."

So Carroll manages to say the right thing after all.  "Well they're my
kids too.  I love kids.  Will love them, no matter what.  What I love,
Steve It is as close as she comes to apologizing.  "I love anything
that has to do with you."

He can have both!  Pleasure rushes into his face, quickly effaced by
that old shadow, like a familiar enemy.  "They're not just my kids."

He finishes.

"They're Vivian's."

And Vivian was crazy.  "Just little girls."

"There are things you don't understand about Vivian."  He puts down the
paper cup and reaches for her hand, gripping it as if they're hotwired
and he can put information into her directly.  "Did you ever want
something that was bad for you?"

She thinks, Maybe this.

"And you want it partly because it's beautiful and partly because it
really is bad for you," he goes on.  "That was my wife Vivian.  Hard to
explain.  I loved her, but she was crazy as a bat in a wire wheel.

From the beginning she had something driving her - unless she was
chasing it.  Vivian and this - other thing - going around and around
somewhere inside her head, where I couldn't see what was happening.

.

."

His plane is called, he's supposed to begin boarding but is intent on
the recital.  "And then we had the baby.  Babies.  Two, but both part
of the same thing - it's hard to explain, but twins ... They aren't two
people, they're an entity.  Same size, weight, same blue eyes, hands
like starfish, even Vivian couldn't differentiate, and whatever was
going on inside her .  . ."  He doesn't exactly finish.  Hejust says,
"I could see it in them.  Something, I don't know what, just."  He
shakes his head.  "Something."

He turns inward, as if looking for the imaginary wire wheel and trying
to separate and identify the creatures circling ceaselessly inside it,
tail to head to tail to head to tail until there is no separating end
from beginning, captor and captive, master and creature, quarry and
pursuer.  The next words pop into the air.  "I was afraid for the
kids.

The pairing, the private flow.

Things happening.  It was getting weird.

He drops the name into the space between them, where it lodges.

"Vivian.

I tried to get help.  Remember, I loved her, they were my kids.  And
then she just took them.  She took them away."

Carroll is aware of the passengers rushing by but she too is intent,
she says, "And you just let it happen."

"I had to.  It was part of the arrangement, and now He breaks off and
starts over.  "Carroll, there's something I have to tell you.

About the twins."

But this is the last call, he has to go.  She's aware that there are
things she needs to say to him, an apology for the last bad moment in
the bedroom, but there isn't time.  "Steve, I just .  . ."

"Oh Carroll, I love you so much."  Everything she has to say to him is
lost in the rush for the gate.  Hugging her so hard that her ribs
crack, Steve slips into the stream of passengers.

As he disappears Carroll calls, "I love you," but she can't be certain
he hears.  Sobbing, she is confounded by the past - Violet and Daddy,
hugging like this just before he got into the car that last time and
died in the crash.

Then at the very last second her husband, lover, the man she loves
best, turns and over the other passengers' heads he says, "Something
you have to know .  . ."  She thinks she knows, about Vivian.  But what
she hears is, "About the twins."

Trapped behind the ropes, Carroll leans forward with her mouth wide,
straining to hear, but a last-minute traveler rushes between them so
she can't see Steve's face much less divine what he's trying to say.

In minutes distance will fall between them and erase everything.

He's going and she hasn't made it up.  Maybe it's the shock or the hour
that decimates her or the echo of that bad moment in the bedroom, that
she hasn't resolved, or maybe there is such a thing as prescience.

Whatever it is, it flattens her.  Later, back at the car, Carroll will
sit in the parking lot for so long she loses track of time, sobbing for
him.  But right now even though he's ducked through the gate and headed
down the ramp Carroll hears herself promising because she will do
anything to make it up.

"Steve!"  she shouts.  Several people turn to stare.  Steve is nowhere
that she can see.  "Don't worry," she says brokenheartedly.  "Whatever
it is, I'll take care of them."

"COOL," my sister says.

"Better than cool."  We hold up the picture of our king, Saint
Stephen.

"Look at him!"

"And he's ours."

"All ours."

Look at us, the queen of Amadamaland.  Aren't we beautiful?

And triumphant.  Yes.  We have fought for the kingdom and emerged
supreme.  We declare a holiday for all the citizens in memory of the
rival queen of the country next door, poor Vivian.

Poor Vivian.

Not poor.  just gone, she is.

But so sad.  Our mother, lost ...

Not our mother, OK?  just poor Vivian.  Our real mother would never try
to break us up like that, we are the queen, remember.

But she loved us ...

Shut up!  She was a witch!  Why else would she try to take us out of
here?

But she was our ...

Wrong.  She was just somebody the king got, to take care of us.  We had
to save ourselves, OK?  Don't you think so?

I don't know, I don't know!  Ow!  That hurts!  Please don't.  Ow!

Well, don't you?

What?

Think so?

Ow!  Whatever you say, now please stop hurting me.

That's better.  Now rejoice and be glad with me and I'll let you be in
charge today.

Hall to the queen.

The queen in this and every dimension.  Now smile, he's coming!

So I rejoice and my sister rejoices.

We are protectors and defenders.  We have prevailed.  Why shouldn't we
prepare a celebration?  Our courtiers are safe, so are the people in
the villas safe, we have defended the integrity of the castle.  Rejoice
for us, for all the cottagers - everybody in the kingdom spared a fate,
not worse than death, exactly, but just as ugly and final.  Not a
single Amadaman life was taken in the skirmish.  And we have our
victory.  Nobody can come in here, nobody can even begin to dismantle
the buildings or disperse our citizens.  We are the queen.  No one
dares question us.

But there is an astonishment.  A fresh victory.  Something we did not
anticipate.  Even in Amadamaland, things you don't know enough to hope
for are often best.

Look down there!

From our parapet at the top of the house, we can see him coming,
Grandmother's solemn driver Billy Graver, circling the driveway in the
black car like a funeral cortege of one.  It takes him forever to reach
the front door, sad old Billy with his stern, udgmental looks.  Willing
or not, he is bringing us a present.  Leaning over the railing, we are
glad we put on our mother-of-pearl headbands this morning, and our
dresses of blue stonewashed silk.  Billy gets out to open the car door
but his passenger is already springing out, he looks so young!

It's just as Grandmother promised.  He's here.

The special one.

It is amazing.  Even from here we can see it.  He looks like w.

"There he is!  Oh, jade!"

"He's gorgeous.  Oh, Emerald!"

One of us says, so slyly that neither of us can be sure she said it,
"We should have done it sooner."

To cover this, one shouts, ta-ra, "Throw open the gates."  Here he
comes.

Our mother is dead, poor Vivian, but we are not an orphan, oh no.  We
have gained, not lost.  For the first time we're opening the gates to
Amadamaland to an outsider.  King Stephen, the Expected.

. We just found out this morning.  Grandmother called us down to the
library when she got home from the hospital.  After the ambulance came
and took Vivian, we just - didn't hear.  Nobody called.  Nobody came.

In spite of which, we understood.

When Grandmother finally got back at dawn, she called us down to break
the news.  Billy rattled the gates of Amadamaland to rouse us.  He
stood in the doorway and his face was like carved driftwood, colorless
and stern.  Sometimes he likes us so much he'll give us anything and at
others he does not like us.

Well enough.  We do not necessarily like him.  "Your grandmother has
sad news for you."  Not real news, we already knew.  Only Billy was
surprised.

His look told us he thought we wouldn't care.  We did feel bad, we
did.

Some of us sobbed.  She did not exactly tell us.  Instead Grandmother
hugged us hard without explaining and then she I stood back and studied
us.  Then she took a big breath like a drowning fool, "Girls.  I need
to talk to you."

We know.  "Oh, Gran," we said, first one, then the other.  "You look so
sad!"

"I am sad," she said.  "I just wish I knew what to do with you."  At
her wits' end.  I'm at my wits' end, she used to say every time we
walked into trouble.

We slid onto the sofa on either side of her and stroked her cheeks.

"Don't be sad."

"Please don't."  We did things to make her smile, it always works, it
worked today in spite of everything, with her eyes filled up like that,
she smiled a little.  Not hard to know what people want and give it to
them.  "Poor Gran, we hate to see you crying."

Poor Gran, so mournful.  "If we hadn't been talking about separate
schools .  . ."

We stroked her face and breathed into her soft neck until she forgot
what she was trying to tell us and promised there would be "And then
your poor mother, I She took a big breath.

"When I tell you, you'll understand," she said.  We already understood
but we let her.  She told us and we all three cried together and put
our arms around her and said things to make her feel better.

But then!  The surprise.  "But, girls.  Somebody special is coming."

"Not a new tutor."

"Not a new governess."

"Jane, Emily."  Grandmother's hands got away from her and flew up and
up.

So did her voice.  It came whistling out.  "Your mother is.  Something
has.

Your mother can't.  . ."  Poor old thing.  "Somebody has to .  She
finally got it out.  "I've sent for your father, girls."

It was like a tidal wave crashing on the shores of Amadamaland, foam
seething over us, washing away small objects, treasures, household
pets, leaving us clinging for dear life.  janemjan, jademerald, swept
away by something new.  We could hardly get our breath.

"You told us he was dead!"

She sighed.  "It was a necessary lie.  I had to bring you up the best
way I could," she said.  "And now, without Vivian .  . ."  We stroked
her hands until she calmed down and said, "Now come upstairs with
me."

Poor thing, she was so far gone in grief that she never even tried to
read our faces.  She just went through Mother's things with those
shaky, shaky hands, while Emerald and jade flickered in the shadows
like fireflies, waiting to light up.  She was looking for his
picture.

"Your father's name is Stephen," she said.  "And he's coming.  TO."

Then didn't we lean toward her, listening.  Take us away?  But she
didn't finish.  There was something she wasn't telling us.  Yes no
separate schools.

there may be trouble.  Nobody takes us out of the kingdom, no.  She had
found the picture she was looking for, but she didn't let us see.  She
had it clamped to her front, bang among the ruffles of the dress she
was wearing when it happened to Vivian.  And she had thattook.

One said, "Janem.  Glena."  We have to watch out for her.

One said, "Emjan.  Femo naja."  Sister told sister in the language only
we two know, She's nothing.  Nothing at all.

Our grandmother's eyes were all watery.  She would not let us see the
picture.  "Oh stop it.  Please don't."

We are steel and velvet.  "What is he coming to do?"

"What's he coming for, Grandmother?"

Beaten, yes?  But clever too.  In her own way this lady, our
grandmother, is as strong as us.  She sighed.  "I'll let him tell you
the rest."  And showed us the picture after all.

We smiled our smooth cat smiles.  Victoire.  No more Farmington talk,
or Ashley Hall, no talk of separation.  No, "Emily can study music in
New York," no giving us, "Nice little school for Jane, in
Farmington."

Next to Amadamaland, New York is the hole in the middle of a zero.

Farmington is in the sticks.  No more of, "You need to make other
friends, school will be good for you."  No more resistance.  Shejust
showed us the picture.

Nothing comes between us.  We are the queen.  Our kingdom is here.

When she saw it, my sister shuddered and blinked.  "Our father?"

Look at our grandmother's eyes, swimmy and so grave.  "Yes."

"Fama.  Emona."  Father, Emj'an.  Remember?

Grandmother cried, "Stop that!"  She hates our secret language.

"Fama?  Emenola."  janem, Not really.

Sometimes in the deep of night the queen remembers someplace else,
other bedrooms, another pair of arms, but it is in the book of the
castle that the queen never had a father.  In the royal book of
Amadamaland it is written that the queen came into the throne room
fully formed.  Appeared.  Us.  No father/mother.  Immediate and
whole.

A goddess, springing from the brow of a god.  Even so, we knew.  That
is our face in his picture.  Weaker, maybe, not so wise, but our
face.

We knew him at once.

We, the queen, pronounced on it.  "Em6-na-mus!"

"Girls?"  Grandmother kept waiting - for what?

We are the queen.  There was no need to answer her.  We took the
picture of King Stephen and ran away.  We put it in the Amadamaland
cathedral, in front of old Dr. Archer's Visible Head with its glass
eyes and articulated jaw.  We flanked it with crystal bud vases we
liberated from the kingdom downstairs.  We put the little silk prayer
rug Grandmother thought had been stolen in front of it and set candles
in the silver candlesticks.

"King Stephen?"

We lit candles and watched the light flicker on the face.  It was our
face, but not.  We look like him but we really come from Vivian.

"Maybe his name isn't King.  He looks like a saint.  Saint Stephen."

"Gorgeous."

My sister says, "Like us."

There is heat in my voice.  "Gorgeous man."

"Exactly."

"I think I'm in love with him."

"Vivian said he was dead."

"Well Vivian was wrong.

Sometimes the rival queen was nice.  When Vivian was happy with us she
gave us things, she was sweet.  Sometimes big as we were she used to
hug us and try to get both of us on her lap.  She cried over us.  We.

feel a little bad.

"Poor Vivian."

But now, the father.

Here he is.  Look at him down there, standing alone in the driveway
while Billy Graver puts the car away.  Look at him waiting for
Grandmother to open the front door.  Seen from above like this, he
looks so little.  Like nothing.

Watch him hug our grandmother and see how she backs away.  Then the
weak old thing forgets herself and almost falls, so he has to put out
his arms and help hold her up.  And all the time our grandmother is
talking, talking.

We can only imagine what she's telling him about the Queen.  Some
lies.

Well never mind, we have had enough of her.  It's him we watch.  He
never thinks to look up at the parapet, where we are hanging over with
our earrings dangling and our faces all pink from being upside down.

He doesn't see us.  We wonder what he thinks he is doing here.

We think, Here he Zs.

He is ours by blood.

The One who belongs to us, by our stars.  Who all these years has been
denied us.

"Vivian.  Serves her right."  She said it right out loud.

Wait.  Who said that?

janem, E an, Emerald, jade.  Who spoke?

Mi It is us, the Queen of Amadamaland.

My sister does not have to say, Daddy?

In spite of which I hear, and do not have to say, Idiot.  I know she
hears.  This z's no merefather.

Our prince, my darlings, that's him going into the front door way
below, and after he speaks with the grandmother, he is coming upstairs
to the tower wing, where we will greet him by name.  "Stephen."

"Father."

"Saint Stephen."

"We knew you'd come."

Look, he has traveled all this way just to come and live with us!

After we hug we will pull him into Amadamaland and we will live here
together forever.

It will be so fine!  We'll be complete.  We can be happy for the rest
of our lives right here in our beautiful, perfect kingdom, jade and
Emerald and their king, Saint Stephen, together forever in
Amadamaland.

And when the time comes?

When the time comes, we will marry him.

But we can't both.

Yes we can both.  After all, we are the queen.  Who would not want us
we are beautiful.  Idiot, say it.  Aren't we beautiful?

Everyone knows we're beautiful, but he's ...

He loves us!

... Ourfather.

We wz'll make him our king.

He may already be married.

Marriage is nothing.  We are the queen.

"Look, here he is!"

Waiting, we are agog, aflame, suspended over our lives, like Rapunzel
in the tower.

"Our prince!"

"Shh, he'll hear you."

Not pn'nce.  He's ourfather.

Father, prince, they are the same to us.

Together, we will be one.  In Amadamaland.

GOING UPSTAIRS in the aging Victorian pile that belongs to his
ex-mother-inlaw, Steve Harriman finds himself walking softly, although
there's no real reason to sneak.  He stays close to the wall, as if
putting his weight on the point where the tread is anchored to the wall
may keep the stairs from creaking.  He seems to need to go quietly.

For some reason, he isn't ready to let the girls know he's coming.

Jane.  Emily.  His daughters.  His and Vivian's, that he thought he
would never see again.  It took him a long time to get over the loss
and now ... Now Vivian is gone and here he is.

All the bad memories slip away and he gulps in anticipation.  The last
time he saw his daughters they were tiny, with plump legs still bent in
that baby way.  His pretty, sleepy twins were like cuddly rabbits in
fuzzy pajamas with feet.  They were moist and fragrant from the bath,
and Vivian had put on flowered hair ribbons to hold back their curls
roses for Jane and bachelor's buttons for Emily.  They looked at him,
not mirror images, but something more.

The likeness was exact.  Em.  Janie.  Or is it Janie and Em?  No
matter.  They were so pretty he almost forgot.

But even in their sweet moments, some sinister current crackled between
the two of them.  It didn't have a name, it was nothing he could
isolate and plumb.  It was strange enough to make him ask for help.

His friend the doctor was coming to evaluate.  All he wanted the man to
do was one simple thing.  He wanted his friend the doctor to say, Don't
be silly, they're fine.  The night before, Vivian took them and fled.

After all this time the memory is sharp as a hook dragged across an
open wound.  It took him two years to track her down, and when he did,
she got a court order to keep him away.

"For your own good," she said the one time they spoke.  Her mouth was
filled with tears and she would not explain.

The daughters he said goodbye to are not the daughters he's coming
upstairs to meet.  These girls are adolescents, nearly women.  Why
should they be glad to see him when he hasn't come before, and never
even tried to call or write.  He can't exactly explain to them about the
court order, or certain threats made by Vivian.  He can't be sure the
girls will remember him.  Here he is, Steve Harriman fresh in from
nowhere and out of excuses, getting ready to pick these unsuspecting
children up like puppies and take them out of their lives.

What is he supposed to do, open the door and say, "Surprise?"

He doesn't know.

Hejust knows he isn't ready.

Changing planes in Chicago, he shuddered in anticipation.  He couldn't
go in unarmed.  Pressed, he dodged into the airport gift shop and
picked up earrings for the girls - little crystal studs.  Then he
bought two more pairs, lapis and malachite.  Then he worried because it
might look like too much.

Would they think he was trying to buy them off?  He just wanted to have
something to give them.  He needed some way to let the twins know that
even though Vivian told them he was dead, they had - no.  Have.  They
have a father, who loves them.  Hejust wants to show his daughters that
in spite of everything, he never stopped thinking about them.

Now he bites his lip because he doesn't even know whether their ears
are pierced.

And he understands he's a little afraid of them.  On the long drive
here, he tried to pump the driver.  All he wanted was some little
detail, anything he could build on to start a conversation with his
estranged children, but at his first question Billy Graver went inside
himself and pulled up the drawbridge, leaving Steve to ride along with
his doubts.  Meeting Steve, the driver could have been a doctor
reporting a terminal disease, or a returning soldier bowed down by bad
news from the front.  Then there was Meredith.  She wants him to take
the girls, she doesn't want him to take the girls.  It is confusing.

She wants to tell him something but she can't.

Most of what fell between them didn't have to be discussed.  When she
pulled him inside, Meredith was breathing so erratically that her
pearlsjumped.

Her elegant face was leached of color.  She looked like a castaway
who's spent too long staring into an eclipse and it was clear that it
was not age that had done this to her, but the pressure of events.

"I tried to warn you," she said without preface or explanation.  "She
never should have had children.  I never should have let her marry
you."

"She would have married somebody else."

The old lady's hands flutter to his upper arms.  "You had such a nice
face.  Viv was trying so hard.  I thought it might even be all right.

And now.

. ."

"Shh, Meredith.  They're my children too."

She pulled him into the ell under the stairs and gave him the rings he
had given Vivian when they were married.  "Here."

I "She was still wearing them!"  When they dropped into his hand it all
became real.  His breath came out in an involuntary groan.

She nodded and couldn't stop, her whole head shook.  "I'm sorry.

I'mjust not strong enough.  When they're bigger, you'll want them to
have their mother's wedding rings."

"You haven't told me what happened to Vivian."

"It was very sad."

Vivian had died suddenly.  This woman called him from the hospital in
the middle of the night, dropping into Steve's new life to drag him
back, and now he was here.  He'd left home without really explaining,
leaving poor Carroll standing in the airport with a hurt, puzzled look
because Meredith said he had to come alone, and now?  Steve prodded
her.  "How did it happen?"

She opened empty hands to him.  "I don't know!  Nobody's sure."

Was this all she had to give?  Impatient, he said, "I need to know.  I
just need to know the details."

"A fall," she said.  "It was terrible."  Was the old lady trying to
protect him from painful details?  Or was she really baffled?  He did
not know.  She wouldn't answer, Meredith Archer, who could only say,
"I'm sorry.  I'm just not strong enough to bring up another set of
twins alone.  I just can't.  When you get to be my age, children put
things over on you.  They need ... They need somebody else.  Somebody
young."  Then when he thought she was about to start weeping
helplessly, she drew herself up.

Staring at something he could not see, Meredith Archer turned a
chiseled profile, she could have been a defeated general, looking out
over the fields of a fallen country.  "You can only carry a burden for
so long."

He plunged.  "Like Zane."  That old business.  Vivian was never clear
about what happened to her twin brother, but she carried the full
weight of their joint history.  Their marriage broke under it.

Zane.  The old lady's head seemed to spin on her neck at such great
speeds that her expression blurred.  "It's just too much.  I just want
them to have a chance!  Now they're your responsibility."  joy
surfaced, surprising him.  "I know!"  God, he had missed them.

Every night of his life he imagined going into their room and kissing
his children good night.  Feeling a little flash of disloyalty to
Carroll, he realized how much he was in love with Vivian.  How he
missed her now.

"So," Meredith said, as if she'd explained everything, "there you
are."

"Do they know about me?"

"I gave them your picture."  Now that they had completed the
transaction, Meredith had his elbow, he could feel the bite of her
nails through his jacket.

She was moving him toward the staircase.

"You still haven't told me exactly what happened."

"Nobody knows."  Gracious, steely, his ex-mother-in-law had always been
the perfect lady.  Meredith, the master of denial.  "They know you're
coming, but I wanted the rest to be a surprise, so I haven't had them
packed."  By the carved newel post the old lady stopped, looking up as
if she expected the girls to be hanging over the rail on the
third-floor landing.  She dropped her voice, in case.  "They'll need
all new things."

"I'll be happy to .  . ."

She rushed on.  "Once you get them away.  The problem will be getting
them away.  Billy will have Viv'an's car ready with the motor
running.

All you have to do is get them downstairs.  And if anything comes up
...

"What could come up?"

... I'll pay."

He said, uneasily, "Why are you making this such a big thing?  They're
only kids."

"I hope so."  Meredith's expression brought it back, the secretiveness,
the strangeness that encircled his little girls and contained them they
were only babies but there were times when he looked at them in the
crib at night and thought he saw something fierce and powerful there, a
force bigger than the two of them that kept them locked, head to tail,
spinning in a tight, furious, unbreakable circle, moving so quickly
that faces, identities, everything blurred Meredith's voice drifted
between them and hung there, words quivering like discrete objects.

"It's your turn now."

So.

Troubled, he rehearses opening lines for this encounter, but he can't
get much beyond, "Hi."

It's not the girls he's afraid of, it's their reproaches.  If you
really loved us, you would have come r us.  I couldn't.  I promised.

What if they don't want to go with him?

He tells himself this has happened too fast, that he needs to call home
and touch base with Carroll before he faces them.  He wants to be able
to tell his girls, "You have a father who loves you and a nice
stepmother.  She loves you too.  She wants you to come and live with
us."  He tells himself everything is fine, hejust isn't ready to start
doing what he has to do here.

This isn't the real reason.  And it isn't anything Meredith has told
him, either.

He can't say why he needs to be careful, or why he wants to surprise
them.

These are his daughters after all, his girls, and he's not the enemy,
he's their father.  They're only children.

He corrects himself.  Not children.  Adolescents.  From all the
pictures Meredith has, beautiful.  They'll be young women soon.

When he comes into the third floor corridor heading for the girls'
suite, he hears music.  The Triumphal March from Aida.  It lifts his
heart and makes him smile.  Swift and suddenly happy, he knocks gently
on the door and waits for them to answer.  He can hardly wait to see
them.  His girls, his children.

"Girls."

The Triumphal March peaks and then tapers off.  Paired voices come from
inside the door, silky and touchingly sweet.  "Who is it?"

"It's me," he says.

"Your father."

The blended voices say, "King Stephen?"

Surprised, he laughs.  "Not exactly."

"Then you cannot enter," one says.  Emily?

Maybe it's Jane who says, "We admit only the king."

"King Stephen.  Oh, God, if you say so."

"Saint Stephen."

"Not exactly."  He feels so guilty!

The voice is steely.  It is an imperative.  "Saint Stephen."

Sighing, he capitulates.  "Whatever you want."  He puts his mouth close
to the crack and says, "I never got a chance to tell you girls this,
but I want you to know that even when I couldn't see you, I loved
you.

I've always loved you."

"Wait," one says.

The other says, "Then come."

The knob doesn't yield.

"First give the password."

He feels in his pockets for the earrings.  He was going to start
with the crystals and save the lapis and malachite for other days, but
now he pulls out all the little boxes at once, holding them out in
cupped hands.

"I've brought you some presents."

There is a scuffle on the other side of the door.  "The password is,
Prenamo," one says.  He shudders.  It is the old language.

The other says, "Present yourself."

"King Stephen.  Prenamo."  A grown man like this, locked out in the
hall of a strange house with his hands full of trinkets and that funny
word choking him.  "Prenamo," he says, louder.  "King Stephen, OK?  Or
Saint, if that's what you want."  Then on an inspiration he adds, "I
have come to make homage to the princesses."

One says, in a voice so low and thrilling that it could have come from
deep within a much older woman, "We are the queen."

"The queen," he says.  "Oh prenamo.  Please let me in."

The key is in the lock, chain latches are already sliding, in another
second the door will open and he'll see his children, Steve Harriman,
King Stephen to you, he thinks with a little edge of anxiety, waiting
to enter the kingdom.

"You may enter," the other daughter says.

What does he expect when he walks in, hostility?  Weirdness?  It's
neither.

It's just two teenaged girls, flushed and beautiful and as uncertain
and excited as he is.  He still doesn't know what Meredith was trying
to tell him but seeing them, he's relieved to know she's wrong.  The
twins fill the little opening.  They hide their hands in their skirts
like shy girls at dancing class.  "Dad?"

They look so tentative that he says, "Hey, it's me.  Your father."

Their smiles make his heart leap.  "You're really our father?"

He nods.  "You look great."

"So do you."  Their eyes fill.  "You heard about our.  .

"Mother."

One corrects him.  "Vivian."

"Yes," he says, feeling something twist inside him.  "Vivian.  That's
why I've come.  Your, ah..."  He can't explain, not yet.  "Your
grandmother thought you probably needed me."

"And we need yoi-j," they say.  They seem so young, so ordinary and
easy with him, nice children with their smooth hair and pastel dresses,
that he wonders what all the fuss was about.  They hold out their arms
to him.

Which is how Steve finds himself hugging them.  His twins are
beautiful, fragrant, standing so close that he doesn't see their
faces.

When he can swallow he says into their hair, "So, your mother.

Vivian.  Vivian is gone, but.  Ah.  At least you'll have me, OK?"

When they release him and back off one says, "We're so glad!"

The other says, "Really."

"'A'e're so glad you came!"

"We thought you were dead."

"We just wish we could have had you and her together."

He hears the silent reproach.  Why didn't you stay married?  "She
didn't want that," Steve says.  "I guess I have a lot to explain to
you."

"We have a lot to tell you too," one says.  In spite of their grief
they are both smiling, excited to have him here.  Who wouldn't love
them on sight?

"And things to show you!"  the other says, and as her sister's face
changes she rushes on, "The kingdom!"

He supposes they mean these rooms.  "That's great," he says.

The other says hastily, "But not right now."

Her sister sees, and adds, "Notjust yet, OK?"

"Whatever you say," he says.  Something warns him not to tell them
where he's taking them.

Like any children, his beautiful twin daughters want to forget their
grief in the commonplace business of the day, two nice kids and their
father, getting to know each other.  They move him out the door.

"Let's go downstairs, OK?"

"Outside, where it's pretty.  Out in the car."

"When we come back, we'll take you around the kingdom."

"Whatever you say," Steve says.  He can't quite figure out how to tell
them he's taking them away from here.

"To McDonald's, maybe."

"Or Dairy Queen."  He's glad to hear them laugh.  "Let's go spoil our
lunches."

Now they're on the stairs, lingering until he catches up.  "Wherever
you say."  Steve is laughing too, in spite of everything.

His daughter says, "You're in charge, Dad."

"Dad," the other daughter says.

Steve takes a deep breath.  Dad.  He feels better.  He has plenty of
time to break the news to them.

AL ONE in Steve's house, Carroll wishes she could rewrite the last few
hours.

She wants Steve here so she can mend whatever is broken between them.

She wants to take back her harsh words.  But now he's on his way to
northern California to change their lives.

When he comes back he won't be alone.  He's coming home with his
twins.

She's a good reporter, she has to prepare.  If she can get hold of some
facts, she'll know how to proceed.  Maybe she should be at the library,
reading everything there is about twins, care and feeding, she guesses,
or is it psychopathology?  Do twins have special qualities that
ordinary people don't know about?  Are there specific things twins
need, or things she needs to know?

She thinks there are.

There are characteristics unique to twins, she thinks, and doesn't know
why this makes her so uncomfortable.  Twins are unique.  Not like us.

She can't shake the bizarre double images in Jenkins, souls shadowing
each other as ifioitied at the waist.  There are pairs she met and
talked to and others whose stories drifted up out of history, or is it
legend, the Duvals, who shared a uniform in the War Between the States,
confounding commanding officers, who thought there was only one Duval
serving the Confederacy and had the wrong twin executed as a Union
spy.

Jane and Dansey Herbert slipped in and out of town history around the
turn of the century, they fell in love with the same man and pursued
him, flowing one into the other like water, beautiful girls who changed
places at such lightning speed that they exhausted their quarry, loving
him to death.  The Archambaults had twin sons nobody saw and nobody
wanted to talk about.  There were the Soders.  So ancient and dried-up
that they were almost sexless, they still lived near the center of town
when Carroll first came to Jenkins, two identical old people in
matching overalls, stewing like wasps trapped in a kettle.  If you
slipped on the way home from school and accidentally put one foot on
their grass, they came boiling out.  Even the twins Carroll knew in
high school were a little creepy, Betti and Bobbi Carter, who kept
secrets, and answered for each other in class, the Benson boys - the
dumb one always took the blame for what the smart one did, but when
dull Blake got killed in a wreck, brilliant Bob had to be pried off his
casket.  That night the police found Bob sleeping on top of his
brother's grave, when they woke him, he refused to leave, instead he
started pounding on the dirt like the pillows of an unmade bed.  "Get
up," he screamed, sobbing to break the heart of the dead.  "Get up.

You've slept long enough."

Twins.  Carroll has read that identical twins come from the same egg,
not complete individuals, but discrete halves of a mystical whole.

joined in ways ordinary people can't know, they share, what is it, the
ability to know without being told.  One cries, "What is it?"  before
the other speaks.  They don't debate, they act as one.  Separated at
birth, an identical twin will double over, gasping in pain at the exact
moment that the missing twin is shot dead halfway around the world.  It
speaks of something alien to her, disturbing.

Not like us, she thinks.  Not like any of us.

And all this time the man she thought she knew has been the father of
twins.  Steve Harriman married and fathered twins and for unspecified
reasons he walked away from that life and into Carroll's, hiding this
central fact.

She is hung up on the lie.

The shock made Carroll say things she regrets.  Blinded by pain and
resentment, she attacked, hurting Steve when he needed her most.  If
she needs to go to the library and do homework now, if she wavers
between research and compulsive shopping, buying too many things in
pairs for Steve's girls, it's because she needs to make this up to all
three of them.  She's whirling now, torn between pain and guilt, pain
at the lie and the betrayal, and guilt because she hurt Steve when he
could least handle it.

"You've turned our lives into a lie!"  He was ashen, shaken by the news
from California, but she couldn't stop, it hurt so much!  "You should
have told me."

A long shiver took him by the shoulders.  "I couldn't."

"Oh yes."  She's ashamed to remember her tone.  "Oh yes you could.  You
could but you let it go by and now it's, Oh by the way, in case you
thought you wanted a family, you already have a family."  She was
crying.  "I would have loved them, Steve.  All you had to do was let me
know."

"I was afraid if I told you, you' stop loving me."  The look e gave her
then was clouded, she recognized the shadows rushing at his back - they
had crowded Steve at their first meeting by the river in Jenkins, and
in spite of all the vows Carroll had made to herself, to make him
happy, to make him forget, in spite of the little song of safety she'd
been humming ever since they married, the shadows had never gone
away.

"Stop loving you?  Me, stop?"  Outrage shook her.  "Who do you think I
am that you had to lie to me?"

He put out his hands.  "Carroll, don't.  There's no way you can
understand this.  The weight.  The responsibility."  His voice was raw,
as if he'd pulled it out of a place that was still bleeding.  "Whatever
it is they are."

"Nothing bad," she said quickly, like a maiden raising a crucifix
against the unknown, or whistling into a whirlwind.  "Nothing bad.

They're only twins."

Everything in him shuddered to a stop.  It was as if a bat had flown
into the room and started circling.  "My twins."

So this is how Carroll summed up her astonishment and pain at his
betrayal, the anxiety that left her hurt andjlttering.  With her voice
dark with resentment, she lashed out, "Exactly."

She might as well have smacked him with a board.

So she and the man she loves more than anything have this unresolved
bad moment standing between them.  There wasn't time to make it up.  If
Carroll is wandering the empty house now, bouncing from room to room
like a Ping-Pong ball, it's because she wants a chance to rewrite all
their sentences and give the scene an ending that leaves her feeling
less mean and miserable.  She can't wait to have Steve back so she can
rewrite history.

It was this combination of love and regret that drove Carroll to shout
after him as he boarded, "Whatever it is, I'll take care of them."

How badly has she hurt him?  She doesn't know.  She only knows she
needs to see him soon, and in the ready superstition of those who have
lost a parent in childhood, she thinks, What if something happens to
him and I don't get a chance?

Stop it, Carroll.  just stop.  He'll come back and find everything a
mess the house, your face.  You don't want him to see you like this, so
you need to wash your hair and put on earrings and a silk shirt.  You
have to focus on the ceremonial dinner.  New furniture.  You'vepromised to take care of the twins.

Twins.  The word calls up a cartoon double stroller, with identical
grinning doll faces framed in ruffled bonnets and identical pudgy hands
brandishing matched rattles.  It's like a practical joke.

But this isn't a joke, and they aren't babies.  They're adolescent
girls.

Because it's less threatening, she's been thinking of them as little,
but they're fourteen.  Are they still kids or emerging women?  She
doesn't know.

She doesn't even know what to buy for them.  Steve left in haste.

There are too many things he didn't think to tell her that she didn't
have time to ask.

Does their mother try to give them separate identities, or should she
be out at Eikeia and the Gap buying things in pairs?  Carroll doesn't
know.  She thinks she ought to clear her things out of the front
bedroom, books, her laptop, her files, to make a place for them.

She lingers at the door to the spare room, looking at the neat desk
Steve bought for her, the open laptop with its blank screen reproaching
her, the daybed that in a pinch they could use for guests.  That first
day, sunburned to pink and laughing, still shaking sand out of their
shoes from the wedding trip, they stood right here-.  Hugging her,
Steve opened the door.  "I fixed this up for you," he said with a proud
grin.  Carroll was excited, touched.  "It's your office.  Plus.  You
can sit there and write a novel."

"In your dreams."  She laughed.

When she writes her book, it will not be a novel.  Carroll knows more
than she ought to about how being orphaned changes ordinary lives.  She
remembers a quotation from a book on suicides, "'The missing parent,
like an open wound."

She has spent her life since Violet died trying to fill the empty
places, she thinks there's more to find out about what these early
losses do to perfectly ordinary people, and considerably more to
write.

Reinforced by Steve, she laughed.  "Who knows what else I can do."  Her
tone was bright.

He crunched her to his side so they joined, flank to flank.  "You can
do whatever you want."

"Count on it."  But even that first day she cast around in spite of her
ambitions, secretly placing other furniture, the crib.

Now this will be the girls' room.  His girls.  In pain, she thinks, He
already has what he needs.  He'll never want a baby now.  Then she
thinks, bitterly, He said he didn't know if he wanted kids.  He never
said he already had them.  Then she thinks, Don't.

Because to her astonishment she's come smack up against what's really
bothering her.  That rises in her throat and tastes sour in her
mouth.

It is the lie.

No, she thinks, leaving the room and kicking the door shut.  It's
discovering the lie.

No.  She stops in the hall with her heart thudding.  That isn't it at
all.

Standing there in the upstairs hall of Steve Harriman's house, Carroll
is newly bereft.  She wants to believe it's the shock, no, the
dislocation that has leveled her and left her open to the winds, like a
half-demolished house.

The fact that she left a job that was her life to follow a man who
didn't love her well enough to tell the truth.  She let Steve Harriman
swoop down on Jenkins, Florida, and pull her out of the sand like a
shrub with shallow roots.

He shook the sand off her roots and transplanted her here, binding her
to him with love and promises while that idiot Russell moved into her
desk at the Dispatch and took her place.  Steve did all this - changed
her life forever without trusting her love enough to tell her the
rest.

But that isn't the whole thing.

The real issue is deeper and more troublesome.

What bothers her now, what caught Carroll under the heart with hooks
was the way Steve's face changed in the predawn light when he turned
and for the first time said his dead wife's name.

"Vivian."

It was like having her there in the room.  Vivian.

Some unsuspected part of the man she thought she knew moved out of the
shadows for a narrow second, and shone.  And

Carroll saw that happy as Steve had been with her, he was not the same
man he had been in life before Carroll, before the explosion that ended
his first marriage and overturned him, changing his life.  His look
told her that before whatever happened to change him so dramatically
happened, her lover, husband, her only one had been delirious, exalted,
drunk in love with Vivian.

It was jealousy that sent Carroll running at him, using words like
snares to bring him down in midflight and pull him back.

She wants him here.

There are things she has to know.  Like, Who was she, anyway, this
Vivian, who still lights up your face.  And if you loved her so much
how could you end it in the first place?  If it's really over, why do
you look like that when you say her name, and if things between you two
were so bad, why does she still make you shine?

She wants to bang on his chest, hammering until it opens like a cabinet
and the truth spills out.  She hears herself crying, "Why didn't you
tell me?"

But she knows.  No.  She thinks she knows.  She's felt him shifting
restlessly in the night, murmuring in his sleep, chased by furies she
can't envision.  His face when they first met was shadowed, as if at
his back large shapes loomed, stalking him.

Short of sleep and parched - did she forget to eat?  - Carroll roves
the house, looking for something without knowing what.  She may hope to
find some object - photograph, diary, talisman that Steve kept because
he couldn't bear to throw it away, but kept hidden because he couldn't
bear to think of Vivian.

She just wants to find something that will prove the old marriage was
really over.

No.  That will prove Steve didn't love this Vivian after all.  Or had
stopped loving her.

Anything, she thinks miserably.  After all, I'm into facts.  It's an
occupational hazard for any reporter.  Get your facts to march in order
and you can control your life.

Wait, she tells herself even as she rummages.  It's over.  You have
him.

The poor woman is dead.  Listen, she tells herself with only a touch of
guilt, you have to inform yourself, you're taking care of this woman's
children now.

Finally she admits that she's looking through Steve's things simply
because she can't help it.  She misses him so much!

This is what she finds.  In the back of the drawer to Steve's drafting
table, two snapshots.  Steve and Vivian on some forgotten, happy day.

They are only smears but they make her grimace, it's disturbing to see
how lovely the woman is.  Was.  And in the pigeonhole in the desk in
the front room, right where she could have found it if she'd looked, a
fact that makes her ashamed of the search, she finds the divorce
paper.

it is official, bland and unyielding as a concrete wall.  It's dated
ten years ago, almost to the day, and it is a no-fault decree.  Carroll
knows the blanket terms for cases like these, Irretrievable
breakdown.

Irreconcilable differences.  God.

Isn't this enough?

He loved her.  It's over.  She's dead.  Carroll shouldn't mind that he
used to love Vivian, but she does.  Brace up, she tells herself.  Feel
better.

After all, you're still here.  You're both still here and you have him
now.

He's yours for good.  But the selfish, jealous part of her stalks the
house, slamming drawers and bumping into things, because if she and
Steve live a thousand years together she'll always know that Vivian
came first.

Looking at the twins, Steve will see Vivian's face.

Emily.  She tries the names.  Jane.  She practices.  Hello Emily.

Hello Jane.  Twins.  For the first time Carroll forgets her own bitter
preoccupation and thinks about the girls.  Disturbed by the suddenness,
the threatened incursion, she's shied off the central fact.  She and
Steve's twins have more in common than they know.

Their mother is dead.

Like Violet.  Her insides shift.

Without knowing how she got there, Carroll is back in childhood,
waiting for Violet to come home from the hospital.  No.  Inside she
already knows Violet is too sick.  She's waiting to be told.  She is
ten-year-old Carroll Lawton with her knuckles gnawed raw and the ear of
her frayed Teddy gripped tightly in her teeth, ignorant kid in her
striped T-shirt and matching polyester flares with her underpants
drooping and her socks bunched up because when Violet got sick
everything in the world seemed to let go all at once.  She hears the
elevator door and the almost intolerable pause while the person getting
out collects herself.  The sitter.  She's coming back to break the news
to Carroll that her mother is never coming home.

The twins.  Everything in her rushes to meet them.  Poor kids!

Carroll will do better than her aunts did when she came down to
Jenkins, trying to be brave and not cry.  She was doing all right until
Suzy's gooshy sympathy brought her down.  Oh you poor thing, you've
lost your mother!  What's going to happen to you now?

Please stop it.

She is crying.  Stop.

She'll find some easy thing to say to Steve's daughters when they come,
something ordinary, so they can pretend life is going on after all.

She has to help them over the first hard places.  She'll help the girls
pretend that in spite of everything that's happened to them, they're
going to be OK.  Carroll will not, will not look at them and let her
eyes fill up like Aunt Suzy's or say that awful thing.  She'll love
them because she loves Steve beyond loss and beyond all memory.  After
all, she's promised to take care of them.

The phone rocks her back into the moment.

"This is Meredith Archer calling."  The voice is soft and elegant as
old velvet.

"Vivian's mother!"

The old woman does not answer.  "You're Stephen's wife?"

With the fear of the once-burned, Carroll cries, "Yes!"  What's the
matter, what's the matter.

"I'm the twins' grandmother.  I thought I ought to call to let you know
.

. ."

Carroll is thinking OhGodohGodohGod.  Her voice Is too loud.  "IS HE
THERE?"

"Not any more," the woman says.

"What!"

The remote speaker seems not to hear her cry of fear.  Instead she goes
on in a careful tone that is not quite matter-of-fact.  "He had to
hurry down to San Francisco to catch his plane.  I had him take
Vivian's car."  Cultivated as she sounds, organized and in control, the
old woman betrays herself, "He might as well, she doesn't need it any
more and I don't care what happens to it now.

I just ...

Carroll prompts her.  "Then he's on his way?"

"Yes," she says gratefully, "That's it.  He's on his way."  She pulls
herself together and goes on as smoothly as a grande dame making
arrangements for an afternoon tea dance.  "He's on his way, and
naturally you'll want to meet their plane.  I thought the least I could
do was call you with flight numbers and times."

Carroll is emptied out by relief.  "Oh thank you," she cries, and is
too fixed on this to think to ask the caller for any further details.

GOING HOME to the chauffeur's quarters, Billy Graver drags his feet in
an old man's shuffle.  He's reluctant to face his son.  He knows what
Kurt will say.

You will do anyt/tingfor the Archers.  Even lie.  Well he hasn't lied,
exactly.

When he helped Steve Harriman put the twins' things into Vivian's car,
he just neglected to mention certain things.

They're his daughters after all, he tells himself.  They deserve afresh
start.  Another chance.  They do!  He and Meredith love the twins, but
if they're going to help them, they have to let them go.  Billy and
Meredith didn't even have to discuss this.  Like so many things that
pass between them, it was understood.

He would do anything for her.

In his time he has done everything.  Billy has worked for the Archers
ever since he got his license.  He was driving for the family when he
and the orphaned Meredith were young.  Last night he drove Meredith to
the hospital to release the body of poor Vivian and he will drive her
to the Church of All Saints for the funeral tomorrow.  They've known
each other all their lives, and if Billy thought he was in love with
her when they were nineteen, if Meredith confided in him so completely
that he could pretend she loved him, he knows better now.  He is the
driver and she is mistress of the house.  just friends.

In his time, Billy has taken her everywhere.  He drove the limousine to
the church the day she married Hal Oliphant, the unfaithful, drunken
unfavorite son of some big family in the East.  How could she love a
handsome husk of a man whose family paid him to stay away?

Whose mother sent a priest west to plead with her to change her mind?

Poor raving Franklin Davage.  Bushyhaired Father Davage with his
warnings that sounded more like mad ramblings.

They should have listened!  It didn't matter what he said, Meredith was
so dazzled by Hal Oliphant that she would have ignored a whirlwind.

They went to the church with the window between passenger and driver
rolled up, sealing him away from Meredith.  She sat in the back, lovely
in her wedding dress, while he drove with his jaws locked tight so he
wouldn't scream, his nails dug into the wheel until he could feel blood
starting inside his gloves.  At the church Hal Oliphant reeled in the
road in his wedding clothes, already drunk.  To this moment Billy
wishes he'd done what he wanted, even if it meant prison.  He should
have run the bastard down.

To stop the pain he married Esther Beecham, and was surprised when
nothing changed.  Then Kurt was born and Billy told himself that if he
hadn't stopped the pain he had at least begun to replace Meredith in
his heart.  My son.  My pride.

But he is never through doing things for Meredith.  When her twins were
born it was Billy who drove her to the hospital and Billy who gnawed
his knuckles in the waiting room.  It was Billy who rejoiced when the
long labor ended and he alone who saw the doctor's peculiar expression
when he came out to break the news.  If at the moment of birth
something uncanny had happened, the doctor was not ready to give it a
name.  So it was left to Billy to tell Hal, who came in late, and
drunk, "You have twins.  A girl and a boy."

Hal said the strangest thing.  "Not again."

"Don't you want to see them?"

"You've got to be kidding," Hal said.  That was all.  Blathering drunk,
he muttered, "Better make Davage baptize them.  Or say some charm."

Crazy.  Like a fool, Billy didn't pass it on.  And like a fool, he let
his wife Esther work in the big house.  He let her go up there where
handsome, ruined Hal Oliphant roved the halls, but that was not his
greatest oversight.  He let his baby grow up on this place with Hal
Oliphant's beautiful, flawed twins.

It was Billy who drove Meredith to the hospital the night Hal lost
control of the Mercedes and roared into a tree - the last in a painful
string of accidents.  Their visits to the hospital were like so many
infernal worry beads.  Police prying Hal out of the wreck found the
drunken fool locked in Esther Graver's arms, Billy's wife was already
dead.  He did not mourn.  This is what Billy hugged to himself and held
tight, At least I have my Perfect son.

Together in the hospital, Meredith and Billy clung, and when it became
clear that Hal Oliphant was going to live, he drove her home.  He drove
her to her lawyers' offices the next day.  Meredith divorced Hal and in
an attempt to erase him, took back her own name.  She finished with Hal
too late.  She had his twins.

And there was something strange about the twins.

He should have been warned!  Billy has always been troubled by this
deficit of attention.  He and Meredith should have been wary, they
should have combed the Oliphant family history, looking for signs.  He
wn the priest and laid open his soul and pried
the secrets out.  There were strange things hanging from that
particular family tree that nobody talked about.  There was more
strangeness implied.  The rest, nobody knew.  It seemed better to put
the past away and go ahead.  Or so they told themselves.

But there is no anticipating the mystery and power of twins one spirit
in two bodies, good, bad, clothed in the same flesh, inextricably
tied.

There's no isolating and identifying the power that binds twins and no
anticipating how it will be unleashed.

Because Meredith was left to bring up the twins alone, Billy ended up
doing things he won't even admit to.  After the first terrible business
with Zane, he had to lie about the accident.  He had to take poor Kurt
to the emergency room and lie about how the child got hurt.  "It
happened too fast for me to see," Billy said, handing him over - his
own son.  "Hurry.  He's in shock."

So there was the first lie.  Then there was Kurt's injury.  After that
little Vivian needed certain injections just to keep her from waking up
screaming, whether in anticipation or fear even her mother couldn't
say.  It was Billy who made the purchases.  Later it would be up to
Billy to cover up the last terrible business of Zane's death.

Then there are Vivian's girls.  He loves them but delightful as they
are they have their bad days, and in his time he has done certain
things for the twins.  If Jane and Emily are not like other children,
it's his business to help Meredith pretend they are.  If they sometimes
fall into rages, if when they were small they got mad and broke things
or beat their ponies or even, dear God, hurt someone, it was his
business to help make the best of things, even if it meant covering
up.

He and poor Meredith have spent their adult lives covering up for
things.  It is too hard.

Still, Billy has been driving for Meredith for too many years to
stop.

He stays on.  God help him he stays on in spite of everything.

He knows Kurt thinks it's because he and Meredith are in love, maybe he
even thinks they sneak out in the deepest part of the night, but that
isn't true.  The truth is more complicated.  They are old friends.

No.

Fellow sufferers.  Partners yoked and moving down the long, unbroken
road to the inevitable checkout counter.  They are comfortable in
silence because they've shared so much.

How to explain this to a man so young he still thinks love must
necessary y include sex.  Who shuts himself in above the garage, where
there's no chance for either?  He does business by fax and modem.  His
clients come to meetings in the tiny living room.

The tragedy is not Kurt's being hurt when he was little.  It's his
falling in love with Vivian.  He's loved her ever since they were five
years old.

While the child was mending Billy sat by the bed and said, "Maybe we
ought to go someplace else to live.  I can get another job."  Kurt flew
into a tantrum and would not get up until Billy, who had his own
loyalties, promised they would stay so he could play with "Bivian."

They were children, it was sweet.

Lord, Billy thinks.  So it's my fault after all.  His fault for eating
his pain in the first place, cleaving to Meredith after Esther died,
for letting his vulnerable child ignore what had happened to him and
play on with Meredith's dark, passionate twins.  It seemed OK, his bon
got over the accident and grew up fine.  They stayed on because Kurt
was fixed on Vivian, dizzy and lost in love.

He should have known!  He should have known from experience that only
bad things come from this kind of love, But they were only kids!

Children, and God help him, Billy didn't see it coming until they were
in their twenties and so much in love that Vivian's twin circled them
like a flame-crazed moth, trying to find some way to reach the center
of the light.

Meredith saw it though, and sent her twins on the Grand Tour of Europe
while Kurt went to Stanford.  But they came back to the place, they all
did.

And picked up where they left off.

Billy let himself imagine it was OK, Kurt and Vivian would be happy in
love - might even get married.  He reckoned without Zane.

Crossing the driveway, he strikes his temple with his fist, grinding
his face until tears come under his sharp knuckles.  So stupid!  He
doesn't know exactly what happened after Kurt came back from Stanford,
but by the end of that month Zane was dead and Vivian was in isolation
in a private mental hospital.  When it came time for her to come back
here from the hospital she ran away.

And Kurt?  He was never the same.

Something picked him up that night and broke him in two.  He just went
inside and never came out again.  At the end of that terrible night
Billy came back from the police station shaking with grief.  For a
minute he thought the apartment was empty.  Like a kid in a horror
movie he moved slowly through the rooms, calling.  Then he found his
son, crouched on the floor at the end of the hall with his head bent.

Something had sent him so far inside himself that nothing could touch
him.  He stayed that way for a long time while his father wept and
begged.  When he came out everything changed.

Billy was about to call an ambulance when Kurt shook himself all over
and stood.  He had come to a decision.  He made lists.  Gave orders.

He had turned into somebody else.  And if he never spoke to Vivian
again it seemed all right.

Immured as he is, he has made a success.

And seems satisfied.

It breaks Billy's heart to see him and know that at bottom it is all
his fault.  Groaning, he mounts the stairs.

SLOWLY, Billy enters the little apartment above the half-timbered
garage.  Kurt doesn't even wait until his head clears the opening.  He
snaps, "You didn't tell him."

"How could I, when I don't even know what there is to tell?"  He
doesn't, Billy tells himself.  The hell of it is he probably does.

Sadly, Billy surveys the living room, tired furniture, a brilliant
carpet bought in hopes.  He and Esther made a life here, they moved in
when Kurt was born and they could have been happy here if Esther hadn't
been killed in the wreck, if Kurt hadn't ...

He always feels heavy coming in.  The Tudor beams make the ceiling seem
even lower than it is.  Computer screens flicker and smoke from his
son's cigarette layers in the dim light.

"You'd do anything for Meredith Archer, wouldn't you?"  It is implicit,
even lie.  "I've done a lot of things."

"You just sent him off without telling him?"  Kurt's accusation fills
the tiny apartment like a dense coastal fog.

"It wasn't mine to tell."

Kurt lashes out.  "Whose was it then, mine?"

Billy's voice breaks.  "Oh, son."  He hates this.  It makes him feel a
hundred years old.

"You should have done something."  Darkhaired, lanky Kurt Graver pushes
his chair away from the computer table, looking unnervingly like a
young Abe Lincoln.  He's hardly aware of thickly printed paper rolling
out of the fax and urgent messages flickering on the various screens.

He is handsome in his own irregular way, and in his own way he is
strangely powerful.  He is at ease with his body, physical - he keeps a
battery of fitness equipment in his room - but except for the nightly
runs he makes along the rugged coastal highway, Kurt hardly ever leaves
this room.

"How could I do anything, when I'm just .  . ."  Billy breaks off.

Kurt's voice trembles.  "How could you not?"

He is a living reproach.  Of the trio of children who grew up on the
Archer place, Kurt's the only one left.  Wild, angry Zane Archer is
long dead.

Now Vivian is dead and he's afraid to ask Kurt how he feels.

Billy's chest clenches - dear God, how did it happen, really?  He
doesn't know.  Were Vivian's eyes open when it happened and could she
have saved herself?  He thinks she may have welcomed it.  The bond of
twinship loosed at last.  Darkness.  Silence.  The end.  She may have
rejoiced at the stilling of Zane's voice inside her head.  Surviving,
she contained both of them.  Now the black fire has gone out.  Or he
prays it has.

Maybe her twins can grow up ordinary after all.

Poor Vivian's ex-husband is on his way back to the San Francisco
airport with Vivian's girls.  He's taking them away.  Trembling, Billy
helped him load their things into the trunk of Vivian's car, looking
anxiously over the lid at Emily and Jane who leaned into each other,
touching foreheads, and would not return his look.

Steve Harriman and the twins are gone now, heading for the airport.

Soon the girls will be completely out of reach.  When the car pulled
away from the house this morning, Billy felt some of the same things he
did after Zane died and Vivian ran away.  Something lifted from the
house.

Relief.  The engine that drove them all was stilled.  He thinks they
should count themselves lucky.

Kurt says nothing about Vivian.  As far as he's concerned it ended
years ago.  Instead he charges his father.  "You should have told
him."

"Told him what?  How could I tell him anything when I don't even
know?"

Billy doesn't have the heart.  Not without proof.  Of what?  He doesn't
even want to admit the suspicion.  He loves them.  They're only little
girls.

"You don't have any idea what they're going to do."

"But they haven't.  . ."  Done anything.  I think.

"You don't want to know, but you do."

"Oh, son."  Billy wants to protest, and can't.  He realizes how empty
he feels now that Jane and Emily are gone.  Twins fill more
psychological space than they occupy physically.  Like Zane and Vivian
in the lost, innocent days before the accident, these girls are a
force.  Taken individually, they're not much taller than Meredith, but
together, they are huge.  For twelve years theirjoined, restless spirit
has expanded to fill the Archer place, overflowing the house, the
gardens and the cliff where the house sits, the ocean beyond.

Now they are gone.

Kurt says doggedly, "You should have told him."

Even if Billy had wanted to stop Steve, or try to cobble some kind of
warning instructions, notes for an unwary father, it's too late.  He
sighs.

"He already knows."

"Sure he does," Kurt says bitterly.

"He's their father," Billy says, as if the rest naturally follows,
caution.  Full knowledge of the risks.  "Of course he knows."  But the
secret guilty part of him is chiming, Nobody ever really knows.  Until
you see it happening, you never know.  And even then.

Even then.  Here is Kurt chained to this place.  A reminder.  Not for
the first or the last time Billy thinks, if only I could make it up to
you!

"You could have told him about Zane."

Stricken, Billy says, "No I couldn't."  He is goaded, pricked by
memory.

He can still see black-haired, savage Zane Archer with his white-rimmed
eyes and that dangerous grin.  He falters.  "How could I, when I don't
even know the truth?"

"You know."

Billy cries, "Son, you never told me!"

Kurt looks up with that little jerk of the neck he has, showing teeth
bared in pain.  "You've always known the truth."

"Oh, son.  I am so sorry.

"You know better than anybody," Kurt says, and Billy thinks, Except
you.

But Kurt won't admit self-pity and he won't permit it in Billy.

Instead he glares, waiting.

"He lived with Vivian," Billy says finally.  "He already knows."

Kurt says angrily, "He only thinks he knows.  He's just like you
were.

Deaf and dumb and blind."

"For God's sake."

"You didn't want to know.  They had to rub your face in it.  Vivian."

Kurt makes it sound like a whip -,rack.  "Zane."

"With Hal gone we thought there was nothing left to be afraid of."

Billy's voice drops.  "When he left he told us to watch out.  He never
said what for.

Oh, Kurt, at the beginning they were only children."  His voice
breaks.

"Children.  . ."

Kurt nails him with a look, Q.E.D. "-twins.  So youjtist send this poor
bastard off, like, Take care of the twins."' The twins are Steve's
problem now, Looking out of the back of the car, Jane and Emily waved
goodbye with such sweet looks that it brought tears to his eyes.  He's
trying hard to keep from crying.  His heart rate is too high, it will
take him a while to recover from all those trips from the third floor
with the twins' things, cartons, clothes, certain dolls.  He's shaky
from all those stairs, he can't even catch his breath, and now here is
the one person he loves most, half-turned from the computers with his
yellow eyes flickering angrily.

"Whatever you think I ought to be doing, I can't.  I'm sorry.  I have
my loyalties."

"Loyalties."  Kurt can't bear to look at his father right now.  He
turns back to the screen, moving his hand over the keyboard so swiftly
that Billy can't follow.

"Son?"  Billy holds his breath and waits.  The air in the living room
where Kurt works is tainted with smoke.  He gestures with fingers
stained yellow, he smokes so much he has the cough of a man three times
his age, but he can't stop.  Billy knows better than to say, Please
don't smoke, do you want to kill yourself?  Maybe he does.  "I didn't
mean to hurt you," Billy cries.

"We're not talking about that," Kurt says, chopping the air with his
left arm.  "We're talking about this."

"Oh Kurt, I am so sorry."

"You didn't hurt me," Kurt says.

"You know what I mean."  Billy can hardly stand this.  "I never wanted
anything to hurt you."

"It's no big deal."

"It's terrible."

"No it isn't," Kurt says matter-of-factly.  "It's the way things
are."

With his right hand he gestures at the arrangement of tables and file
cabinets behind him, the complex of computers and files and fax, the
multiple phones.

"You should be pleased.  You sent me to Stanford and you should be
proud.

Look.  I'm doing fine."

"But you're here."  Billy does not know how to describe what's happened
here.  All he can do is sum it up.  "You're always here."

"Yes."  Kurt grins.  "I'm here.  And I'm doing fine."  He has no life
outside this room.  He has no friends, no places he can go in town or
in San Francisco where he can sit down and eat and laugh with other
people, or listen to music or get up and dance.  The only people he
sees are clients, who come here for his meetings, do their business and
go.  Even tied to the Archer place as he is, Billy goes to town when he
can, catches a movie, calls up people he used to know in school.  Yet
Kurt is terrifyingly contained.  "I have everything I want right
here."

Oh, Kurt.  Billy thinks.  Oh, son.

Now he snaps forward in the chair so quickly that his black hair falls
over one eye.  "Firms all over the country are installing my
software.

A million kids are playing games I designed.  You know as well as I do
how much money I make.  Dad, I can afford to send you around the
world.

Anything you want."  Irritated, he shakes his head to replace the black
hair, but it keeps falling back in his eyes.  "Name it and I'll get it
for you."  if only I could make this might.  Billy cries, "I only want
you to be happy, son."

Kurt smiles.  "Don't worry about me, I'm fine."

"It's you that ought to be leaving.  With your money you could go
anywhere."

"No I couldn't," Kurt says.

Billy chooses not to hear.  "You could get a penthouse, take a
cruise.Go to India or China, anywhere.  You could give parties, you
could start going out ...

Like this?"

"It doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter to anybody but you, and look at
you.  You're good-looking enough to meet anybody, and smart enough to
do anything you want."

"Maybe this is what I want."

"You could have the whole world.  Instead your whole life is on that
screen."

Kurt's smile is strange.  "And I know a million people.  They all know
me without having to see me.  Is that so bad?"

"There's no reason for you to hide yourself away, like a .  .

"Like a cripple?"

"If only you didn't let it bother you!"

Those yellow eyes are clear as unflecked amber.  Kurt says in a sweet
tone devoid of recrimination, "It doesn't bother me.  It isn't even
here."  He means, You know that's not what's the matter with me.  His
smile is so bright it breaks Billy's heart.

"You're too young to bury yourself."

"I'm not burying myself.  I'm reaching out."  Even as he speaks the fax
dings and two of his phones begin to ring.  Without letting his eyes
waver from Billy's face he keyboards a quick command.

Billy can't stop.  "This is all my fault."

"No it isn't."  Kurt shakes his head, he's troubled by the fall of hair
that won't go back in place.  Devoid of bitterness, he seems unwilling
to place blame.  "It isn't anybody's fault."

" I saw it coming."  I'm so tired, Billy thinks.  And for the first
time in his life he thinks, I'm so old.

Gently, Kurt says, "You saw, but you didn't know what it meant.  Now
stop flogging yourself for something you couldn't help and start
figuring out what we ought to do to keep it from happening again."  The
hair that won't stay in place falls over Kurt's eye one time too many
and irritated, he raises his left arm and brushes it away.  Without
even noticing what this next gesture does to his father, whose breath
finally returns in an audible sob, Kurt pats it firmly in place with
the reddened, angry-looking stump that protrudes from the foldedback
cuff of his shirt.  Kurt's clear, untroubled expression tells Billy his
son's mind is elsewhere, he's come to terms with the old injury and
quite simply stopped thinking about what happened to the missing left
hand.

WHEN THE CALL'COMES that evening, Carroll is emptying out the desk in
the front room for Steve's daughters.  If she can just get through this
hour it will be time to go to Logan to pick them up.  As soon as Steve
gets off the plane she can unsay everything she said to him and
everything will be OK.  But the protective charm she's weaving is
broken by the bleat of the bedroom phone.

She goes to answer with a sense of inevitability.  Conditioned by
childhood losses, she's never assumed anything is simple.  When Steve
left she went into a defensive crouch, What's next.

She's afraid to pick up the phone.  Something's wrong.  He's missed his
plane.  He can't come back now.  What if he's never coming back?  Stop
it, Carroll, stop.  Be cool, she reassures herself, it's Steve, he's
not on the plane but it's OK, he wants you in California.  He needs
you, you're the native speaker who can help soothe the old lady and
translate those awkward fatherdaughter talks.  Or.

She's alljagged edges.  Or.

The part of Carroll that is used to setbacks and losses scurries ahead,
looking for exits, but it can't outrun the fear.  She should never have
let him go.  She should have bought or forced her way on board his
plane, hidden in a toilet until it took off, or taken the next plane
out.  She never should have let him out of her sight.

She knows better than anyone that bad things happen to people when you
aren't looking.  This is her fault, for being so angry that she let him
slip away alone.  Listen, she was still in shock, not hisfirst wife.

She can't wait to talk to him.

Before she left the airport this morning she checked on available
flights.

In case.  She's all but packed.  She shouts into the phone.  "Steve!"

"No."

"Steve, where are you?"

"This is Meredith Archer."

There is something terrible in the air between them.  Even the old
lady's voice is not the same.  It sounds strangely artificial, like
speech produced by a computer thousands of miles away.

"What is it?"

The caller doesn't answer right away.

"I said, what is it?"

"Something's come up."

Carroll's heart zigzags.  "Steve!"

"No," the woman says at last.  But when Vivian's mother goes on the
words are small and thin, as if she's forcing them out.  "At least I
don't think so."

"What do you mean, you don't think so?"

"Theyjust called."  It takes the distant speaker a minute to collect
herself so she can go on.  "The twins are in the hospital."

"What's happened?"

She says helplessly, "They're still trying to sort it out."

"You'd better tell me what happened."  Frightened, Carroll scans the
room, her bag is here, wallet and charge cards in the billfold on the
dresser, over there.  She can go without taking any clothes.  She roves
the room with the phone cradled on her shoulder, trying to listen and
prepare for departure all at once.  Still she manages to keep the
reporter's cool tone, designed to create a sense of the ordinary that
helps interviewees keep talking, no matter what.  Just tell me what you
know, OK?"

"I think you'd better come."

The old lady is too addled or upset to tell her any more.  Somebody
comes in and she rushes Carroll off the phone.  She's afraid she knows,
she doesn't want to know.  As long as nothing's definite she can rush
into the airport and make the next plane.  She can get where she's
going and do what she has to as long as she can tell herself Steve is
safe.

She is all right, really, until the plane takes off.  Until now she's
managed to focus on details, moving through all the traveler's
checkpoints like a soldier on a forced march, but once she is flying
nonstop to San Francisco with nothing left to do, all her fears come
crashing in.

What if something has happened to Steve?  What if he's sick, or hurt?

What if, what if?  She tries and fails to focus on the girls, imagining
accident, illness, throwing up a barricade of possibilities like so
much broken furniture, useless against the juggernaut, because in the
darkest part of her heart, Carroll knows her life is about to take
another plunge into loss.

She won't spell it out, but in the practiced resignation of the orphan,
she understands she is rehearsing for death.

Once caught unprepared by an unexpected loss, a child will do anything
to keep it from happening again.  She will build a circle around
herself and the people she loves so strong that nothing can hurt
them.

Yet in spite of a lifetime of struggle to win at work, to arm herself,
in spite of Steve's love and everything she has shored up against
future losses, she is in terrible danger.  In spite of everything she's
put between her and that terrible time, Carrol'i is never far from the
front hall of the house on Arbor Street in Jenkins, "Oh you poor
thing."  She is that same person.

No!  Stop it, she tells herself.  Pull yourself together.  You have
responsibilities.

The twins.

I have responsibill't'es.  She's like the survivor of a mine disaster
hland over hand.  Duty.  This's the rope she will pulling herself out
use to pull herself out of what follows.  She will survive by taking
care of Steve Harriman's girls.  She swallows hard, she can feel her
chest caving in under the weight of the next thing.  Whether or not
Steve is OK.

By the time she gets off the plane it is morning.  As arranged,
Meredith Archer's driver meets her at the airport - a greying man with
green shadows in the hollows under the bill of his uniform cap.  He is
tall, too thin in the faded French blue livery that speaks of a
long-lost era of great houses and chauffeurs, it hangs on him as though
it has grown or he has shrunk.  He looks beaten to death.  Even though
his head bobs like a windblown flower, the driver maintains a doggedly
military bearing, greeting her with dignity.  "Mrs.  Archer sent me.

I'm Graver.  And you're Mrs."  He seems to be having a hard time going
on.

"Carroll."  She says it without inflection.  It is her business to be
numb.

Shattered, he takes off the cap with a vestigial bow.  He doesn't hear
himself repeating her name.  "Carroll."  His faded eyes film over.

He seems fixed on some remote point.

To pull him back to the moment, she says, louder, "Steve's wife?"

Without speaking, he takes her hand.

She tries to make sense out of what little she can read in the driver's
face.  Shaking off the hand as if that will help her avoid what's
coming, she says urgently, "Is Steve here?"

"No."

"Is he in the car?"

He shakes his head.

All Carroll's fears escape her in a cry.  "Steve!"

"They're at the hospital."

"They!"

His face is grey.  "The twins.  He was on the way to the airport with
the twins.  They're..  ."  He could be choking on stones, he has to
swallow them before he can catch enough breath to continue.  "They're
going to be fine.

They ... Oh."  He falters.  "Oh."

Carroll falls back on her steely reporter's tone.  "Just tell me where
he is."

"I can't."

She presses on.  "I mean Steve.  You know.  Steve Harriman?"

When he shakes his head this time, there's no mistaking him.

Carroll's voice sounds like it's coming out of somebody else.  "What
happened?"

"Accident.  There was an accident."

"Steve!"  Everything in her shudders to a stop.  "I have to see him."

"I'm sorry, you can't."  Shattered, the aging man in the neat French
blue livery that's mysteriously gotten too big holds his elbows and
rocks as if he's about to sway out of control and he has to hold
himself in place.  "There was an explosion."

When Daddy died, she was too young and they didn't tell her anything.

When Violet died, her sisters had her cremated and all they brought
home to Carroll was an urn.  She can't believe what's happened here
until she sees Steve.  Living or dead, she can't come to terms with it
until she has looked into his face.  She makes herself sound calm.  "I
can handle it.  You can let me see him now."

There is only a negative, the shaking of the head that closes all
doors.

"There was a fire."

"It doesn't matter how bad he looks.  Listen, I'm a reporter.  I've
seen the dead before."  Her words are jumping up and down like
butterflies, anxious to please.  "Accident victims.  Bodies after a
fire.

I've seen a lot worse things."

"Shh.  No."  He reaches for her but she pulls away"Listen, he's my
husband."

"I know."

"Then you have to.  . .

"No."  Billy Graver waits until he can manage it and says, "Everything
burned.  What didn't burn washed out with the tide.

There's The rest comes out in a gust.  "There's nothing left."

Now everything else in the world stops, the activity in the airport,
all the clocks, the breeze, the movement of the earth.  It is as if
everything and everybody around them is momentarily arrested, like
figures in a freeze frame.

Carroll says into the great stillness, "Nothing left!"

"Nothing except a piece of the car."  This surprises even Billy.  He
marvels.  "Nothing at all."  Then with dignity he steps forward and
holds out his hands as if to support her in her grief.

What does he expect of her, public wailing?  Complete collapse?

Carroll has survived everything that's happened to her so far, up to
and including the loss of her father and the death of Violet, by
keeping herself to herself, and she is not about to collapse into
anybody's arms.  She knows how to do this, after all, she's done it
before.  Therefore in the practiced resignation of the bereft, she lets
the numbness spread.  She has no choice.

Later, when she's alone, she'll let grief come close enough for her to
take a good look at it, and when she's had a chance to comprehend
what's happened, she will cry so hard she'll understand why she was
afraid to cry.

She'll wonder why she hasn't spent her whole life up to now crying in
anticipation, she'll cry and go on crying until she thinks she's never
going to stop, but right now, she is silent, intent on being still.

Right now she doesn't cry.  She can't.  There are more pressing
concerns.  She has to figure out how to get through the next few
minutes, the next few hours.  No.  The rest of her life.

When she can collect enough air in her collapsed lungs to speak she
says, "What happened?"

And the clocks in the airport click forward a second.  If the crowd
around them seemed to be in suspended animation, the world has started
moving again.  She will go on.

Billy is saying, "I want you to understand, there was nothing the
matter with the car.  It was Miss Vivian's, and I kept it in perfect
shape."  He finds it necessary to reiterate, "There was absolutely
nothing the matter with the brakes.  He was driving down to the airport
by the coast road and the girls wanted something out of the trunk .

.

."

"The twins!"

"Somebody wanted something out of the trunk.  He had to stop.  It isn't
safe.  He should have known it wasn't safe to stop.  The road is too
narrow, there are too many cliffs.  I don't know why they didn't take
the .  . ."

She cuts him off.  "Then what?"

In the tone of someone who knows, Billy Graver says, "I don't know."

Then he corrects himself.  "No.  Even the police don't know.  He
wasjust taking them to the airport.  All he was doing was taking them
to the airport.  By this time they should be in Connecticut."

Carroll understands that whatever's happened, the gaunt driver has not
come to terms with it himself.

"It was at one of those laybys, where the road runs along the cliffs.

The girls .  .

"Are they all right?"

Billy nods.  His expression is too complex for her to analyze right now
but later on Carroll will take it out and study it like the map of an
unknown place.  "They say the car started to roll while they were
getting something out of the trunk."

"My God."

That look again.  "They don't know how it started to roll, but it did,
and it was so close to the edge.  . ."  Then he adds more for his own
purposes than hers, "Those roads are terrible.  The cliffs are steep.

He's from the East, he wouldn't know.  He wouldn't know it was so close
to the edge."

Carroll's tone is so large and stern that it surprises even her.  "If I
can't see Steve, I need to see the place."

"Yes," the driver says.  "It's on the way."

Grief stalks like a huge animal, waiting to devour her.  Pain blurs
understanding.  She says dully, "On the way to the hospital."

No."  He gives her a significant look.  "Mrs. Archer wants you to come
to the house."

"On the way to the hospital."

"No.  She needs to talk to you."

"But the twins!"  First their mother and now this.  Those poor kids!

"They're still under observation.  They're perfectly safe.  When you
see them, you'll see they're really perfectly .  . ."  For whatever
reasons, Billy Graver can't say what he means.  "You'll see them soon
enough.  Mrs.  Archer wants to see you before you meet the girls.

There are things you need to know."  He puts one shaking hand under her
elbow and Carroll lets him.  Gently, he guides her out to the car which
is waiting in front of the Arrivals building with the motor still
running and the headlights on, like a limousine accidentally detoured
from a funeral cortege.

Respecting the privacy of grief, Billy rolls up the window between them
so she won't have to talk.  For the moment, Carroll is just as glad.

Later, on the way to the hospital, she'll badger him with questions,
wringing him dry of details about Steve, she'll want to know what her
lover was wearing when he left the house and how he seemed, whether
driving away with the girls, he was happy or upset.  She'll beg Billy
to replay every word Steve said in his presence, everything he did,
because now Steve Harriman, the only love she has allowed herself, is
lost to her and the details are all she has left of him.

Except for his girls.

In a layby at a hairpin bend in the road, Billy stops the car.  He
leaves it parked on the shoulder next to a sheer rock wall, a
possibility for a driver going up the coast from San Francisco, where
the right lane hugs the cliff, and not, for instance, down the coast
from the Archer place, where the road skirts the precipice so closely
that in some places the road seems to hang in air.  He gets out and
opens the backdoor.

"They told me it happened here."

Trembling, Carroll gets out.  She looks at the narrow layby on the far
side of the road - no more than a sandy, crumbling shoulder too small
to support anything but pebbles and a few clinging weeds.  "I see."

"And now we have to go."

"Not yet."  She crosses the road.

Billy cries, "Be careful!"

Mesmerized, she keeps going.  "I have to see."

The edge is marked by tire tracks that tell it all.  It's hard to know
whether the rocks and sand were dislodged by the passage of the car or
whether the cliff edge gave way under its weight, leaving the front
wheels suspended over nothing until it plunged.  She's having a hard
time crossing the road.  When she finally makes it, she sees how high
up this is, and how far he had to fall.  The drop is so steep that she
has to lie on her belly to look down.  She inches forward until she can
look over the edge of the cliff at the rocks below.

Steve, she thinks, looking into nothing.

In the case of a death like this there is no body, so there will be no
funeral in the ordinary sense.  A part of her will always be running
after him, perpetually crying out, Oh, Steve!

When this is all over, Carroll tells herself, not knowing precisely
what "this" encompasses, I'm going to come back and find some way to
mark this place.

At the moment, there is nothing to mark.  It is high tide, and waves
are boiling over the rocks where the car must have crashed and exploded
and burned.

Except for a slight blackening of the surrounding area, there isn't
much to see.

She sees a single piece of metal protruding - all that is left of the
car.

Dwarfed by scale, it looks like ajagged claw, but she thinks it must be
a substantial piece of the frame.  The tide has come and gone at least
once since the accident.  The water is high right now and when it goes
out, there will be nothing left.

it is as clean as a burial at sea.

Steve is truly gone.  She supposes she should throw herself in after
him or bury the ring he gave her in the ocean along with him, but she
can't.

Everything else they had together is gone, his life, their life
together in Steve's house, grief is curled up by the front door of the
house in Connecticut and she knows she can never go back.  Without
understanding why she does what she does next, Carroll takes her
mother's ring off her right hand, the fire opal that came home from the
hospital with the urn, and throws it into the sea.

Her tone is even, the wind takes the words as soon as they come out of
her mouth but she could be crying to heaven, she knows that somehow,
somewhere, Steve is going to hear, and note the way she marks this
departure.  "Goodbye Steve."

CARROLL PULLS HERSELF BACK to her feet hand over hand, her promise is
the rope she uses to save herself, Whatever hqoens, I'll take care of
them.

The old lady meets her at the door of the Archer house.  She is .

brilliantly dignified in pale grey silk that speaks of kinder times.

This old spine has not crumpled with the years, she's tall and straight
as a woman half her age.  Although she will bury her daughter later
today the old lady seems remarkably steady, her eyes are bright and her
face has a healthy sheen.  She wears no makeup, but there's color in
her lips.  She looks like a woman who has turned the corner in a major
illness and is finally on the mend.  She seems somehow relieved by the
end of certain things.  "I'm Meredith Archer.  Thank you for coming,"
she says.

"I'm Carroll Lawton.  Steve's wife."

Meredith Archer studies Carroll for a minute as if deciding how to
proceed.  Then she holds out her hands.  It's clear that whether or not
she knew Steve was dead when she made the phone call that brought
Carroll here, the old lady knows now.  "My dear."

The last time Carroll walked into somebody's front hall like this she
was ten years old and they made her cry until she thought she was going
to die of it.  She will do anything to keep it from happening again.

One kind word from this woman will demolish her.  Scowling, she flashes
the warning of the bereft.

Do not sympathz're.  Whatever you do, please don't cry for me.  I can
endure anything if we don't talk about what's happened to me.

The old lady seems to understand.  Without condolences or further
explanation, she begins in a light voice that makes her sound young.

"When my mother was still living black was the official color for
people in mourning, and you went through it in stages.

"Not yet," their grandmother says.  "I need to explain."  She looks
past Carroll at something in the middle distance -past events, perhaps,
or past mistakes.  "God knows we did everything we could for them.

This thing ... it's so hard to contain."

Like a runaway heading for the barn, Carroll keeps her head down and
does not question.  All she wants is to get through this, so she can be
with the girls.

But the old lady goes on as if it is her duty to try to explain.  "It's
all so sad.  You understand we were at an end here, or she and I would
never have started this in the first place."

"I don't understand."

"Telling them we wanted to split them up.  We thought maybe in separate
boarding schools they could grow up normally.  Distance, we thought.

Maybe distance would diffuse the .  Whatever it is that troubles her,
Meredith Archer can't find words for it.  It's as if somebody has taken
her by the ankles and rattled her.  "The twins.  There are things about
twins that I hope you never have to know."

"Mrs.  Archer, they're only children .

She says, too quickly, "Don't be so sure."

Touched by their loss, with her heart taken by storm and rushing toward
them, Carroll finishes anyway, why would you want to split them up?"

"You don't understand now .  . . but you will."  The old lady's voice
drops.

"You will."  With this said she brightens.  "Maybe they'll do better
with you."

She does not explain, shejust goes on, "You're sure you want to take
them?"

"Poor kids!"  Everything in Carroll warms to the girls.  "Of course."

"I'M so glad."

"Let me go to the hospital and bring them home."

The old lady says too quickly, "They aren't coming home."

"But the funeral."  She flashes on the twisted metal that will be
Steve's only marker, the crashing surf, she has no idea where his body
will rest.  She can't even figure out how to mourn him properly.  It
makes her tremble.  "Their mother's funeral?"

"I don't want them here for the funeral," Meredith says.  "They cant
come back here."  Her face is just about to disassemble.  "It's too
hard.  It's just too hard."  Collecting herself she tries again on a
more reasonable note.  "You'll take them direct from the hospital.  I'd
like to do this quickly, for their sakes."

"I don't understand."

"With the twins, you never know.  If you go straight to the airport it
will be easier.  For them.  For me."

"Don't you want to tell them goodbye?"

She shakes her head.  "I can't.  It's too hard.  Billy will take you
straight to the airport from the hospital, there are tickets being held
for you.  It's Boston, isn't it?  I booked you first class."  At
Carroll's baffled expression she lifts her voice an octave, hitting an
accomplished, artificial social tone that implies genteel laughter.

"It'sjust - easier.  Easier.  Don't you see?"

She is so distressed that Carroll says, "Mrs. Archer, if it will make
you feel better I'll do whatever you say."

She grasps Carroll's hands.  "Oh my dear."  Now Meredith Archer finds
it necessary to pile on reassurances.  "But I want you to know that
wherever you take the girls from here and whatever you have to do, it
won't cost you a penny.  Whatever they need will be taken care of.  I
know my duty, and as you might have gathered, I have means.  I'm
prepared to provide everything the girls need.  And everything you
need."

Offended, Carroll pulls away.  "I don't want money."

"You can't do this alone."

She sets her jaw.  "I won't be alone."  She's going to take them
directly to Jenkins, to her family home.  Uncomfortable as she is with
her mother's family, she needs them now.  She needs dinner ready on the
table and a place to go at night.  She needs to go back to work.  In
Jenkins she has a place to live and a job.  (One phone call.) She'll
call Charley Penn from the airport and have him tell Russell, that
twerp from Harvard, to get his things out of her desk.

Then she'll call the aunts on Arbor Street and have Laine open the back
bedrooms for her and the girls.  And some day, a long time from now,
when Carroll can bear to see the place where she was so happy for such
a short time, she'll go up to Connecticut and clear out Steve's empty
house.

"I insist.  I expect to make a significant contribution."

"You can't pay me for this, Mrs.  Archer."  Carroll draws herself up.

"I'm not doing this for the money.  I'm doing it for Steve."

Meredith's voice is like a scarf brushing against her cheek and twining
about her throat in a silken snare.  "It may be harder than you
think."

"But they're only .  .

"Twins.  When you get to know them, you'll understand."  This is heavy
with implications that Carroll is too stunned and preoccupied to
mark.

"I want you to be provided for.  You'll need to give these girls
everything they want before they ask for it.  I can't explain, just
take my word for it.  It's important not to let them get mad.  I just
want to - I don't want you to She is unable to finish.

If she doesn't have anything else left Carroll has her pride.  She's
promised Steve and she says with great dignity, "Thank you.  I'd like
to do this alone."

"Very well.  But before you go, I'd like you to see their rooms."

Meredith stands.  "So you'll have some idea what to expect."  Her
expression is a puzzle, fond, shadowed.  "Then Billy will take you.

The hospital bills are paid.  I gave the doctors your name on the
release.  And I've booked your tickets to Boston, the seven-fifteen
from San Francisco Airport.  So you can pick them up and go direct."

The old lady adds, "Our surprise."

"I'm not going back to Boston.  I'm .  . ."  Carroll interrupts
herself.

"Surprise?"  Later she will think back on this conversation as ominous
but at the moment she's just confused.

"The children respond best when they don't have time to plan ahead."

"You're going to send them off without telling them?"

"It's going to work better this way, that's all."  She is intent on
closure.  "It's the only way.  They're lovely children, but.  . ."  She
has Carroll by the elbow now.  "But first, their rooms.  It's easier to
show you than to explain."  As if cued by the silence she creates, the
driver slips back into the library.  "Billy will take you up."

He looks at Meredith Archer out of eyes ringed with green shadows and
does not move.

"Billy?"

Whatever they are to each other - employer and employee, equals, former
lovers, accustomed friends - it is clear that the intent, handsome old
man supports the elegant old lady as surely as she does him.  Instead
of doing as she says, he shakes his head.

Pressed, Meredith raises the old barriers.  Her manner signifies
generations of command.  "I said, take her up."  and pain that brings
tears to her eyes.  "Yes madam."  Reminded of his place, Billy gives
her a look of combined regret Carroll tries, "Maybe I can pick up a few
of their things for them?

Clothes, or favorite things?"

"They can have new ones," the old lady says hurriedly.  "I think it's
better for them not to look back."

This is how Carroll finds herself alone on the third floor of the
Archer house, in the orphaned girls' rooms.  It is like walking into
another world.

The place is like a warren, or a series of caverns, with niches and
corridors leading from the main area into others.  In this room velvet
swags cover the windows, sealing them against fresh air and compounding
the shadows, so Carroll has to flip the wall switch to turn on the
little chandelier before she can see.  When she does, the shadows do
not retreat, they just turn color.  One of the girls has draped pink
fabric over the flame-shaped bulbs so everything in the dimly lit
central chamber is tinged with red.  The close air is thick with the
scent of death or lavender or of some rich, crushed bloom that speaks
of both.  It is as if life has fled, but some central part of the girls
is still here.  No wonder they hated leaving this place, no wonder they
had to go.  It is bizarre.

Where she can see them amid the mass of hanging banners and draperies
and hastily assembled costumes, the walls are thickly covered with
complex lines and crosses and lettering in ballpoint and colored Pentel
and Magic Marker, whose significance is not immediately clear.  The
lines are as dense and tightly interwoven as diagrams of the central
nervous system, and as hard to read.  There are historical charts and
genealogies and other things written on the walls in crabbed
handwriting in characters as elaborate and mysteriously gorgeous as a
military code, and where the walls are not otherwise covered they are
thick with snapshots and formal photographs of vanished families and
clippings from dozens of newspapers and magazines all arranged to no
specific pattern, really, but unnerving nonetheless.  She wants to get
a strong light and a magnifying glass and decipher everything the twins
have written, she wants to back out quickly and close the door.

There is too much here, it's too diffuse, all these toys and souvenirs
and over here ... Her voice emerges in a sob.  There is a little table
or altar complete with melted candles and dead flowers in crystal bud
vases, and at the center, propped on something she can't quite make
out, is an early picture of Steve with the same bright hair and dark
eyes, but this is a young Steve with his eyes glad and his face
unlined, untouched by the shadows that have hounded him since before
they met.  She is so busy stuffing the photograph into her bag that she
does not immediately register the object supporting it, a detailed
doctor's model of a human head with the skull flensed to expose the
nerves and muscles, with lidless eyeballs goggling and pink tongue
exposed between teeth that open and close.  Backing, she doesn't know
whether to laugh or go on sobbing when she sees that the girls have
given it a velvet tam.

She collides with something that falls over without a sound, it is a
lifesized rag doll in a ruffled silk dress and organdie petticoats and
pantaloons.

She thinks there must be at least a thousand dolls here, rank on rank
baby dolls and elaborately dressed character dolls like Scarlett O'Hara
and Shirley Temple and Snow White as well as king and queen dolls and
legions of Barbies and Kens and Dawns all doing their owners' bidding
here in these silent rooms.

They are attended by trolls and Smurfs without number, along with
hundreds of stuffed animals of every kind - dogs and pandas and koalas
and horses and cows and Tasmanian Devils and replicas of Maurice
Sendak's Wild Things all marshalled in daunting formations in front of
dollhouses and decorated cartons and wooden boxes painted up as castles
and cottages and shops and post offices and theaters that represent a
civilization whose nature she can only guess at, structure after
structure lining the madly figured Oriental runners that connect the
rooms.  She cannot know that she is looking at what remains of the
country of Amadamaland, or that it is as dead and deserted as the city
of Pompeii.  Or that unlike the Pompeiians, who were caught in
midflight by the horrendous fall of ash, silent and fixed in place for
eternity, the citizens of this extinct kingdom have already taken their
valuables and fled.

Later Carroll will not be able to explain what she has seen in these
rooms, that makes her mouth dry out and her fingers grow cold, but she
can hear her breath rushing around inside her mouth like wind in a
cavern and she knows that if she is going to survive this day in one
piece, if she's going to make it to the hospital and put on a cheerful
face for Steve's daughters, she has to back out right now and close the
door.  She has to turn her back on the lost civilization and all her
questions and walk away, which is what she does.

No wonder, she thinks.  No wonder they're strange.  She can give them a
normal life in Jenkins, away from this creepy place.  They can go to
high school and meet boys.  Instead of dolls, she'll give them a dozen
new friends.

She doesn't know why, exactly, but she staggers as she reaches the
landing.  It takes all her remaining strength to stay upright and keep
from toppling down the stairs.

The old lady sees her face and does not ask.

Unable to speak, Carroll bows her head to accept Meredith Archer's
swift, tight hug.  Released, she touches the old lady's cheek with her
lips, surprising both of them, and then with a tremendous effort clears
the house and gets into the car.  She will not speak again until she
and Billy have passed through the gates and the car has turned off the
winding access road onto the coast highway.  Right now she needs to be
someplace where the sun is shining and ordinary people are out doing
ordinary things.  She wants to sit down in some bright room and meet
the twins.  She needs to hug Steve's girls and love them and take them
home to Jenkins, so she can begin to think about starting over.  She
leans forward like a mad coachman flogging his horses.  Faster.  She
can hardly wait.

They are all she has left in the world.

I DON'T KNOW what to make of them."  The doctor looks up from the
window where he's been fixed as if in front of a TV set, studying the
pair in the hospital room.

Looking more like a kid than an official in thejeans and Adidas, the
young detective squints through the one-way mirror.  "They've been like
this?"

"Ever since they came in.  You'd expect them to be crying unless
they're in shock.  I just can't tell."

The girls on the other side of the thick glass are as still as matched
figurines.  Even in repose they have a certain delicacy, an airy grace
that makes them seem less like adolescents than models waiting to be
draped in chiffon and feathers and sent down the runway to stardom, or
displaced angels, lovely and diffident.  Dressed in Johnny coats and
hospital robes, the twins stand with their backs to each other - one
studying the TV screen as if there is something urgent written on its
glassy surface and the other looking out the window.

Without having to look, they move as one.  The tilt of the heads is
identical, each props the same fist on the same hip at the exact
angle.

They are composed, beautiful.

They are waiting for their new guardian to come for them.

The doctor says, "Look at them, Preston.  What do you think is going
through their heads?"

Bemused, the detective says, "You'd never know they'd just been
orphaned."

"Shock does funny things to some people.  God knows they've been
through a lot.  First their mother .  The doctor grimaces.

"How did it.  . ."

"A fall.  We think.  She was cremated immediately.  The whole thing
happened too far north of here for us to be involved.  Out of our
jurisdiction.

Poor kids."  Detective Preston leans close as if the glass can magnify
the figures on the other side so he can see what drives them.  "And now
their father."

The doctor says, "I can't even guess how they feel."

The detective says, "It's hard to know.  What do you think?"

"Look at them!"  The doctor and the young detective are progressing
toward something they don't want to have to deal with.  "They told our
staff psychiatrist they barely knew their father, which explains it, I
guess."

"Unless it doesn't explain."  The detective lieutenant squints at the
pair.

"They don't look exactly griefstricken."

"It could be shock.  It could be something else.  Look at them.

Composed," the doctor says, and then he says, as if it's a dirty word,
"Serene.

They're unwholesomely self-contained."

"Always the same story, right?"

"Always.  A dozen people have talked to them and the responses don't
vary.

Nothing changes.  Usually in these narratives something slides between
tellings.  With two girls involved, you'd think there would be a little
slippage, but these two .  . ."

The detective completes it.  "Are picture perfect."

The doctor nods.  "Sometimes you get this with twins.  Genetically,
these things usually skip generations, but their mother was a twin.  I
think that makes the whole thing intensify.  It's not two whole
people.

They're either less - or more.  Look at them.  Twins are in touch in
ways we don't know about.  Almost psychic.  But never to this degree.

It's eerie."

"I'd like to try once more before you release them."

"You'll get the same story.  We've talked to them together and
separately and it's always the same.  Weird," the doctor says.  "With
twins sometimes, the only morality is what flows between them.  The
only imperative.  They follow their own tune.  And there's another
thing."  Disturbed, he taps his teeth with his index fingernail.  "We
can't tell which twin is dominant."

"Is that usual?"

The doctor shakes his head.  "It's more intense than anything I've ever
come across.  There's no way to get at them.  If there's anything
wrong, we can't tell who's hiding it.  Or making the other one hide
it."

They consider this in silence.  The detective is still for a long
time.

Then he moves closer to the mirror.  "You're not satisfied it was an
accident."

The doctor shakes his head.

"Neither am I."  The detective says, "If you couldjust find a way to
keep them for a while, study them.  Separate them and see what
happens.

Take turns talking to them alone.  . ."

"I'm sorry, we can't hold them.  There's nothing medically wrong.  No
apparent trauma."

"On an outpatient basis, then."

"We can't.  Remember, they weren't in the car when it went over, they
weren't touched.  No physical marks.  We have no choice but to release
them."

"Psychiatry."  The detective is pushing hard.  "You can call it grief
counseling."

"Their grandmother is having them moved out of state."

His eyes snap open.  It's as if he's just heard the tumblers click.

His voice is harsh.  "Out of ourjurisdiction."

"Out of your reach, Detective Preston," the doctor says.  "Their new
stepmother is on her way here."

"Somebody who knows them?"

"Somebody who doesn't know them at all.  She and the father were just
married.  He hadn't seen the girls in twelve years."

"And you're just going to let her.  .

"You know as well as I do what happens in these cases.  The state has
to place children with the nearest responsible relative."

"A perfect stranger.  What are you going to tell her?"

"What can I tell her?"  The doctor does not have to take the detective
over the jumps, confidentiality, the uses of privileged information.

He gnaws at the frayed fingernail as if he wished he still smoked.  "I
can't say anything that will prejudice the relationship.  What about
you?  What are you going to tell her?"

"I don't know.  I just think I ought to .  . ."  The detective breaks
off and begins again.  "I need to see them separately.  I don't know
what I'm going to tell the stepmother until I can find out what there
is to tell."

"And if they won't talk to you?"

He shrugs.  "Whatever happens next is going to happen in some
otherjurisdiction."

In the white room with white, white beds and more whiteness on the
ceiling, the TV glows like a flower garden in a snowstorm.  And we, in
our white gowns, before the mirror that gives back the white room, we
look like flowers.  Our faces are like giant peonies bobbing under the
weight of the nice the nurses have given us to make us calm and keep us
quiet here.  We are not sick, and yet they have given us druggy
numnums.  We are perfectly fine but we are in the hospital.

"Because of what happened," the psychiatrist told us.  "You need some
time to get over what happened."

But we are fine.  It is Vivian and Saint Stephen who got broken.  My
twin wants to tell the doctors so they'll let us go but I squeeze her
hand with my nails until she bleeds and we don't tell them anything.

Then when we are alone in the room I look at her and suddenly she isn't
fine.

Don't let them see you cry," I say, and she makes her face completely
still even though the tears are streaming.  We make her stop.  We do.

She and I are stuck here until Grandmother comes to get us.  It is all
right for now, I think, feeling the druggy buzz.  But only for now.

Now that the obstacles are removed it's time to go home, because there
are pressures.

The blue people and the green people are at war in Amadamaland.  We
must make peace so we can begin the celebration.

takes a seat.  We have been silent long enough.  I say, "What do you We
have been standing long enough.  I take a seat.  My sister think,
Emjan?"

My twin says, "I do not like this place, OK?"  We who know without
having to be told leave many things unspoken.  I know it is not the
place my sister dislikes.  We have an interest in hospitals.  It is
that we have been too long away from the kingdom.  We are needed at
home.  Her blue people and my green people have slaughtered each other
in great numbers and there are probably fornications in the palace,
gross secret mismatches.  In fact, when King Stephen surprised us, we
were in the middle of peace talks.  We have numnums from Vivian's
medicine chest that she won't be needing and Grandmother's liqueur
candies for the truce party, we have liberated absinthe and port wine
in cut-glass ship's decanters to celebrate the Armistice.  Her voice
teeters.

"I don't like it at all."

"Manjennemma," I say, one of our many names for us.  I use it to remind
her who we are, and my sister lifts her head.  I go on in the old
language.

"Prebo.  Don't worry, we won't be here much longer."  I am supreme in
the only chair while she sits on the end of the bed and if you cannot
tell which of us is which, doctor, well, neither can we some of the
time.  And if you, the doctor, are looking at us through that blatant
two-way mirror, all you will see is two poor beautiful queens who have
lost their father, the twins.  You will see that they are upset
perhaps, and under stress they fall back on their old cradle language,
and if you don't understand a word of what we are saying to each other
... Fine.

"But the doctor says we have to wait," she says.  My sister, who is as
one with me, at least most of the time.  Her pink, pink nose and the
red-rimmed eyes make her look like a poison bunny rabbit.

I What's the matter with her?  In spite of what we found out about King
Stephen's intention to take us out of the kingdom, in spite of what we
agreed, my sister's eyes are running.  She has been on the edge ever
since disaster overtook him and now she has tumbled into open
weeping.

I do not want them to see.

"Etrap," I say.  Stop it!  "Be calm.  In short order we will be safe
back in Amadamaland.  It'll be as if all this has never been."

"But he's.  . ."  she sobs, and I think, Don't do that, they are
watching us.  Too late.  She is sobbing aloud.

"It couldn't be helped," I say and in an undertone I try to put steel
into her.  "Never let them see the queen is crying."

"But he's .  . ."  She can't finish.

I can.  "It is a very great tragedy.  Naturally the queen will declare
a period of mourning, but listen.  This - this is, OK, the time of
waiting.  When we are home, then is the time to mourn him."

"He's gone.  . ."  She plucks her gown.  "And we're.  . ."

"Here."  I touch the Band-Aid on her arm.  The nice they gave us is
buzzing between our ears, one shot and we are flying.  "Not so bad.

Shots now, later Seconal."  Remember, we are talking in the old
language that only she and I know because between us, we the queens
created it.  I can almost see them taking notes about our strange
behavior, I can almost hear the scratching of their pencils.

Her eyes glitter.  "Seconal?"

"Like Vivian's nice nighttime red ones?  And maybe later, something to
go home on.  Predibus, and they will have to give it."

She nods.  "Predibus."  We will pitch a fit.

We will pitch a fit and they will have to send us home with Valium and
other numnums, Seconal to sail the night in.  I turn to the glass and
go back to everyday language.  The language of the boring outside
world.  "Of course they had to bring us to the hospital.  We need a
place to stay until they come for us."

"But who?"  She is all anxious.  "Who's going to come for us?"

"They are, stupid.  From home."  Grandmother, or silly Billy, her
driver, who is groomed to do our bidding and keep us happy in
Amadamaland, anybody but Kurt Graver with the yellow eyes.  He doesn't
like us, I have seen him looking, and if I have to, late one night I
will crawl into Grandmother's lap and say to Meredith, my tool, I love
Billy but I don't like Kurt.  If that isn't enough to get him kicked
off the place, I will tell the police that Kurt tried to touch me where
he shouldn't.  And then I will curl my hand around her face and make
her agree that now that Vivian is gone she needs her twins together,
and we will stay right there with her, safe at home.

But right now my sister needs attending to.  "Grandmother would never
leave us here," I say.  "Remember we are the queen, so you can just
stop crying."

But she won't.  Or can't.  "Janem, why aren't they here yet?"

"No matter, Emian.  See what's here that we don't have back in
Amadamaland.  Enjoy it.  The boys, the men."

She sees what I am saying.  "Something we don't have at home?"

"Something we don't have at home."  They are everywhere in the
hospital, young ones with big hands and hard, flat wrists and
good-smelling bodies, and I think there is more to the kingdom than
being queen and here are new areas that need conquering.

"Oh," she says, "they would be nice to have."

Indeed they would.  The orderly who brought us here was one and the
doctor who took our particulars was another, and when I brushed this
doctor's hand with the best parts of me I think he looked at me a
certain way.  They are older than the stupid ones we meet in dancing
class, who get creeped out that Emily and Jane are two, with only one
face between them, as if we had not enough faces to go around.  No
matter, they wouldn't know what to do with us if we invited them.

My sister needs cheering and I say, "Tons of boys and men.  The one who
came with the mop after we spilled the orange juice, for one, the cute
technician.  Be nice and we can take him back to our house."  To
Amadamaland.

What's the matter with her?  "But how can we look at new men while we
are still mourning our king?"

"We need a new king, sister, and knights."

"But our poor Saint Stephen?"

"He loves us so much he died to make us free."  I take her by the
wrists and pull her up.  I must put steel in her.  "We are rulers,
janemana, we take what we want."  Then I drop my voice so only she will
know.  "You wouldn't want anything to happen to Carlo, king of your
blue people, would you?  You wouldn't want the greens to overrun your
dresser and tear up all your pretty things .  .

."

This makes her lift her head and chime in the old singsong, "We take
what we want Amenanja.  Boys too?"

"Boys too, some day."  Soon, I hope.  New knights we need.

"Boys, yes."  Boys.

But still she wavers, just a little.  "But where from here, my
Princess?"

I grip her tighter.  "Home, Principetta.  Amadamaland tonight.

Tomorrow the world."

"I miss the father already .  .

My fingernails gouge and my sister flinches.  "Don't look back,
Emenanja."

Soft, she is, too soft.  "Still I am so sad."

"No," I say, correcting her.  I say it to the mirror, which has become
like another person to me.  I go on, louder, in the other language.

"We are so sad, after all, look at what has just happened to us.  It's
awful, isn't it?"

And my sister sees me looking into the mirror and she turns to it and
says because it is expected, "Yes it is terrible."

Satisfied, I go on in the old language.  "Terrible about our king,
Saint Stephen.  Lost to us.  But listen, my selfest, listen here.

Mourning we will have in the streets of Amadamaland, we will marshal
the troops and all the courtiers for the funeral procession and in the
square we will build a statue in honor of Steve the Great, who opened
the gates of Amadamaland and found us, the princesses in the tower, and
we mourn him properly from this day to the hereafter."

Then I stand so close our heads touch.  "But look, see what I took from
him."  And reaching into the pocket of the hospital bathrobe I pull out
the token I slipped off the king's wrist and onto mine right before we
got out of the car on the Pacific Coast Highway, it is a silver
bracelet.  "We have a first class relic."

"My God."

"No.  Your sister.  And this will make us strong enough to do
everything we have to."

"Yes," my sister says, she's feeling better.  "Do you think we can get
the cute one to come back in here?"

"Are we not the queen?  Watch me."  And then it occurs to me that to
bring them running, to make them do us the way they ought to, the queen
must cry after all.  And let them see her crying for true.  Big tears,
loud howls.  I move close enough to jog my sister, nobody but she will
know that I am using Grandfather Archer's opal stickpin.  Ow!

Here they come now.  The kingdom is ours, I think.

Ours for the taking.

They are at the door.  I say in the old language, "Koprictus."  Let us
be ordinary.  Nice us.

My sister assents.  "Koprictus."  The queen recedes.

Nice us.  When they come in they will find only ordinary girls.

"You remember Lieutenant Preston," the doctor says.  He's waiting for
the girls to look up so he can present the detective.  When they don't
he has to go on anyway.  "You met him last night after the accident?

You were probably too upset to remember."

"Yes," they say with their heads bent.

In the jeans and expensive running shoes the detective could be another
kid, reminding them.  "Like, we spoke?"

"Yes," they say to Preston.  Speech flows back and forth between the
girls so fluidly that there's no telling which says what.

"Afterward," they say.

"After the accident."

"But you were upset," he says.

"Upset," they say.  One sobs.  "So upset that we forgot."

He prods.  "Too upset to remember what happened?"

They've buried their faces now.  Without speaking, they nod.

"But now you've had a little time.  If it's OK, I'd like to talk to you
again."

"Whatever you say."

It is a relief to see them weeping.  The doctor wonders whether,
standing with their hands covering their faces, the girls know they
have assumed identical attitudes of grief.  He waits for them to look
up, hoping to learn something from their faces.  When they do, he's
surprised to see how clear their blue eyes are after all that crying
with unmarred whites, like perfect marbles.  The tears have
evaporated.

Their expressions are so open that he knows there's no credit
accumulated here, no building on former conversations.

He's going to have to start all over again.  Interesting, he thinks.

It's as if we've been wn'ting on the face of a waterfall.  Every time
you start with these two it isrightfrom the beginning.

"You remember me, I'm Dr.  Allison?"

They smile engagingly.  "Of course."  One speaks first, but there's no
telling which.  "Dr.  Allison.  Can we go home now?"

He doesn't answer.  "And you remember Lieutenant Preston."

They say, "Right.  Lieutenant Preston."  Like any other girl their age,
they look him up and down, cute boy.  "Cool."

If you just wouldn't echo.  "And you are Jane Archer, and this Is
Emily?"

The doctor looks from one to the other.  If one of you would just be a
little taller, or more aggressive, or different.

"We're kind of hard to tell apart."

"He needs to talk to you before you go."

Even the detective is unable to figure them out.  "I'd like to see you
alone," he says.

Grinning, they turn to follow in an elegantly calibrated movement.

"Sure, Lieutenant.  Great!"

"One at a time."

They hesitate.

"If that's not a problem for you."

Without speaking, they confer.  They shrug agreeably.  "No problem."

"No, no problem."

One of them speaks first.  Which one?  Is it the same as last time or
do they alternate?  The detective doesn't know.  He remembers his
frantic third grade teacher tagging the Anson twins the first day, all
that school year Jan was the one with the plaid hair ribbon and jen
wore the striped hair ribbon.

He'd like to try that here but the girls'cool dignity unnerves him.  If
only one girl would push it a little, step forward, show him who's in
charge here.

"Who wants to go first?"  He realizes he's waiting for one to give the
other some kind of high sign.

Without consulting, they take a step backward.

"OK, who wants to go second?"

"Whichever you want."

"OK, if you won't decide, I will."  The detective holds out his hand to
the one standing nearer.  "We'll take a stroll down to the day room and
when we're done talking I'll come back for your sister.  Doctor?"

The doctor nods assent.

Walking along with the girl at his side Preston says, "Which one are
you, Jane or Emily?"

She smiles.  "It doesn't matter."

"Well it does to me," he says sharply, he can't say whether it's the
sleepless night that puts him on edge or the unyielding density of the
child's serenity or the fact that walking along with her like this he
can't be sure she really is a child and not an emerging woman.  Tension
makes him impatient.

"Are we almost finished here?"

"Sit down over there," he says, not answering.  He lets her precede him
into the empty solarium.  When she is in place, sitting on the cracked
leatherette with her knees and feet neatly matched and her head lifted,
he pulls a chair around.  They are facing but not touching so nothing
he does here will be misconstrued.  Then, moving openly so there will
be no misinterpretation, he picks up her hand as indifferently as he
would an empty bottle and turns it over so he can read the name on the
hospital bracelet.  Her fingers curl in her moist pink palm so
suggestively that he quickly drops it.  "Emily."  He hesitates.

"Emily?"

She smiles - too pretty.  "Sure."

"I know this is hard, but we need to talk about what happened to your
father."

"Terrible," she says, shaking her head.

"Yes, terrible."

"An accident."

He doesn't rise to this.  Instead he watches carefully, as if he can
read the details in the way she responds.  "I think."  Nothing.  He
lowers his voice significantly.  "We're not sure."

She regards him in serene innocence.  "Terrible accident."

"I see.  Tell me about it again."

"If that's what you want."  The eyes are like deserted ponds at the
bottom of a deep cavern.

Later, when he returns Emily to the room, if this is Emily, there is a
wait before the other twin comes out.  "_Jane," he says, and discovers
he is in no respect certain whether this is a new twin or the same one
who just sat in the sunny lounge, meeting his questions with the polite
diffidence of displaced royalty.  Even after he's checked the name on
the hospital ID band, the detective can't know whether it's two girls
he's questioned today or the same one twice.

Troubled, the young detective closes the door on the girls' room.

Inside, they are dressing to leave the hospital, leaving him with an
empty notebook and too many unanswered questions.  Preston shakes his
head.  "They're so consistent it's like talking to the same person."

The doctor nods.  "All the reports match up, no matter which one you're
with or how you frame the question.  They all match up.  Every one of
them."

"They didn't tell me shit."  They are at the end here.  "So nice, and
they didn't tell me shit."

"I thought maybe it wasiust me," the doctor says.  "I was hoping you'd
have better luck."

Preston says, "If only The doctor cuts him off.  "If only we had more
time.  If only we could get one of them to open up.  If only they
weren't leaving in an hour.  I know."

Inside the room, the twins are already dressing.

"This is definitely an if-only situation.  If only you could give me a
few more hours."

"Look, Lieutenant, the stepmother is in the lobby.  What are we going
to tell her?"

"Stall for time.  Lie."

The doctor shakes his head.  "Can't.  She has a car waiting to take
them to the airport.  They're out of here tonight."

"To some otherjurisdiction," the detective says sourly.  "It would help
if we had something definite on this.  About them.  We've got this
enigma walking around with a mystery and we can't even tell the
difference between them."

"All we know is that we don't know anything.  Look," the doctor says
because it's been a long day and because he is at the end of his
energy, beyond improvisation and too honest to deal in invention.  He
knows better than anybody that he's casting around for a rhetoric to
get them both out of this.

"Let's let the stepmother handle it.  She's family, she may know what
to do with them."

"She doesn't know the kids," the detective says uncomfortably.  "She
doesn't know anything about them."

"What are you going to tell her then, that you don't know either?  That
you don't know anything but you're worried about something?  Come on,
here.  How do you send these kids off with a bad rap when all you have
are suspicions?"  His index fingernail has split to the quick.  He
gnaws at it one more time and blows away a small fragment.  "What am I
supposed to tell her?"

"Tell her to keep in touch," the detective says.

j A N E A N D E M. Em and Jane.  Carroll thinks Jane is the one on her
left and Emily sits on her right in the big back seat of Meredith
Archer's car, but she has no way of knowing even though the twins told
her for the third time as they came out of the hospital.  Laughing,
they said, "Be cool.  You'll know pretty soon."

Sandwiched between them, she is both touched by their warmth and at the
same time unsettled and confused.

Following the uncommunicative doctor down the hall to their hospital
room this afternoon she could hardly wait.  She hardly marked the fact
that he didn't tell her much, except that the twins were, what,
internalizing their grief.  Good, she thought.  If we can keep from
breaking down, we'll do better.

She needed to hear Steve's tones again in his children's voices, to
catch a last glimpse of his face reflected in their eyes.  Together the
three of them would try to handle what's happened - orphans together,
Carroll thought.

Afraid to plumb her own losses, she fixed on theirs.

"Oh, kids."  Uncertain, she hung in the doorway.  It was as if they
hadn't heard her speak.  Instead they sat on one of the beds with their
smooth heads bent over their notebooks and did not look up.  Oh God,
she thought.  Two kids, and I'm all the family they have now.  What am
I getting into here?

It was interesting.  Suddenly there was nobody around - no nurses, no
orderlies, she remembered a doctor friend telling her the secret of
hospitals, As long as they think they can help you, you're fine, but in
a hospital you know you have a disaster when eve?Ybody starts to
disappear.  The eerie sense of desertion made no sense in this
context.

Nobody was dying here, she and these girls were going home together.

She cleared her throat like an anxious child.  "Emily?  Jane?  I've
come to get you, OK?"  Then she waited.  Their lives together hung in
the balance.

One spoke.  "Koprictus."

Carroll blinked.  "Ko-what?"

"Koprictus."

Everything changed.  Absorbed, the twins were putting away their
notebooks and their silver pencils.  They moved like synchronized
swimmers or Siamese twins separated at birth.  Looking up at her with
Steve's eyes, they smiled.

It was like the spring thaw.

"We're so glad to see you."  They got up with gorgeous, enthusiastic
smiles.

"You're so pretty!"

Carroll flushed.  "Hey, thanks.  Look, kids, I .  She shook her head,
this with Steve was too fresh for her to be able to bring it into the
room with them.  He was dead and for the life of her, she couldn't come
right out and say it.

"We know," one said gravely, as if sparing her.  Strange.  It was as if
the girl had heard her thinking.  "So sad."

"Terrible," the other said.  "We do know."  They put out their hands to
her.  "We'rejust so glad you came, OK?"

She shook tears out of her eyes and managed an uneven smile.  "Me
too."

"But what's your name?"

"Did you come to take us home?"

"Who are you?"

"Are you our new teacher or what?"

"No, I'm ... Not exactly."  She couldn't quite bear to tell them the
truth.

That she was the only person they had left to turn to.  Oh you poor
kids you've lost your ... No.  Not Carroll.  Not yet.  "My name is
Carroll Lawton, and I've come to check you out of the hospital."  She
would wait to tell them where she was taking them.

"Hey, great!"

"We've been stuck in here forever."

They were bubbling at her side like ordinary kids.  My kids.  She was
touched by their excitement and a little overwhelmed by their beauty.

"Then let's get your stuff and get out of here."

They seem to be delighted to be in the car with her.  They ride along
so happily that'she doesn't have the heart to break the news.

If she isn't careful she's going to get weepy, tough as she is, the
relentless march of hours has worn Carroll thin.  She's at the end of a
long, hard day that found her stumbling off the redeye in San Francisco
early this morning.

Now it's afternoon and she's heading for the airport again.  She can
hardly bear the idea of strapping herself into her seat on another of
those flying coffins but she can't stand sitting in this rich woman's
car much longer either, flanked by graceful girls whose hair makes hers
look like something a bird made and whose flawless pale shoes make her
want to hide hers under the seat.  Even the twins' hands are perfectly
kept, set off by heavy gold rings with flat squares of sardonyx the
color of their eyes.  They are so lovely that she may have to spend the
rest of her life proving she's good enough to take care of them.

Travel makes the days blur.  By the time she and the girls get to
Jenkins it will be tomorrow.  And Steve will still be dead.

How am I going to tell you about your father, she thinks, pressed and
forlorn.  And tries to sort them out instead.  "One last time," she
says now that she has them sitting on either side of her.  "Which of
you is which?"

"I'm Emily," the one on her right tells her.  Is it the same twin as
last time?  The other?

"And I'm Jane," the other says, with Steve's smile.

Dazzled by the duplicate likenesses, she blinks.  "When we know each
other better, I won't have to ask all the time."

"Either that or you will."  They giggle and fall silent, fixed on the
rushing scenery.

Yes it troubles her, the bizarre blurring of identities.  Is this
something they intend?  She doesn't know.  She thinks so.  She has no
way to prove it.  Carroll doesn't yet know why it's so important to
know which one is which, but she knows it is.  She studies the twins
with a certain urgency.

She's skimmed their faces for clues a chipped tooth, a fresh zit,
perhaps, anything one might have that would distinguish her from the
other, if these are mirror images she should be able to peg them, but
the slight droop of the lip, even the slant of the head to the left is
the same, they could.  be gold coins stamped from the same die.

Their clothes are the same, unreal Laura Ashley floral prints that make
them look like large children, identical soft leather flats.  Well I
can take care of that, she thinks.  Running shoes in bright colors.

Get you some jeans, she thinks.  Gap for one and Guess?  for the
other.

I can look at the trademarks and know.  She wants to ask the girls how
they'd like this but she can't.  Not yet.  She doesn't know them well
enough.  She doesn't know them at all.  Here she is, frazzled and
unkempt after all her hours of travel and they are riding along as
beautifully tended as little queens.  They might as well be inside a
crystal globe, perfect and unapproachable.  They'll probably want to
put a bag over my head to keepfrom being seen with me.

She wants to ask them about Steve, but she's afraid to start because
she can't bear to find out whether they know he is dead.  She wants to
tell them where they're going.  She doesn't want to tell them where
they're going.  She doesn't want to begin because she doesn't have the
strength to follow through.

An so t ey sit with their faces turned as if there is nothing more
important than what's going on outside the windows.  Billy goes along
in silence, protected by the glass that separates him frorri his
passengers.

Then the car makes an abrupt turn off the freeway.  The girls stiffen
and swivel to face her.

"What's this?"

"Where are we going?"

Suddenly they are brusque, accusing her.  "I thought you were taking us
home."

"I am.  Ah, kind of."

The other says, "You promised."

"1.  It's."  Her breath pops out, pah!  "Not home.  I'm sorry,
something's happened and I can't.  We're going to the airport," Carroll
says.

In that second, they change.  One minute they're going along as nicely
as anybody else and in the next, she risks losing them.

"The airport!"  The twins go rigid.  Bracketed by the girls, Carroll is
electrified by something that crackles between them, it's as if she is
hotwired, conducting messages she can't even hear, much less
translate.

They vibrate like little helicopters, ready to lift off the seat, and
then settle back again.  The twins have communicated without
speaking.

When they do speak it is in tongues, they could be Martians, or angels
talking over her head.

"Predibus?"

"Maybe.  Koprictus?"

"Enemo."

This is no language Carroll knows.  It is unnerving.  "Jane?"

"Glena femo naja."  The current runs between them, carrying God knows
what messages.

Carroll tries, "Emily?"

They don't even hear.  "Mo no letternay."

" What?  " "Predibus."

"What are you two "Predibus."  The twins are agreeing on something.

Then the one on her left turns to her and says with great dignity,
"We're not going."

The other's voice is sharp, commanding.  "Turn the car around."

Oh God, she thinks, how am I going to save this?  "I can't.  Billy's
under orders .  . ."

"I said, turn the car around."

"Or else," the other says.

It is a dangerous moment in the car.  How can she think this?  But
there is something going on here that she doesn't know about.  Can't
guess.  That made Steve's face go dark a long time ago, so that it
brightened only when he fell in love with her.  There's something going
on that jerked him out of her bed and back into his old life at the
ring of a phone, the old pull of blood so strong that she is just now
beginning to comprehend its power.  The two young women or old children
bracketing her with their maturing bodies and smooth young faces are
mysterious and stern as deposed princesses who can still summon armies,
and a part of her knows that they are sitting in udgment.  Wait.  She
is troubled and unsettled.  They're only kids!

And I promised Steve.

They look ready to open the car doors and fly out, or turn and sentence
her to death, anything to keep from going with her.

"Please."  It's the wrong way to start, in this thin voice quavering
with weakness, but Carroll is too used up to do better.  "Oh please.

Your grandmother wants me to take you home with me."

"No."  The twin on her right looks like a marble Psyche.  "We're not.

. ."  The twin on her left looks like a marble Psyche.  "We're not
going."

Their chiseled jaws are squared.

"No.  We're not."

"Look, it's.  . ."  Her mind is scurrying fast, but all their entrances
are closed to her.  "It's because your father is .  .

"Our king."

"Saint Stephen.  Gone forever.  We know.  So sad."

They have just let slip something extraordinary, but Carroll is so
intent on completing this transaction, on getting them into the airport
and safely on the plane that she doesn't register.  Instead she says
with desperate gaiety, "I'm taking you to Florida!"

They fall so still that she wonders crazily if they've been struck
dead.

"Girls?"

There is a stupendous silence.  The twins are considering.  When she
turns to the speaker she meets a cold blue stare, Carroll knows what
she'll see if she turns to the other.  There is something new in the
car.  They are something more than two fourteen-year-olds who happen to
have been born of the same crazy mother at the same moment.

But they're Steve's kids too.  "Look," Carroll says, too tired to care
that she's built her career on telling truths.  She will do anything to
make them happy again.  "It's kind of a vacation, OK?"  At her back all
the terrible hours since Steve left are piling up, pushing her toward
closure at any cost.

She lies!  "Oh look, your grandmother wanted to split you up, but Steve
. .

"He tried to take us out of the kingdom."

"To a better place!"  If the lie works, it's a good lie.  "Your father
wanted you to go to Florida."

"Florida!"  There is a pause.  "Real Florida, like on TV?"

"Jenkins, OK?  It's a small town, OK, but close to the ocean."

"The ocean."  They brighten.  The girl on her right softens.  It's as
if she's shut off the current.  "Beaches, then.  Not that old
Connecticut."

Steve's house - she can't bear it.  Not yet.  She says firmly, "Not
Connecticut."  In her grief Carroll admits, "I can't do Connecticut ri
g lit now.

I have family in Florida."

"Can we go to the beach?"  The girl says to her twin, "Florida."

"Fla-th-da."  The twins are talking across her.  "Lots of beaches."

Their voices interweave, embracing a new word.  "Boys."

"Beach boys.  Cool!"  They are turning into little girls again.  It's
as I f'she's promised to take them to Oz.  Carroll knows better than to
say, We're going to be living there.  "Yummy boys for us."

"Beaches."  Their breath is sweet.  "Florida, Emangel.

Plenem.

Eemo?"

Puzzled, Carrolijerks her head around.  "What?"

"Angelem.  Florida.  Elmo lettermay?"

"What did you say?"

One says, "Disney World?"

The other says, "Busch Gardens?"

"Anything you want," she says.  Anything.  "We'll make a day trip.

Sure.

Look," she says, remembering the arcane clutter in their third floor
rooms, and even though Carroll wants to give them a normal life instead
of all that complex decadence she offers, "if you'd like, I'll even
have your grandmother send some of your dolls."

"Dolls?"  Their eyes empty out.  "Emenola.  We don't have dolls."

She tries hard to please.  "You know, your -things at home?"

That little current surges between them.  "No."

Something flashes.  "Nobody touches our things at home."

"Nobody."  The tone is imperious.

Uncertain, she backs off.  "OK, OK, no problem, we'll get you all new
things in Florida."  Caught between them, Carroll wonders which is the
dominant twin here, because she has a feeling one is leading in all the
exchanges and if she can just figure out which one it is she can win
them both by playing directly to her.  "Jane?"

But Emily says, "In Florida."

"Florida.  Orlando?"

"Well, not exactly."  If only she could work it out, which one's in
charge.

"We're going to my home town."

Now it's Jane who seems to be bargaining.  "Miami?"

"Not really."  What is it about these two that puts her on the
defensive?

She wants approval!  "My town is called Jenkins, OK?"

"Jenkins.  It's not in the commercials."

"Below Jacksonville.  It's kind of small."  They don't need to hear
that it's not home but her old job that's drawing her.  "You'll love
it.  It's only minutes from the beach."

"Beach club!"  They don't give her a chance to say this is not exactly
a beach club situation.

"Sailing," the other says.

She gives the best she has to offer.  "Body surfing."

"And Disney World," they remind her.

"Whatever you want," she says, exhausted.  And waits.

The twins begin their deliberations in the mad, jittery dialect that
confuses Carroll, she wants to think they were taught to talk by a
Japanese nanny, but they aren't communicating in any known language.

These two have taught each other to talk, and if their English is
strangely formal, it's because English is their second language.  This
alien dialect came first.  It is filled with sound, little clicks and
bizarre inflections, so complex that they may have words for things she
can't guess at.

The syntax is so logical that she thinks that with an effort she might
understand, but whatever they have to say to each other is embedded in
a past so deep that she can't begin to touch it and the language itself
is impenetrable.  It's eerie, she thinks, defeated by the vocabulary
and trying to make some sense out of the pacing, the gestures.  She can
tell by the time that they're winding up their deliberations.

She can't figure out who's in charge and it makes her afraid.

"Florida, Emangel.  Plenem.  Eemo?"

"Angelem.  Florida.  Elmo lettermay?"

Yes something is going on over her head.  The girls are completing
their transaction.  "Plebo.  Lettermay."

"So.  Ah.  It's OK?"

"Oh yes," they say, converging on her in a hug.  The sun comes back
out.

It is as if they're conferring a gift.  And as before, they giggle like
ordinary fourteen-year-olds, leaving her to wonder whether the rest was
a product of her exhaustion and grief.

Their voices are light.  "But we need new bathing suits."

"You bet."

"And T-shirts?"

"Sure."

"And party dresses."

She's so relieved she laughs.  "Anything you say."

"Boys."

"And earrings.  Are there lots of boys?"

"Oh God, I don't know.  I think so."  Gratitude pushes her into making
promises she can't keep.  "You'll meet plenty of cute boys at the
beach."

It is only when they get to Arrivals and Billy Graver gets out of the
car to open the doors for them that she has a second to talk to him.

The girls get out nicely enough and their grandmother's driver speaks
to them sweetly enough, but as the twins hug him and tell him to say
goodbye to Grandmother, she sees him grappling with such conflicting
emotions that it makes her afraid.

The twins stand by the automatic doors, waiting for Carroll to lead the
way, but Billy draws her back.  Surprised, she asks, "Are we all
right?"

It seems to cost him to tell her what he says next.  "They're sweet
girls, ma'am, and I'm going to miss them."  His voice trembles.  "But
the thing about them is, you never know what to expect."

"But they're lovely kids," she says, more or less in his stead.  "Oh
yes."  He seems sorry to see them go.  "Yes they are."

"And we're going to be fine."

His response startles her.  "Oh, ma'am, I hope so.  For everybody's
sake."

There is no making out what's flickering in the eyes under the shiny
bill of the chauffeur's cap.

"Billy, is there something I ought to know?"

"It's just patterns."  He shakes his head because that isn't it.

Whatever it is, it hangs between them now, but he can't seem to find
words for it.  He says at last, "You'll be fine."

"Look, if there's a problem, you'd better say so."

But he's fixed on the girls, and whatever he needs to say or thinks he
wants to say is lost somewhere, hopelessly out of reach.  As they give
him sweet little waves, he manages, "I think this is the best possible
thing for them."

She wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake the truth out but she
sees that the aging driver is weak with fatigue.  "It's OK Billy.  I'm
sorry.

I guess you've been through a lot."

He dips his head in assent.  Then he looks from her to the girls, who
are craning, intent on overhearing.  "I'm sorry too."  Is he
apologizing for not being able to explain or about Steve or is this
about the twins?  Lingering, he tugs the bill of his cap so the shadow
obscures his face.  Then as the girls push through the slidin doors and
Carroll whirls to follow, he grasps her hand so unexpectedly that she
gasps.  He squeezes hard.  "Oh ma'am, ma'am.  Take care."

She hugs him impulsively.  "You too."

He says in a voice that has gotten old, "If there's anything I can do
to help.  . ."

The girls have slipped through the door and are heading through the
airport, moving ahead so surely that she could be the child and they
the women in power, preparing to yank her across the continent and
stuff her into a completely different life.  In another minute they'll
be out of sight and because she can't do this without help, Carroll
says, for Billy, who is incapable of speech, "I know I can count on
you."

IT GOES FAIRLY WELL, really, until they get to Jenkins proper.  No.

Take that back.  It goes fairly well until the cab pulls up in front of
the big old house on Arbor Street.  On the plane the girls took turns
sitting by the window while Carroll took the aisle.  If they had flown
before, they didn't show it, they were like any children on a first
flight, giggling and distracted by the novelty of magazines and soft
drinks whenever you asked and meals on trays and sanitized earphones
and the takeoff video.  There were many goings to the bathroom and many
conversations with the stewards, who provided cheap pins with the
airline logo, which each girl pinned in the exact same spot on the
front of her dress.  When the cabin was darkened for the movie they
whispered together while Carroll slept.  Once she woke while the cabin
was still dark and through slitted eyes saw them writing in their
little books with silver pencils, when she squinted, trying to read
over the near one's shoulder, she was daunted by the look of the page,
as cryptic as the pharaoh's hieroglyphs or encoded chicken tracks.

Going through Chicago was OK, they led her from one shop to another in
the boarding lounge arcade and this perfectly normal enthusiasm so
relieved her that she bought them souvenir mugs and popcorn and frosted
doughnuts so sweet they threw them away.  She admired them for being
brave, as she was trying to be brave.  The stopover in Atlanta was even
better because in the strange, skewed time scheme of coast-to-coast
travel it was morning, and she was almost there.  While the girls ate
Belgian waffles she called the Dispatch from an airport phone and asked
for Charley Penn.  He was so delighted to hear that he didn't ask
questions.  The aunts in Jenkins were a little puzzled but two were
headed off to work and the third, grinny Aunt Laine, who made a career
out of housekeeping on Arbor Street, promised the wing above the
kitchen for her.

Riding into Jenkins, the girls were so overtaken by the tacky
commercial architecture and the bizarre differences in landscape that
distinguished this place from northern California that they hung out
the windows like sightseers from another planet.  Excited, they asked
each other if they could smell the ocean, could they see it yet, if
that was sand, were they almost at the beach, going on in such sunny
voices that Carroll was lulled into thinking that not only were things
going well, they would keep going well.

Which they did, until the cab pulled up in front of the sprawling,
weathered Larrabie house on Arbor Street.

Carroll is tremulous as matchmaker.  "Well here we are."

They don't speak, not even in their arcane private language, but the
shock is palpable.  Carroll can almost hear, Is this It?  This caift be
it.  This dump.

She gets out and pays the driver.  He guns the motor, waiting for the
girls to get out, but nothing happens even after Carroll leans in and
tries to wave them out.  "Come on."

They look at her without speaking.

Poor things, she thinks.  They've been through a lot.  "OK, guys," she
says.  As the twins stiffen and press against the upholstery in
stunning diffidence she thinks, Oh shit, I forgot.  She tries to sound
brightly matterof-fact.  "OK Jane.  OK Emily.  Girls?"  Once again they
fix her with matched stares.  "Time to get out."

"Here?"

"This is it," she says with that stupid matchmaker's lilt.

"No it isn't."

"This can't be Florida."

"I'm afraid it is."

"It doesn't even look like Florida."

"Not like TV."

"This is a different part of Florida."  Exasperated, Carroll says, "Now
will you please get out so the driver can go?"

"Do we have to?"

"Yes.  Now are you coming?"

Their faces crumple in disappointment.  "But it's.  .

"It isn't forever," she says.  "Right now we all need a place to
recover."

Poor things, she tells herself, trying to get into the right head.

They don't mean anything by this, they're just tired.

The cab driver is gunning the motor.

Fatigue makes them sound querulous.  "It looks so old."

"Do we have to, Carroll?  Do we?"

Poor things.  They're just tired and upset.  "Please," she says
finally.

"For me."  She hates herself for not being able to go on.  Oh shit.

She, who never lets anybody see her cry, is on the verge of blowing it
right here in front of Steve's girls.  "OK?"

Seeing she is on the edge, the girls exchange a look she will learn to
recognize.  In that instant they soften.  "OK, Carroll."

"OK."  With tight grins that suggest she's making a huge fuss over
nothing, they thank the driver and get out.

Carroll is so grateful that she hears herself gushing as they go up the
walk, "I know it isn't as nice as your house, but in the old days it
was supposed to be beautiful, the columns are kind of a wreck now, but
I used to sit up on this porch and it's so high off the ground that I
could pretend I was on the deck of a ship .  . ."  Oh my God, she
thinks, looking at the glossy oleanders flanking the porch rail and the
morning glories starting up the columns, I'm havzing an attack of
memory.  There are those nasty flat-needled bushes overhanging the
walk, the remembered smell of crushed needles almost overwhelms her.  I
don't thz'nk I can do this.  It's like sword-fighting with a monster,
Back, damn you.  Back.  Back!  But memory has overwhelmed her and in
another minute it will have her pinned and gasping for mercy with her
limbs wriggling helplessly, Carroll Lawton, who's managed to survive
everything that's happened to her so far, pinned by the past and
squirming like a doodlebug.

"Look," she says desperately, "at least it's big.  There are a lot of
places you can play and hide."

When she looks back to see if they're following she sees the girls
looking up in a concentrated moment of assessment.  Dilapidated as it
is, riddled with leaks and tunnels made by Florida insects, the old
house is big.  When Carroll's great-grandfather- built it, he had
pretensions.  If he couldn't be a plantation owner, by George he could
live like one, and if her greatgrandmother wouldn't let him build
outside town, where his property would be protected, too bad.  Not his
fault the neighborhood has decayed since then.

Not his fault the house is crowded by its neighbors or that the
Larrabies are the last private owners on this street.  The aunts and
Uncle Peyton would be just as happy in neat condos down by the river
but the sad truth is, they can't afford to move.  At least the house on
one side holds doctors' offices .  On the gone downhill - dozens of
tenants, other side the property has I appliances abandoned in Carroll
can hear somebody yelling, rusty ap the thick grass out front, gutted
cars and several motorcycles parked alongside.  The Larrabie house
floats like a ship in the middle, pretentious, decaying, proud.

"A lot of places to hide," she says.  "Are you two coming?"

There is a perceptible click, information noted and stored.  Twin faces
turn to her.  The one on the left, she thinks, Jane, she thinks, is
almost smiling.  Maybe Jane's the one she can get to know.  But even
though she's at the top of the front steps the girls are still planted
on the walk.  Carroll realizes that the longer they stand there, making
it clear that it is they, and not Carroll, who are in charge, the more
helpless she is.

"OK," she says firmly.  "Come on."

Then Aunt Laine opens the door with that grin and it's OK.

I Magically, the girls start to move.

Laine is as short as the other aunts but not as neatly put together,
her hair was colored so long ago that the grey's showing through even
at the ends and probably because she's been busy cleaning the bedrooms
above the kitchen, the tail of her plaid Ship In Shore blouse is
pulling out of her wraparound skirt.  Although she's the youngest of
Violet's unmarried sisters, in a funny way Laine's the most
maternal, Laine the purchaser of colored BandAids and loving purveyor
of junk food for afternoon snacks.  "Oh, Carroll," she says, spreading
her arms.  It's Laine who took all her savings to pay for Carroll's
first year of college and Laine who bought her the electric typewriter,
which does not stop Laine from holding out her arms with that gooshy
look that means trouble tears and debilitating sympathy, Oh you poor
thing.

And Carroll nails her with a look.  "Please don't."

'Laine's grin smears a little but she pulls it back to rights and
Carroll explained this over the phone she looks past even though her at
the twins.  "And who are you?"  Oh you poor ...

Carroll stops Laine before she can say it.  She makes the
introduction.

"These are Emily and Jane Harriman."

"No," they say, ever polite.

"What?"

"No," they say.

"You're not who I think you are?"

Who speaks first?  "Not Harriman."

The other says, "Archer."

'Laine's eyebrows go up.  "Oh, I thought.  .

"I'm sorry."  Carroll manages to keep from calling them "guys."  She
swallows hard.  "I should have asked.  Archer," she says to Aunt
Laine.

"Jane and Emily Archer.  And this is my Aunt Elaine."

"Archer?"

"They took their mother's name, Elaine."

"Well they lookjust like their father," Laine says.  "You two look just
like your father, you do!"  Expansive Laine tries to pull the girls
inside the house with her.  Carroll sees them shrink.

Then Laine corrects herself.  "No, you're the image of each other.  Oh
Carroll, they're the image of .  .

She says drily, "Themselves."

As'Laine burbles on the twins draw themselves up and look that look,
and judge.  And in her exaggerated state of loss Carroll finds her
glance shuttling from one twin to the other to her aunt and back again,
shifting incessantly until it fixes on her own tattered reflection,
looking back at her from the dirty glass in the front door, the eyes in
the imperfect image are black sockets and the wide mouth makes another
black hole.  It looks like a painting of a scream.  Then everything
piles up, past, present, the exclusive bond between the girls and
Billy's inability to come out with what was on his mind because she's
convinced now that he was filled with it, whatever it was, but when he
came right up to the moment, he couldn't say.  Her heart clenches.

What.  What?

Meanwhile Steve's daughters linger on the porch, regarding her with
clear, cool eyes.

Oblivious, Laine tugs their hands.  "Oh, girls!  Come on in, I'm so
excited.  Come on into the kitchen, I've microwaved a cake."  As
Steve's twin daughters go past Carroll into the dim front hall she sees
their heads lift and their backs stiffen as the unwitting Laine goes on
in a spasm of hospitality, "Chocolate, with sprinkles, and I got double
Dutch chocolate ice cream, but first, I want you girls to tell me which
is which."

Then, just when Carroll is about to despair of them the girls make a
comic turn, looking past Elaine at her.  In the second before they duck
their heads and politely follow Laine into the kitchen, they do
something that completely disarms her.  With matching grins that demand
complicity, they wiggle their fingers at poor Laine in a gesture that
makes her want to laugh.

GETTING READY FOR DINNER in the old house where she was so unhappy
growing up, Carroll wonders why in God's name she came back.  Yet here
she is.  Again.

She's uncomfortable enough with the relatives when she's feeling
strong, and this is not exactly her best time.  Coming in on the redeye
this morning, she lost all track of when or whether she'd slept.

When she and the twins staggered into bed after lunch today, she didn't
expect to sleep so hard, or to wake feeling so gritty and confused.

It's already getting dark.  Sitting up in bed in her underwear,
listening to the clatter in the kitchen below, Carroll's lost track.

Had she really grown up and moved away?  What if she looks in the
mirror and she's still ten years old?

She forces herself to get up.  The adult clothes still fit, the face in
the mirror looks adult and assured, but an essential part of Carroll is
forever little and marooned in that grim front hall.

Coming out of the room, she knows she's changed, but the house around
her is the same.  The labyrinth of upstairs hallways and bedrooms and
closets is layered with past miseries, leaving her ankle-deep in
memories.  She perceives the upstairs hall as a series of closed doors
leading to rooms where the aunts and uncle have slept ever since they
moved out of the nursery.  There are seven bedrooms on the second floor
not counting the servants' quarters above the kitchen, where she and
the girls are staying.  A long screen porch runs across the back of the
house and she's halftempted to duck out there and wait for dinner to be
over, just the way she did when she was little.  Impatient Suzy used to
ring the maid's bell to flush her out.  When it sounded in her
bedroom

Carroll fled to the attic, but when you're little and alone ghosts
begin to stir.

They seemed to live amid the abandoned furniture and ruined portraits
of forgotten Larrabies, and the rolled-up bedding and bare mattresses
in the maids' rooms suggested sleepless nights and unshed tears.  There
was furthermore the unfinished space beyond, where one wrong step sent
you into unknown territory where the flooring gave way to punky plaster
and old lath.

Therefore there are parts of the huge attic that Carroll has never
penetrated, dark places toward the front of the house and crawlspaces
under the eaves.

Spooked, she always ended up coming back downstairs to face the family
after all.

The worn pink hall carpeting stretches all the way from the servants'
quarters to the large front room that has been kept just as it was when
MorMama died.  Great-grandmother, whom the aunts called MorMama, got TB
and slipped away while Violet's Grandfather Larrabie was fighting in
World War One.  When he came home from the war he used to sit in his
mother's room and talk to her.

Like a monument to the past the great Eastlake bed still dominates the
room, draped in the same dust ruffle and crocheted spread, with
MorMama's satin bedjacket folded on the pillow as if she's going to
come back and put it on some day.  Violet said when she was growing up
Grandfather used to slip away from the family and stretch out on
MorMama's bed with the matching Eastlake side tables.  Carroll was
spanked for sneaking behind MorMama's striped chaise to read and she
still doesn't know why dead people's things should be more important
than a living child.

It makes her dizzy - so much family past piled up in one place.  It
makes her sad.  She needs the girls to reassure her that this time,
things are going to be different.

The twins aren't in their room.  The beds are neatly spread and the
clothes she bought the girls at the mall this morning are hanging in
the closet like patterns - blueprints for rectitude - so straight and
even that anybody who put them on must be straight and even too.  The
girls have laid out pink string sweaters on the beds with the arms
folded across the fronts as though these too are part of some obsessive
scheme for the future, and the beds .  . .

Carroll is uneasy about the beds.  They've pushed and pulled,
rearranging so the feet of the beds meet in a precisely aligned V.

There's something meticulous at work here - the twins imposing order on
their space.  It seems strange until she remembers herself moving in
after Violet's death, marshaling her things in ranks on the dresser to
protect her, taping up pictures of her fourth grade class and her and
the ancient Larrab'e dog, her only friend here.  She put them in a
cruciform arrangement as though the order of objects could protect her
from whatever came next.

Fleeing memory, she starts downstairs.  The shadows at the foot are as
forbidding as ever, the dark oak paneling is the same and from a
pedestal on the bottom landing a bust of some unidentified poet greets
her with a leer that always reminds her of Uncle Peyton's.  The dust in
the place smells the same.

The genteel chatter from the dining room is exactly the same and the
scars in the pier table where Carroll kicked it in some early tantrum
are the same.  The living room, music room and the dining room are
still hung with faded brocade put in by Great-Grandfather in
anticipation of triumphs that never took place, and his ornate gilded
chair still sits in the music room.

"Carroll, is that you?"

Starting, she realizes she's stalled outside the dining room, unable to
go back and reluctant to go in.  "Hello, Uncle Peyton."

"You know better than that."

She sighs, "Hello, Pay."

Uncle Peyton looks tired and older, with his collar open and his coat
off so she can see how soft he's getting around the waist.  Even though
his prematurely white hair is yellowing now, he's rumpled it in that
same old boyish way.  "You'd better I hurry, we're all at the I
table.

Laine's been holding dinner for you."

Still she hesitates, but she knows it's impossible to wait him out.

e'll stretch his neck like a hungry duck to H extort his greeting, and
unless she sighs and capitulates, he'll take her hand and hold her in
place for the ritual embrace.  "Don't I get my kiss?"

Interesting, she thinks.  Men don't have to put up with this.  There is
something of the repressed lecher at work here and Peyton won't let her
pass until she's brushed his cheek with hers and thenjust when she
thinks she's well away, he'll sidle closer and drag his hand along her
waist.  Even more interesting is the fact that this happens even though
she doesn't want it to because he is a Southern gentleman and he's
family and she is a woman, and beholden.  Women have to do a lot of
things they hate.

She gets it over with.  Peyton seems put out when she doesn't want to
linger even after he points.out that it's been such a long, long
time.

Pushing him aside impatiently, she heads into the dining room.

Everybody turns to face her, fat Patsy, toying impatiently with one of
Laine's buttermilk biscuits, lazy Suzy with her eyes already filling
up, Oh you poor thing.

Laine, whose expansive gesture indicates a series of burnt offerings,
from her best sweet potato casserole with marshmallow topping to glazed
ham with pineapple rings, the twins.

The twins.  Silent, they sit on either side of Carroll's empty place in
their matched Gap T-shirts and denim skirts, looking at Laine with
dutiful smiles.  Their hair is brushed smooth and they're so scrubbed
that the only color left in their faces is in their matched mouths and
their eyes the color of sky.  Right now they look about ten years
old.

Carroll notes wildly that one of them is wearing a gaudy blue slap wrap
bracelet in a flip feint at high school chic, and the other is wearing
a red one.

Laine grins proudly.  "Red one's for janey, blue one's for Em.

Tomorrow, I'm getting them tiny little ruby and sapphire rings."

The twins twinkle.  What else has Elaine promised them?  Carroll's lips
move.  Ruby and sapphire rings.

But if she senses disapproval, fluttery Laine chooses to ignore it.

She is proud of her expedient, beaming.  "Then we'll know for good and
all which of these nice girls is which."

Only the twins will recognize the sarcasm in Carroll's intentionally
weak, three-note delivery, "Great."

And then - surprise!  They grin.  "Where've you been?"

They're glad to see me.  She grins back, she can't hide her pleasure.

They are.  "Sorry I'm late."

Suddenly she can handle this.  She hugs the other two aunts, whom she
hasn't seen since the wedding, and then slips into her seat between her
charges.  In a way, she's grateful to Laine.  This is Jane on her left,
wearing the red bracelet, and on her right side, Emily.  She and
Steve's daughters form a solid front as Laine plies them with food and
looks hurt when they don't take seconds and Patsy wipes her mouth and
asks polite, awkward questions and Suzy yawns and stretches her arms
above her head with her hands linked like an aging sex goddess waiting
for the old magic to take effect.  Carroll is touched, She's trying to
impress the twins.

Her twins.

While she wasn't looking the Larrabies seated around the table went
crunching into their sixties, and Carroll is astonished to see that
time has turned them into parodies of their younger selves.

Laine, who was engaged three times when Carroll was little, is still
pretty with her sweet motherly expression and her shoulder length white
curls.

The body underneath the neat shirt and skirt set is going soft - a
funny, matronly contrast to the rounded collar and navy wraparound
skirt and the polished penny loafers, an old style she adopted some
time in high school in the forties and never changed.  She talks in an
apologetic little whisper and when she hugs you, you sink in.  When she
and the others grew up their mother was still living but bedridden.

Violet ran away and got married.  The other two girls had ohs and Laine
was elected to keep house for Mother.  She's never i done anything
else.  "Only until you get married," somebody said, and Laine said that
was fine for her.

Grandmother died some time in the early sixties but'Laine had promised
to take care until she got married, and in the happy expectation that
the right man was going to come along sooner or later, she was still
taking care, trudging up and down with loads of laundry and greeting
people at dinner with honey-glazed roasts and Bing cherries embedded in
Jell-O and pretty, inedible pies.

She still cherishes an old snapshot of Larry, a Jenkins boy who got
shipped to Korea after college.  He's standing under the palm trees out
by the high school in his ROTC uniform and even though he moved to
Arizona after he got out and never wrote to her, Laine is still in love
with him.  "When Larry comes back," she used to say when Carroll was
little.  "When Larry comes back.

. ."  It keeps her young.  In spite of the fact that she's old enough
to be a grandmother, there's something sweet and young about'Laine all
the tremulousness of an unfinished 9 irl.

Aunt Patsy seems older.  And she doesn't.  Tightly girdled, she goes in
for big hair and small shoes.  Perhaps because she's worked in an
office filled with men ever since she dropped out of college, she is
worldly by comparison, a little loud.  The black hair and aggressive
makeup keep her from being any age.

Her face is so round there's no slack for wrinkles and glossy lipstick
makes her mouth look enameled.  Unlike Laine, fat Patsy changes her
style according to her self-image and throws in accessories picked out
of the pages of the latest Vogue.  She's gone from slenderizing blacks
to carefully constructed brushed cottons that looked like slipcovers to
gaudy prints in synthetic fabrics that flow over the lumps in her.

Where Laine stays home waiting for the phone to ring, both Patsy and
Suzy make a point of going out.  Slender Suzy is the younger, not much
older than Violet would be.  In certain lights she looks
forty-something instead of what she is.  The dyed hair is not as
aggressive a color as Patsy's, as the years unfold her hairdresser
makes slight alterations in the styling.  The clothes are almost chic,
she gets a discount at the downtown department store where she works.

She used to bring men home, but now she prefers to stay out
overnight.

If she and Patsy sometimes hit singles bars together, it's because
Patsy thinks Suzy knows what she knows, That you have to go looking for
love because it won't come looking for you.

Oh God, Carroll thinks.  Here we are.

Suzy says, "You look tired, honey."

Patsy says, "That color is good on you."

Laine says, "I'm trying something special for dessert.  It's got your
favorite things in it' Peyton eats without speaking but his eyes follow
her.

The continuity is staggering.

Nobody remarks on Steve's death and nobody notes how long it's been.

Dinnerjust goes on as it always has.

What's fascinating here is the fact that she and the relatives have all
sat down together and fallen into the same old patterns without once
marking the fact that Steve Harriman is dead, that after all her
cutting of the ties after the wedding, Carroll has come back to them.

The aunts and Uncle Peyton are sitting here with their heads bent over
Laine's ham and sweet potatoes as if it's any ordinary week night ("Oh,
and Laine, while you're at it, set an extra place").  It is a scene
that unfolds without reference to anything that goes on outside 553

Arbor Street, an ongoing event waiting for Carroll to walk back into
it.

It's Peyton's night to clear the table and as he leans past Jane to
take her plate he accidentally brushes her cheek with his hand, moving
quickly, he does the same to Emily and Carroll sees both of them go
rigid with dislike.  So they have that in common too.  Later she can
take the twins out for ice cream and brief them on the personnel.

Maybe when they're alone she can get them to loosen up a little instead
of sitting there like polite dolls.  Maybe she can get them laughing.

She can start making friends with them.

Laine looks hurt as they refuse her pie and Carroll tips them a wink
and takes two pieces to make up for it.  She murmurs to Jane, "I used
to slip things to the family dog, but the dog died."

"The dog died."  On her right, Emily snickers.  Good, she thinks.  If
she can just get close to one girl, she thinks, maybe the other will
fall into her hands.  She reduces the pie on her plate to bits so maybe
Laine won't notice she isn't eating it.  Later she'll slip into the
kitchen and deep-six it, it's awful but she'll go to any lengths to
keep from offending the chef', who happens to be the only aunt she
really likes.

Suzy has taken out her makeup and is brushing blusher on her cheeks.

In another few minutes the doorbell will ring and without asking
whoever the caller is to come in, she'll grab her coat and go running
out.  Sucking in her stomach, which she's convinced will make her
lighter, Patsy complains about her weight.  Carroll swallows a giggle
and says, "Oh no, you look fine," while at her sides Jane puffs out her
cheeks and Em begins to raise her elbows as if without her being able
to help it, her body's begun to inflate.

The girls see how funny Patsy is.  She's not alone here.  She and the
twins are together in this.

Maybe I brought them here so we'd have something to fight.  If you
fight hard enough, you don't have time to think.

When they're excused and everybody leaves the table she's surprised by
warmth - the twins pressing on either side of her in the oppressive
hallway, Jane and Em, Em and Jane, not putting their arms around her,
exactly, but moving in so close that she is surprised by the solidity,
the fragrance of living beings who are, right now, closer to her than
anybody else in the world.

Touched and grateful, she's barely able to speak.  When she does it's
to one, to the other, to both girls and to the extraordinary string of
accidents that has brought them together.  She murmurs, "I'm so
glad."

In the morning Carroll will make the necessary detour on her way to
work so she can drop the girls at the beach.  As they head down the
walk that protects the sea oats and what remains of the dunes, she's
going to hesitate, but only for a minute.  Is it all right to leave
them here, newly orphaned and brand-new to this place?  Then she'll
tell herself the sun's going to be good for them.  It's fine as long as
they wait for her to come back to go swimming.  Who wouldn't feel
better, wading in the surf?  Later she'll come back and explain about
the riptide and they'll go in together.  She'll forget their funny,
inscrutablejabber and their disappointment when they saw the house.

She'll think she dreamed the sound of thumping overhead and the voices
murmuring in the night.  In the sunlight, she'll be sure she imagined
it.

They'll look like any other teenagers, going down the path.  Bouncing
along in their straw hats and pink-and-white gingham bikinis, the twins
will look less formidable, like figures out of a beach-blanket movie.

Smiling, Carroll will wave even though they aren't looking.  Then
she'll be free to go where she's been heading ever since the accident
ripped Steve out of her life.

After months away she'll pull into the parking lot behind the two-story
stucco building on Flagler Streetjust as she used to every morning of
her working life.  She'll race upstairs to the newsroom to see her boss
at the Dispatch.  Charley's hug says everything without her having to
say anything.

Together they can acknowledge Steve, her loss, the grief.  Then in the
rhetoric of survival Charley will say, "You never did finish up that
series on juvenile crime."  She'll say, "I thought Russell was going to
do that."

Then Charley will tell her exactly what she needs to hear.  "Only you
could do it right."

"I'll get right on it."

And sitting in her old spot by the front window, booting up and finding
her old filename still in the company computers, Carroll Lawton will
begin to feel better.  Sitting there behind the tinted glass in the
slightly stale recycled air redolent of cigarette smoke, she will smell
all the old smells and realize that even though she spent her childhood
trying to get out of Jenkins, Florida, this newsroom is as close as
she's ever come to home.  Although she told Charley goodbye forever
after the wedding, her files are still in her cue.

Yes, she'll think.  There.

The twins are all she has now, but this job is what she is.

This.  It seems right to her.  No.  She knows it is right.  I came back
here because of this.

watching the beach parade.  They are identical in the pink-and-white
checked gingham bikinis, the greenand-white striped towels are
identical and the pearly polish on their fingernails and toenails is in
the same shade, only the slap wrap bracelets differentiate them - blue
for Emily, red for Jane.  Later, remember, they will have ruby and
sapphire rings - the aunt has promised, yes!

Gems are appropriate.  They are, after all, the queen.  Stretching,
they look at the world through blackframed sunglasses.  Their fair hair
falls forward so it covers their faces like a widowed queen's veil,
giving them the illusion that they see without being seen.  They love
this new beach!  Sunlight sparkles, the sand is white and fine.

Everybody in the world is going by - boys near their age and men three
times their age, some are as old as Uncle Peyton, the only man they can
find in that big, messy house on Arbor Street.  There are so many
here!

The men all do that strange dancing double take when they see the twins
laid out on their matching beach towels.  Men and cute boys alike let
their eyes slide here, there, over the girls' sleek bodies.  It feels
strange.  As they pass, the men turn that proud three-quarter face that
tries to pretend it isn't looking, and then hesitate in mid-step,
hoping the girls will speak.  Every last one sucks in his belly as he
goes by, while the twins wriggle in the sand and murmur as if they
hadn't noticed.  It is exciting.

This is nothing like Amadamaland.  In Amadamaland the courtiers and
knights stand in respectful ranks as jade and Emerald pass among
them.

They worship from afar.  Everybody in Amadamaland does as the queen
says, but these men look at them with different eyes.

Jane and Emily, jade and Emerald, the girls are so tightly linked that
they communicate without speaking, Men, Emanjena.

And they are all looking.

What do they see?

Us, janemela.  They are all looking at us.

Why does it )nake them smile?

They must see something they like.

The twins consider this with royal diffidence.  The eyes raking them
make them feel strange.  New.  Oh yes this is weird.  Emerald asks
aloud, "Do they know we are the queen?"

And jade considers.  The twins have no basis for comparison.  When she
and Emerald leave the kingdom and go downstairs in Grandmother's house
in California, there is only Billy, who is too old to figure, and when
they go outside there is only Kurt, with the missing hand and the
puzzling black looks.

Kurt doesn't like them.  Even before the business with the gardener he
didn't like them, he never has, and even though each of them in her
turn has rubbed against him, purring and cozy, he's refused to talk to
them, really, much less say why.  At home jade and Emerald can go for
days without meeting a stranger.

The cute boys they see they see only from a distance, at the monthly
concerts given at St. Margaret's, when St. Anselm's comes to their
school.  In northern California they are children in a garden in shiny
shoes and prim flowered dresses, lovely and untouchable.  Here on the
beach in new bikinis, they are something else.

The eyes of the men make jade feel good and bad, special.  "Don't be
silly, everybody knows we are the queen."

"Then why are they looking at us like that?"  The eyes of the men make
Emerald feel good and dirty, powerful.

They're staring because they can't puzzle it out, you know?

But they think it is beautiful, eight?

Right.  They think it is beautiful, but that's not all they think.

Turning in the sand as they roast slowly, Em, Jane still move as one, t
is their power and their distinction, this pairing of beautiful
flesh.

They see us.  They see it is different.

Yes.  Jane, Em, Em and Jane alike, they sigh a satisfied sigh.  Yes,
different.

We are the queen.  Stretched out like this, the twins feel special,
extraordinary, and the passing parade of oglers?  Another proof of the
existence of the queen.  If one of them is getting hungry or one of
them needs to get up and go to the bathroom, it's not important.  The
only thing that matters is the unit they make.  The engine that drives
them is the will of the pair.

Pressed, the twins could not tell you who is the leader and who is the
follower here Their identities blended in the crib, Jane and Emily
tangled and howling rather, in the economy of joined lives, one twin
howling so both will be fed.

They act as one.  What one twin does, she does for both.  It's always
been this way.  If the girls get up now and move their towels closer to
the beach parade it is without consultation, and if they arrange
themselves on the towels like Playboy models, it's because some part of
them needs what's coming even as it fails to understand exactly what
that is.

All they know is that they're greedy.  They've never felt exactly like
this before.

Like the men, the twins see things they like - strong sunlight beating
down on polished bodies.  They study a procession of biceps and
pectorals and laterals mounted on frames of all shapes and sizes, they
study boys' long bellies and the tightly muscled bel l lies of
body-builders corrugated like washboards, lean men and fat ones, bodies
there is no need to look at and bodies that seem to say, follow me.

It's like seeing their lead soldiers magically realized, life sized and
marching past on a conveyor belt - the Lucite Visible Man multiplied,
but with each fresh body clothed in tanned and oiled flesh.

Mmmm.

The beaches are too cold in their part of California for this kind of
exposure, in their part of California there are only the Cliffs, and
winds laden with mist.  If the twins want to swim Billy Graver takes
them to the club and Grandmother sits by the pool with them and pops
towels around their shoulders.

Grandmother, what are you afraid of?

Why are you covering us up?

She said it was so they wouldn't be cold but they knew it was so I
nobody could see.  Their bodies are perfect.  Why is she ashamed?  In
their part of California they never get to see boys undressed like
this.  They don't get to be undressed like this.  Or get these looks.

Maybe this is what Grandmother was afraid of.  They giggle.

Interesting.

Interesting.  They are excited and pleased.

One of the girls stretches, digging her fingernails in the sand like a
kitten.  Useful, perhaps.

The other yawns.  We'll see.

Yes, I think we'll see.

The queens of Amadamaland wear bodies that look older than they really
are.  Are they new women or large children?  Even they don't know.

Although the spoiled child rages inside, at a distance they look
mature.  In a strange way the girls' bodies are just that, something
they put on to confuse the onlooker.

Like their faces, the bodies are beautiful, smooth and flawless,
paired.  janem, our outsides do not look like our insides.

Exactly, Emangena, they would be frightened if they could see.

Her sister finds it necessary to remind her.  "Emerald," she says
aloud.

"And you are jade."  And we are beautiful.

jade says, "And we are queens."

Regal, Emerald says, "Together we are queen of Amadamaland."  Look at
them looking, jade!

jade warms under their eyes.  Yes!  See the way they look at us!

"Well I think we can be queen of this.  Right, jade?"

"And queen of Disney World and all the other places that Carroll woman
promised she'd take us."  jade looks at her pearly fingernails.  "And
we will make her take the boys."

"We don't know that she's going to take us anywhere," Emerald reminds
her, running her tongue over her own fingernails.  "A woman we don't
even know."

"She married King Stephen."

Emerald does not say what they are both thinking, He should have
waited.

He should have married us.  "We should have gone home.  Why did we ever
agree to come with her?"

"You know.  To get out of the hospital."

Everything - the threat to the kingdom, the overnight flight, their
seedy new surroundings - everything's left Emerald tired and
disrupted.

"But it isn't any fun."  jade says, "The beach is fun.

Emerald can't help it, she frets.  "She promised to take us lots of
places, and all she's done so far is bring us here."

"Well this is not so bad.  I'd rather have these .  Rolling over, jade
puts her arms down at her sides and then drags them up in a sweep so
that she makes angel's wings in the sand.  When she rolls back and sits
up, her gesture takes in the three new boys who have just come down
from the parking lot.  The trio is standing far enough away to keep
from alarming them but close enough to see everything they want.  With
the back of her hand jade flips her long hair over her shoulder and
gives them that look she's been practicing.  Now that they're watching,
she's ready to complete the thought.  "I'd rather have these guys than
a hat with Mickey ears."

Somebody laughs.  They are close enough to hear but too far away to
touch, three lean guys with chipped teeth and raunchy grins.  The
Florida towheads look closer to twenty than fifteen, tanned to peeling
by too many weeks in the sun and just a little edgy, rocking back on
their heels in lowslung, faded cutoffs, studying the twins from
underneath lashes flecked with sand.  The one in the lead rubs his hand
across his bare belly, leaving a sandy track.  Three.

One too many, jade thinks.  Or one too few.

She pretends not to notice.  "Emanjela.  Premo?"  You want?

Like jade, Emerald flips her long hair over her shoulder and looks at
them.  "Janema.  Preemo."  I want.

Born at the exact moment they are identical, line for line and bone for
bone, same flesh.  Thoughts flow.  And they will do what we tell them,
like our subjects?

As they consider this the girls turn and stretch like kittens getting
ready to grow into tigers.  Without looking, exactly, they can see how
the boys respond.  They have to want to.  We have to make them want
to.

They both know the imperial we.

That's a problem.

Unless it's not a problem.  When they lift their shoulders and tilt
their headsjust so, their hair falls in a way that makes the watchers
shift their weight on their feet, straining to get closer.

This might be better than Amadamaland.  Yes they arejust beginning to
comprehend their powers.

Or something we can take home.

Oh let's go play with them, they're just big dolls.

And as if something palpable has shifted the balance here, the leader
of the trio licks and licks his salt -rimed lips and rubs his belly and
grins.

The anticipatory buzz links them.  Mmmmmmm.

With a gesture of magnificent indifference, jade stands up.  It could
just as easily have been Emerald ducking her head to mutter a final
question behind the shimmering screen of blonde hair.  "What if they
want us to do what they want?"

But Emerald chooses not to hear.  Her body goes through the same
sequence.

She says, too low for anybody but her sister to hear, "Jade, if we
catch some, can we take them home with us?"

Not yet fifteen - old, young, dangerous women and vulnerable children,
they move out.  But in the last second before they lift their faces to
the strangers, jade says in a strangely gutty, adult voice, "Queen
Emerald, I think it works the other way."

WE COULD KILL Uant Lain.

just when everything was going so well.

Standing by the refreshment stand, we are, and we are just about to
take our hot dogs and get into their car - these boys are so cute.

What are their names?  Tod and Randy and Jake.  They all work down at
the marina and they want to take us out on their boat, and if this is a
little scary because they're over twenty, it is also exciting, OK?

Look, we are the queen.  Our eyes are glossy with it.  New realms.

Real knights.

They have their hands on our waists and the next thing is just about to
begin when this Larrable woman that we hardly know comes down on us and
ruins everything.  No kin and she says call her aunt, no way.  This
walrus comes galloping down into the sand with her ankles'rolling in
her gummy shoes until one foot turns over and she stumbles into us.

Laine comes gasping with her elbows flapping and her shoulder bag
sliding, sad old woman with the dyed hair and the wrinkles, fluting,
"Oh, jaaaaanne."

Don't call me that.  It is humiliating.

"Emileeee .  . ."

I told you never to call me that.  Like to murder her.

One of the guys says, "Who's that?"

"Nothing.  It's nobody."

I can feel his fingers moving.  "Don't look like nobody to me."

"Nobody we know."  But I am thinking, the rings.  Maybe she is bringing
the rings.

"Oh, girls .  . ."

The boys mock.  "Oh, gi-rulls .  .

"There you are."  Her mouth is quivering.

We are looking at her, Woman.  We can forgive you if you've brought the
rings.

In hell.  "Your stepmother was afraid you'd get too much sun."

Stepmother!  The bitch.  "We don't have any "Now hush.  Come on."

Woman, don't you know you are dealing with the queen?  This Laine will
try to drag us away like children.  She tsks at us.

"You don't want to get burned on your first day."

I turn, my sister turns.  "Let's get out of here," my sister says to
Randy, or is it Tod.  But the boys are intent on the tableau we make,
the queens surrounded by courtiers, bare, sandy arms around bare
waists, his around my sister's and get this, in the middle, another his
around ours, and at this end, the third - his around mine.  His arm and
his arm.  I love the beat.

So as Laine crunches down I duck into Tod's shoulder and pull Randy
closer and my sister does the same.  Shall we say to no avail?  Nothing
halts this galumphing woman who is hooting like a fool, "Oh, girls .

.

."

Tod has his mouth on my ear and I am stretching to feel his sandy lips
slide the length of my neck to my shoulder and all the time this
creature is getting so big she obscures the sun.

"Oh girls, please come on."

"Go away!"

I hear my sister shouting, "Go away!"

"Who do you boys think you are?"  Aunt Laine is so loud and out of
place here in the sharp-edged sunlight, so angry and insistent that the
boys' arms slide off us even though I try to o Randy's hand on my
waist.  As we face her, our courtiers fade away.  See them
disappearing.  Some knights you are.  "You damn well better get out of
here," she shouts and this speeds them along.  She shouts, "You want to
go tojail?"  Yes she is angry.  Instead of quaking before the queen,
this Laine yells at Tod and Randy an the world at large, "Do you have
any idea how old these children are?"

So she has said the one thing that will ruin us, at least in that
company.

The boys split.  Forget about the night on the boat.

This Laine is red in the face, bustling and indignant.  "What do you
children think you're doing?"

My sister shows a flash of royal anger.  "We are not children."

But this does not even slow Elaine.  "I know what you are," she says.

"You're my responsibility.  Now come on."

Still we are not sorry.  Cute as he was, Tod smelled like a stale
mattress, his fingernails under the strap of my bathing suit were sharp
and when I looked at Randy, there was green stuff on his teeth.  We can
do better, yes?  Plenty more where they comefrom.

Yes we can do better.  And will.

At the wheel, Aunt Laine is indignant.  "Trash trying to pick up my
girls."

We are not your ... The sun and the water and the ice cream she buys us
on the way home have made us mellow and too drowsy to take her up on
this.

"I saw those boys."  She surprises us.  "To tell the truth, you girls
were meant for better."  Her voice gets furry and confidential.  "You
just have to wait.  The right man will come along.  . ."

We do not ask if she's still waiting for the right man to come along.

Our king, Saint Stephen, my sister thinks and does not say.  I know
what she is thinking and I murmur, "Better."  Our saint is in heaven,
where saints stay.

All the living, sexy ones are here.  "Better."  Yes.  Dumb Uant Lain
thinks we are talking to her.

"Better," she says, driving along and driving along.  "One of the first
things a girl has to learn is who's the right boy for her."  We let her
talk because she has promised us the rings.

She promised but she doesn't give.  Instead she sits us down in the big
kitchen and feeds us grilled franks and more ice cream, this time with
fruit and jimmies, three kinds of syrup - until our bellies get as fat
as the grabby Peyton's.  She winks as she pours on Marshmallow Fluff.

It is strange, like sitting down with the maid.  My sister the queen
does not say anything and I don't say anything, We need time to study
the situation here.

The house is almost big enough for us.  In the cavernous kitchen we're
like chess pieces on the dingy black-and-white linoleum.  Me.  My
twin.

Elaine.  There are glass-fronted cabinets and a rusting two-door
refrigerator.

The big gas stove has many burners and two ovens so big that you could
perform cremations here.  Something about it makes'Laine sentimental.

"In the old days the family had a cook.  When our mother was little
every day was like Thanksgiving, with three starches on the table at
their dinners, and for dessert, three kinds of pie."

She says this as if she's reciting an old prayer that used to mean
something to somebody else.  "Of course our grandmother had ten
children, nine living, so things were a lot different here."  It is
awful, having her try to make friends with us.  All she had to do was
give us the rings.  Instead she tries to make us love the house.

"I see."

She tries to make us love her.

"I see."  Love.  Imagine.  Yeugh.  What about the rings?

"I suppose things are a lot different at your house."  She is all
tremulous.  "I mean, were."

My sister the queen does not say anything, I the queen will not say
anything.  The Felix the Cat clock on the grease-spotted wall above the
giant stove is wagging its tail, tick-tick.

"Do you girls like movies?"

Tick tick.

We are sick of her trying to make friends with us.  We shrug.

"TV?"

Tick tick.

She sighs.  "I just wish I knew what you girls liked."

You have no way of knowing what we like.  Better not say that.  Better
not say anything.  Better just roll our ice cream over and over in our
mouths until everything is gone except the immies.  Better eat and then
get shut of her.  If we are in exile, so be it.  This is temporary.  We
are still the queen.

The woman cannot tolerate a silence.  "Poor Carroll must be..."  She
breaks off.  "They were just married last year, and now, poor thing
...

First her mother, and now this.  Awful.  Devastating.  So sad!  Poor
Steve!"  She sighs.

"Terrible thing.  And such suspicious circumstances, you know?"

This brings our heads around.

"Killed so fast.  Freak accident.  At least they said it was an
accident, but from what Carroll says ... I don't know."

Suspicion makes us squirm.  We are sick of Elaine talking but we don't
know how to make her stop.  I run my finger around the bowl and my
sister runs her finger around the bowl.  She licks her finger and I
lick mine and all the time the woman talks on.

"And your mother too.  So fast!"  She sighs again.  Then her eyes
slit.

She looks at us sideways.  "What happened to her anyway?"

Somebody shudders.  I know.

Disturbing.  But I don't know.  Do we or don't we?

Disturbing, yes.  Don't want to know?

Don't know!  It is confusing.  We do know, but we don't.

This Laine is waiting.  Naturally we do not answer.  "I just don't know
what we're going to do with you .  . ."  Then she sighs again.  After a
while she can't handle any more silence, this woman we hardly know
staring, us staring, nothing going on.  Even she is getting sick of
trying to make friends with us.

Elaine gets up with this little quiver.  "If you girls want to go play
. .

Play?

Queens don't play.

We have more important things to do.

We are the queen.

She can hardly wait to have us gone.  She gives us a hug that is more
of a push and everything comes out of her, quivering.  ... just go
ahead."

We shake off Elaine's strong hands and go upstairs.  We get into
clothes, but they're not our clothes.  Pink gingham halters and ruffled
shorts.  Tawdry, like the room.  Carroll what's-her-name says this is
our room, OK?  This is nothing like our room.  See the twin beds,
cheap'and tacky plaid spreads.

Matching maple dressers with identical mirrors.  Matching windows.  One
gives on the back screen porch.  The other faces the house next door.

I say to my sister, "We can't stay here."

"Look," my sister says.  She is at the side window.  "Look over
there."

And so we do.  Unlike this place, the house next door has lots of
apartments.  It is like the movies.  In every window, secret lives are
going on.  There is a woman hitting her screeching baby.  Over there,
some fat girl in her underwear tries on clothes, she is getting ready
for a date.  On the first floor, two people are having a fight.  Up on
the third, a man with black belly hair pulls up his T-shirt and
scratches.  He sees us staring and stares back.  In the attic window we
see a woman so old she's probably been there since it was built.  In
the driveway are motorcycles, we hang out the window, trying to see if
the owners are around.  We need cute boys.  Nobody.  Too too bad.  My
sister is sagging.  "Where are the boys?"

"The boys aren't home now," I say, "but they will be."

"if not, we're going home."  Florida is hard!  We are so tired!  "When
this Carroll comes."

"We'll make this Carroll take us home."

"After Grandmother begs us to come back."

"After we get the rings."  Sapphire for her, ruby for me.  At least we
will have one thing to show for this.  To take back to Amadamaland.

Outward and visible signs we are the queen.

We fall silent.  We watch the window movies in the house next door
until we hear a motor start.  Somebody's backing out the shared
driveway.  "Look"' It is the Larrabies' spare car.  "Elaine.  She's
going out."

OK Elaine.  Well might you go shopping.  Meanwhile, we're alone.

Then we have a time.  Oh yes.  The house is ours, and so we have our
way.

First we go into the big front bathroom where the aunts pee and we take
all the pills out of all the bottles and mix them up and put them
back.

Oh yes, we take a few for us.  Numnums for later, who knows when?

Take that, Elaine.

Uppers and downers so mixed up that you won't know whether you're
coming in or going out.

After that we have the whole house to explore - the other bathroom,
gangs of bedrooms and big closets, which we skim.  We find the top
styles from old years in Aunt Suzy's closet, outgrown clothes in Aunt
Patsy's, candy wrappers in her dresser.  A woman's hair on the pillow
in the Peyton's bed, no color that we recognize, but you never know.

Poor Elaine has a shelf filled with withered corsages, from dances a
hundred years ago.  It pleases us to stick the pearly corsage pins
inside our halters with the smooth heads against our skins and the
points sticking out of the folds, squash us and you'll feel them right
enough.  We study the room where this Carroll stays - a few sad
clothes, underwear.  No clues.

Bored we are, so it is up the back stairs to the attic.  It's big and
scary and hot, probably from sun beating on the roof for centuries with
no rain.  There are more maids' rooms up here, how many servants did
they used to have?

Rooms there are, and in the attic proper, gangs of trunks and boxes
filled with used-up clothes and over here, oh boy, piles of
old-fashioned hats sitting on wig stands and look, pins we find,
beautiful with jewels and devices on the end, long enough to stick the
biggest hat to the biggest hair, so nice we have to take them, yes.

Pins we find, and family portraits piled up like people in a doctor's
waiting room and behind the rooms a crawlspace where the roof meets the
eaves.  If we wanted, we could duck inside and run the perimeter of the
house like rats but it is hot and dark and when my sister kicks over a
box at the opening, insects run.  The attic's big, there are a dozen
places to hide, but not now, not now.

Down the back stairs we go, but nobody's in the kitchen.  Wherever this
Uant Lain is, she doesn't come back and bother us, not even when we
mix up eight dozen things from the shelves, starting with ketchup and
hot sauce and Hershey's syrup to make an ugly drink and then dare each
other to take a taste.

I do.  My sister does.  Nobody dies.  Nobody wants it, either.  It is
disgusting.  We talk about feeding it to this Carroll, but we decide
not, at least not until she's bought us more clothes and bikinis and
taken us all the places she promised, yes?  We take the mess outside
and pour it out in the dirt under the huge back porch.

We're bored so we go around front.  The columns are strangled by
creepers.

It looks like Tara, if Scarlett O'Hara got poor and the jungle started
eating up her house.  We sit in the rockers and rock and curse, curse
and rock.

If she wants to give us rings she can damn well hunt for us.

Nothing in this awful place goes the way it's supposed to.  She doesn't
come looking.  We are alone on the porch.  We sit in the high-back
rockers working on the royal chronicles and talking about the boys.

Tod and Randy nolast-name, and call-me-jake.

In the absence of the Great Book of Life, that went over the cliff in
the death chariot with our late King, Saint Stephen, we write their
names in our books.  This will have to do until we are at liberty to
enter their names in the Ledger of the Realm which my sister keeps,
along with her novel, in the back of the dresser in the Royal
Bedchambe'r in Amadamaland.  Sir Tod and Sir Randy.  Milord Jake.  How
we wanted to enter their names on the roster of knights!

But she came and got us.  Elaine.  Doesn't she know we are Archers?

Beware, bitch.  We have the power.  Paired Archers can send the arrow
into the center of your brain.

Right now we are armed, but not dangerous.  After all, she's promised
us those rings.  Today, she said last night, but probably she means
tomorrow because it's getting late.  The queen is stern but she is also
gracious, and so we are inclined to wait.

Besides, here's a new guy.  Yes!  And pretty cute.  He just got out of
a cute car and now he's crunching along the driveway next to our
porch.

We go to the rail and look down.  "Nice car."

"Say what?"  He catches us looking.  He looks that look.

And we?  We say, "Do you want to come over?"

"Can't, I came to see my girlfriend."

Oh yes we saw her in the upstairs window, deciding what to wear.  But
look at us in our halters and shorts.  We sit on the rail so he can see
us.  "Come see us instead?"

He sees.  Oh yes he sees.  He's cute enough, he will do for now but
he's soft as Mr. Poppin' Fresh in polyester pants and shortsleeved
shirt where we are thin, lovely.  Quick.  He should be flattered,
thrilled.  "Sorry.  She's expecting me."

But we have seen her.  We know we are prettier.  So does he.  "Oh," we
say.  "Well she isn't there."  There is a little roll where his neck
meets his collar but the smile is cute.  We hang over a little farther,
feeling sleek inside our skins and skimpy Florida clothes, with the
pearly heads of the corsage pins rubbing us there.  "She's gone, OK?

What's your name?"

"Ed."  Our expressions make him blush.

"Well come on over, Ed."

Instead he shakes his head.  "Too bad you're too young."

We are sultry.  Sexy, yes.  "Old enough to be queen."

But he just - blows us off!  "Sorry, kids."  As if we are nothing at
all.  And turns and goes.

Clouds roll in.  "Hey wait, you.  We are no kids."

He doesn't hear the thunder.  He just goes on.

Doesn't he know what forces he is awakening?  Kids!

Too bad there's nobody to tell him, Nobody crosses the queen.

"Eemo."  Shall we?

"Elmo."  Will we?

You betcha.  Us.  The Archers.  We don't even have to discuss it.

Yes.  In spite of which, one of us calls after him.  "Glena."  Watch
out!

But he, this Ed, is already out of sight.  Inside with that ugly
girl.

Never mind.  We can wait.  The queen's temper is short and her memory
is long.

Therefore we sit back and wait, and plan.  Our knights.  Tod and Randy
and call-me-jake.  Maybe they're still at the beach.  When this Carroll
woman gets back from wherever, we will make her take us back to the
beach.  And if they're gone?  There are plenty more where they came
from.  The beach is a feast of lean boys and raunchy men.  Forget cute
Ed with his slick car and his superiority.  Kids.

Tough rocks for you, Ed.  We are the queen.

And we are hungry, yes, but not for ice cream with jimmies and three
kinds of syrup.  We'll be going home soon, so we need to work fast.

When this Carroll comes back we'll make her say how long this little
vacation is for.

How much time we have.  Two weeks in Florida, is it?  Or is it three?

We left in such a rush we didn't ask.  Time, we need, but not too much
of it.  Time here, in this ruined house.  Time we need to find and
catch and use and have.  We need time to get us the best and cutest
knights, to take back with us, but not so much time that we get
bored.

After we see Disney World and Busch Gardens and maybe even Universal
City, after we have our just due and this Carroll has bought us all the
Florida clothes we can wear in two lifetimes, we will go home.  Then
and only then.

Let the Archer grandmother beg us to come.  Then we can decide what to
do.

There are things going on back there that we need to see to.  The Blues
and the Greens are at odds in Amadamaland and only we can sort it out,
but when we go back into the kingdom this time we are going back on our
terms.  And we're not going alone.

Knights we need, we know this now that we have seen so many nearly
naked, tanned and strong with flat muscles in their bellies and long
round muscles in their thighs.  Nearly naked and that close!  Knights
we need and knights we'll have, and take them all back to live with us
in Amadamaland, where I the queen have my way and my sister the queen
has her way because we are the queen and we will have everything we
want in Amadamaland.  We will ...

"Oh, there you are!"

That awful voice!  Priss-priss, eohh, theah you ahh.

Too easy to see that there's nothing in her hands and nothing in her
pockets.  No rings today.  One of us says, "Go away."

She grins that everlasting pink lipstick-on-the-tooth-y grin.  Elaine
it is, oh see her clomping along the porch.  Put away our notebook,
quick!  She knows we hate her but she won't quit.  We throw looks like
armed grenades but she doesn't stop and she won't shut up.  "I'd
thought you'd gotten lost."  Ah thowut you'd ...

I make a face.

"Oh, girls."  Aww, guhls.

My sister makes a face.

As it turns out, she is bringing something.  Something nasty.  Cards.

"I just brought you these forms, for registration?"  She drops them in
our laps.

Cards with our names on them.  Archer, Jane and Emily.  A hjust brawl
...

We glare.  "You - what?"

"You know, for school?"

"School!"

"After all," she begins, and the next thing she says shakes our hearts
inside our ribs and sets our brains and eyes and tongues all rattling
in our skulls like china.  It unseats huge and terrible shapes in
Amadamaland.  just out of sight tall buildings shudder and start to
fall.  Watch out!  We can bring everything crashing down around us like
the city of Babylon around the raging Samson and his tormentors.  In a
flash we see the ruin of civilization, the world engulfed in molten
lava, the dreadful termination of lives.  While Elaine says, "Now that
you're living here .  .

Glena.  Watch out.

Does she understand what she is unleashing?  No.  She pulls us up.

"Let's go inside and fill these out."

Feel the volcano boiling up.  Beware the Archers.  Beware the wrath.

Beware the fire in our hearts and in our veins the molten steel
hardening.  Yes we are becomzing.

Elaine the ignorant, marching us along the porch.  Fool.  Beware the
queen.  As she blunders on we are aware of activity in the driveway,
through the vines we can see that Ed person coming out the side door of
the house next door.  He is alone.  Here he comes, down the drive.  In
another minute he's going to get in his car alone, when all this time
he could have been getting in the car with us.  Ignore us, hey.  He
sees us and waves.  Call us kids.  Slowmoving target.  We wave back.

He hesitates just below us.

Call us kids.  Something in us stirs.  Better call us tiny.

Rage weaves between us as we fix on him.  Fury crackles and I think,
Eemo.  I switch my behind and when I look over my shoulder, he
smiles.

My sister looks back over her shoulder like a model.  Elmo.  Unwitting
Ed person, stopped in his tracks.  The slob.

Ed lingers while Elaine is so intent on her cards that she doesn't see
what's going on.

Krazgo.  Not good enough to be a knight.  Watch out, careless Ed.  We
need him for other things, OK.  Glena!  Watch out.

While I wiggle my fingers at Ed and my sister sees him run his tongue
around his mouth, heedless Laine holds the screen door open.  "Are you
girls coming?"

No answer here.  just us hanging by the rail in the early spring
heat.

And'Lainejiggling.  And Ed.  Yes, Ed.

My sister clicks and I click in a transaction that needs no
explanation.

There is no external sign that it completes itself.  Elainejust babbles
on while we drift back to the rail and look through the vines.  At the
far end of the driveway this Ed lingers, licking his round mouth and
rubbing his fingertips along the hood of his cute car.

Krazgo.

They are both fools, yes, but we still have use for her, while he ...

We know what we must do.

No one knows that we are about to do it.

Beware the lack of outward and visible signs.

Elaine's mouth trembles.  Can't she feel the wrath?  "Girls?"

Beware jade and beware Emerald, Emerald and jade.

Too bad for you that you don't know Vivian's warning.  Instructions for
anyone who's ever taken care of us, Grandmother's help and all the
staff at school and all the ships at sea, it goes right over her
head.

Whatever you do ... Never mind.

Too bad.

Too late.  In her fiercest nightmares Elaine won't see it happening.

For the moment, her circumstances protect her, this Ed out front,
stroking his car, the rings she promised, our position in the house.

Now Elaine, getting-old Southern lady goes on as if we are ordinary,
not the queen but children, children.  Seals their doom.  "Of course
school.  Now that you're living here for good."

For good.  She just lets it fall out of her mouth.

Rage rips through us.  Kaaaaaa.

w i.

I T D 0 E S N'T M AT T E R how far Kurt Graver rows on the machine
adapted to his missing hand or how many miles he runs along the coast
road every night, he doesn't sleep much now.  He hasn't slept since the
Archer twins were whisked away.  More than their being here, their
absence has left him jangling.  For him it's like knowing there's a
bomb ticking somewhere just out of sight.  He can be physically
exhausted and still not sleep.  No matter how late he stays up or how
long he sits in the dark in the cluttered living room, smoking and
staring at the changing displays flickering on the VDTS, he doesn't
even get sleepy.  Instead he sits there waiting as if the answers to
all his questions are just about to come i up on one of his screens.

He is ordained to do something.  But what He's trying to figure out
what to do about the twins.

He doesn't want to believe something terrible is going to happen, but
he does.  The others may want to ignore it but the bad old history is
still writing itself, and the outcome of the next chapter is up to
him.

If Kurt had his way all life would be on some gigantic data base and
all he'd have to do to get to the bottom of the mystery here would be
enter the right password and get into the system.  Without leaving this
room he'd shake the twins' family tree until it yielded the twins'
grandfather Hal Oliphant and then he would squeeze Hal Oliphant until
he gave up his secrets.  He could modem into Trappist monasteries one
after another and on one of his electronic forays he would raise this
Franklin Davage, S. I who I is hiding out in one, the priest who knew
the Oliphants so well that he tried to prevent Hal's marriage here some
forty years ago.  And when he could not prevent it, fell off the
earth.

The priest knows something we don't know.

When Hal and Meredith Archer married, the clergyman performing the
ceremony came to the ritual moment, "If anyone here present knows any
reason why these two should not be bound together .  .

Meredith gasped.  Handsome Haljust gave a boozy smile.  Until the
Jesuit sprang out of the shadowed vestibule shouting, "Wait!"

Turning from the altar with a poisonous scowl, Hal Oliphant raised an
army of ushers and had him thrown out of the church.

Kurt reflects, How many times has Billy told me this?  Over and over
ever since I was five and Zane Archer blew me apart.  "He tried to stop
the wedding," Billy says, "but she wouldn't listen.  I drove him to the
bus.  He told me there was something wrong with Hal but they were
married by that time, so he wouldn't tell me what it was."  Considering
his son, Billy says over and over, "If only she'd listened to the
priest."

If there was a bad seed in the Oliphant family, Kurt thinks, it fell
close to the tree.  Zane.  He flinches.  Vivian's twin brother Zane,
with his uniquely black vision and a lust for destruction.  And yet the
three children played together, they played until ... Sometimes Kurt
still feels the ghost of the missing hand.  Flexes the imagined fingers
and lets them play across his keyboards.  Zane.  Sometimes Billy
rages.

"He should have been smothered at birth."  From the beginning Zane's
silky malice set him apart.  Now it flowers in the next generation,
Vivian's twins.  They smile and,wave at him, they flirt with him
underneath his window.  Pretty as they are, he still sees Zane in them
- handsome, malicious.

He doesn't know what to do.

After the accident - after Kurt's left hand exploded in his face, his
father went half-crazy trying to locate the priest.  The child cried,
"Why, Daddy?"

Billy whirled on him, weeping.  "Because he'll know what to do!"  And
the sad old story came out.

The deep, superstitious part of Kurt believes in the power of the
Jesuit.

He'll know what to do.  But the priest hasn't been heard from for
years.  Now Kurt is grown.  Now Vivian is dead, leaving only Kurt, with
his dark suspicions.  She's dead and her twins are gone.  And he's
still here.  Stuck.

What will it take to blast him loose?

Nobody knows it but until this week Kurt's perimeters have been defined
by Vivian.  Until Zane died she was his sun.  That night it was over,
but still!  He is surprised by how close she's held him all these
years.

As kids they were desperately in love, he loved her when they were five
years old, Vivian clutching his spurting wrist to stop the bleeding,
looking at him out of those beautiful, tragic eyes.  Kurt survived the
early accident all right, he went back to kindergarten the next Monday
because he was tough.

Vivian loved him, and no matter how the stump hurt, he was fine.

Love kept him on the place.  He was safe and happy with her here, going
to town in the closed car with Billy at the wheel.  They left
reluctantly on school mornings, coming home as soon as the last bell
rang.  After the explosion Kurt needed the safety, beautiful Vivian and
her brilliant, funny brother.  The Archer place.  Him.

Until he left for Stanford, he didn't know how bad it really was.

Without Vivian, he panicked, gasping for air.  Cut II I oose, he
couldn't breathe!  He taught himself how to feel safe within certain
boundaries, the classroom buildings and the dining hall.  The computer
lab.  His room.  He could go other places as long as he had a friend to
ride post.  Nobody knew.

Clever as he was, Kurt dissembled.  He didn't have to go out much.

People liked him.  They came to him.  When he graduated he and Vivian
would be together again.  Together, he thought, they could go all over
the world.

Then he tangled with Zane and it ended.  They weren't children any
more.

He looked into Vivian's face after Zane died and for the first time saw
her naked.  It was over.  They never spoke again.  After the hospital
she ran away.

Kurt would not see her again until she was married and divorced.  Until
she came back with twins of her own.  When she came back it was the
same.  Yet he's still here.

But look.  He has the world at his fingertips.  He is surrounded,
reinforced by technology.  Disturbed as he is now by Vivian's death, by
the sense of large shapes shaking loose and beginning to move, Kurt
spends these nights keyboarding.

Logical as he is, he sees ghastly patterns, the flashing
dark-lightdarkness that ruined his life.  He can't let Vivian's twins
have their way out there in the world.  If he can just come up with the
right information, he'll know what to do.  At least he's trying to
help.  Or has the illusion he's trying.  Before he's done he will have
exchanged with every hacker and consulted every computer directory and
accessed every database in the world.

The right electronic hop, skip and a jump and he will be, as it were,
face to face with Father Franklin Davage.

Where is the bastard anyway?

"In seclusion," Billy said in one of those agonized sessions they've
had every night since Vivian died.  Kurt pressed for details until
Billy groaned, "Oh, let the dead bury their dead."

"This isn't about the dead.  If you know he's in seclusion, you must
know where."

"In some Trappist monastery, I think.  Anything so he wouldn't have to
see what happened here.  Oh hell, maybe he went to Mount Athos."

"Greece?"

"It's possible."

What if Kurt could modem into the place where the priest is hiding
out?

What would this Father Davage say?  Keyboarding, he would charge him.

- What is it with these people, Father?  Is it something in the
blood?

- I can't say anything.  I'm in seclusion.

- So am I, Father, Kurt will say.

- Please go away.

If you're worn'ed about it, Kurt will say, we're quite alone here.

You.

The computer.  Me.  The seal of the confessional.

He can almost hear the priest, - That's another thing.

Speaking through computers is a lot like confession, Kurt thinks.  The
most intimate place in the world is not the 900 number, it's a computer
bulletin board.  You can say anything from behind the screen.  - Come
on, Father, you can tell me.  What is it with these twim?  His mind
always supplies, twins, but in his heart Kurt knows he's trying to
locate and attach some meaning to his own life.  He won't admit it but
his dialogs with the priest go back to the first weeks after his
injury, the maimed child trying to make sense of the accident.  Trying
to reach the priest by phone, by mail, Billy supplied the rhetoric.  It
stuck with the child.  "Father Davage will know what to do."

So.  What about it, Father?  Kurt holds imaginary conversations with
the priest more often than even he would care to admit.  In the absence
of meaning, the mind constructs it.  it's one of the reasons he got
into computers in the first place.

The last bad business with Zane split his world in two, separating hope
and expectations, love and fulfillment, Kurt and Vivian.  And in its
wake Kurt Graver marshalled all his Apples, IBMS faxes and modems, for
God's sake a VAX against his enemies, and shut himself in here.  He
likes his controlled environment.  From here if he had to, he could
control the world.

Or he thought he could.  But his assorted systems are not doing the
job.

Vivian's death demonstrates that he's not complete or even protected
here in the snug garage apartment, barricaded behind technology.  No
matter how many computer systems and copiers and other electronic toys
he shores up, Vivian is dead.

And Kurt?  He isn't safe.  He isn't even self-contained.

There are just too many things out there in the world that he has to
see about, information that computers won't yield.  What the twins are
doing.

What's going to happen next.  God, he's hacked, phoned, faxed and
modemed and for all his megabytes of memory, for all his megahertzes of
power, he can't even turn up one missing Jesuit.

He's spent the last three days researching this Franklin Davage,
Sjonetime friend to the Oliphants of Manhattan and the Eastern Shore,
apparent Cassandra, luckless early warning system and custodian of
certain secrets, he thinks.  He actually thought he'd find the guy
through computers.  Fat chance.

The Trappists are not on line, no way.  He's also phoned every Trappist
monastery in the country without any luck.  The externs who give and
take messages have never heard of anybody by that name, The Manhattan
directory yields no Oliphants and there are none listed in Palm Beach
either, the last reported address for Vivian's wastrel father and his
second wife.  Using certain codes he's accessed credit ratings, the
major credit companies, everything, and as far as he can make out, by
modem at least, Franklin Davage, Sj and the foolish Hal Oliphant and
all his kin have simply disappeared from the map.

The more he can't find this Father Davage, the more he needs to find
him.

It's weird.  If he can't find the answers on the electronic bulletin
board, if he can't control the environment from here, he's going to
have to venture out.

It's been a long time.

What if I can't?

It is this that leaves Kurt Graver edgy and restless, circling like a
gerbil in an exercise wheel.  If he can't sleep now it's for more than
one reason.  With Vivian's twins gone the Archer place is so quiet that
once Kurt gives up and goes to bed he can hear his father tossing and
sighing in the next room.  The stillness makes him acutely aware of the
sound of his own breath.  It wasn't the noise the girls made, he
thinks, it was the space they occupied.  They were more than just two
girls living here.  They were more than that spooky kingdom with its
armies of dolls that Billy deplored.  Giggling, they pretended to flirt
with him.  God help him, Kurt felt flattered.  Every time he saw them,
his stump throbbed.

Superimposed on their faces he saw Vivian and Zane.  Again and again he
relived the agonizing moment in which fire bloomed in his left hand and
seared his veins, the moment that changed him for life.  He can still
hear Zane's wild laughter.  Twins were his past and in mysterious ways,
he thinks, they are his future.

With them gone, the place is preternaturally still.  A single light
shines in the big house, marking Meredith Archer's room.  Yes the house
and grounds seem unaccountably empty.  Yes the stillness is keeping
them both awake.  Like Meredith, Kurt's not ready to admit to himself
that Vivian is gone.  No.  Dead.

He will never get over her death.  It marks the end of the passion he's
nursed ever since that first bad day.  While Zane laughed, sweet Vivian
cried and cried, hugging Kurt's wrist to her white shirt with the
little yellow ducks while the blood spurted and Kurt howled to break
your heart.

Because he will do anything to keep from repeating his own history,
Kurt fixes on the twins.  Gone, all right.  He wishes to God he could
forget them.

Beautiful as Vivian, but underneath, he thinks, as wild as Zane.  Why
don't people see?  This fills him with irrational anger.  Was it the
girls' fault Vivian died?  What about the accident with their father?

He doesn't know.  And what about this Carroll, who took them away?  Is
she OK?  He would like to go back to his life in this room, but he
can't, his missing hand aches.

Damn them anyway.

The girls are all he thinks about.  Out of sight like this, Jane and
Emily Archer don't disappear, they don't even begin to fade.  They just
get bigger.

They loom in the mind.  What are they doing, out there in America?

What are they doing with Steve Harriman's widow?  What are they doing
to Carroll Lawton, who walked into this scene too late to understand
it, and scooped up the twins thinking they were ordinary kids?

Although he's always been wary of them, Kurt knows he loves Jane and
Emily Archer in some of the same ways a secret sinner loves the sin.

He loves them because they're all that's left of Vivian, he also hates
them for being like Zane.  Withdrawn.  Intent.

Dangerous.

Strangely, he wishes them back.  At least we knew what they were
doing.

Out of sight, they could be anywhere.  The possibilities keep him awake
until dawn, heavy with unrooted dread.

Sunlight shafts into the little breakfast nook, picking up the color of
the orange juice, the yolk of Kurt's soft-boiled egg.  He puts a
perfect twominute egg in front of his father and waits.  His father
claims to have put the whole thing out of his mind, but it's clear that
he hasn't.  This morning Kurt sees Billy's hands tremble as he tries to
hold his egg so he can tap it open, last night Kurt saw him circling
the telephone like an obscene caller without the faintest idea what to
say.

"Who are you calling, Dad?"  "Nothing.  Nobody."  Poor Billy, he went white.  What
was he trying to do, call this Carroll Lawton and issue
warnings "I wish I knew."

So there's that, but that's only part of it.  With Vivian dead and
Steve Harriman dead, Kurt feels an added obligation to the widowed girl
- Steve's wife, whom he saw standing in front of the main house three
days ago, waiting to get into the car.

She had her fists on her hips in a brash attempt to look tough.  It
made Kurt want to go outside and take her by the shoulders, "Look, it's
OK to cry."

Hurt, like me.  Like drawn to like.  He was stopped by the blunt image
of his stump on her arm.  Still Kurt knows from experience that like
him, this Carroll Lawton is the kind of person who says, "It's fine"
when the exigencies make it clear that it isn't fine and she isn't
fine.

Unexpectedly widowed, Strike one.

The least I could have done was warn her.

Strike two, Carroll Lawton sent away without warnings and with no
operator's manual to draw on, unarmed and cut loose in America with
those extraordinary twins.  Kurt can't be sure why this leaves him so
disconcerted.

No.  He looks down at the stump, which in ordinary circumstances he
never looks at.  No.  He knows exactly why.

It is his duty to protect her from strike three.

"Dad.  We can't let this go on.  We can'tjust let it happen to her."

Tapping the egg, Billy turns empty eyes to him.  "Let what happen?"

"You know."

He does know, but too spent to embroider, Billy denies it.  "Nothing's
going on."

"The twins.  They ought to come with warning labels, and she doesn't
even know."

Billy's spoon flies off the end of the egg without even denting the
shell.

Tears spring.  "There's nothing to know."

"You know better and you know it."  Kurt is on his feet now, standing
over him.  "If you're not going to tell her, I am."

"I know I've promised Meredith to give them another chance."

The sudden decision makes Kurt dizzy.  "Then I am."

"Oh, son!"  Billy studies him with those watery eyes, Kurt has never
seen his father look so old.  Even his voice quavers like an old
man's.

"You're really going?"

He can hardly breathe.  "Somebody has to."

Billy is torn here.  He has secrets to keep, but there's something else
going on, what he wants - what he's nudged and nagged and hinted at
ever since Kurt finished college and shut himself in here.  Whatever
Billy wants, it's near.  He's on the verge of a smile.  "They've gone a
long way."  He starts over.  "They're down in Florida.  Florida."  He
tries to make it sound ordinary.

A little vacation.  "I don't know.  Maybe the trip would do you
good."

Kurt thinks, Is that all he wants?  He doesn't know what Billy wants.

To see me go out?  This is terrible and wonderful.  It is so sad.

"Somebody has to follow up on this.  Somebody has to be sure it's all
right."  He's a little afraid.  It's a little like being kicked out of
the nest.

"You mean that the twins are all right."

But informed by the pattern, the ghastly possibility of repetition,
Kurt says, "You know what I mean."

"They're only children," Billy says.  "Maybe they deserve a second
chance.

A fresh start," he says wearily, as if concluding a long dialog he's
been having with himself.

Kurt snaps, "So they can hurt somebody else?"

Billy backs off.  "I'm just afraid you'll ... No, it will be fine.  The
trip will be good for you, I just .  . He's blathering.  "Just be careful," he says, and he just can't help himself, he adds in a motherly
tone, "and have fun."

This is frightening.  He's really going.  Kurt draws himself up.

"I'll do what I have to," he says.

WHEN CARROLL COMES IN, nice old'Laine meets her in the front hall with
her floured hands raised high because she's in the middle of rolling
out cookie dough.  "I thought some cookies would be in order," she says
without explanation.  "What with everything."  She is a one-woman
charade today, the trouble is, Carroll's too preoccupied even to guess
at what her aunt is acting out.  Fluttering, anxious, Laine lowers her
voice and mutters through tightly matched teeth, "They're upset."

One day in the newsroom and her view of the world is so nearly returned
to normal that Carroll says automatically, "Who's upset?"

"The twins.  Jane.  You know, and Emily, except they want us to call
them jade and Emerald."  Then Laine adds something that the distracted
Carroll dismisses as so silly that she's sure she misheard it.  "Queen
jade and Queen Emerald."

"The twins!"  My God, she'd almost forgotten them.  She doesn't hear
herself making the automatic correction.  "Jane.  Emily."  What am I
going to tell Steve?  She rushes on.  "Tell me you didn't forget and
leave them at the beach."

"Of course I didn't, I .  . ."

"All that sun after so much fog.  -I'hey'll be burned to cinders,
Carroll says.  If they're damaged, how is she going to explain to their
father?

"I went and got them just the way you told me, and I brought them home
and gave them lunch and everything was going fine until ... until .

.

."

Theirfather will be ... Here's trouble.  She can't quite admit their
father is dead.  Something makes Carroll say, "You didn't make them
angry."

"God knows I didn't mean to," Laine says.

Dead.  She whirls.  "Where are they?"

"I don't know what I said to set them off."  Laine's soft face is
quivering with distress.  "Whatever it was, I lost track of them for a
while."

She hears herself trying for a patient tone.  She hears herself losing
it.

"What do you mean, you lost track of them?"

"I just did."

"All I asked you to do was take care of them."

"I couldn't help it.  I don't even know what I did."  Laine's eyes
fill.

"We were having such a good time.  Then they got mad and went off
somewhere."

"Youjust let them go?"

"I didn't know.  They were out on the porch?  They got so mad that I
didn't want them to look at me.  I went inside to see what I could find
to make it up to them -candy, cookies, you know."  Standing there in
the old-fashioned apron with her old-fashioned hands floured up to the
elbows, Elaine starts to get old.  The last time Carroll looked her
aunt was a spunky middle-aged flirt who would make some man a good wife
someday, but in the last year the sun has crossed the meridian and it's
too late.  She wonders if Elaine knows.

Sympathy makes Carroll gentle.  "Cookies aren't always the answer."

It's all she can think of to say.

"They always worked with you.  I thought a little chocolate would..."

She brightens momentarily and then sags.  "Then when I came out to see
if they wanted to lick the bowl, they were gone.  They weren't
anywhere.  I didn't know who to call."

"You could have called me."

Even though she's twice Carroll's age, her aunt looks sheepish, like a
bad child brought to the accounting.  "I kept looking for them in the
house."

"Why did you think they were in the house?"

Elaine's gesture is expressive, hands raised, as if holding the past
all those lives spun out in all these rooms.  "You know the house.  A
person could get lost in here."  She waits for Carroll to say, there
there, which she does not.  "Besides, where would they go?  They
haven't had time to meet any boys."

Elaine won't look at her.  "No place to go, but they were gone.  I'm
sorry, I was frantic.

I looked for an hour, I wasjust about to call the cops when I heard the
front door open.  They didn't say hello, they didn't say anything, they
were just standing there.  The two of them with those cold, cold
eyes."

"Where were they all that time?"

"I don't know.  They wouldn't talk to me."  She sighs.  "It's a sad
world when two teenagers can make you feel like a worm in your own
house where you've lived all your life."

"I'm sure it isn't that bad."

Her aunt goes on.  "Lord, I said, I'm so glad to see you!  I tried to
give them ice cream but they wouldn't talk to me.  Now they've shut
themselves into the second floor back porch and they won't come out and
they won't let me in."

Elaine stops.  "Is something the matter?"

"I'm all right."  Oh no I'm not all right, Carroll realizes.  As long
as she has calls to make and stories to write she can pretend, but
Steve's death took all the blood out of her.  She can hardly put one
foot in front of the other to go upstairs.

"Where are you going?"

"Up to see about it."  She corrects herself.  "Up to see about them."

The twins are, as advertised, locked onto the screen porch that runs
across the back of the house.  The hall door's still locked, they must
have gone out through their back bedroom window.

She taps on the glass.  They've stationed themselves at the rail in the
white wicker rockers where Carroll used to hide out when she needed to
cry.

Silent and serene in white dresses she doesn't remember buying for
them, the girls are facing out like matrons on an ocean liner, waiting
for the next sitting in the dining room.  When she taps again they turn
and recognize her with faint smiles and listless waves.  She calls,
"Hello?"

If they've been close these last two days, they are different now.

They give her their grandmother's smile, frosty, remote.  The one
Meredith reserves for the help.

She calls, "Open the door."

They smile again and pretend not to hear.

She hears herself shouting, "I said, open the door."

After a while she gives up and goes into her bedroom and opens the
window that gives onto the porch and climbs through.  Without even
turning to look at her the twins go on rocking, pointing at something
beyond the rail, as if they've sighted whales or an iceberg or another
ship passing in the pink late afternoon light.

She says drily, "I don't suppose you're going to tell me what's the
matter."

After a long silence in which the twins murmur little things about the
view off the back porch - the trees, the two-story garage, the shed,
she says, "No, I didn't think so."  Troubled, she asks, "Did you really
tell Laine to call you queen something?"

They don't even dignify this with a look.

After a while one of them turns in her chair, and as she does, her
sister turns.  As the girl points to the apartment above the sagging
garage, Carroll sees the red slap wrap on her wrist -this must be
Jane.

She says, "Are those the slave quarters?"

In the dim dead days, the male cook used to live up there.  "No."

Using the slap wrap Elaine put on the girl last night to verify her
identity, Carroll says, "Jane."

She lifts her head at the sound of her name.

"Believe me, there aren't any slaves."

The twin wearing the blue slap wrap says, "But you could put slaves up
there if you had some."

"Nobody wants slaves, Emily."

"Somebody's got to do the work around here."

Carroll makes a mistake.  "Emily, that's an ugly thing to say!"

The eyes the girls turn on her are lovely - blue and cold.  Without
answering, they swivel so they're facing the rail again.  She might as
well be gone.  As one, they prop their feet to make it hard for her to
move around to a place where she can see their faces while she talks to
them.  This means that when she begins, she has to address their
backs.

If they're up here, it is for a reason, and if they're baiting her,
that's for a reason too.

"Your aunt - I mean, Elaine, I mean, Laine says you ran away or
something?"  She wants to sound stronger but it's been a hard three
days and she can't help the nervous little lilt.  "Please smile at
me.

What's the matter with you girls?"

Jane rocks and Emily rocks.

After a while the silence gets to her.  "Listen, dammit, Just tell me
what is your problem?

She can almost see the air between them vibrating, it's thick with
unspoken communication.  As if agreeing after several minutes of silent
consultation, the twins shift in their chairs so they are not looking
at her directly, exactly, but turning partial profiles so they can,
what is it see, without being looked into.

"School," Jane says.

Emily says, "School."

This leaves Carroll baffled.  If she canjust position herself right,
she'll be able to look into the twins' faces so she can see what's
going on.

She approaches from Emily's side but the girl ducks her head, leaving
Carroll to talk to her smooth, thick hair.  She says anyway, "Your
problem is school?"

Speaking, Jane seems disingenuous.  "She said .  .

Em is quick and cold.  "The bitch."

"Don't call her that."  Carroll sighs.  If she's going to make a friend
here, it's probably Jane.  She moves around to jane's side.

Emily says, "The aunt."

"Her name is'Laine."  She slides along the rail, trying to address
Jane, but Jane turns away.

"She said since we were going to be living here we might as well start
school.  She said we would be living here!"  Emily's elegant brows rush
toward each other in an arresting frown.

Jane lashes out.  "For good!"

Oh God.

Jane says, "But she doesn't know anything, right?"

"Just say she doesn't know anything."

Even seated, they are formidable.  She stammers, "I can't."

They charge her, "All you have to do is say she's wrong."

This shuts Carroll down.  When she starts up again it's on emergency
power.  Bare bulbs hanging from frayed wire light her brain.  "I'm so
sorry," she gasps.

"You said this was only a little vacation."

There are tears in her voice.  "I would have said anything to get you
to come with me.  I'm sorry."

They lash out.  "Sorry!"

"I love you guys but .  Embarrassment confounds her.  Oh Steve, I am so
sorry.  She finally manages to finish.  "I haven't been straight with
you."

The effect is chilling.  Without seeming to move at all, the twins come
to their feet.  Young as they are, they stand tall, so imperious that
it makes Carroll fall back.  They circle their chairs and finally,
after all this shifting and dancing, she and Steve Harriman's twin
daughters are face to face.  Angry with her as they are, stranded in
Florida with their backs against the wall, newly orphaned and betrayed,
the twins are beautifully composed, as still as a pair of marble
nymphs.  Ordinary kids she could have dealt with, but they are not
ordinary.  She would have preferred tantrums, hitting, anything.  As it
is, their perfect mouths are relaxed, their brows are unmarred and like
the eyes, the faces are lovely, but empty.  It's like addressing paired
porcelains.

Oh please say something.  After too long she says weakly, "Kids?"  God,
if only they were ordinary kids.  Kids, she could understand.  This is
different.

They don't speak, they don't change.

What is most alarming is the fact that their uncanny stillness in no
way means nothing is going on.  In mysterious ways she senses but can
only guess at, these two, Jane, Emily - whatever they want to be called
- are completely in touch.

Downstairs'Laine is calling, "Supper, supper," in that tremulous,
hopeful voice of hers.  From here they can hear Suzy and Patsy
jabbering in the driveway while Uncle Peyton's car rumbles into the
garage, but here on the second floor porch there is nothing but
silence, one desperate woman at odds with two remote girls, threatened
by the current that runs between.

She has to explain.  "Your grandmother begged me to take you.  She said
she couldn't keep you there."

"Couldn't keep us together?"

"Couldn't keep you," Carroll says and her heart falters.  She's afraid
of what they will say.  No.  She's afraid of what they will do.

As it turns out, they don't do anything.  Theyjust stand facing her
with those eyes that don't waver and - perhaps it's an illusion - don't
seem to blink.  It's as if they've suspended everything, breath,
heartbeats, the flow of blood, until they have this resolved.

The silence is almost more than she can bear.  "Please?"

When they finally decide, what they have to say is astounding.  Jane is
the first to yield.  She comes to herself with a little shiver and
inadvertently, Carroll lifts her hands as if aching for a hug.  Jane
moves back a step.  Emily moves back a step.  Jane blinks like a waking
sleeper and says, "The rings."

"Rings!"

"If we're going to stay here, you have to take us out to get the
rings."

Emily says, "Sapphire.  Ruby.  The old aunt promised us."

Jane says, "But we think she can't afford it, so we think she was
making it up."

"The rings."  Carroll keeps shaking her head in hopes the particles
will settle, but she still can't sort it out.  She realizes they are
holding out their wrists, indicating Laine's silly red and blue slap
wraps.

They say, "We can't keep wearing these."

"They're ugly."

"They look bad."

She is looking at their left hands, those flat, layered stones in the
brutish square settings.  "But you already have rings."

"Oh, these."  Their looks shame her.  Fool, they say, don't you know
what's important?  "These are only sardonyx.  We want ruby, sapphire.

So you can tell us apart.  She promised."

"God, if it's that important.  . ."

"You mean you'll get them?"  Jane begins to soften.

"If that's all you want .  . ."

Emily pounces.  "Tonight?"

To make them smile?  Cheap at the price.  "Sure," she says, relieved to
see their faces are changing in a brilliant flash of teeth.  "If that's
all you want."  Like a fool, Carroll hears herself giving in.

"Absolutely.  Fine.

Right after dinner, OK?  We'll go out to the mall."

"Not later, OK?"  They are swift and fragrant, crowding her.

"Let's go right now."

"But Elaine is waiting dinner on us."

"The rings might be all gone!"

"We can eat later, OK?"

Somewhere in the back of her mind Steve's voice rings, OK, babe?  The
twins' breath is sweet, their voices are sweet.  "Come on, Carroll."

They are twining their hands in hers, soft, wheedling.  Let's go, OK?

Let's go get us the rings."

"The beautiful, beautiful rings."

"Oh Carroll, we'll buy!  We'll buy you supper at the mall."

"Wait a minute.  I don't know."

They are like judges at the Olympics, waiting to see whether she'll
make the lastjump or fall.

Downstairs, she can hear the tempo in the kitchen picking up - her
aunts and uncle chattering as they carry dishes back and forth.

Everything is ready, Laine will have the table laid and Carroll is
expected to sit down just the way she did every night when she was
stuck here as a child.  The familiar tugs at her but the twins' eerie
insistence keeps her rooted here.  The strange plays off against the
commonplace.  And underneath everything there is the manner, as if
these beautiful children are somehow entitled.

Does one of the girls really say, Don't make us wait, OK?  She doesn't
know.  But she might as well be under orders.  The effect is the
same.

The strange plays off against the commonplace and wins.

"All right."  A sigh that starts somewhere deep rocks Carroll, but she
catches her breath and begins again on a bright note.  "OK kids.  Let's
go."

They hold up their scorecards, perfect marks.  "So, yay!"

She doesn't know what makes her want to thank them for being pleased
with her, but she does.  Touched, she lets them take her hands and pull
her along.

WATCHING THE TWINS chatter in the sunny dining room the next morning,
Carroll is reluctant to go in.  They look so happy!  Pretty heads bent
over the new rings - ruby and sapphire solitaires set in gold.  When
the jeweler at the mall told them how easy it would be for their mother
to come in to the shop later and add diamond chips, their eyes shone.

"When you graduate from high school," he said.  "And two more when you
finish college.  Right, Mother?"  Looking at Carroll they said, "Our
mother is dead."  After a moment's hesitation Jane, who was wearing the
ruby, said, "Now we have Carroll."  When Emily assented Carroll felt
herself go weak somewhere at dead center in an almost sexual rush of
warmth.

They like me.  Never mind that she maxed out on her plastic to do this,
cheap at the price.  In the part of her where checks and balances are
noted, Carroll put the twins on the plus side, they can't begin to
replace Steve but look, here's one good thing to set against the bad.

On the way home she put Jane in front.  Emily said, "My turn next
time?"  Warming to them both Carroll said, "Your turn next time."  They
left Suzy's car in the porte cochere and went in the side door to the
dining room, where the aunts and Uncle Peyton round in the ruins of
Elaine's shepherd's pie.  The were sitting a three Larrabie women and
their rakish brother swiveled their heads to look at her, Carroll's
only relatives looking like nothing so much as stuffed owls.

God how she remembered all those sad evenings, seeing them sitting
there in the dining room and having to go in.

Suzy always grilled her about her schoolwork and criticized her
clothes, Elaine plied her with food she didn't want while Patsy ate
food she didn't need, thin, squashy, fat, the sisters bore the family
stamp on their faces and if biology really was destiny, Carroll could
end up the same way.  Worse yet, every night of her life as a child
Uncle Peyton raised his face for the obligatory kiss and would not let
her sit down to eat until she'd sighed and given it.

Now things are different.

Since Carroll's childhood, her relatives have run true to type.  When
they came in last night - late, admittedly, but for good reason - Suzy
tapped her American Beauty nails on her glass with an annoyed look and
said, "The least you could do is get these children to the table on
time."  Plump Patsy said girlishly, "We waited and waited."  The rubble
on her plate suggested she, at least, hadn't waited for long.

Elaine was distressed.  "I tried to save a little for you, but this is
the best I could do."  She was like an octopus, trying to gather the
remains of the salad, some bread, the destroyed pie and press them on
her niece.  She was wheezing with good intentions.  "Oh let me go out
in the kitchen and heat up some hash."

"It's OK," Carroll said, feeling unaccountably rich.  "We had something
at the mall."

Uncle Peyton stroked his yellowing mustache.  "You could have been more
considerate."

With Steve's daughters flanking her, she could handle this.

Confronting the relatives, she and Jane and Em stood arm in arm in arm
- if not exactly family, then friends.  The coldness that fell between
them out there on the porch had dissipated, Carroll doesn't think it's
the rings.  She wants to think she's broken through.  They like her!

At least Jane does, and if Emily is more reserved,just give her time.

Together, they form a solid front here n the old house where she
soldiered through her own hard childhood alone.

She woke in the night and heard the girls talking - excited, she
guessed.

They were so sweet at bedtime that she heard herself promising to take
them to Orlando.  It's expensive - hotels for three nights, three theme
parks, but she's back at work so she'll have her paycheck to add to her
and Steve's joint checking account.  She's still too shaky to confront
the exigencies, selling the house where they were so happy for such a
short time.  Insurance companies, banks.  Final things.  Add them to
her grief, subtract Steve and she's left with the sum total of their
short marriage.  And the twins.  If keeping them happy costs more than
she makes, that's fine.  In a strange way, the twins are the last
barricade between her and the totality of grief.  As long as she can
keep busy pleasing them, she doesn't have to face the rest.

She's so relieved to see them laughing in the sunshine that she doesn't
even wonder why they're downstairs so early today when they were up
jabbering all night.  Once she thought she heard thumping overhead but
she discounted this as another sad waking dream prompted by the last
few days of tension and pain.

Seeing them this morning, she knows she imagined it.  They look so
pretty!

They have on their new Gap T-shirts with khaki shorts, they look less
imperious and more like well-meaning campers with their pink
espadrilles and morning light playing in their shiny hair.  See them
sitting by the window with their right arms extended in the sunlight,
starfishing their hands so they can study the sparks glinting in their
new stones It makes her feel - not maternal, exactly, but proud.

This is her doing, hers.  Carroll can't wait for them to look up and
smile.  She's about to go in and speak when in a beautifully
synchronized passage they lean in until their heads touch.  She can
almost hear the buzz.  Their communion is so intense that it excludes
the world.

The twins are chattering so fast that the words don't separate into any
language she can recognize.  They don't see her, they don't hear, even
when Charley Penn honks his horn out front.

Even so, Carroll lingers.  She wants to say goodbye before she goes to
work but the girls are so engrossed that she sighs and backs out.

Rumpled, grinning Charley Penn leans across the front seat and opens
the car door for her.  "How are the kids?"

"OK, I think.  Being twins makes it easier."  The house is big, old,
depressing.  She feels guilty for leaving them alone there while she
goes into the newsroom and looks for her old self.  Carroll past
present and future flickers in front of her.  "I'm so glad they have
each other."  it just breaks out of me.  "Amanenj'anamamenjanama .  .

"Stop you should, just cut it out."  Protesting, the weak sister feels
what I do, is disturbed by what disturbs me.  We can't afford to feel
this way.

"Shut up," I say.  "Shut down.  The aunts."

I know.  I can't.  Never like this before.  "But oh shit oh glenaglena
sister."

Stern she is, we are the queen.  See how thought flows back and forth
between us.  "Strebidibus."  Forget it.  Things to do.  We have things
to do.

Forget it!  "Strebidibus, OK?"

But my voice keeps going, OK?  "Frenemo oh my ooh oh
amanenjanamenamenjama "Shut up," she hisses.

"Ahmo frenemo."  I'm so sorry.  Grieving, I protest in the old language
and in the old language my sister answers me, but before I can stop her
she slides into the common people's talk in a brutish conjunction that
strikes my heart.

"Naja dummy and don't you forget it."

I try to raise her up.  "Glena hemo krazgod."

"Etrapi" Stop it.

"Krazgod," I say.  it's true, we did.  We got him.  Looked into that
face and did the thing.  Saw the fear and did it anyway.  "Krazgod,
sister."

"Menemene sisterno."  I know what she thinks, We did the thing and it
felt good.  OK, I feel it too.  She says, "We are the queen,
remember."

I sigh.  "We are the queen."

"Queen Jade," she says firmly.  "And Queen Emerald."

She's right.  We are.  "Queen Jade."  I sigh.  "And Queen Emerald."

"Queen of Amadamaland and queen of here."

"I guess so," I say, I don't feel so good.

"Look, my queen.  Queen, remember.  Queen everywhere we go, OK?  They
know we're queen and you know too.  Why else would they give us the
tokens?"

Right, the tokens.  "They're nice, but still."

"Queen, OK?  In this and every other kingdom."

"Queen wherever we are," I say, because she expects it, I mean, what
else?

But, look!  We feel so bad from it or I do, and what I don't know is,
is it only me that feels bad or is it we?  Things blur until there is
no knowing.  What I know is that in spite of everything the excitement
leaves me twitching - the old feeling only more.  Because we looked
into that face while it was happening.  Maybe that's why I don't feel
so good.  Feel bad even though at the tippy end there was that grin on
his face, so good it was for him in some way, I guess, or at least my
sister says it was.

"The queen does what she must and never looks back so smile," my sister
says, but it makes me crawly, OK?  We've been sawing back and forth
over this all night, what we actually did.  What to do with the trophy
we took.  The trophy makes the whole thing special, because of, or in
spite of the part that creeps into my belly and won't leave.  It makes
me want to throw up today, although it didn't seem like much while we
were doing it.  Not my fault I am staggered by second thoughts right
now.

Not my sister's fault she has only first thoughts.

Mine pile up in my throat.  I cry, "Krena?"  What shall we do?

She tells me, nothing.  "Naja."

Hear me groan, "But look what we did!"

"Shh!"  She comes back in the old language.  What does she say we
did?

She says, "Naja."  Nothing.

"Oh, agh."  I can't help myself.  We did do something, in spite of what
she thinks.  No pretending we didn't.  We have the trophy to mark it.

"Oh sister, frenemo."  I'm so sorry.

"Sisterno.  The queen, remember.  Etrap."  Stop that.

I can't help it, see!  I feel the ngs about it, different.  I mean,
this is huge.  What's the point of doing, if you aren't supposed to
feel?  "Fregel," I say even though I know what she'll say to this.

"Fregel."  Guilty.

My sister the queen brings me down.  She does it in the common people's
tongue.  "Queens don't have guilt, asshole, so forget it."

And what's done is over, OK.  I pray in my heart that we won't have to
do it any more.  "Frenemo," I say again, so sorry!

But she lifts her hand and mine so the red stone and the blue one are
cold on my cheeks and she goes on in the old language.  "Etrap, OK?

Naja."  Then she spreads her hand and I see the colored fire on her
finger and she says, "Etrap, and I mean it."

"Yes," I say, "OK."  It is, I guess.  Besides, we have to figure out
what to do with our trophy.  Where to put it then, that they won't see,
but we will enjoy it because we know it is there.

Watch out, the thin aunt is coming.  This hard-looking Suzy woman trips
through en high heels, followed by Patsy who is too big for the spikes
that carry her.  They give that look they save for the twins.  Then the
Peyton, who has another kind of look for the twins.

She says OK, but I'm afraid she doesn't mean it.  It took long enough
to bring my weak sister around.  "OK," I say, sealing it.  My twin
swallows so hard I can see the lump on her throat glupping, glupping,
how can we keep our position here when she is so craven?

"Bye," Uncle Peyton says.

We say, "Bye," as nice as can be expected.

Then up we go -to our room, we tell pink, sweaty Elaine, who asks have
we filled out those cards yet.  We say we haven't but we will, we say,
we promise we'll do it real soon.  Then we go up but past our room and
up the attic stairs into what will become the annex to our kingdom.

Away from Amadamaland, we must colonize.  In our time we'll go from
kingdom to empire to world.

The attic is vast.  It's almost big enough for us.  It's hot and dusty,
empty of life except for the insects, squirrels, ourselves.  We have
our uses for every part of it but right now we're concentrating on our
special place.

Never mind which room it is, never mind which part of the attic we have
found, we make the map and then destroy it because here in the colonies
as well as back home in the kingdom, we the queen have to keep our
secrets.  The place is nice, the thing we carry between us is nice the
best we could get yesterday, rushed as we were, pressed for time and
hurrying to completion.  Take that.

Take that and that.  And give us that, while you're at it.  Never be
missed except by the one who gave it up - in hopes, I suppose, although
we don't know what he was hoping for.  He gave it up to us at the very
last minute.  With that smile.

The space is nice, but not as nice as it's going to be.  We've already
done a few things, a start.  We have our trophy, yes, we have our
notebooks and our pictures from home - beloved Saint Stephen!  and we
have collected forgotten treasures from this used-up Larrabie family
from every corner of the attic.

See the portraits of glassy-faced ancestors propped here, the vases
there, and threelegged chairs from an old gazebo teetering in the four
corners of the room we have selected.  Not as good as it should be, but
better than we expected.

Away from Amadamaland, we are the kingdom.

Alone.

Carroll is gone.  Newspaper, she says.  To get money to buy us
things.

She says she is a reporter, like Lois Lane.  Well we think she should
put us in the paper.  Put our pictures on the front page.  The working
aunts and the uncle are outside in the car now, quarreling in the
drive.  We can't wait for them to leave.  Then Elaine must go, even if
we have to send her - to the mall for more presents, now that Carroll
has given us the rings Elaine promised, it's up to the poor bitch to
give us something too.  A cinch.  No problem.  She would do anything to
make us like her.  Then while the aunts and the dirty uncle are good
and gone, we'll fan out through their rooms and take the best of what
they have without their even knowing it and bring it up to reinforce
the outpost which already looks less like an outpost.

Now that we have the first treasure.

We take some time arranging the right setting.  By the time we have it
put more or less where we want it my sister has stopped sniffling under
her breath and is feeling better.  So - good!  She feels better, I feel
better.  It's a relief.  Sometimes I think we must bejoined at the
head, unless we arejoined at the belly.

Then we hear the voice.  "Emily."

My sister turns.  Somebody's at the bottom of the attic stairs.  It is
Elaine.  We quit breathing.

We hear her starting up the stairs.  "Oh, jaaane."

"Oh shit," my sister says.

"No," I say.  "This is good."  I put my head close to hers and soon
enough she sees what I see.  "Really."  So I answer, lilting.  "We're
up here."

"What are you girls doing?"

My sister says, "Nothing."  I am proud of her.

I say, "Be down in just a minute."

"Well hurry, it's hot up there."

And my sister answers, "Just another little minute."

"Too hot for you children.  Pretty soon it will be stifling."  She is
working hard on lilting.  "It's getting hot down here too."

"Yes ma'am," I say.

This Elaine wants to bribe us.  "It's getting so hot I thought I'd take
you girls to the beach."  We exchange looks.  So easy!  Still we
linger.  We aren't finished here.  After a while she says, "Hurry up, I
have a surprise for you."  We hear her cropping away.

We look at each other again.  It is like looking at myself.  We still
haven't decided about the trophy.  I have it on a marble-topped table
we've dragged out from under the eaves but that doesn't seem right.  It
wants something more, or better, or different.  My sister had it on a
little shelf but that wasn't right either.  Now we have to quick decide
so we can go to the beach.  Finally I take it off the table and without
having to consult my twin I spread my scarf in the middle of the floor
and take the trophy.

"Yes," she says.

"Yes," I say.

We put it there.

When they stand like that with their elbows planted on the counter of
the refreshment stand and their cute, pert butts facing the ocean,
Lanny Raynor can hardly bear not to touch them.  He would like to just
reach out, his mouth waters and his hands cup in spite of his best
intentions.  He's been watching them for an hour.

They caught his eye when he came down to the beach this morning after
he got finished at the gym.  When he began his walk up the beach he
just ran into them.  They were planted on their bellies in the sand
with their feet twined in the air, succulent little things, could be
any age.  By the time he came back they had turned over to toast the
other side.  Beautiful.  Since then they've been down to the water and
back three times, parading like little models.  But they don't go in.

Instead they jump in the wavering, changing foam line and then come
back, giggling, to their matching towels.  It's still north of noon but
now they're ordering hot dogs, flirting with the counterman and
twitching those asses.  Watching, Lanny blesses the fact that it's a
school day because it makes him the only game in town right now.  What
is the old saying?

Good things come in pairs.

And he has a lot of fun out here, cruising the beach until he meets
somebody he can make music with.  He's always subtle, smooth, mind if I
help you dig, or, walk a little way with you, or, can I lie down next
to your blanket?  And never violent, just furtive.  For Lanny the best
pleasures are the ones his partner is least expecting.  No big whup,
just a few gentle touches, a kiss or two, he is not after all a
rapist.

Funny old word from the old funny papers fits him exactly, lothario.

Most of the time the girls he finds go along with him willingly,
surprised, maybe, but grateful.  And the twins, the twins!

He thinks there used to be a thing on TV where Hayley Mills was twins
and he's been going nuts trying to remember whether there was one good
twin and one bad one.  He's been going nuts trying to decide which of
these girls might be bad enough to want to go places and do things with
him, but when girls come in pairs like this they don't always want you
to separate them, and there's no reading what's going on inside those
sleek bodies.

These twin bodies look perfect without any effort on their owners,
part, and their fair hair catches the light without benefit of
peroxide.  They are so pretty it makes his palms sweat.  How old are
they anyway?  He tries not to think about how old he is.  He doesn't
look so bad himself, but it takes him a little longer.  All those hours
in the gym.  Lean and well-muscled in the thong bikini, Lanny knows he
looks like an ad for some heavenly health club, and if his body matches
up with theirs, if he already knows the three of them will look good
together, well it's up to him to call this to their attention.  Cute.

Not from around here, he can tell by the red lines that don't match
yesterday's tan.  He sidles closer.

"Where you girls from?"

When they turn, their sunglasses give back Lanny's image in
quadruplicate, muscular shoulders sloped, pelvis slanted forward,
tight, ridged belly.  He looks like the big bad wolf in one of those
old cartoons, it's a little unnerving.

"You're not from around here, are you?"

When the girls don't answer he says, "I'll take off mine if you'll take
off yours."

One of the girls giggles.

"Sunglasses, I mean," he says disarmingly.  If he hits on one will the
other get mad or peel off and leave him alone with her?

He doesn't think so.  Somewhere inside he's humming, "Double the - ."

They are mumbling together, God they are pretty, what is it they're
saying?  "Anamana."  it doesn't sound like anything.  He tilts his
head.  "What?"

"Premo?"

"Preemo."

They raise their hands and lift their glasses.  The eyes are
staggering, china blue, glassy, perfect.  But with an attitude.

Lanny falls back a step.

Hard to explain the effect of their cold scrutiny.  It's a little like
dressing for a barbecue and discovering you've wandered into the wrong
party.

He touches his throat, feeling for the bow tie he ought to be
wearing.

Oh, excuse me, I didn't know it was a tuxedo thing.

He's just standing there and they're just standing there.

One says, "You forgot."

"I'm sorry."  Now why did he say that?  He doesn't know.  It was just
automatic.

The other says, "Your glasses.  You were going to drop your glasses so
we could see each other."

"Oh, right."  He's so relieved he can't quite understand it.  He drops
his wraparound g'rlwatcher shades and blinks at them.  They're watching
him intently.  Without moving their eyes they seem to be gauging his
quads and pecs and triceps and counting the ridges in his tightly
muscled belly.

One says, "Now the suit."

The other says, "Jade!"

"Might as well see what's what," she says.

"Jade," he says.  She's waiting.  What makes Lanny most uncomfortable
is the fact that it seems like an order.  In another minute they'll
have him stripping right here on the beach in front of everyone and the
beach cops will be on him in seconds.  If they're underage he's
cooked.

Buying time, he says, "That's a pretty name."

The other giggles.  "And my name is Emerald."

He looks at her.  "Emerald."  He flashes on one time when he was
little.

He was springing up and down in the surf, justjumping waves until he
tangled with an undertow, he didn't even know T how it happened, just
suddenly he was way over his head with nothing underneath his feet but
a million gallons of the Atlantic, panic moved him fast but the ocean
pulled him the other way and it took him an hour to swim back to where
he could touch again and by the time he did he was frightened and
exhausted.

"That's beautiful."

"The suit," jade says.

"Oh," he says.  "Not here."

She is looking at him intently.  "In the water."

"In the water.  . ."  He'll do anything to make friends with them.

"Would you girls like to go swimming?"

"Yes!"

The one called Emerald reminds her, "We can't go in."  jade explains as
if this kind of thing happens to everyone, "The aunt won't let us."

"How old are you girls anyway?"

"She says not without a lifeguard."

Maybe they're younger than he thinks.  But maybe they're not.

"Would you girls like to go somewhere?"

"We can't."

"She told us not to leave the beach either."

"I don't see how we're going to get to be friends," he says.

"She made us promise."  jade starts.  "But we can go in."

Emerald finishes.  "If there's a lifeguard."

"Well then," he says.  "Before I .  . ."  He doesn't know how to finish
this.  Before I lost myjob?  Not good.  Dropped out of school?

True, but a long time ago.  Instead he gives them the bald lie.  "Did
you know I used to be a lifeguard?"

"Really?"

"Sure.  Once you start saving people, you never forget how."

Warm flesh bumps warm flesh as they close in and jostle him.

He can feel the sand particles rubbing between them.  One says, "So
it's OK for us to go into the water after all."

"Sure it is."

"And we'll swim out?"

"Sure.  A little ways."

"Eeemo?"

"What?"

"Elmo?"  They are talking over his head again.  "Einel!"  they say,
tugging him toward the water.

"Wait," he says.  The girls are moving so fast now that they have him
confused, jade, Emerald, or is it Emerald and jade, double the ...

Lanny thinks, and more or less stops thinking.  If they asked him to
drop his suit a minute ago, now that they have what they ally want they
have forgotten.  Well, he hasn't forgotten.  re "Water, come on."

"Come on, water!"

"Sure," he says.  His voice is thick with anticipation.  He can already
imagine the three of them bobbing together and the warm, soapy feeling
of his bare hands on those perfect bodies in the beautiful salt
water.

Who is he to know what they expect or what makes them angry or what may
happen to anybody foolish enough to stir them up?

m KURT GRAVER is on the redeye, flying east.  He is blindsided by
excitement, stunned.  Being up so high.  After all these years, being
exposed.  Somewhere inside a part of him is running around waving its
arms and giggling like a little boy.

The rest is rock-bottom terrified.  This is the first time he's been
off the Archer place in the daytime since Zane died.  When he gets into
open places can he still breathe or will all his life systems just shut
down?  Can he handle being so exposed?

Although she's used to assessing the moods of all kinds of passengers,
the stewardess would never guess.  Kurt sits facing front with his dark
hair falling straight from the part so it almost covers one eye and his
face fixed in a forbidding expression of reserve that says, Don't touch
me.  Don't even try to talk to me.  There is something rusty-looking
about him, as if he is somehow unused.

Handsome, she thinks, looking at him.  But there is that scowl.  Except
for the amenities, she leaves him alone.

Kurt's heart levels off with the plane and at cruising altitude, he
discovers he is still breathing.  He begins to consider.

Things about the Oliphants.  What does he really know?  All he knows,
he knows by extrapolation, the weirdness of the girls, the strange,
dark streak that ran through Zane, hidden until it exploded in blood.

It was like a geyser splattering the world.

What else?  Things his father knows.  "Well," Billy told him, "the
Oliphants were rich before they lost all their money in some bad
deal.

Rich enough to send Hal away.  Except for him, I think they were
perfectly ordinary people.  Plain.  Fine.  What I do know is that they
wouldn't come to the wedding.  Wouldn't have anything to do with it."

For his father, the pain is still fresh.  "Hal Oliphant was a terrible
drunk.  Meredith, I mean Mrs. Archer, never should have .  . ."  Billy
has left off trying to finish that sentence, there's too much grief
implied, too many bad things have fallen between then and now.  "There
was something about Hal, from the beginning Meredith knew there was
something wrong with him, but she was in love and she refused to see.

I'm not sure she knew what it was."  He sighed.  "And she married him
anyway.  At the wedding, she didn't want to know."

Billy's voice hit bottom.  "Then she didn't want to tell."

Right, Kurt thinks.  The fatal fact, or flaw, that brought out the
priest.

Some flaw that runs through the generations, Hal to Zane.  Kurt is
convinced it's surfaced in Vivian's twins.  He's convinced the truth is
locked up in some monastery with this Franklin Davage, S.J.

If he's on the plane now, it's because he has to be.

If he knows where he's going, it's because Meredith Archer has supplied
him with a place to start.

He doesn't know what Billy said to her exactly, only that for the first
time since the accident when he was little, the old lady got in touch
with him.

She sent word.  She didn't talk to Kurt, she never could.  Since the
old accident Mrs. Archer has found it impossible to face him.  She was
kind enough, quick to pay the bills and send presents to the hospital,
she even offered to pay for the best in artificial hands, but she could
- not - be with him.

Even when he and Zane and Vivian were kids Meredith used to see him
coming and disappear, one look at the rapidly healing stump and she'd
fade.  It took Kurt a long time to figure out that it was nothing he
did.  It as what he was.  Maimed, and by her own son.  Kurt embarrassed
w her.  OK, lady, he thought.  OK.  And he stayed away.  Easy enough to
do back then when Kurt was little and in love with Vivian and he
thought she was in love with him.  Now Vivian is dead and he's left
with the sad legacy of warped pathology that he has no way of knowing
whether he can ever identify, much less straighten out.

At least he has a lead.

The information came to him secondhand, by note.  Meredith sat up there
in the big house and wrote instead of phoning.  It came on one of her
engraved correspondence cards, formally deerrands for livered by his
dad, who was accustomed to doing such her.  When Kurt looked up his
father was standing in t I he living room in full uniform, holding his
cap.  God, he thought.  Is that all you ever wanted to be?  A
chauffeur?  Billy didn't have to speak, Kurt already knew the answer.

All I evie wanted was to be near her.  She'd put Kurt's name on the
envelope and, forever the lady, had written in the lower right-hand
corner, "Kindness of William Graver."

"Something for you," Billy said.  He just handed it over.

Kurt didn't have to ask, Do you know what it says?  It made him furious
to know that Billy would never dream of reading it.  All his life with
the Archers Billy has obeyed orders without question, carried notes
without reading them.

Dignified as he is, kind and intelligent, Billy is a servant.

Well Kurt is something else.  Still he has to thank the old lady for
supplying the one piece of information he could not pull out of his
extensive network of data banks.  Of course Hal Oliphant has living
relatives.  Of course his sister would be listed in the Manhattan
directory under her married name.

But they are landing.  Has he slept?  He doesn't know.  He's flown into
night and come out in broad daylight.  More time has passed than he was
aware of.  It's dizzying.  Still he's been through this airport so many
times in memory and imagination that he makes the transition to a taxi
almost without noticing.  Puts on his mirrored shades as if they'll
hide him from the world.

Riding along, he is turned in on himself, mulling it - where to go from
here.

 ask.  What he has to do when he finds out.  Before he's
aware that he's paid the cabbie and gotten out Kurt is hatched,
blinking and shaky, on the corner of the building where Hal Oliphant's
married sister lives.

The freedom staggers him.

He loses several beats before he comes to with a jerk and realizes
where he is.  Outside, in one of the biggest cities in the world.  It's
like waking up in any one of a dozen movies.  And discovering that
although he has a part, he doesn't know his lines.

He is almost blown away by the city of New York.

It is too much!  He could hyperventilate right here, spinning in place
until his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed, he could get
into the next taxi and go back to the airport and go straight home to
his computers, where it's safe.  Or else he could stand here and wait
for something to happen - mugging, driveby shooting, arrest for being
crazy - hanging in air until he got busted or the ambulance came and
took him away.

Or he could get his act together and do what he came to do.

Dizzy, he puts his hand in his pocket and it closes on Meredith
Archer's card.  It is rigid, crisp.  He can read the raised monogram
with his fingers.

He takes it out.  Carte blanche, he thinks.  Telling him where to go,
Mrs. Archer has added a note that will make them let him in.  The
doorman reads the card, dips his head and lets Kurt inside.  He buzzes
the apartment and when there is no answer he tells Kurt, "It's OK.

She's always home.  She's a little you know.  You'll find her on the
roof."

Hal's sister is older than Mrs. Archer.  She looks ninety-something in
her terrycloth bathrobe with the flapping basketball shoes and the big
straw hat.

She's up on the roof watering her plants.  They sit in flats warmed by
artificial light.  She's been living alone for so long that until she
sees herself mirrored in Kurt's sunglasses, she isn't even aware that
she's not exactly dressed.  She greets him with dignity nonetheless.

"Are you a friend of Hal's?"

"No ma'am."

"Of course not.  You're too young."  Approaching, she squints into his
face.  "You're not one of his children, are you?"  She's so close he
can see the ripening cataracts on her pupils.  "Nope.  Not one of hr's
children, I can tell.  Don't ask me to tell you where he is, because I
don't know."

"I just need to know.  . ."  What's wrong with him.  That must be
genetic.

Where did it begin?  How can it end?  There is no way to say this.

just as well, because the next thing the old lady says betrays grief,
"If you want to know the truth, I don't want to know."

"Oh, ma'am, ma'am am so sorry.

"Please don't ask me about Hal."

"I won't.  I just Need to know what to do.

"Don't beg, it won't do you any good.  I haven't seen my brother for
fifty years."

He knows better than to press.  "No ma'am."

"Or heard from him either.  So don't."

"I won't."  Instead he asks about the priest.

Her face softens.  "Franklin," she says.  "Poor Franklin."  It's as if
she's been waiting for this question half her life.  "In seclusion,
don't you know?"

"I know," Kurt says.  He's getting weird.  This is the longest he's
been out in years.  The highest up he's been.  Pull yourself
together.

Breathe.

"But where?"

Moving even closer, she stands on tiptoe to take off Kurt's sunglasses
so she can study his face.  Whatever she sees seems to be OK because
she nods and begins.  Remote, she says.  Small town, she says.

Dominican monastery somewhere in Vermont.  Kurt nods.  Not the
Trappists after all.  Franklin's the chaplain there, or he was the last
time she heard from him, but it's been years.  She stresses this.

Years.  She stresses it so he'll know what to expect.  Father Franklin
Davage, S.J is at least her age, perhaps a little older and after all
these years there's no telling whether he's still alive.

She doesn't even know if he's still a priest.  He doesn't write.  The
nuns are the only Dominicans left.  They operate under the vow of
silence, she says.

That's why there's no phone.  "What a waste."

"Him shutting himself away like that?"

"Him going into the priesthood."  To his surprise she sounds girlish as
a jilted teenager.  "He could have broken a dozen hearts, and almost
did."

"I'm sorry."  nt he can see "It's all right."  The old lady's skin is
so transpare the veins and for a second he sees how lovely she must
have been.

"We got over it.  Women always do."

He's about to thank her and go when she says, "Wait a minute.  You
can't leave until you've seen my violets."

Then before he can back into the door and plunge down the

T" stairs to safety Hal Oliphant's big sister grabs his hand and pulls
him toward her plants.  Rank and file and officers, she has the plants
in their pots standing on what look like plant bleachers like a little
audience.  She keeps them where they can get reflected sunlight during
the best hours of the day.

Dozens of potted African violets.  Frankly, they're revolting with
their whitish stems and hairy leaves.  Kurt tries to back off but she's
insistent now, holding him in place so he can hear her naming them,
genus, species, variety and variation, bred and cross-bred to produce
remarkable results.  He could spend the rest of his life out on this
rooftop, meeting every plant personally and learning to call it by
name.

"And this," she says when he's just about to despair of ever
escaping.

"I want you to see this."  The genteel gardener lifts the corner of a
rag to reveal a plant hidden under the bleachers.  Kurt kneels so he
can see.  The thing is enormous, grotesque.  Even in the shadows the
thing flowers, and the flowers are hideous.  "This is one of my
failures.  I hid it under here hoping it would die."  She sighs.  "But
it's doing better than ever.  You see?"

A geneticfreak.  Kurt doesn't know what to say.

She goes on.  "With the best possible intentions I crossed two strains
and instead of something beautiful, I got this.  Even the best possible
intentions can go wrong.  Even the best strains can go bad."  She fixes
him with her filmy eyes.  "Do you understand?  Sometimes you get a wild
card that doesn't seem to come from anywhere."

"Oh ma'am, ma'am."

"It's nobody's fault," she says, standing.  "Nobody's fault what blood
can do when it's mixed wrong, you see?  But you couldn't possibly
know."

It's as close as she comes to talking about Hal Oliphant.

"Thank you."  He tries to pat her reassuringly and back away at the
same time.  And in his haste to escape, exposes his stump.  Hearing her
gasp, he looks down.  The cuff has fallen away.  In the sunlight like
this it looks blunt, bad, embarrassing.  He blurts, "I'm sorry," and
flees.

Oh, you poor thing."  As he opens the roof door and plunges into the
stairwell he hears her pattering after him.  As he begins his descent
she opens the door.  Her voice follows him down.  "You poor thing.  You
do know after all."

By the time he gets to the cloister after a short flight and a long
drive, the day has disappeared.  The monastery where the Dominican nuns
are located is on a hillside in rural Vermont.  Kurt parks outside a
rock wall that must have been put together by some fan of King Arthur
and his court.  The gates are locked but the garden door bears a
sign.

NO TRESPASSING To Make Deliveries, Ring the Bell.

When nobody responds Kurt gives the gate a little push and when it
yields, he opens it and starts up the dirt road to the main building.

The place is a strange combination of farm and fairyland.  What must
have been formal gardens in the old days have been turned to vegetable
plots.  The dirt road goes between rows of last summer's plants still
staked to posts.  Beans, he supposes.  Tomatoes.  Squash.  The nuns
live in a fake castle built out of nubbly rocks by some dreamer whose
descendants probably liked it less than he did and donated it to the
order.  From here he can see gun slits instead of upper windows, and at
the roofline, carefully replicated crenellations, if they wanted to the
nuns could pull up the drawbridge and repel all boarders.  They could
mount cannon on the roof.

He crosses the drawbridge and finds the buzzer.  Nobody comes.  At
first he thinks there's nobody around.  But this is a living
institution, not a dead one, he has the sense of several complete lives
going on somewhere just out of sight.  He doesn't know the religious
order of the day but thinks maybe the sisters are at evening prayer.

Therefore he's surprised when someone actually comes.

I She doesn't look like any of the pictures of nuns he's seen.  This is
a wiry, capable-looking woman in black with a thin band of white
showing where the half-veil meets her dark hair.

"I'm not a Catholic," he blurts.

"No problem," she says.  She squints at him through the slit in the
door.  "We weren't expecting anybody."

"I'm sorry I didn't call ahead."

Her look suggests he's insulting her intelligence.  "We don't have
phones here.  Nobody calls ahead."

"I thought you couldn't talk."

That look again, "I'm the extern.  There are three of us and between us
we take care of all the outside business here."

"And the others?"

"Nobody enters the cloister," she says.

"I ... came to see Father Davage?"  He expects her to slam the little
window, never heard of him, and so he adds quickly, "Somebody told me
he was here."

"He's .  . ."

"In seclusion.  I know."

"He's one of our burnouts.  So sad."

"I'm sorry.  I've come all this way and I just."  He just what?  He
doesn't know.  He has the sudden, crazed idea that he expects the
priest to restore his missing hand.

" I don't know whether he'll see you."

"Tell him I'm here about the Archers."  He rethinks.  "No.  Ask him if
he remembers Hal Oliphant."  But that isn't it either.  For whatever
reasons, he keeps seeing Hal's sister among her African violets.  He
sees the plant she kept hidden.  That she made him see.  Even the best
strains can go bad.  "Tell him I'm here because Hal Oliphant has
granddaughters."

She says cautiously, "He hasn't seen anybody in years."

He can't shake the image of that horrible, sprawling, bulbous plant.

"Tell him they're twins."

"He says he doesn't want to see anybody."

That plant.  Cut it out Kurt.  Stop it.  That plant.  The missing
hand.

Cut it out!  He isn't going to fix your hand he may not even tell you
what to do about the twins.  I've come so far, this is so precarious!

Everything piles up and comes out unexpectedly.  "Oh please let me
in."

She considers for a moment.  Then she does, pulling him inside and
shutting the door behind him quickly, as if she's afraid of letting in
the world.  "Wait here.  I'll go and see."

He is in a generic convent parlor, good but shabby furniture donated by
some genteel family, bad reproduction of Murillo's virgin in a dark
frame over the sofa, surprisingly good figure on the contemporary
crucifix by the door.

The unexpected element in the room is a sliding window in the inside
wall.

There is a grill over the glass and in the open space between the grill
and the bottom of the wicket, there is the little ledge where he
supposes books and messages are passed.  Beyond the grill a translucent
curtain hangs.  It makes him think of a confessional.  Do Catholic
people kneel in front of that little window and spill all their secrets
here?  He wonders if the families of these cloistered sisters come on
Christmas or birthdays and whisper at them throu h the opening.  He
doesn't know.  His breath catches.  He doesn't know.  This is what's
killing him.  He doesn't know anything.

After a long time the extern comes back.  She seems surprised.  "He
says he'll see you.  Pull your chair over to the wicket and wait."

After another long time Kurt hears the glass window slide open.  The
curtain stays where it is but it moves slightly, as if stirred by
somebody's breath.  Kurt has a wild impulse to get down on his knees
and say what Catholics do -Bless me Father for I have sinned.  He says,
"Father Davage?"

"It took you a long time to get here."

"What?"

The priest's voice is dry, as if his throat is papery from disuse.

"I expected somebody long before this."

"You did!"

"I thought ... How long can it go on?"

"Oh, Father!"

In the silence that follows, the priest moves the curtain a little to
one side so he can see out.  Kurt hears him grunt with pain.  He must
be crippled by age or arthritis or something worse.  Apparently
satisfied by what he sees, the priest says, "I suppose you want me to
tell you something useful."

Kurt leans closer, if only he'd pull back the curtain so they could be
face to face .  . . "Anything!"

But the curtain stays closed.  "I can't.  Not really."

"Why!"

"Most of what I learned, I learned from Hal and his brother in
confession .  . ."

"His brother!"  Kurt discovers that he's on his feet with his fingers
tightening around the grill.  "Hal's brother?"

"A twin."

"Hal has a twin?"

The priest corrects him.  "had.  His twin brother died when they were
sixteen.  The police declared it an accidental death."

"But Hal confessed to you."

"No."  His breath is shaky, as if charged by things he can't say.

Kurt says urgently, "Look.  You have to tell me what he did.", "I'm
sorry, I can't do that."

"The least you can do is tell me what he said."

"Don't you think I want to?  Don't you think I would have.  told
everybody if I could?  The police?  That poor girl, his fiancee?"  The
priest's breath hisses out in a little burst of frustration.  "I
can't."

"You can't?"

"The seal of the confessional."  When Kurt does not immediately say,
Oh, right, he explains.  "Everything that's said there ... Everything I
do there ... Understand, I carry it to the grave.  And if I'm killed
for not telling, fine."

Then Kurt hits him with it.  "You know Hal Oliphanf had twins."

The priest's voice comes from somewhere high behind his forehead in a
thin, perfect tenor that falls into the room like a celestial groan.

"Oh God.

I heard she was pregnant, I never knew.  . ."

"That it was twins?  They were twins.  One."  Kurt's breath catches.

"One died."

"Was it.  Is it .  .

Kurt thinks the priest wants him to answer a question that the is seal
of the confessional, whatever it is, won't let him ask.  Sobbing,
Father Davage wants reassuring, he wants to be told Zane's death was an
accident.  Kurt says, "You mean, who died?"

"Please."

The priest is so closemouthed that it makes Kurt cruel.  "You mean, was
it the good one or the bad one that died?  The bad one, for what that's
worth."  As he says this he thinks uncomfortably, At least I think it
was the bad one.

Ther, he hits him with it.  "An accident."  At least the police said it
was an accident.

"God!"

"There's something else you need to know.  Hal has grandchildren."

Without having to be told he says, "Twins."  The priest's sigh shakes
the curtains.  "I was afraid of that.  I didn't come down to the parlor
to help you, son, I'd like to but I can't.  I can't help anybody any
more.  I .  . ."

The curtain trembles as if the man behind it can't stop shaking.

Finally he manages, "All I can do is pray for you.  I'm the last person
to ask for help in any case.  I don't even hear confessions any more.

I have done worse things than any of the penitents who come to me.

Sins of omission, you understand?"

"Omission," Kurt repeats.  All those years he hid behind his computers,
up there in the garage apartment.  "I think I do."

"I still say Mass for the sisters but when I elevate the Host all I are
my failures - Hal's brother .  .

can think about "What happened?"

". . . that poor girl.  I can't tell you."

"Yes you can."

"if only I could!"  first time in h' Kurt's patience snaps.  "That's
enough!"  For the i s ment instead of hiding it.  While the pr' life he
uses his disfigure iest hs and stirs with arthritic slowness, he
unbehind the curtain sig buttons his cuff and rolls it back to expose
the stump.  Then he says harshly, "Lift the curtain."

"I'm sorry.  I won't."

Kurt growls, "I didn't say open it, I said lift it, OK?"

"I don't have to keep the curtain closed," the priest admits.

"I'm hiding."

"Just lift it a little.  I have something I want to show you.  That's
good."  He lays the mutilated stump on the little ledge and slides it
underneath the grill.  "One of Hal's twins did this."

"Oh son, son!"  There is a stir as the priest gets up with an effort
and with an even greater effort pulls back the curtain from the wicket
so at last they are face to face.  The failed Jesuit is still handsome,
with clear eyes under disorderly white brows and the profile of an
eagle.  His face lies so close to the bone that the soul shines
through, as if he's been purified by pain.

It is such a nice face that Kurt almost apologizes for upsetting him.

He almost cries, Bless me father, make me well!  But he has this to
do.

Now that he has his audience Kurt continues.  "You see what drives
me.

This is why I have to know."

"All I can tell you is what I can tell you.  It won't be much.  Hal
trapped me, you see?"  The priest can't seem to stop sighing.

Kurt hangs in place, waiting.

After a while, the priest begins.  "You know how it is.  You go along
and you go along, you think there's something wrong but you don't say
anything because you're ashamed of yourself for suspecting, there's
still something wrong but you don't know what it is exactly until it
boils up and explodes in your face."

Kurt winces.

"So I didn't say anything.  Then it was too late."

Kurt echoes.  "Too late."

"It was like seeing a volcano erupt terrible."

"He killed his brother?"

"There was a fire.  We never knew.  But the business about the girl .

.

Kurt barks," What about them?"

"I can't tell you any more.  I'm sorry I can't tell you, but I
can't."

Kurt puts his stump on the ledge again.

"All right!"  The priest groans.  "After his brother died, there was
something about a girl.  Terrible thing.  Hal caught me in the
confessional.

After he made his confession and I gave him absolution I sat there
trembling.

I thought, At least he's sorry.  I heard him get up, I thought he had
left the church.  He was waiting outside.  Laughing.  He laughed and
laughed.

"You should have heard him, I couldn't let it go by.  Somebody had to
admire what I did.  Now I have bound you.  You know and there's not one
single thing you can do about it."' it's too much.

The priest breaks off.  When he resumes his voice is thin.  "All the
time I thought he was truly sorry he was putting me in a trap.

Chapter.

Verse.  Terrible details and not a word I could say.  That poor, poor
girl.

"And then we heard he was engaged.  I tried to prevent the marriage but
I was under the seal.  I tried to warn the Archers but when they asked
what was the matter, I couldn't say.  They just laughed at me and went
on with it.  I tried to do so many things and there was nothing I could
do, I tried to tell them but I can't.  Here at least I don't hurt
anybody."  He looks up at Kurt.  "Are you the twins' father?"

"Their father is dead too."

"Oh dear."

Bearing down, Kurt repeats, "They said it was an accident."

"Oh dear!"  It's as if he's struck the priest in the face.

Now Kurt lays out his trail of escalating incidents and growing
suspicions, from early vandalism in Meredith's morning room to the
death of her pet.  He makes himself talk about Vivian's apparent
accident.  One day she was getting ready to send the girls away to
school and the next ... He describes the day Steve Harriman got into
Vivian's car with the orphaned girls and set off down the Hal ... His
brother, It was death while he, stairs above the garage and did
nothing.  Yes he's guilty as hell.

"And what did I do?  Nothing, Father.  That's what I did."  What does
he want, absolution?  "Now this woman their father married, this
Carroll Lawton is taking them to live with her."

"That's terrible."  The priest covers his mouth.  "I mean .  .

"It is terrible," Kurt says.  "She looked so young.  So not pred.  I
don't know what they're going to do to her but they're pare going to do
something."  Doubt makes Kurt falter.  "At least I think they are."

He sees the girls' faces and just beneath the surface Zane's face
coming and going, flickering until their pretty smiles are one with his
savage glare.  He remembers the last day, Vivian's twins riding away in
their flowered Laura Ashley dresses.  What was he supposed to do, run
down and shout accusations?

"God, Father, they're only little girls!"

The Jesuit is on his own track.  "Hal was only a boy."

"How can I warn her when I'm not sure?"

Their narratives overlap.  "That's what hampered me," the priest says
as Kurt says, "What if I'm wrong?"

"I kept thinking, What if I'm wrong?  This is what I'm paying for.

This failure.  I've been paying for it ever since."

Kurt is studying him.  "Father, all I want you to do is give me
something to go with."

"I can't do anything.  I couldn't do anything, my God, that's why I'm
here.  Helpless in the face of .  . ."  The priest whispers, "My own
failure."

His mouth clamps shut.  His face is glazed with tears.

"Then there's nothing I can do."  Kurt looks into his open right hand
as if he can see its missing mate there, complete down to the curling
fingers, stares into it as if the answers sit in the palm of the
spectral hand.  He says hopelessly, "Maybe nothing will happen..."

"Please God."

"Maybe she'll be all right."  He's studying the priest and he plants
the next information carefully, waiting for it to sprout.  "If she
doesn't make them mad."

This brings the priest around smartly enough.  "The temper."

"The temper," Kurt says.

Everything he's been trying to suppress assails him.  His groan rattles
the little room.  "Oh my God."

"The temper."  Kurt has him now.  "With the girls so far it's only been
little things - I think.  But with Vivian's brother - - ."  My God, he
thinks, what did I do back then to make Zane so angry?  All I did was
fall into his mud castle and break it, I was crying, it was an
accident.  What Zane said to him after the explosion, Kurt's blood
splattered his face but he was laughing, laughing!  It was an
accident.

For God's sake was it because he knew I loved Vivian?  Another minute
and Kurt will be hanging on the grate and sobbing out his story.  He'll
pull the bars out of the wall so the priest can thump him on the back,
there there.  He leaps for safer ground.  "Hal's sister says even with
plants things go wrong.  You end up with a mutant strain."

"Into the last generation," the priest says.

"Three generations of twins.  This poor woman has taken the girls to
Florida and she doesn't have a clue.  If I walk in cold, what am I
going to say?"

"Maybe you shouldn't walk in at all."

"Then I would bejust as responsible - sorry, Father."

"As responsible as I am.  I know, I know.  I just wish there was
something I could tell you.  I wish there was something I could do."

"Goddammit, father."

"Exactly," the priest says.  Then he says so naturally that he
surprises even himself, "Why don't you just go to Hal?"

Kurt leans forward with his eyes glinting.  "Do what?"

"Maybe the years have improved him."

"He's still alive?"  Kurt pounces.  "Where is he?"

The priest says as if it's the most natural thing in the world,
obvious, "Palm Beach."

"Palm Beach.  No he isn't.  He dropped out of sight.  He dropped off
everybody's computer screen.  He's not in any police network, he .  .

."

"He put everything in his third wife's name."

"And you know what it is."  Bitterly, Kurt pushes back his chair and
makes as if to leave.  "But you can't tell me because that was in
confession too."

Now the priest is angry.  "Don't belittle me.  Don't think you know
what binds me and sets me free.  He did it after the second marriage
foundered.  He got religion.  Then he fell in love again."  He stands
up quickly, so angry that he doesn't even feel the stabbing in his
joints.  His eyes are bright with rage.  "I have his new wife's name.

I even have an address.  The fool imagined I could help him get the
first marriages annulled."

WHAT HAPPENS is probably Carroll's fault for being so late.  She never
should have left the twins alone with the relatives for so long, but
things happened at work.

Not her fault the Jenkins police came up with a death so tasteless,
odorless and colorless that until the coroner finishes, they can't even
identify it as a murder.  But it was her fault for hanging in after the
police P.R. officer told her there wouldn't be anything conclusive
until tomorrow.

She just wanted one more thing to put in to make a solid story.  As it
was they went with the bare facts.  "Found dead in a mail parking lot
.

." Even though she didn't have much, Charley gave her a box on One A.

("Glad to have you back.") Glad to be back.  For the first time since
her wedding she's going to wake up in the morning and see her byline in
the paper, at the top of a story she worked on until the pieces fell in
place and she got it right.  Nature's way of letting you know you're
not dead.  Maybe it means more to her than it should right now, but,
hey.

Because she can't bear to examine her own grief, she focuses on
death.

The least she can do is make Steve proud of her.  She has to get this
story out, and get it right.  It keeps her well after quitting time.

Coming home late, Carroll walks into trouble.  When she calls out
nobody answers, although she can hear voices escalating in the
kitchen.

Her aunts are having words, she can recognize the tune from here and
her whole life in this house boils up in her throat.  The familiar sour
taste makes her want to walk out of the scene and keep walking, but she
doesn't.  That poor kid.  Struck in the same place by the same old
sadness.  She corrects herself quickly.  Those poor kids.

She can't afford to think, Poor Carroll.

She has this pressing need to make up to the twins for her whole life
as a kid.

Still it takes her a minute.  Every time she sees these women she has
to remind them she stopped being the orphan child a long time ago.

Every time she sees them she has to come on strong just to prove.what
the rest of the world knows.  She's a grownup now.

She runs her fingers through her short red hair, pushing it back, and
with a little shake lifts her head and straightens her shoulders.  She
holds herself like a tall person, lifting her shoulders as she goes
through the shabby family living room.  With misgivings, she opens the
kitchen door.  Although it's crunching toward the Larrabies'dinner
hour, there are no signs of preparation here.  Instead she sees Laine's
grocery bags leaning against each other on the counter with their
sodden bottoms leaking and small items spilling out.  Her aunt Elaine
and the twins seem to be at some kind of standoff.  Jane and Emily have
carved out their own territory in the middle of the kitchen.  They're
standing quietly with their eyes fixed on something Carroll nan't see
while Laine scolds them and chic, angry Suzy stands framed in the back
door.  The girls are pink from the sun and their fair hair is plastered
to their necks in salty ropes.  Their expressions make it clear they're
far away, this fight is going on without them.

They don't stir when Carroll says, "What's the matter?"  She turns to
Elaine.  "What's the matter?"

Flushed and angry, Laine growls, "I told them not to.  They know
perfectly well I told them not to but they did it anyway."  Suzy is
impatient.  "I don't see what difference it makes."

"And now Suzy wants to act as though it never happened."

"I want to get this settled," Suzy says.

"What?"

Laine's shoulders are hunched and herjawjuts.  "This is not the time
for presents."

. Carroll looks from Laine to the twins for some clue as to what's
going on but the twins blink and don't respond.

"They disobeyed."

Rattling matched candy-striped shopping bags, Suzy begins tapping back
and forth in her high-heeled patents.  "All I want to do is have them
try on these dresses."

"I told them what to do and they did as they pleased."

Suzy snaps, "Well don't make a federal case out of it."

'Laine says to Carroll, "Do you think behavior like that should be
rewarded?"

"What did you guys do that you shouldn't?"

The twins turn faces smeared by daydreams or memories, she can't know
which.

"No dresses now.  They don't deserve it."

"What's the matter?"  Carroll looks at Emily, at Jane.  "What's the
matter here?" Jane doesn't answer, she just extends her hand and
studies the ruby ring.

Emily turns her hand, looking for lights in the sapphire chip.

"if I want to give them nice dresses I can give them nice dresses."

Suzy looks with scorn at the wet patches on their Gap Tshirts.  "You
can't let them run around in wet bathing suits."

'Laine says doggedly, "I can It reward them for being disobedient
either."

Suzy ignores her.  "We're going to be friends, aren't we, girls?"

"Dresses to match the rings, one of thelgirls says dreamily, and the
other says, "Pretty.  Strapless."

"You're trying to make them look like little hookers."

"'Laine!"

One of the twins says, "Just exactly what we wanted."

Carroll says quickly, "What?"

"The The girls swivel to face Carroll, saying in counterpoint,
dresses."

"You know, pretty."

"To match the rings."

"We told Aunt Elaine we were sorry.

"The first thing we said was, Aunt Elaine, we're sorry."

"And we are."

It disturbs Carroll how nearly interchangeable they are.  One says for
both, "And now, the dresses."

"Silk ones."

"She promised."

Suzy says, "I did."

Elaine sniffles.  "I told them not to go into the water."

They turn blue eyes on her.  "You told us not to go in without a
lifeguard."

"Well we had one."

"We did."

Laine's face is pink with distress.  The tail of her perky blouse has
come out of her wraparound skirt and the collar is sadly crumpled.

"There was no lifeguard when I dropped you and there was no lifeguard
when I picked you up."

"He had to leave."

She turns to Carroll.  "There wasn't any sign of one."

"He was there but he left," Jane says to Carroll.

"I looked and looked."

"He was there but he left," Emily says.

"It took me an hour to find them."

"We were right there."

"She just didn't know where to look for us."

"We said we were sorry."

They have Carroll by the hands now, ane on the left, Emily on the
right, sweetly urgent.  "We said we were sorry.  Carroll?"

"Caa-rull?"

"So can we have the dresses now?"

"They don't deserve.  .

Carroll can feel the pressure building up in the room.  What's been
going on here while she was so busy at the paper?  What have her girls
been doing while she was tied up with her possible homicide?  How many
alliances have been made and tested?

One of her twins tugs on her hand.  "Can we?"

Suzy is rattling her twin shopping bags with an impatient look.  She
and Laine have been wrangling for so long that she's reached the end of
her patience.  "The least you can do here is decide.  All they want to
do is look nice .  .

"That's all we want."

Suzy finishes, just like all us girls."

"All we want to do is look nice."

"Oh Elaine, I'm sorry."  Carroll frees her hands so she can hug the
girls.

Side by side by side they face the Larrabie sisters.  "They'll do
better next time."

"We will."  They hug her back.  She's so grateful it makes her mouth
water.

"We will do better next time."

"All right," Laine says grudgingly.  Released from combat, she looks
sadly at her groceries.  "It's getting so late we're going to have to
order out for pizza."  She tries to perk up her tone.  "Do you girls
a.

like pizz @" "Pizza.  Right.  I'll spring for watermelon for
dessert."

They don't even hear.  Carroll is aware that they've flowed away from
her like quicksilver, attaching themselves to Suzy and her shopping
bags.

"Dresses.  Can I see?"

"Can I see?"

"Of course you can.  After all, you want to look nice."

"All we want is to look nice.  Did you get us shoes?"

Elaine asks mournfully, "Is pizza OK?"

As Suzy bridles and giggles, they look back at Elaine.  "We're sorry,
we can't."

"Everybody likes pizza," Elaine says.

"We're going out."

"But you haven't had dinner yet."

"Aunt Patsy is taking us to Dairy Queen."

"That isn't dinner."

"First Uncle Peyton is taking us to the Charthouse .  .

"Uncle Peyton!"  Carroll starts.  "Did he .  . put his hands on you?

But they're happy, bubbling.

at the top of the Bradley building the restaurant that goes around."

Suzy says firmly, "After you get into your party clothes."

"All right, all right," Elaine says while Carroll is still standing
there with her mouth open.  "Party tonight, but tomorrow morning,
school."

They look from her to Carroll and back.  Then after one of those
lightning exchanges that Carroll has learned to recognize they nod.

Click.  "Tomorrow morning, school."  There is a little pause.  "But
we'll need clothes."

"I'll take you shopping before you register.

Upstaged, Suzy begins, "I'll.  . ."

"You'll be at work.  And after, we'll have lunch.  At groping.  "At
Binky's.  It's the best.  OK kids?"

"Yes Aunt Elaine."

The speed with which all this has happened leaves Carroll unsettled and
bemused.  She can't work out the scenario in which all these dramatic
changes took place.  Frosty Suzy out shopping for Jane and Emily,
Peyton promising dinner at the most expensive Elaine is disappointed
and besides, she has work to do.  I have work to do.

"Right, Charley.  I'm there."  She wants to hang on the phone talking
to Charley because it extends the, what, the useful feeling she has
when she's working, but her aunts are fidgeting over their gooey
"Some-mores."

She'll sit through the evening with Laine and Patsy as if watching TV
with them is the most important thing on her mind, but as she does,
Carroll finds herself sorting the details of the day, the discovery of
the body in the last car at the far end of the parking lot in the local
mall, her inconclusive interview with the investigating officers.

Grinning politely at a rerun of "Cheers," she will itemize the calls
she has to make and the questions she has to ask in the morning to come
up with a second day story that's stronger than the first, so there's
that.  And now there is this drowning.  If they haven't made an
identification, that's where her story is.  She can comb the beach
looking for people who knew him, telephone all the local gyms.  If they
have an ID she can go to the victim's house, try to get a picture, find
friends or neighbors who have some background on the guy.  Jenkins is a
large enough town, or small city, for any unexpected death to be
potential news.  Watching "Knots Landing" unfold on TV, she finds
herself hoping it's murder.

Fleeing grief, she rushes headlong into reporting death.

Her second phone call comes as Elaine and Patsy are heading upstairs
after the late news.  Carroll turns off the set and tests the
silence.

She's not quite ready to be alone with herself.  She's hunched on the
sofa in the musty family living room picking at the frayed flowered
slipcovers and waiting for Peyton and Suzy and the girls to come in
when the phone rings.  She answers quickly.  "Yes, Charley.  What've
you got?"

The man at the other end is abrupt.  "This isn't Charley."

"Then who?"

Instead of answering he says, "You're Carroll Lawton@" He sounds so
urgent that she says crazily, "Steve?"

"No.  I'm sorry."

Why does he apologize?  How did he know?  She hears background noise,
crowd murmurs, amplified announcements over a remote P.A. "How did you
get my name?"

"I'm sorry to be calling so late, but I had to get to the airport.

This is the first chance I've had."

"Who are you?"  twins?"  The speaker sounds rushed.  "You're guardian
of the Archer "Yes.  No."  Guardian.  It sounds formidable.  Final.

Like more than she can handle, but there is another element here.  "I
think So.  Who gave you my name?"

"You don't know me but I think we need to talk."

"Who are you?"

"I'll explain tomorrow."

"Tomorrow!"

"If I can make it.  There's somebody I have to see first."

"Why can't we talk now?"

"They're calling my plane.  Shut up and listen.  There's something I
have to tell you.  This is going to sound crazy, but until I can get
there, I .  . . Look."  He seems to be having a hard time getting it
out.

"It's."  When he does, he gets it wrong.  "Be careful with the
twins."

Or she does.  "Of course I'll take care of them."  Tears spring.  "I'm
going nuts trying to take care of them."

"That's not what I mean."

"And now my aunt and uncle have dragged them off."  She doesn't mean to
sound so weak and stupid but it's late, she's pressed, she's been left
the one last treasure Steve had to give to her, she thinks she knows
what she's supposed to do and she can't even do it right.

"I don't mean that, I mean..  ."  The anonymous speaker breaks off.

"Why is this so hard?  Listen, why I called was, I ... What I'm trying
to say is .  He blurts, "There's something strange about the twins."

Carroll jams her knuckles into her mouth.  She doesn't want to hear
this.

She definitely doesn't need it.  Not tonight.  Not now.  "You don't
know what you're talking about."

Suddenly he sounds very young.  "Yeah, right, I knew it was a mistake,
trying to do this by phone but I got, I got worried, OK?  I knew it
would be tomorrow or Saturday before I could get.  there and I can't
explain until I get some kind of proof but then I thought anything
could happen and I just - - ."

She hears the front door opening, she hears laughter, she hears Suzy
and Peyton laughing and the twins'high musical giggle, coming as if
from a single throat.  "I can't talk right now."

Suzy calls, "Carroll, are you still up?"

He growls, "I just didn't want you to be down there unprepared."

Now it's Carroll who is rushed.  She feels guilty and furtive for
listening to whatever he's trying to tell her.  She feels guilty about
being on the phone at all.  "I'm sorry, somebody's here."

"Don't hang up!"

But now they are in the family living room, twins and Suzy with their
hair flying, laughing and brilliant in their contrasting silks, has
Peyton given them champagne?  Yes, she thinks.  Too much.  The room
fills with colliding perfumes - Suzy's Chanel and the spicy cologne
she's splashed on the twins, Peyton's aftershave and second-hand smoke
from the expensive restaurant dining room.  Flanked by Suzy in her
black sheath and Peyton in his crumpled whites they move into the
shabby sitting room in a burst of glamour that leaves Carroll giddy and
uncertain.  Looking at the girls' pink faces, their blurry smiles, she
smiles foolishly, why is it so important to her to make them like
her?

"Hi girls."  She's only half aware that she's still on the phone.

"Ma'am, ma'am.  One thing?"

"I'm sorry, I can't talk."

"Hey Carroll."  Jane sidles close.  "We had the best time."

Emily curls an arm around her.  "We had the best time."

"Listen, whatever you do .  . ."  The next thing pops into her ear at
the same time that the girls circle her, hugging and putting their
faces close to hers, they smile, she smiles, and right before he hangs
up the caller says, or she thinks he says something that snags in her
memory and flutters there like a rag stuck to a freshly plastered
wall.

It goes by too fast for her to take it in but even now she hears the
echoes - Meredith Archer in her drawing room and somebody - her driver
Billy Graver?  - saying this, exactly this.  It's something that she
will have to take out and examine later, but not now, not now.  His
voice rushes into the receiver.  "Don't make them angry, OK?"

But by this time the girls have taken the receiver from her and lovely
Jane puts her thumb on the button, disconnecting the speaker, and sweet
Emily hangs it back up on the wall.

0 N E M U S E E N A M U S Y E S!  And the feeling, and more things we
will be feeling, I think I like Florida.

I know I like the beach.

We hate the school but that's where you get boys, cute ones to follow
us home and wait with the motor running while we lied to Aunt Elaine,
here we are at - the beach!  We let them play until we got tired of
them.  The sand is like a dessert cart.  Take as many as you want,
there are always more.  Knights for our very own, as many as we want,
laid out on towels rank on rank on rank, so fine!  The queen will take
only the best onto the throne with her, so let the trials begin.  Want
to run fastest, jump highest?  Want to come into the water with us?

jade and Emerald, no, Amanenja queen of Amadamaland separates the bold
from the worthless in the royal tournament.  We will take the finest
and the strongest into Amadamaland with us, only the winners will sit
at the feet of the queen.  Beautiful bodies like gold sculpture,
holding up the throne - only the best, OK?  And the others - too bad.

Tough rocks cute boy, you failed that test.  Offend the queen will you,
so much for you, take that!

But that was yesterday.  No time for that.  We are the queen.

Now here comes a good one, stalking in the tight leopard suit, the kind
the sun tans right through and he's all built up with those big chest
muscles, like yesterday's, great bleached hair and fouralarm tan, but
maybe cuter, maybe not so ... Whatever.  Maybe no problem, just right,
OK?  Let's see.

- Not ready.  I'm scared.

- Scared are you, well you weren't scared when it counted, my queen, I
saw your look.

I saw your tongue circling, licking your lips as if you couldn't get
enough of it - the excitement, the power, I felt our tongue on our
lips, it was fine.  Fine, yes, how it came down yesterday and how it
felt to us, yes, doing what we had to do after he did what he did.

Beware of the ones that look The Look.  Offend the queen, will you?  No
way!  We had no choice, you know?  I know you know.  What I feel, you
feel, if we are not the same person, we are close enough.

What one thinks, the other knows.  Sister, what a rush!  In all our
lives since we came into the kingdom and set up shop there, this is the
best it's ever been - this feeling, Queen jade and Queen Emerald
together, supreme.

- Fregel.

- Fregel!  Forget guilty.  When we are done here in this Florida, we
will go back into the kingdom, and when we do, we'll be a thousand
strong.

- Still scared.

- Don't be scared, feel glad.  All the things we have because they
think they can make us happy here!  Garish.  Expensive.  The fools.

Florida clothes from the housewife aunt and silver barrettes she bought
to make up for forcing us to school.  New shorts and skirts we have,
and funky shirts from this Carroll and silky dresses from Suzy, the
money extravaganza, with her Diamonique and classy suits right out of
fashion magazines.  Grandrpother would never let us go out in shiny
dresses like the ones Suzy buys for us, low in the front and low in the
back, and she would never approve of big jewelry with bright stones.

We look like queens, that's what Suzy says, You look like little
queens,' well yes, you know, and right you know, there may be a place
for you in the kingdom, Suzy the One Who Shops, Lady Suzy, who gives,
and takes us out at night.  The mother would never, ever let us go to
the Charthouse or dance after bedtime like that, no not the mother, the
Vivian ...

- Ifeel bad about Vivian.

- Well don't.  She never understood we were the queen.  What she did
see, you don't want to know.

Look how it was, the way she treated us.  You'd think we were a disease
that you had to keep in an isolation ward so it wouldn't spread.  If we
hadn't - You Know, we would still be there.  We had to You Know before
they sent us off to those terrible separate schools.  If they split us,
then what would happen to our powers The Grandmother, the Vivian, they
kept us like Rapunzel trapped in the towers of Amadamaland and now
we're out, so, good!  Good lying in the sand in our bikinis, good
feeling the sun on our bellies and good letting the boys look into our
belly-buttons like frog princes looking into pools.  We will take the
best' into our army, and This Jenkins, this Florida.  Not bad!  From
here we can go anywhere.  We can get anything.

Look what we've got so far!  Silks we have, from this Suzy, and from
Elaine, silver barrettes, Patsy doesn't know it but she will give I
velvet capes next winter when it's cool enough for us to convince them
it's really cold.  The Peyton gets to buy ermine tails for the aunts to
sew on the collars, raiment fit for the queen we are, plus, this
Carroll already gave crown jewels.

- Crownjewels!  Pinheadl .  ewels.  Pretty, but so small!

- Fine one you are to complain.  Small maybe, but stones rolling in the
right direction toward bigger ones, I think, and see them shi the,
OK?

We have our rings and Suzy's things, Diamonique earrings the size of
caramels, plus the gold chains Uant Lain is going to buy us to make up
for not being first with the rings.  With more to come, and the food!

This Patsy eats for regiments and she brings food for armies because
she wants us to like her, yes, and what she brings, we store.

Cakes Patsy gives, blueberry muffins from Dunkin' Donuts yesterday and
frosted honeyd'ps today, that I we sneaked upstairs, to put with the
five-pound box of candy Patsy left on our dresser last night that we
took straight to our armory, provisioning for battles to come.

- What battles?  Not here.

- Wherever we have to fight.

- Not here.  They want us to like them, and so they get us things.

- Yes, you think, sister, and yes for now, and things we get, but who
knows what else we get, and when?  Let's take what's now and take it
good, but remember.  Tomorrow, you never know.

Tomorrow it can go sour.

Like Patsy.  She promised Dairy Queen because she wanted to go to the
Charthouse last night.  She wanted to flounce in and sit down at Uncle
Peyton's table and pretend to be pretty and thin, like us.  When we
left without her she got burned up.  The note with the candy, This
will make you sweet to me.  Sorry, you are fat.  When she goes out the
queen of Amadamaland wants only beautiful people in her entourage, not
big things stuffed into flowered satin and tiny, tiny shoes.

But we'll make up.  We need the food.  We'll let her take us out to
some drivein where they bring burgers into our lives.

out to your car and nobody sees how you get grease on your mouth or how
your chins tremble when you start licking up the crumbs, and between
times we can swank around town with Suzy and the Peyton and get
presents and put them on, yesterday the Charthouse and tonight the
Rainbow Room.

- About the Peyton one.  He looks ...

- He looks The Look.

Beware all you who look The Look, you too, you Peyton one, with your
white suit and your yellow teeth, but with your plastic, man, we live
like queens.

When we get dressed up the Peyton can afford to take us where we want
to go.

Out, where the people can look at us and be amazed.  We saw those men
with their homely wives and their mouths watering, courtiers ready to
bow down.

- The Peyton wants to give us presents, but what does he want to
take?

- Ah, that is the whole thing.  Never mind what he wants.  We take what
we get, and more, and more, and forget the wants, OK?  It doesn't
matter what he wants.  All that matters is what we need.

Expensive clothes we need, to make up for the ones we left behind in
Amadamaland, and rich dinners in all those places to make up for
leaving the kingdom and scooters to make up for the no ponies, and we
need gold and silver things to make up for the rundown house and ugly
new bedroom and trips to Disney World to make up for the having to go
to this terrible new school.

- I hate the school.

- Ugly, you know, not like our St. Margaret's where every class was a
party with us and some nice teach sitting around a table in those
elegant rooms, like, What would you girls like to talk about today?

This school is a factory, with tacky cracker teachers playing like they
know more than us, and if we say yes ma'am, yes school to Aunt Laine
it's for the boys we see hanging on lockers and slouching down the
halls, not all cute, no, but all boys.

And who else for our knights, but all these beautiful tanned
long-bodied boys with their muscle shirts and their bleached blond
heads and their chests out to here, we'll try them out and the best
will come to the top like cream, you'll see when we begin the trials.

But the school building!  Yeugh.  We aren't going to like it, no.  No
secret corners and no soft places to hide in with the boys, everything
by the bells.

Aunt Laine flirting with the principal while we smiled, Ko@ctus.  Nice
us.  She flirted while he winked.  Both of you, shame!

This Dr. Foster Goss, that laid it out for us.  Go from this classroom
to that one in this order, sit in this seat in this row.  Be quiet I or
else.  Fine for commoners too poor for St. Margaret's, but we e the
queen.

Separate home rooms, no way!  The only order we'll accept is our
order.

The only orders we follow are our own.

Dr. Foster Goss, the whole time this poor Aunt And look at 'Laine is
simpering, he's sneaking sly looks at us.  We know.  He thinks we don't
see him looking The Look.  The queen doesn't let people like that get
by with things like that.  He'd better back off or the Goss will learn
what happens to fools who are thinking about One Thing Only while they
try to make you think they're thinking about something else.

- Wait.  The Peyton thinks about One Thing Only.

- That's different.  He buys us things.  This Dr. Goss, we have to
show.

Like all the jerks who play like they're talking ordinary talk when all
you see is them working their mouths and looking The Look.  We can
handle the school.

We know how to look like we're going there without going there, OK, we
only have to do it until summer, which is soon.  Then we're free and by
fall we'll have the best knights marching in our army rank on rank on
rank, cute knights on our left and marching in front of us when we
invade.

I Then Grandmother will be dead and we the queen will inherit the
kingdom, we will move all our cute knights into the castle, we'll march
in triumph back to Amadamaland.

- I miss the Blues and the Greens.  It was so sweet, and now ...

- This is bigger than the Blues -and the Greens.

- Scan'er.

- That's why it's fun.  Now put some stuff on my back, OK?  OK.  So
school is just a little while, OK?  OK.  And all we have to do ...

- OK.  Now you put some stuff on my back, OK?  OK.  EmenanI.al I'm
scared.

I don't know if we ought to do what we have to do.  . - Shut up.  All
we have to do is pretend to go to school.  Mornings the school and then
the beach, every day the beach, OK, and you know what happens at the
beach.

- I don't always like what happens at the beach.

- In hell you don't.  I saw your face.

- It happened so fast!

- It had to happen, OK?  Don't think I didn't see your face when we did
it, I can see behind your eyes to the place where you are thinking, I
can see into it and I know.  It felt good.  It did.  It felt like
more.

So here we are.  Again.

- I'm sorry, Il'just.  I don't know.

- Yes you do.  I can feel it writhing inside you, don't think I can't,
because I feel it traveling in me.  Yes, OK?  and, more.  So it's
again, OK?  And soon.  It's the beach for now and the beach whenever
they will let us, and knights for us, cute ones, and we will make them
do whatever we want them to, OK?  And things to get for the kingdom in
the attic, and trophies for our shrine.

Oh sister, look.  Up by the refreshment stand.  Randy.  Alone.  - S
scared.

- But it's a good scared.  We're quicker than they are and the things
we do, they'll never know.

And good it feels, it does feel good, right twin one?  Right sister, my
peer, my queen?  Everybody gets scared sometimes, if you aren't scared,
where's the rush?

"You.  Randy.  Over here."

"Hi Randy.  It's us."

KURT IS DELIVERED, squinting, into the strong sunlight of Palm Beach.

He feels bedraggled and shaky as a new chick.  All the houses in this
neighborhood have sharp edges.  Even the shadows on the dazzling cement
look different, black and stark.  Heat shimmers in waves around his
ankles.  The cab rounds the corner leaving him marooned here with the
hot air parching his throat and drying out his lungs.  This is
Florida.

It's taken him too long to get here, he blanked out in the terminal in
Atlanta and missed his connection.  When he came to himself he was
sitting on one of those moulded plastic seats with his head bobbing and
his wrists dangling, going, Uh.  Oh.  Uh,just like your classic sixties
burnout or disrupted Nam vet, some beleaguered stray turned out of his
institution too soon and left to scavenge in public places, spending
nights scrunched up on unyielding seats.

Even now he doesn't know what happened to him.

One minute he was waiting for his plane and the next, it was gone.  The
time just disappeared.  Whether he was overtaken by exhaustion or by
what he now recognizes as acute agoraphobia, he can't say.  If Kurt had
his way he'd go home this minute.  He'd go back upstairs to the garage
apartment and spend the rest of his natural life at his work station,
zipping through time and space electronically, the only travel he
considers safe.

Stupid, getting this close to Hal Oliphant and then blowing it just
because he phased out.  By the time he had a new ticket and another
flight scheduled, he'd lost the morning.  By the time he located the
Oliphant house, half the afternoon was gone.

Now he is here.

The house is exactly where the city records said it would be, but if
Hal Oliphant has a phone Florida Information doesn't know it.  If Kurt
wants to talk to Vivian Archer's father, if he wants to find out
anything about the family, he's going to have to go up to that pink
front door and ring the bell.

He wants to, but he can't.

He doesn't know what freezes him here in the middle of the deserted
street, dangling in place in front of the Oliphant house like an
oversized coat from an invisible hook.  Is he afraid this old guy Hal
Oliphant will refuse to see him, or is he more afraid that Hal will ask
him in?

Be cool, he tells hinuelf.  What do you think, he's going to try to
hurt you?  What can he do to you, force your one remaining hand into
the Dispos-all or blow it off with an exploding dn'nk?

Still he lingers.  He can't figure out what keeps him planted in the
cement in the middle of this empty heat-blasted street.

It's a lot deeper than simple fear for his person.  He has the idea
that even though he came all this way to do something hard and
complicated, it's going to be harder and even more complicated than he
thought.

And there's this.

Now that he's here, he knows what he's really afraid of, Kurt Graver
who has found beauty and logic in the world of the computer where
options chosen open new options in a gorgeously complex but ultimately
predictable map of possibilities, where

actions and reactions, decisions and consequences are inexorably
linked.

Sitting at his terminals he can scan the world and control everything
he touches, but now he is unshelled in front of a closed house on a
deserted residential street in Palm Beach, Florida, and when he goes to
the front door anything can happen.  Anything.

What Kurt Graver fears most is not the unpredictable, it's the
uncontrollable.

He's afraid he'll look into Hal Oliphant's face and discover Zane
smouldering inside, the same evil spirit flickering behind the eyes.

Stretching like a waking tiger it will unfold, greeting him, Oh, it's
you.  I thought you'd never come.  It may be the same force that
propels Vivian's twin girls.  When he confronts Jane and Emily, he's
going to see the same shadow flickering in their faces - something
nameless and hidden stirringjust beneath the surface, flexing like a
tiger preparing to spring.

So what keeps Kurt Graver hanging here is something he hasn't exactly
fathomed - the nature of the evil he's come out to deal with - what
he's afraid the twins will do.

He is increasingly certain that the dark force that propelled Zane
Archer didn't die with the person.  It lives.  He has seen it behind
the faces of Vivian's twins.  He's seen the danger all his life but
until now, he never saw it clear.  He doesn't know whether it was the
priest who put the last piece in place for him or whether the knowledge
has struck him like lightning, but standing in the street in front of
Hal Oliphant's house, he knows.  It lives.

Whatever it is that links the Oliphants - bizarre electrical current,
or spirit, or evil genius or driving energy or worse - it is
pervasive.

It has tracked these twins through the generations, through Hal, whose
twin brother died mysteriously, to Hal's son Zane.  And then?  God, he
thinks, and then?

Through Zane.  No, he thinks.  He knows now.  Through Vivian.  It lives
in Emily, he thinks and he can feel his belly quiver and knot itself.

It lives in Jane.

And as far as he knows, he's the only person in the world who cares
enough to try to find the girls and confront this.  He doesn't know how
to begin, he doesn't have a clue.  Awkward Kurt Graver, an agoraphobe
even on his best days.

What can he do?

Who do I think I am anyway, 7iding out like the masked avenger or a
neogothic vampire hunter, ready to nail evil with a stake through
something's heart?  He manages to uproot himself, but only to kick a piece of
taillight reflector out of his path.  Who I am is, I'm a jerk.

OK, the house is daunting.  It is.  It's an expanded Florida ranch,
glittering white in the sunlight with reflective shades pulled down
over the plate glass windows and a neatly raked white gravel front yard
and dead palms in white cement urns on either side of the front
steps.

Except for blue roof tiles and some red things blooming in a bed next
to the lavender front door, there is no color here.  The house is
bland, faceless, with that hermetically sealed look that signals
prosperity in hot climates - everything closed up tight against
intruders, central air conditioning, security system, live-in maid,
complete lives going on inside, unthreatened by contact with the
outside world.

No wonder he doesn't want to go to the door.

And what am I going to do when Ifind him, grab him by the throat and
not let go until he tells me what to do?  Or tell him, Look, you've got
these strange granddaughters.  How about you hold still while I drive
this stake into you?

Some .  rk I am, thinking I can do this.  He thinks maybe he ought lei
 to go home and work on something he can handle, like changing the
tax structure of the state of California, or writing global war games
for the joint Chiefs of Staff.

He supposes he should be grateful when the vintage silver Cadillac with
tinted windows rounds the corner and almost hits him.  jumping out of
the way as it swerves into the driveway, he discovers that once moving,
he can keep going.

As the garage door rolls up automatically and the car glides in, he
bounds up the front walk and rings the bell.

"That won't do you any good."

He whirls.  She's old, north of sixty and beautifully veneered, with
aggressively tanned legs in the short-shorts and a blonde hairdo that
would do credit to the top of a wedding cake.  The face tells him she
could be any age behind the dense black sunglasses, but the body tells
him she is not.  Her legs are too skinny and her midsection is too
thick, as if the muscles that held her in place have begun to let go.

"I'm sorry," he says automatically.  Why is he always apologizing?

"I'm looking for Hal Oliphant."

"Well you're in the wrong place."  She takes down her dark glasses to
look at him.

Her expression makes him say, "I'm sorry" and mean it.  "I'm so sorry,
Mrs.  Oliphant."

She says in a tight little voice, "I took back my name.  I'm Veda

Faller again."  She has pretty blue eyes in the middle of that tootan
face but the lines around her mouth remind him of certain carvings of
saints being impaled by arrows or killed by rocks.  Turning away, she
unlocks the door.

"Nice talking to you."

"Oh please!"  Without even thinking about what he's doing Kurt grasps
her hand and cries, "Can I come in?"

She studies him.  Does she think they have something in common or does
she think he knows something she doesn't know?  He isn't sure.  "Maybe
you'd better."  She disarms the alarm.  "You don't look so good."

He moves into the cool, dim front room without hesitation because he
knows Hal Oliphant isn't here.  It's a well-ordered house with a
day-to-day calendar on the little side table with little notations for
almost every hour.  The gilded frame around the mirror above it is
thick with business cards - anybody you might need to call for goods or
services, help in case of any contingency if he looks closely enough
Kurt is sure he'll even find a supplier for artificial limbs.  The
place is as stone quiet as a model room in a museum - no newspapers
strewn on sofas, no piles of hastily opened junk mail waiting to be
thrown away.  This is the home of a single person who cleans up the
entire kitchen after breakfast and fluffs up cushions every time she
gets up from a chair.  There may be one incredibly messy junk drawer in
this woman's kitchen, but he doesn't think so.  Like Kurt when he's at
his multiple terminals, Hal's ex-wife has all the parts of her life
under control.  He's unaccountably dizzy - sudden change of temperature
or disappointment, maybe, or maybe it's relief.  After a while in which
he waits for her to double-latch the door and turn on a china lamp with
shepherdesses twined around the base, he says, "Is it OK if I sit
down?

I think there's something the matter with me."

She says quickly, "I'll get you something to drink."

"Water would be fine."

She's rattling at the bar.  "Then'l'll get me something to drink.  You
sure you don't want something stronger?"

"No thank you," Kurt says.  He wants to be safe at home but he's here,
with this woman who has shed Hal Oliphant's name and he has to ask her
something.  The hell of it is, he doesn't know what to ask.

"After all," she says, nailing herself firmly in the older generation,
"it's half-past the cocktail hour."

"Water will be fine."  Oh God, he thinks, now that I'm inside, what if
I can't go out again?  What if instead of being stuck at home with my
computers forever, I end up stuck here?

As Hal's ex clicks across the terrazzo in her high-heeled sandals,
touched and temporarily distracted by the fact that she has he's
iridescent toenails.  In a house where nobody else lives, this woman is
brushed and polished and made up down to the extra ring of green
eyeshadow around the dark eyeliner, carefully put together just in case
somebody comes.

She sets down a glass of water and a plate of stale Pepperidge Farm
goldfish and watches until Kurt takes a drink and puts a handful in his
mouth.  "You asked for Hal Oliphant.  What do you want?"

Kurt flushes.  "It's hard to explain."

"No it isn't."  She is looking at his arm, the wrist.

"It's nothing."  Embarrassed, he hides it between his knees.

"Yes it is."  Her face is changing.  R'mmed by shadow the same color as
the flowers in her shirt and heavy with mascara as they are, her eyes
brim.  Her mouth quivers, she's about to tell him more than he wants to
hear.  "It's Hal.

He's hurt you too."

"No."  Kurt has never met the guy.  But without Hal Oliphant there
would have been no Zane and no explosion and no Vivian, nothing about
loving Vivian, so you might say it was Hal who changed his life.  "Not
exactly."  Then Kurt flashes on Hal and his own mother, her dead and
him walking away from the wreck, and he's burned by tears he can't
help.  His mouth is quivering too, he knows he'd better shut up but he
blurts, "Yes."

"It's OK," she says.  "I know the look.  I saw it in Mildred's eyes,
she was his first wife?"

"She wasn't his first wife."

This doesn't surprise her.  "Whatever."

"She was at least the second."

"Third, eighth, she had the look.  I thought it was because Hal loved
me and not her.  Do you believe that?  just goes to show how charming
he was.  How convincing he could be."  She squeezes her eyes shut as if
to keep him out.

"Is.  And then one morning, after .  . ."  Whatever he did, she can't
or won't spell it out.

"After what?"

"I can't."  Her voice is getting thin.  "Not yet."  Carefully put
together as she looks with her perfect makeup and big hair, Veda Faller
is no sounder than Kurt.  They both sit there for a long time and then
she finishes with a brave little lilt, "But I got over it.  At least I
thought I did.  And then one day I looked in the mirror and I had it.

The damaged look.  Like you."

"There's nothing the matter with me."

This makes her angry.  "I may look all right to you, kid, but I'll
admit right now there's something terribly the matter with me, and
you're welcome to get up and walk out of here right this minute if you
aren't willing to admit there's something the matter with you."

He'd like to get up.  He'd like to excuse himself and go, anything to
escape her scrutiny, but he can't quite move.  "I can't."

"I can't tell you where Hal is," she says as if he's asked, "but I can
sure as hell tell you what you're looking for."

So he sits in her neat little brocaded chair in that perfect living
room with his hand on the water glass and his wrist clamped between his
knees and listens.

"I married Hal Oliphant five years ago," she says.  "He and Mildred
came into the dance class I was teaching at the time and he swept me
off my feet.

Too bad about Mildred, he said she didn't understand him, he said she
was insanely jealous, he said she was losing her mind.  He could tell
you anything and you'd believe.  At the beginning we were very happy,"
she says.  "We went out at night and came home and hugged and lay down
together and laughed and hummed, and everything was fine except for
Mildred's phone calls, you know, his ex-wife?  She called at night when
he wasn't here and she'd always say, Aren't you wondering why he isn't
there?  I thought she was crazy, that's all, when all the time she was
trying to warn me, but you want to know the truth?"

She's pulled her chair up so they're almost knee to knee.  "Even if
she'd spelled it out - what he'd done to her, what he was really like,
I wasn't ready to see.  I was too much in love, you know?  He
charmed."

Kurt flashes on the twins playing underneath his window gracious,
lovely, when they caught him watching, they looked up with those sweet
smiles and raised their hands in identical waves.

She sighs.  "He had all that charm."  She lapses for a moment,
reflecting, and then with a little hah, resumes.  "Oh, God if I'd only
listened to her!  If she'd only listened to the one before!  The calls
I wouldn't listen to were only the first sign.  Next came voices in the
night.  I used to wake up and hear him in the bathroom, talking, but to
who?  I never knew.  Sometimes he seemed to be arguing k with himself,
man to man but other times I thought I heard a child's voice, I think
it was a little boy's, it was strange, but I loved him and he never
mentioned it, so I never asked.

A,.nd then one day I picked up the phone and heard him on the extension
with a woman - not Mildred, somebody young, and she was giggling, these
strange things started turning up in the laundry, once a handkerchief
with lace edges, another time a woman's blouse and when I asked him
about it he said it must have back from the cleaners with our stuff, he
was sure it was a come mistake but there was a price tag still on it
strange!  And all the time there were these voices in the night ... And
me?  I was so much in love that I just dreamed along, OK Hal, OK, OK
fine."

He says, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."  She shakes her head as if she can make the tears fly away
for good.  "You know, when you take a man into your life you're always
taking in a puzzle and an enigma, but lord, I never pected to find my
gold tank watch missing, or go into my jewel ex box and discover my
grandmother's diamond earrings gone, any more than I wanted to believe
there were strange things in the laundry, a perfume, not mine, coming
from his dress shirts, lipstick on his undershirts and in the night
these voices.  You want to know what I thought?  I told myself, There
must be some explanation,' like a fool I thought, This must be a
mistake.  And you want to know the worst thing?"

Kurt discovers he can't speak.

Her voice drops an octave.  "I thought, oh dear, it must be something I
did."  This leaves her angry and ashamed.  She doesn't want him to see
her face crumble so lowers her head, leaving him to study her
burnished, indestructible hair.

"You know how it is when you're in love with a man, you think he's so
perfect, you don't want to hear one bad word.  Well I'm here to tell,
love doesn't only make you blind.  It makes you deaf and dumb.

Especially dumb.

There I was seeing these signs and dodging these crazy phone calls from
Mildred and strange girls who wouldn't give their names, I didn't want
to hear.  Hal wasn't home much but when he was, the voices got louder
and louder so we could never sleep through any night and then the
police came something stolen from a store - a leather case I had found
in the top of our closet the day before.  I thought Hal had bought it
to surprise me and yes he was drinking and yes the money was leaking
from our account and yes I still loved him, I loved him even after he
stayed away for three days and never even called.  When he came back
that time there was blood on the right front fender of the Mercedes and
I believed him when he said a cat had run in front of the car.  His
voices seemed to bleed over into the daytime, I could come into any
room and hear them but if I knocked or called, they stopped, and then
one night.  . ."  She can't stop gasping.

Kurt says gently, "It's OK.  If it makes you feel bad to talk about it,
stop."

She shakes her head.  "I can't.

"And then one night .  . ."  It takes her a minute to control her
breath but she manages finally.  "I woke up and they were talking in
our room.  In our bed."  She looks at him as if this explains
everything.  "So now you understand."

"You haven't exactly told me who."

"Who was talking?  I didn't know at first.  It was dark.  I was
scared.

I thought he was having a nightmare so I turned on the light.  There
was nobody in bed with us.  But there were voices, Hal and this - other
were arguing as if they'd been at it ever since we went to bed and
turned out the light."

"Who?"  Kurt leans forward as if he expects to hear her say it was
Zane.

"I don't know.  I've thought about it and thought about it and I still
don't know.  Hal, of course, but more than Hal, this other, and I don't
know whether it was some split personality thing or if he was possessed
or what.

Evan,' he kept saying, my Hal, my husband that I thought I knew, God
damn you, go away,' and this other voice kept coming back, I can't,'
and Hal sounded so savage that I thought hell had opened up and vomited
monsters on our bed, he was screaming, Go away and leave me Evan, I've
had enough!"  and first it answered in a child's voice, It isn't me,
it's what you did,' and when he started screaming I didn't do
anything,' it answered in a man's voice, it was coming out of Hal but
it wasn't coming out of Hal, I am the victim and the proof,' it sounded
so sad, you have to stop."  Then Hal screamed, Leave me alone,' he was
rocking the bed like somebody falling into a fit.  The man's voice
said, I won't let you kill any more,'and Hal was thrashing and my God,
I should have seen it coming but I couldn't, I was too busy trying to
shake him out of the nightmare, I tried so hard, he was grappling with
the enemy by that time, trying to throttle it and he was shouting, Get
out or I'll kill you again."' Stunned by the significance, she
repeats.

"Again!  Did you hear that.  He said,'Again."' Not even being aware of
what he's doing, Kurt touches her Iling.  "He killed his twin."  cheek
with his stump.  He is asking, riot fe She gasps to keep from
sobbing.

"I don't know who he killed, he was screaming and fighting and then .

. ."  She is on the brink now but determined, the narrative so fluid
that Kurt can't quite follow, "And then they talk so fast I can't tell
what they're saying and Hal is vicious, pounding the woman to a
pulp."

It's strange, forced to talk about the unspeakable, she flows into
third person as if the terrible scene she is recounting is happening to
somebody else.  "The poor woman can feel his teeth closing on the blade
of her hand and grinding in, he is all flying knees and nails and
elbows and fists hammering until she is crying for mercy OH HAL PLEASE
DON'T, the woman is writhing to get away and Hal is screaming, I'VE GOT
YOU NOW.  IF I HAVE TO KILL YOU AGAIN I'M off the bed and rolls all the
way underneath into the middle where he can't reach her and she stays
there until morning when he leaves the house and it's safe for the
woman to drag herself out ...

"She calls the police and has all the locks changed and I don't know
who Hal killed or who he thought he was killing but the woman lived
even though he beat her half to death, and it took doctors months but
she recovered, or the outside of her did.  She lived in spite of
everything he did to her and when she got away from Hal Oliphant that
nighc she heard him howling, it was dreadful, terrible, MY GOD HOW MUCH
I HATE YOU, and in the last second before she tore free he looked into
the face of his victim the's poor woman without even seeing and all the
time, oh God .  . ."

Her voice gets so small that Kurt has to stand and lean close to be
certain that she's actually still breathing, and it is leaning close
like this that he hears the last, the worst, part, Veda Faller, who
behind her reconstructed and carefully polished face is forming the
words she finally exhales - "The woman ...

"It was me."

It is later.  Sitting together over canned cream of tomato soup and
bran toaster cakes and a Jell-O salad at the gold-flecked Formica
kitchen table, they are mending.  Her recital has bonded them, and in
the same spirit of giving, Kurt has given back.  He's told her more
than he's ever told anybody, even Billy, whom he loves.  Softened by
the way she fussed over him, strangely touched by the sprig of mint
floating on his soup, he just started talking and found it hard to
stop.

He's told her almost everything he knows.  Starting with Zane, he told
her about what happened to his hand.  Open to her as he was, he skipped
the next part, going on to Vivian's death, Steve's accident.  If he
doesn't tell her about him and Vivian, if he can't talk about what
happened when Zane found out, he's sorry, but he can't.  He thinks
about it all the time but he doesn't want to.  He doesn't like to talk
about it at all.

Instead he cuts to the chase.  Leaning over the tiny table, he tells
Veda Faller about the Archer twins.  "I don't know what's going on with
them," he says finally, "I can't name this - I don't know dark thing I
think I see, but, whatever it is ... I think it's the same thing that
was going on with Hal."

Her voice is shaking.  "Some family curse."

"I don't think so.  I don't know what it is.  Something about ...

She speaks, so they finish the thought in unison, about being twins."

"Paired."

"Driven."  She's looking at something he can't see.  "Separated but
never separate."

"Too close.  Good and bad."

It is almost as though they are engaged in a meditation, or litany, she
finishes for him, "No way to know which is which."

Mesmerized by the progression, he murmurs, "No way to sort them out."

She finishes, "No way to sort anything out."

For a moment, they don't speak.  Then she says, out of a profound hush,
"I think Hal killed his twin brother."

Kurt hears a click.  "Yes."  He's not surprised.

"And the voices in the bed.  .

"Yes?"

"I didn't recognize all the voices in the bed.  Some low, some high .

.

3 "And the Archer twins are his granddaughters."  When he lays out his
fears, she's not surprised.

"These children.  Where are they?"

"Not far from here.  A town named Jenkins?  Their grand somebody new.

A woman named mother has passed them on to her.  When she took Carroll
Lawton.  She was married to their father.  them nobody warned her," he
says.

,Oh dear," she says.  "I hope she's up to it."

"Her husband just died.  Right now I don't think she's up to much of
anything."

"That poor girl."  She touches her face and without having to be told,
Kurt knows she is tracing the invisible scar of one of the old
injuries.  "You'd better see about it."

"I know."  "You'd better see about it now."

As he gets up, she stands.

On his feet, he's surprised to discover that in spite of the food, in
spite of all her kindness, he Is still unsteady.  "These kids," he
tells her, "they're so pretty."

"Like Hal."

"They're amazing."  anything for him."

"Hal's charm.  He could make you do It believe it.

"The charm.  So until you see it at work, you don There's no way for
anybody to know.  I just don't."  He breaks off.

"I don't know if I can make her believe me.  That's why.

"It's why you came looking for Hal."

"Oh look, I am so sorry."  , She studies him for a minute, con"I'm
sorry Hal isn't here."  sidering.  Then she shakes her head.

1. Oh dear.  There isn't time.  These children.  Something could
happen."  Then she corrects herself, striking echoes that frighten Kurt
more than anything else she could have found to say.

"Anything could happen," she says.  It you "You know where he is, don
"He's a long way away," she says.  "Tennessee.  There isn't time to get
there and back before - - ."

"Tennessee."  His head swims at the idea of another plane trip.

His stomach lunges like a bucking horse.  Getting this far almost did
him in.

"Maybe you're right."  Even though all his parts are moving, worry
keeps him planted here, he doesn't know how to sum it up.  "What am I
going to do?"

Reluctantly, Veda Faller reaches the point they've been approaching.

"Your last chance is probably Hal."

So at last Hal Oliphant's ex-wife gives him the information he came
for.

"After - after what happened to me, I pressed charges.  I went to the
hearing with my face still bandaged up.  My throat was so raw I could
hardly talk.  I couldn't get Hal convicted for what he is, they said he
would always be too crazy to stand trial.  I couldn't send him to jail,
but I got him put away.

It's a private institution."  She pulls one of the cards out of the
mirror by the door.  As she hands it to Kurt, she surprises him with a
hug.  His last impression of her is of one of those funny old-fashioned
brassieres poking at him through her silky shirt like a pair of empty
twenty-inch shells.

TH E M ED I C A L E XA M I N E R is so backed up that he can't get to
the death at the Gateway Mall until Friday morning.  Thursday's
preliminary examination showed no signs of foul play so except for the
victim's youth there are no apparent anomalies - nothing significant to
push this case to the top of the priority list.  He will dictate his
report into a Perlcorder and the clerk who transcribes his tapes won't
fax them to Jenkins until near noon.  By the time the report on the
late Edward Middleton reaches the local police chief's desk Carroll
will be deep in another story, a drowning.

The hall phone wakes her shortly after dawn.  She staggers out and
throws herself on it before the ringing can bring Peyton out to study
her in her pajamas or wake the twins.  The sleep-drugged part of her
can't stop thinking, Steve.  It's Charley.  "Oh, hi.  Early!"

"Something's come up."

There it is again - that surge of electricity.  "Great!"  Greedy for
the story, Carroll crouches over the receiver, stroking it as if she
can coax details out of thin air.  Charley's augmented Walkman picks up
the police band and he heard what little he knows while he was out
running.  She's all over him with questions but he only knows what he
knows.  As soon as he hangs up she calls Lacy Cotwell at the police
station.  She's done Lacy favors over the years, which Lacy returns by
keeping Carroll informed.  At first glimpse beach looks like natural
causes, Lacy says, but, she this death at the adds, there are a couple
of things ...

"Like?"

"That's all I can say, OK?"

Carroll dresses in seconds and heads for the scene.  Clipping a PRESS
sign to her sun visor in case she gets pulled over, she manages the
drive to the beach in half the time.  No matter how fast she drives,
she isn't going to catch up with her racing imagination.  A part of her
is always running after what, The Big Story.  The story she was born to
write.

Somewhere deep the ambitious part of Carroll is already looking for a
pattern.  If her luck has turned, today's death will have something in
common with yesterday's, some thread that suggests that there's more
going on here than other news people see.  She wants to be the first.

If this is murder and she can break the story, she just may be able to
live with herself.

Writing about sudden death, she can move on.  If she can't replace
Steve, she has to find a way to live without him - as the toughest
reporter who ever walked.  The next time she leaves Jenkins it's going
to be for a reporting job in Miami or Washington.  She'll be the best
crime writer since Edna Buchanan of the Miami Herald.  If she can just
write about enough murders, if she can make herself isolate the ugliest
details and get them down in stark, uncompromising terms, maybe it will
help her get over Steve's death and make her tough.

She'll get strong enough to handle anything, even the fact that she's
ripped wide open every time she reaches out in the night and collides
with that empty place in the bed.

Two deaths isn't exactly a pattern, but it's a start.  This second body
washed up on the beach in the night.  Lacy told her it was a white male
identified as Lanny Raynor, an out-of-work beach regular who always
staked out his blanket in this area after he finished his daily walk.

The difference this time was that Lanny was on the beach well before
dawn and he was lying face down in the swash.  The first beach patrol
of the morning found the body.  Like the one at the mall, it bore no
traces of violence, no lacerations, no tissue insult, nothing to
suggest the victim died an unnatural death.

It was middle-aged, fit and remarkably well muscled, which presented a
puzzle.  If a cramp hadn't gotten Lanny, what had?  He was in shape, he
worked out.  He was strong enough to make it back even if he got caught
in deep water, and if there was no getting back he was certainly fit
enough to hold out until the guard in the tower or other swimmers or
one of the half-dozen of windsurfers spotted him.  Unless a riptide
snagged him and held him under until his lungs filled and it was too
late.

Whatever happened, nobody saw.  Even the lifeguards reported nothing
unusual.

If the ocean didn't get him, what did?

She parks in the beach parking lot and without wasting time taking her
shoes off, goes crunching through the sand.  The whole scene is
unfoldingjust beyond the dunes where she can't see.  It's like one of
those dreams where you run and run and find yourself mired in the same
place.  Cursing the long drive, she is aware that she spent too long on
the phone with Lacy, it took her too long to get here, it's taking her
too long to wade through the deep sand now and too long to catch up
with her story.  Since Charley first called the sun has climbed into
position, the color of the morning sky has gone from pink to silvery
white and the top of her head is getting hot.

By the time Carroll finally reaches the spot where the body washed up,
the coroner's wagon has come and gone.  She sees the tire tracks
crumbling, in some places beach walkers have already trampled the
marks, effacing them.  The police are gone and the last onlookers are
drifting away.  She wants to question them but like criminals dodging
TV cameras, they cover their heads with their windbreakers and hurry
by.  The old couple she does manage to stop has nothing to say.  The
old man blinks at her-from under the bill of his baseball hat, his wife
is so indignant that the flowers on her straw sunhat are bobbing.

"Death and dying.  Is that all you reporters can think about?"

Carroll thinks but does not say, Yes ma'am.

"Why can't you write a story about how pretty the beach is, or how nice
it is for the young people to have a beautiful, healthy place to come
and play?"

"Yes ma'am."  Carroll pretends to scribble in her notebook.

"Thank you ma'am."

I t @ As she approaches his tower, the lifeguard ambles down to make
certain she spells his name right.  "LoBelle," he says.  "That's Robert
LoBelle.  I'm a senior at Tufts."

"And the - guy who drowned my shift.  As a matter of fact they "Believe
me, he didn't do it on ody in don't know when he did do it.  Nobody
reported anyb trouble, nobody saw any swimmers beyond the buoys."

"I mean, what can you tell me?"

"This Lanny Raynor?  He lived at the Y."  The guard is earnest and
bulky in his orange T-shirt.  His face is smeared with zinc oxide and
under the orange pith helmet he has the classic longdistance squint.

He looks like an extra in a beach blanket movie, the difference is that
this time it's a murder mystery.

When he doesn't go on, she doesn't speak.  A clever reporter, she
pretends to be absorbed in her notebook, when she does this right, she
disappears.  It makes people start talking just to fill the empty
space.

The guard muses.  "He was kind of a scuzzball, if you want to know the
truth."

"Uh-huh.

She keeps her head down.  Think of me as your psychiatrist.

"In a way, it kind of serves him right," the lifeguard says
thoughtfully.

"He was one of your local beach creeps.  He's what we call a heavy
cruiser.

Looks for the youngest and tenderest and picks them up, and after that,
who knows?  Whatever he does to them, we've never been able to catch
him at it he's too smooth and we can warn the girls about him but they
don't believe us, so that's all we can do.  And none of the girls ever
files a complaint."  He muses.  "Maybe they were asking for it."

Carroll wheels on him in an angry flash.  "What makes you think victims
want to be victims?"

"Sorry."

She can't stop.  "What makes you think you know anything at all?"

"I said I was sorry, now back off!"

Mistake, she realizes.  She's strung tighter than she thought.  "When
was the last time you saw him?"

"Yesterday, I guess, but if he made a pickup yesterday, it wasn't on my
shift."  nterview the halimates at Carroll's mind is already scurrying,
i the Y to find out if Lanny had a history, check the police books for
prior arrests.  With guys like this around, she's glad the girls are
safe in school today.  "What do you think killed him?"

The lifeguard shrugs.  "He could of O.D."d.  He could of had one of
those heart attacks you get from too much blow."

This brings her up short.  "He was a user?"

"Lady, I don't know."

"Are there a lot of drugs on the beach?"

"Ma'am, there are a lot of drugs everywhere."

Make a note, she thinks.  Ask Lacy about drug arrests.  Do a series
about how they handle drug problems at the beach.  She makes another
note, warn the twins.  They're good girls, but there are things they
need to know about survival here.  It makes her feel marginally better,
having somebody to care about.  That may even care about her.  She's
been through too much with Steve's daughters to let anything bad happen
to them.  "Thanks."

"That's Lo, not La, like Patty.  L-0-B-E-L-L-E."

Stopping at an outdoor phone, she calls Charley with what she has.

"Terrific," he says.  "I think I want to banner the story.  Second
Mysterious Death."

"We don't know yet that they're both mysterious."

"I sent Russell up to the coroner's office, and he .  .

"You sent Rwsell!  This is my story."

"Well you can't be in two places at once."

"What do you have him doing, backing me up?"

"Relax, I've got him waiting for the Raynor report.  He called in about
the other one, the guy from the Gateway Mall?"

"What does he have?"  As they talk, she looks back toward the dunes.

The sun is climbing, the breeze stirs the sea oats and two children on
the path start fighting over a plastic bucket.  The day is going on as
if nothing had happened and here she is, strung out because she's
afraid Russell will get something on this before she does.  Then she
and Russell will share the byline, unless she ends up in a slug at the
bottom, "Additional reporting done by ...

She can't have this.  She won't.  "Come on, Charley.  Speak."

"Be cool, the coroner won't talk to him.  But he overheard
something."

Charley sounds wired too.  "There's something."

"What?"

"Some anomaly."

"Anomaly!"  As soon as she hangs up she'll call the coroner.  So it
surfaces and takes over - the old excitement.  Good story.  Somebody's
dead, but, hey.  "I'll get right on it," she says.

Between calls to the coroner's office, she looks for people who knew
the victims.  Because the gym is near the beach, I she starts ith Lanny
Raynor.  Stringy and weatherbeaten, his acquaintances don't look
particularly pumped up.  They look sad, polite, like without ever being
called.  They tell her how many pounds Lanny people who have been
sitting in one of life's waiting rooms too long could press and how far
he ran when he was training.  Anxious to please, they keep dribbling
banalities with one eye on her notebook, which means she has to write
down quotes too dull to use.  Even the owner responds with a shrug.

Back in Jenkins she goes to the Y but the teenager on the desk says
it's too bad and the two hallmates she can collar eye her suspiciously,
girl, they think.  Girl with a notebook.  You have your nerve, they
sniff and turn away.

Carroll can't figure out whether Raynor was the kind of man people
don't want to talk about or whether, worse yet, there's not much to say
about him.

There are even fewer people who know Edward Middleton no relatives in
town, no friends that she can find, he was one of those colorless guys
who slide through life without leaving a mark.  Only his employer seems
to know him.

"He was a nice enough guy.  I liked working with him because he didn't
have any rough edges."  He shrugs.  "If you want to know the truth, he
didn't have any edges at all."  He tells her Middleton was dating a
teller from the bank across the street.  "He thought it was a thing,
but it wasn't anything."

Standing just inside the bank door for so long the guard gets
suspicious, Carroll studies the teller.  Seen from a distance like
this, she looks faintly familiar, context, Carroll thinks supermarket,
maybe, or cruising the local Marshall's, or T. J. Max.

"Sally Schultz?"

The pretty, indifferent teller blinks as Carroll asks delicately if she
minds talking about Edward Middleton.  "Oh," she says, "no problem."

Sally adds hastily, "I felt terrible when I read about it in the
paper."

Carroll looks deep and understands that she doesn't feel terrible.  She
probably hardly knew him.  Scraped raw by her own loss, she says
anyway, "I'm so sorry."

"It's OK."  Confronted with a death, Sally Schultz seems unsure of her
obligation but she seems to think she has one.  "You know what's sad
about it?  I was supposed to go out with him the other night, and I
blew him off?  Like, if I'd known anything bad was going to happen to
him, at least I would have, you know, said goodbye nicely, you know?"

When Carroll comes into the station her friend Lacy hands her the
coroner's report on Middleton.  There is indeed an anomaly.  The cause
of death was trauma to the brain.  The coroner found a tiny puncture
wound under the hairline at the base of the skull.

Lacy says, "We haven't had one of these for a long time."

"Puncture wounds?"

"Oh, we've never had one of those.  I mean murders."  Lacy is scowling
as though she doesn't know whether to be scared or not.  "Drive-by
shootings, maybe, a couple of drug deaths, but not something like
this."  She looks up.

"It's like the person, you know, thought it out."

"How would somebody know you could kill a man like that?"

"Movies," Lacy says.  "Or TV.  The air is filled with these things.

You can learn eight million ways of killing a guy, just by watching
TV."  She adds, "Plus, our people didn't find any prints in the car
except for this poorjerk's."

It's strange, Carroll thinks as she tries her source at the county
medical examiner's office one more time.  He's nice enough but she
knows he's stonewalling her.  It's frustrating, like being told Waldo
is buried in a plate of spaghetti that's so drenched in sauce that
there's no way of knowing where to start looking.

At six she cruises the Station one more time and comes up empty.  Sure
she can look at the Middleton report again but the chief of detectives
refuses to speculate and nobody wants to talk about Lanny Raynor.  As
far as public record is concerned, it's still an accidental drowning.

Nobody's willing to say otherwise and nobody will admit the two deaths
are linked.  The detective in charge is so bent on keeping what they
know a secret that he doesn't even tell her that the Raynor report is
in.  She's on her way out of the office when Lacy Cotwell clears her
throat wetly.  Carroll turns to see Lacy blinking so rapidly that she's
afraid her friend is about to faint.  Instead Lacy puffs out her cheeks
like a bird trying to warn away attackers and rattles her nails on the
clutch of manila folders she's carrying.

Carroll drifts closer.

iL Squinting significantly, Lacy fans the folders so Carroll can read
the tabs.  RAYNOR, one says.  Then she shrugs and heads into the
chief's office.

She's given Carroll everything she can.

OK, Carroll thinks.  It's late, Charley's waiting but she lingers long
enough to pounce on the chief as he leaves his office to go to the
bathroom.

He's one of those good old boys who prefers to believe that no matter
how bright she is, a slight woman is just a little girl.  "I understand
the Raynor report is in."

"Oh, that," he says easily.  "What makes you think .

"I saw it."

"Right.  Well it's closed right now, OK?"  His broad, earnest face is
bland and studiously empty.  "All in good time, OK?"

"Come on, Hank.  I'm on deadline."

"You don't want to see this stuff, which fish nibbled which parts off
the body."  He grins.  "Not a nice girl like you."

She snaps back, "I'm not a girl, I'm a reporter.  What was the cause of
death?"

His face closes.  "I'm not at liberty to say."

"Is there anything that links this to the Middleton case?"

They are at the bathroom door now, he maneuvers her out and himself in
and as he slams and latches the door he says, "I'm not at liberty to
say."

By the time she files her story the paper is closed except for the
right hand column on the front page, which Charley has saved for her.

Except for Charley, she's the last one in the newsroom.  Dinnertime has
come and gone but she's too pressed to remember whether she ate.

Russell called in an hour ago to report he'd come up empty, which she
notes with a grim little smile because she doesn't have much.  Beyond
the bare details she has only the quotes from Middleton's boss and his
erstwhile girlfriend Sally, she weaves in the more presentable quotes
from Raynor's friends and after consulting with Charley doubles back
and rewrites the lead.

The new lead does not link the deaths, exactly, but describes them as
the first two sudden deaths in the Jenkins area since a drug shootout
in March.

Charley won't let her cite Lanny Raynor's arrests for possession
because at the moment he's only a drowning victim, whose record isn't
relevant.  Instead she calls the chief of lifeguards at the beach so
she can fill with descriptions of undertows and riptides in the area
and the guard's warning to swimmers to stay in the guarded areas and
never go out beyond the floats.

The story carries her byline with nothing from Russell, which takes out
a little of the sting.

It isn't a bad story.  The details make her wish she had more
details.

Edward Middleton of Jenkins, found dead in his car at the far end of
the Gateway Mall parking lot early Thursday, was an apparent victim of
murder, according to the county medical examiner.  According to police
the weapon was a long, sharp instrument smaller than an ice pick but
longer and heavier than an ordinary needle, causing immediate and fatal
trauma to the brain.  Middleton leaves no survivors.

How awful, Carroll thinks, to die like that, alone, so that when you
go, you aren't much missed.  Driving home late, sour-mouthed and empty
after a day of digging that has yielded scant details and unprintable
innuendo, she broods over the dead.

Two single guys with no survivors.  How sad it must be to die with
nobody left behind to care.  How terrible to sink beneath the surface
without a trace.

Two people without families, without lives as far as she can tell, two
men with no living parents, no true lovers and as nearly as she can
make out, no children to care when they don't come home tonight and
tomorrow and the next day - two lifetimes spent with nothing left
behind to mark the place.

She can hardly wait to see the twins.  She hopes they haven't already
eaten.  She'd like to take them out to dinner at some nice place and
forget all this.  She wants people in the restaurant to look at them
and think, What a nice family.

Her heart skips a groove.  Family.

She'll be cool about it, she'll let the girls have their lives and try
not to be voracious, after all, she has her life.  No.  She has her
career.  She doesn't want to hover but she's touched by their trust and
grateful for their attention.  She'll hold the twins loosely in order
to keep them, sitting in the front row at recitals and graduations
knowing that there will in fact be somebody left behind to mourn if she
falls off a cliff or gets knocked out of her socks by a truck.

Approaching the house on Arbor Street she sees them on the porch,
sitting with their feet propped and their smooth blonde heads shining
under the yellow light.  She leaves the car out front and hurries up
the steps.  "So glad to see you."  She hesitates on the top step,
waiting for them to speak.  "Emily?  Jane?"

They regard her with eyes so bright they look almost feverish too much
sun, she tells herself.  They're dressed in pale blue cotton sundresses
tonight, simple lines that fall straight from their sunme to burned
shoulders, probably something picked out by La' match their eyes.  The
arms of their big rockers are pushed close to support a box of
chocolates and they turn pink sunburned faces to greet her with big
brown melted-chocolate smiles.

"Hey, I'm so sorry I'm late!"

"Hi Carroll," Jane says through caramel.

"Hi Carroll," Emily says.

She's getting better at telling them apart, she's sure she is.  It
isn't just the rings.  Jane has a little comic twist to her smile and
Emily looks slightly more serious - something around the eyes.  "I
didn't want to be late but I got hung up on this story?"  She thinks
it's better to spare them the details.  "Did you kids have a good
day?"

They smile secretive smiles.  "It was OK."

Her heart bounds ahead of her.  Do you need anything, do you want
anything, what.do you want that I can give you?  "Are you having a good
time here?"

They nod.  God, how she wants to please them!

It's late.  She sees Patsy has been here ahead of her with candy.

"I suppose you've already had dinner."

"Not really," Jane says.

"You haven't eaten?  You must be starving!"

"Not really."  Emily gives her a beautiful chocolate smile.

"You should have eaten."  Fine surrogate mom she is, letting them go
hungry.  "You should have had dinner by now."

Jane shrugs.  "We got home late from the beach."

"The beach!"  Lanny Raynor's life flashes before her eyes.  She has so
much to tell them before they can go back to the beach!  "I thought you
were supposed to be at school."

"We were, but we got out early."

"We got out early and the boys took us."

This turns her around.  "What boys?"

"From school."

"Uant Lain said it was all right."

"But she was mad when we came home late."

"Wait a minute."  Carroll remembers herself at that age, hitchhiking.

But things were different.  The beach wasn't quite as harsh.

"You didn't hitch, did you?"

"Oh no."

"Not really."  They study their nails.

"How did you get home?"

Emily goes on as if she's answering, which she isn't.  "Then Peyton and
Suzy wanted to take us out to dinner.

"You mean Uncle Peyton and Aunt Suzy?"

Jane has a funny, entitled air.  "They want to be just Peyton and Suzy
to us.  You know, friends."

"Right, Carroll.  Like, friends."  Em's little scowl suggests Carroll
had better lay back if she wants to stay friends.  "So Peyton and Suzy
wanted to take us out to dinner but Aunt Laine had already cooked her
special chicken pie and she got mad plus Aunt Patsy was mad because
they didn't want to take her out with us and things got worse and I
don't know .  .

Jane finishes with a smirk.  "They're in there having a fight."

Emily's smirk signals trouble elsewhere and the superiority that comes
with not being involved.  "They've been fighting for an hour."

Carroll sighs.  "I know what that's like."  Her aunts and her uncle
fight like tired children, they've been fighting together ever since
they were little and even their arguments are stale.  They say all the
same things and stamp off to the same old corners of the house.  She of
all people ought to know.  She can hear the familiar buzz, it's as if
the whole house has been whining for years.  Sometimes the whining gets
a little louder, that's all.  Suzy and Patsy and Peyton have been
fighting for so long that they fall into all the same old patterns one
on one in various combinations until finally in spite of everything
Laine gets pulled into the tangle.  Carroll has tried to deal with this
and can't.  She most especially can't deal with it tonight.  It's like
trying to separate the tigers after they've melted into butter, nobody
alive can stop them streaming in an unending circle around the bottom
of the tree and no power on earth can sort them out.  "And the whole
time you two are out here starving."

"It wasn't our fault," Emily says hastily and Jane confirms it.  "It
wasn't our fault."

"Of course it wasn't your fault," Carroll says.  Inside somewhere the
relatives are fighting, it's more than she can face right now.  "Come
on," she says, "let's go out and eat."

"Someplace nice?"

"Someplace really nice."

So it's sweet to be sitting there across the table from her girls in
the nearly deserted Yacht Club, watching the waitresses fuss and the
chef corn e out to ask how they liked the bluefish, and it was sweet
seeing heads turn as they came out through the bar although Carroll
can't for the life of her say whether they look like guardian and
lovely young charges or three friends.  She may be imagining it but it
seems to her as though the twins have matured in the few days they've
been with her, so that the eyes that follow them may register three
women passing, one not bad looking and the other two extraordinary,
gorgeous and perfectly matched and in spite of their youth so fully
formed that they could be any age.

Coming back from the restaurant one says, "Oh, we forgot to tell you,
Aunt Laine said be sure and say you had a phone call."

"Was it from the office?  Was it the coroner?"

The other says quickly, "He didn't leave his name."

"You're sure it wasn't Sam."

"Not really."

The coroner is an old friend, Sam would have left his name.  Uneasy,
she asks, "Then whoever it was - did he leave a number?"

"I don't know.  I think so.  Probably it's too late to call."

41 jane's right, it's probably too late to call."

"You wouldn't want to wake him up."

"If it's the coroner .  .

"It wasn't the coroner."

"Really.  You wouldn't want to call the wrong person."

"If it's the paper I have to .  . ."

"Besides, he said it wasn't important."

"He told Uant Lain he'd try again in the morning."

"It's really too late to call."

"Right," Carroll says with relief.  "It's too late to make any
calls."

She's glad.  When they get back everybody else has gone to bed.

They have the family room to themselves.  The girls watch TV without
any other light on and Carroll finds she likes this too, it turns'the
room into a cave, safe as a nest with the three of them gathered around
the electronic fire.

Sitting on the sofa with one girl on either side she is bold enough to
put an arm around each and pull them to her in a hug.  They don't
resist, instead they flow against her as if they've made a pact to do
everything she wants.  The human contact is like a little shock.  She
can taste her tears.  Their slender bodies are warm and fragrant, their
hair flies around her face like silk and she hears herself saying
again, "I'm so glad you're here."

One gives a little sigh that sounds somehow snug, protected, and the
other says, "We are too."

One of the twins touches the remote and they find themselves watching
the TV with the sound off so that it seems easy for Carroll to say,
"Look.  Kids.

I was in your rooms, back there in California?  Everything was so .

.

." For a minute words desert her.  Finally she manages, "Special.  I
... I mean you had a lot of really nice stuff.  It looked like - some
kind of castle?"

"A kingdom," Jane says, pulling out of Carroll's embrace even as Emily
collects herself and withdraws.

"Our kingdom," Emily says.

"It's - it was .  . ."  They are at a delicate point.  If she stampedes
them they won't tell her anything.  Therefore she's up against it what
she thinks, no, thought about that cluttered and slightly spooky place
when she first saw it and what she thinks about it now.  She treads
carefully, trying to creep into their secret life before they can shut
her out for good.  "Beautiful.

Like nothing I've eve seen."  Bemused, she smiles.  "All those glass
ornaments, the beautiful fabric you used everywhere, and the
pictures.

The toys."  When she first looked into the place it was creepy, now
with the girls flanking her, it seems magical.  "Where did you get all
those wonderful toys?"

"We picked them out," Em says.

"We did.  And anything we didn't like.  .

"We threw away."

"No.  We gave it to Grandmother for the needy."

"I see.  Well you have..."  How to approach it?  Through flattery.

"You both have such a perfect eye for what looks right."

A ripple passes through her, the girls agreeing.  "Yes, we do."

"And all that - imagination."  She is hushed.  "You had whole stories
written on the walls .  . ."

"Our novels."  Who speaks?  In the dark like this they sound so much
alike that there is no telling.

The other makes a slight alteration in the text.  "Records of the
kingdom."

"Records.  Yes.  Records."

"Special," Em says, sliding closer.

Jane snuggles.  "Our place."

They both say, "Our lives."  that, this place doesn't look like
much."

Carroll's voice "Next to is furrier than she intended.  God, am I
making some kind of misem here when they have all that wonderful stuff
take, keeping th at home in California?  "You must miss it a lot."

The girls seem to sense that she's unsure of herself because they
wriggle closer.  "No problem," Jane murmurs.

Em says dreamily, "We'll get back to it."

For the first time in a week Carroll feels snug again - surrounded,
maybe even loved.  Because it's dark and they can't really see each
other's faces she says, "Your grandmother - I don't know - I don't know
if she's going to let you go back."  be deliberate.

"Not go back," Em says.  Now she sounds mo Jane says, "We don't need
to."

"But your kingdom!"  She's thinking, you poor sad kkss, your
parents, your lives!

"It's OK."

"It is."  They answer so fast that their voices twine and she can't
1g.

What she tell whether one or both of the girls say the next thin does
note is the steel-under-velvet quality of their resolution, they could
be vanquished generals, marching out of the territory.  "Not go
back."

"No.  Not go back.  We're going to get it back."

She is thrown back on herself, at ten, in exile.  She loves them for
being so brave.

They sit for a long time while the girls t Think their own thoughts,
whether on the same path or widely diverging ones she doesn't know, and
Carroll reflects on the brief glimpse she had into their kingdom, the
ranks of stuffed toys, the regiments of dolls, every figure and every
object disposed according to a pattern that even now she can't
divine.

What were they doing there, cloistered amid their ranked playthings?

What do they think they're going to do now?  Brave, she thinks.

They're wrecked by the loss of their parents and they're doing
everything they can to be brave.  She tries, "I'M so glad you don't
mind being stuck here with me."

One last time they hug and snuggle.  "We don't, really."

"We like it here."

"We're having fun."

"We are."

"I'M so glad," Carroll says.  She kept going today on the big story, or
the illusion of the big story, and she kept going after that for the
sake of the orphaned girls.  Now in a strange way they are giving back
more than she has to give to them - company, distraction from her
pain.

Solace, she supposes.  She has the illusion that she and the girls are
in this together, bereft and mending, safe for the moment on this old
sofa that bobs like a life raft through the seas of loss.  She wishes
she could sit here with the twins all night and not have to say good
night and drag herself upstairs to her miserable empty bed.

Next to her, Emily yawns and stretches and Jane kneads the arm of the
overstuffed sofa like a cat and she too stretches silkily.

Then suddenly the twins get up, so abrupt that Carroll sits there,
bemused and cooling, long after the girls brush their lips across her
cheeks in a polite good night and excuse themselves, saying in chorus,
"It's late."

Startled, Carroll says, "I guess it is."  It is.  It's half-past
Arsenio.

She's exhausted and reluctant to go upstairs because she's scared of
being alone in bed.

At the door Jane says, "I t's late and we have things to do."

Em echoes, "Things to do."

"If you want," she offers, "I'll make popcorn.  We can watch a tape."

"We can't."

"It's late and we can't."

There is a subtext, We have takings to do.

Loneliness makes Carroll craven.  "It's OK, tomorrow is Saturday, you
can sleep as late as you want."

"Too much to do tomorrow.  So, night, Carroll."

"Tomorrow, yes.  Night, Carroll, OK?"

Like dutiful children, they back out.

Loosely, Carroll reminds herself.  She feels like a mother parting with
her young for the first time.  Hold them loosely and you can keep them
all your life.

N I C E, U P H E RE in this nummy secret place we make for us, this
room from the attic umble, little gold chairs we pulled into lovely
prayer rugs and fringed pillows and naked statu dusty places under the
gables, we have marble-topped tables.  Next, we fix the throne room.

Then we bring our gorgeous knights and it is perfect.  If we don't have
any knights yet - well, soon.

- Dark up here.

- That's the whole point!  unts and Plus, look at all our lovely
stuff!

Presents from the a the uncle, and see our trophies, that we pulled out
and wiped clean to put on the altar in the trophy room, and look!

We found this beautiful, beautiful mounted horsehead with the silver
mane and the lovely blue glass eyes that follow us.  Either our king
Saint Stephen shot it in the jungle and had it stuffed especially for
us or else it was his favorite mount, the Challenger.

Yes.  When he died King Stephen was so sad that he had Challenger
preserved so he could always keep it with him.

Alas, poor Challenger is dead and our king has died.  Now it's up to
us, the queen, to keep the holy kingdom forever.

We do it in his honor.

See the trophy room with three splendid trophies lying in there on the
altar, signifying.  And all those other rooms waiting to be used.  We
can surround ourselves with beauty, and wait for worshipers to come.

Look on my works, you mighty, we are the queen.  We are the queen and
no one crosses us.

Next, we make the throne room.  We want the carved gold chair with
velvet in the downstairs sitting room.  Seats two.  Perfect.  Our
knights can sit at our feet on pillows while we hold court.

So private, so nice!  We can do anything we want here.  Right, my
sister, queen?  Anything.  So stop whining and be glad.

I want to go home.

This is better than home, OK?  When they stole us from the
grandmother's house -just - like - that - when they dragged us into
exile and boarded up our beautiful lost kingdom, we the queen Emerald
thought it was the end, yes, we the queen jade thought it was the
end.

Gone, our beautiful palace.  Gone, all our beautiful fierce knights.

Left propped and gathering dust back there in Amadamaland, stacked like
so much firewood.

But look, our new knights breathe, and when you hurt them, they stay
hurt!

Who would have guessed that all these thousands of miles from
Amadamaland we could make a new kingdom?  Who would have imagined
living knights?

Funny, my queen, how these things happen.  Knights-in-training at the
beach lined up and waiting, and smarmy courtiers downstairs, and up
here, this beautiful secret place, all dark and private where we
surround ourselves with pretty things, and wait.

- Oh shut up, it'sj'just dark.

It's dusty here and creepy.  Oh Emananjena, janamenjena, I don't like
it here.  There are things scuttling out in the dark attic, who knows
what?  Hear them crawling through the junk, land crabs or night
lizards, big orange scorpions making tracks in the hundred-year-old
dust.  We're breathing dust and tiny bugs, there are mosquitos trapped
in my ears and it's horrible, trying to sleep in this silly old bathtub
...

- The royal swan bed!

- this silly old bathtub with the high back and the big claw feet, I
don't like it here and I don't like us.

Look now.  We are in big trouble.  Oh sister, what have we done?

Naja.

- Done again.  And they will wash up!  No matter how deep we go you
know what will happen.  Sobner or later they will wash up on the land,
and then they'll come and get us.

- For what?  It was an accident, OK?  Well, sort of an accident.

Like, look at that Randy.  What are you going to do when your knight
won't do like you say?

The queen does not brook disobedience.

She has everything our way.  Our knights go where we want and do what
we tell them.  When we say, "March," they march.  When we say, "Kneel,"
they kneel.  If even one knight won't do what we say ... You know what
we have to do.

When you are absolute, sometimes you need a nice execution le.  Those
are wonderful days.  Everybody has to make an examp bles in the
courtyard, knights and ladies in their best are all seen ordered to
watch.  It's always like a party, remember?  Yes they take our
message.

That's how the queen stays absolute.

But that was at home.  Those were only ...

Knights, just not flesh-and-blood ones.  Listen, sister.  A bad knight
is a bad knight wherever you find him.  Nobody opposes the queen and
lives.  We had to act fast, OK?  Look how bad that Randy t us
everything we wanted, when was.  The lying!  He said he'd ge all he
wanted was to do things to us.  Body things.

He offended the queen.  Nobody offends the queen.  Try it and you feel
her wrath.  So it was Randy's fault, for trying us.

- It was awful.

- it was a mistake.  Besides, it felt good.  You know it did.  That
new, strange feeling.  Don't worry, OK?  Tomorrow we'll find a good
knight, you'll see.  He'll be good and cute and he'll do everything we
say.

- What if he doesn't?

- Well.

mistakes?  Oh sister, Carroll will be mad.

- My queen, what about our What if somebody finds them?

ashing up.  No We'll fix it so they won't be found.  Nobody w I trials,
and new knights to more accidents.  No messes.  just roya come.

- Promise?

- The queen keeps her word.

And look!  We have all Saturday ahead.  Cute Saturday boys walking and
swimming and lying on their fronts in the sand with their butts
sticking up, new knights just waiting to be found.

We'll get us a good one.  We'll bring him to the throne room and down
and worship give him drinks and Patsy's candy and he'll favor us.  We can
make him bring another one so there will be one knight for each, a
beginning, yes?  Then we'll have fun playing on all the chairs and
sofas and never even notice if it's hot up here.

And when we get tired of him we'll go out and get more.

Oh sister, queen, we can raise an army of knights!  And when we do
we'll get in the car and set out for the kingdom, us and our great
knights that talk to us with real mouths and look at us out of real
eyes, better than our knights in the old Amadamaland, with their
plaster and plush faces and staring glass eyes.

- Pretend knights do like you tell them.

- But it's more fun with real ones.  You'll see.  So Grandmother, here
we come, California, watch out, when we come back we're going to have
cute boys with us!  A whole cute army!  Now stop sniveling, your
majesty, OK?  It's lovely and private here, we have our very own nest,
OK, with brocade curtains to sleep on and this deep feather mattress,
that turns our beautiful old bathtub into a swan bed, or a glass
slipper stolen from a giant queen ...

It's hot up here.  I don't like it.

Strebzdz'bus, sister.  Etrap.  Shut up.  Tomorrow, the beach.

I can't shut up, it's dark and Z't's hot and I don'tfeel good.

Frenemo.

Really.  I'm sorry about everything.  Fregel.

- Guilty?  Strebidibus.  Like, forget it!  It's not our fault Randy
brought it on himself.

We are the queen and we do what we have to.  Listen.  We had to do
it.

- Not we.  You.  You did it.  Oh frenemo, this is so awful.  Krena@
What shall we do?

- Look, bitch, I am you and you are we and what I do, you do.

- And we are the queen.  I know.  So hard, sometimes, too much.

- We are us and no other, and don't you forget that either.

So you can damn well forget all this I and you.

We are US.

We are us and no other, so you can stop it.

Listen, sister.  Listen hard because you will hear me.

We are us, we are this unto the death.

And we don't cry.

In Meredith Archer's granite heap at the top of a high hill in
California, Billy Graver sighs and tosses.  He is touched that she
feels shaky, and needs him to sleep in the house.  It doesn't matter
where he lies down.  He hasn't been able to sleep since his son Kurt
left on his desperate mission.  The selfish part of Billy was glad t o
see Kurt go.  It gets harder and harder to bear the pressure of his
son's suffering, to look at that maimed wrist and know that somewhere
back there, Billy is to blame.  He should have gone to the police and
charged Zane Oliphant with battery, he should have killed Hal Oliphant
before he could marry Meredith and visit her -with twins.

He should have taken Kurt and fled this place right after the accident
but he loved Meredith and he just couldn't.

Whether at risk or safe or going into certain danger, at least Kurt is
free.  He loves the boy, Billy wants him to go out into do better than
he ever could.  More than anythe world and thing he wants Kurt to be
all right, but he has no way of knowing he is.  Kurt hasn't phoned
since he left two nights ago.  He how hasn't wired.  Billy can only
hope the boy hasn t gone to ground where, overwhelmed, no,
thunderstruck by the wide open some places.

he cares less a ut what the twins In his greedy father's heart are
doing than about seeing Kurt restored to health.  He wants him whole.

He wants him to be able to go outside and have a life.

Two days and he hasn't heard from him.

Billy would like to turn on Kurt's computers to see whether there is a
message on one of the screens for him, but the garage apartment is
locked right now, because he is sleeping in the big house.  Meredith
has asked him to spend these next few nights in the downstairs maid's
room because she admits that like Billy, she's staggered by guilt and
by worry.

What are Vivian's twins doing now that they've moved out of Meredith's
control and Billy's ken?  What are they doing now that they're freed of
the lessons and concerts and all the other rituals Meredith devised to
keep them occupied?  Are they being good girls as he and Meredith so
fondly hoped or are the two of them just being famous, the Oliphant
grandchildren's soft-hearted dupes?  What's happened to Carroll Lawton,
who volunteered to take care of the girls and rushed off with them
before Billy could find words to send her away fully prepared?

Worse, what are Hal Oliphant's grandchildren doing out there in the
dark right now?  Billy faces what he's known in his heart and yet
refused to recognize all these years.  The fact he's refused to face,
for Meredith's sake.

Ignore these things and they don't go away.  They only get worse.

Savagery like chain-lightning spans the generations of Oliphants.  He
saw it in Hal.  He saw it in Zane and he sometimes thinks he saw it in
Vivian.

Worse.  He knows it has surfaced in these pretty twins, but as long as
they were here to smile and say nice things to him they kept him too
bemused to see.  Now he's sickened by his willingness to be fooled.

Why didn't he see?  Why couldn't he tell that poor girl who took them
away?

It is this that makes Billy stare dry-eyed at the ceiling with his arms
outstretched and torn nails gripping the edge of the mattress as if
he's taking his place on a torture rack.

Then he shudders and snaps upright.  Twins.

What if they hurt Kurt again?

He wants to call the police, but there's nothing to say, he wants to
warn his son but he can't reach him, he wants to hurl himself into the
car and go looking for them but he can't.  He can't do anything, he
realizes, weeping.

He's promised Meredith.

The twins wake at first light and climb out of their bower in the
heavily cushioned bathtub.  Threading their way through the cluttered
attic, they pad toward the stairway.  Their pretty little sundresses
are damp with sweat and rumpled from being slept in.  Their breath
comes slowly as they pick their way through the abandoned trunks and
broken furniture in the cavernous attic, taking care not to make any
noise that will wake the sleeping family below.

They are rosy with the heat and sweaty from sleep and if one of them is
still groggy and wants nothing more than to throw herself on the twin
bed in the room Carroll has prepared for them and go on sleeping, the
other won't let her.

They have things to do.

Today we are going to start early.

The queen slides open the dresser drawer and pulls something out paired
ruffled bikinis with the price tags still attached.  She rips off the
tags with a kitchen knife she brought up to the room on their first
night and shakes the suits at her sister the queen who rubs her eyes,
yawning.  The new bikinis are sea-green and yes the queen will look
like mermaids in them, just right for today she thinks, yes.  She slips
hers on.  Why is her sister still standing there, rubbing her eyes?

Without speaking she holds the other suit out and stares at her sister,
hissing until she puts it on.

Then they pick up their rubber flip-flops with little daisies jiggling
where the straps meet and they reach for T-shirts and without looking
to see what her sister is picking out, each puts on the new blue one
with spangled waves picked out in green sequins on the front.  In pink
sequins, each bears the legend, FLORIDA.

IL They are dressed now, but not quite prepared.  They kneel in front
of the maple veneer dresser.  One pulls open the bottom drawer and they
study the array of hatpins still left to them.  It is a glittering
collection.  There are long ones and short ones, delicate, sharp pins
with ornamental heads like Spanish fans and butterflies and gaudy
peacocks and there are pins with pearl heads held in a gold filigree
and tarnished silver pins with long steel points and pins with points
that look like stilettos.  This battery of pins has anchored a hundred
hats and dozens of corsages and now they all lie side by side here in
the dresser.  Without consultation, the girls reach for two of the
longest and most beautiful - a five-inch pin with a carved jet head for
one and for the other, a pin with an ornamental metal head studded in
brilliants.

Careful not to stab themselves, they slide the pins diagonally into the
warm place between their bodies and the skimpy tops of their ruffled
bathing suits, and if one girl's fingers tremble and she prays that
nothing will happen today, she has become so clever at dissembling that
the other never guesses.

They are almost ready.

Holding their breath the girls come out into the hall and are
momentarily nonplussed.  At the far end they see raffish, whitehaired
Peyton shuffling back to bed from the bathroom.  At this distance he
could almost be mistaken for one of the boys from the beach because the
shock of hair is combed in the same way and they are too far away to
see the mustache.  He looks rumpled and sleepy at the moment, but they
already know from being in the car with him that his breath is warm and
rummy and his fingers are sharp.  If he turns they will have to think
of something -to say?  To do?  They may have to slide into his bedroom
for a little sweet talk and many promises they don't intend to keep
before he will snuggle and then release them to begin their day.

Frozen in the dim hallway, the girls stand embracing like nymphs at the
lip of a Roman fountain.  When he staggers back into his room without
noticing them, it is a relief.  It makes it possible for them to slip
down the back stairs and into the kitchen where Laine has left out
boxes and bowls and jars of jam and bottles of syrup in preparation for
a ceremonial pancake breakfast.

Too bad!  Scooping out the middle of the cake she has made for their
dinner, they eat with greedy hands and when they're done, they dump the
remainder in the garbage.  Then they lick their fingers and wipe their
hands on the tablecloth and head outside, into the soft morning.  They
make one more stop in the garage, where they stand for a moment with
their foreheads touching.  An observer would have no way of knowing
whether they are communicating or only reaffirming some decision
arrived at in the night.  With the kitchen knife, each cuts off a
three-foot length of nylon clothesline which she loops around her waist
underneath the T-shirt.  The effect is so funky and stylish that
admirers would have no way of knowing this is more than a fashion
statement.

Then they slip out of the garage and around the house, heading off down
the shady street for the Kash n' Karry that stands at the corner where
Arbor Street stops being neighborhood and turns into commercial
desert.

They have the idea that if they hang around long enough at the counter,
they'll find somebody coming in for ice to stock his cooler.  "Going to
the beach?"  they'll say, and he'll say, "Want a ride?" These things
are so easy!

There is somebody parked in front of the house, a dark figure slouched
behind the steering wheel with his head resting against the metal
windowframe.

There is something about him that looks familiar.  Drawing in deep
breaths that they won't release just yet, the twins tiptoe closer.

Jane grabs Emily.  Now her breath hisses out but slowly, so that she
whispers almost without sound.  "Look!"

Emily grasps Jane.  "Big Kurt!"

They are frightened and thrilled.  "He loves us!"

"No, he's come after us."

One says, "What are we going to do?"  even as the other says, "To Id
you he was in love with us."

Drawn, repelled, excited and wary, they communicate without speaking
but, strangely, in the old language.  Glena.  Watch out.  F'Yidibo.  He
has come to get us.  Krazgo.  Get him.

Something profound trembles in the air between them.

Sleeping Kurt Graver stirs and they scramble backward.  Yes he is
everything they remember, big, craggy and good-looking.  Asleep like
this and in this light, he looks vulnerable.  Anything or anybody could
hurt him.  Yet even in sleep, he's dangerous.  They know what they have
always known.  Big, brusque Kurt with the severed hand has eyes that
look deep.  He sees right past the disALI.

.1es and hears their true intentions no matter how they arming smi
dissemble.

- Now we know how, we can do him, yes?

- Shh.  It's OK.  He's asleep.

Krazgo, and I mean it!

- No, my queen.  We still love him.

The other sighs.  It's true.  - No.  We still love him.

There it is.  Their savage hearts back off.  - We do.

Therefore they tiptoe backward and keep on backing until they have
faded into the soft shadows at the far end of Arbor Street and swiftly
whisked around the corner, at which point they turn around and,
hampered by the frivolous flip-flops, the twins start running.

Without having to speak they know that they need to act fast.  Today's
the day, whatever that means.

At the 7-Eleven, a nice old guy comes in to fill his cooler before he
heads for the beach to go surf casting.

Jane smiles her best smile.  "Going to the beach?"

"Yes ma'am," he says, smiling broadly.  "Want a ride?"

"Yes sir," she says.  "Right, Em?"

"Yes sir," Emily says.  "We have a lot to do today.  Right, Jane?"

Right," Jane says, being careful to make sure that her sister doesn't
detect even a second's hesitation.

Ted Madison is on the beach early today because he broke up with his
girlfriend last night.  The fight was ugly and it went on for .  so
long that it left him too angry and disturbed to sleep.  Emerging from
a sweaty, knotted mess of bedclothes at dawn, he decided the best thing
he could do for himself at this point would be work out some of the
pain and rage by running.  He's walking back from a six-mile run when
he blinks to be sure he isn't so crazed that heat mirages have left him
seeing double.

Bad, she thinks, treading water while her hair fans out behind her like
a mermaid's veil of curls.  So bad.  These things start so well, but in
the end they always come out the same.

I thought this new boy would kiss us and be nice to us without getting
ugly.  Who knew he wouldn't want to kiss us at all?

Look, how can we make it come out right when these knights won't do the
way our good knights used to do at home?

In the old kingdom we told the knights, Stay there.  We could tell them
Wait and they would wait, and, Do this, and they would do it.  They did
everything we wanted, even fight and kill each other, yes.  Yes.  They
would even kill themselves.  Do it.  And if they were dead and gone, no
problem.

They were only toy knights.  Pick them up in the morning and play with
them again.

But these knights are alive, so warm and nice at first.  Then it goes
wrong and they get weird or gropey, or get nasty down there that we
don't like.

Or they disobey, like this one.  Then we have to make an example.

Thwart the queen will you, take that.  And that.

And when they die, they don't come back like the toy ones do.

Oh, why do they have to do us wrong when they're so right?

When it's right, why do they have to make us angry?

Patience, my sister says.  What good is patience?  Temporary
inconvenience, she says.  But here, executions are for keeps.  No
picking these knights up in the morning to play again.

Not this one's fault we wanted things he didn't want to do for us, him
going, "Take it easy, I just broke up with a girl," my sister growling,
"Never mind."  My sister the queen wants to spend the rest of her life
kissing knights and so do I. So now we are out in the water again,
swimming way, way out like three beautiful fish and then we the queen
dive like mermaids, twining around his legs, so fun!  But this one
doesn't get all, like, hands and fingers in soft places like the other
ones.  He doesn't do the way we like, kissing and stuff until we can't
make them stop and so we have to stop them.  He doesn't even want to
kiss.

We're getting mad.  My sister is like, "Blow off the queen, will
you."

Oh please, watch out, don't make us mad.  He's like, "I'm not trying to
... oh look, just don't, OK?  I'm just a little wrecked right now."

Bad knight, beware, the queen is warning you "Sweet knight, we can make
you feel better all over."

"Just don't, OK?  You kids are only kids."  Kids.

Warning.  Warning.  Wrong thing.

Warning.  Wrong thing to say.

Then he does a surface flop just like a fish and we move in, but he is
like, "Wait a minute," and we are like, "Can't!"  and when we beg for
nice kisses and he will not promise, my sister takes it out, the pin,
and I know what I'm supposed to do and therefore even though it is
awful, it will happen so fast!  She pulls the pin out of her front and
because she will kill me if I don't, I pretend to hug him from behind
and in that moment the three of us are one ii,i hold him, me and my
sister, my self.  We submerge together, as we and my breath trembles as
she drives it in.  He jangles like an electric wire.  And we feel it,
the rush.

Then we use the ropes.

Then we spring to the surface like blowing whales.  Everything bubbles
up in me and I cry, "Oh noooo, we let it go wrong again!"

She purrs, the ropes.  "But they will never find this one."

Oh look, I think, this has got to stop.

Got to.  I don't dare let her hear me thinking it.  Part of me howls, I
loved him as my sister says, "Tough luck, bad knight!"

And then once more we broach the surface of the water and swim away
underneath the surface, like two beautiful, spangled fish.

HE IS AT THE DOOR when Carroll comes down the next morning, a tall,
rangy man in jeans and a khaki jacket.  Laine hisses, "I thought you'd
never get up.  I asked him to wait on the porch because he said he knew
you but that you might not know him."

She finds him leaning against the doorframe with one hand in his
pocket.

"You can't let just everybody in," Laine says.

He's good-looking in a rough-cut way but seriously rumpled, as if he's
accidentally spent the night in a dumpster.  Maybe he washed up in a
water fountain and combed his hair with his fingers.  He looks drawn,
like a marathon runner pushed to the limit.

He seems to be deciding what to call her.

"Ms.  Harriman?"

"Lawton.  I kept my maiden name."  She's surprised by the next thought,
I loved him and I didn't even change my name for him.

The stranger is saying, "I called last night?"

Distracted, she pulls herself back.  "Oh.  Mr. Ah.  I was supposed to
call.  I'm sorry.  My aunt forgot to write it down."

Behind her, Laine hisses, "Ask him if he's come about the twins."

"Yes, Laine, that would be wonderful," she says heartily, as if Elaine
has said something else altogether.  "I'd love it if you'd go and make
me something different for breakfast.  Something that takes a long
time."

"Make your own breakfast."  Her aunt wheels and goes upstairs.

Have to mend that later, Carroll thinks, and turns back to the
stranger.

She doesn't know this person but something about him - the profile,
perhaps, or the diffidence - seems familiar.

"Carroll Lawton."

"Kurt Graver.  I think you know my father."

For a minute she doesn't and then she does.  Billy Graver.  The lovely,
somber man who told her Steve was dead.  "Of course.  You look just
like him.  He's Mrs.  Archer's .  . ."  She's at a loss.

i', "He does a lot of things for her.  I know there's no reason for you
to talk to me.  I've come because .  . ."  He goes at it from another
direction.  "I wanted to have more information before I .  . ."  but
that doesn't work either.  "Oh hell," he says, "this is going to sound
crazy and you're probably going to kick me out.  .

"You aren't inside yet."

"Oh look, it's about the twins."

"Come in."

When they are sitting in her great-grandparents' overdone Victorian
parlor with the sliding doors closed, he begins.  "I don't have any
proof and I know you're going to think I'm crazy but I couldn't go any
further with this until I'd had a chance to touch base.  I have to go
to Tennessee today but I couldn't leave without talking to you.  It's
the twins.  I think the twins are .  . ."  His expression is sliding
all over the place.

"What I mean is.  . ."

As he starts to tell her and fails and tries again Carroll's mind
scurries in several different directions, her aunt's hurt feelings, the
coroner's report on Lanny Raynor and what Charley's going to expect
from her, her girls, who are sleeping later than they ever have - she's
glad, they've been through a lot.  Poor kids, she thinks and will not
let herself think, poor me.

I , I Whoever this guy is, nice as he is and probably well-meaning,
about grief or he w now.  Still she thinks he means well and she knows
he isn't going to leave until she's let him say whatever he's having
such a hard time bringing out.

She studies Kurt Graver.  Centered on the elaborately carved ancestral
love seat, he leans forward with his right fist clenched on one knee,
he has the left one stuck in his pocket as if he's got something he
doesn't want her to see.  This is so obviously hard for him that she
tries to help him along.  "You were trying to tell me something about
the twins."

This surprises it out of him.  "I think they're dangerous."

"Not Steve's girls."  No.  She can't stop shaking her head.

"There are things you don't know."

"They're my girls now.  I don't need to know."

"Things they did in California," he says, overlapping.

"The past is past."

After all that effort, he is strangely still.  When he speaks again "It
may be only the beginning."  it is in even tones.

"Don't, OK?"

"I'm sorry, I have to," he says.  "Look.  Some bad things are going
on.

They've been going on for years.  Like this week.  I don't know how
what happened happened, but I have my suspicions."

She is too upset and defensive to mark what he has just tried to tell
her.  "They're only girls."

"I can't pin it down for you because I don't know what they've done, I
don't even know what they're going to do.  I just wanted you to ...

He stops and starts all over.  "I want you to be careful.  I know you
probably love them and all do.

"But I want you to watch out for them.  They hurt people."

She is surprised by anger.  "You don't know that."

"I wouldn't be here if I wasn't pretty sure."

This makes her mad enough to confront it head-on.  "What is it then?

What exactly are you trying to tell me?"

"That's the whole problem!  I'm not sure.  Look," he says, "I'm going
to see their grandfather.  if I'm right, he can help me figure this
out, but until I do .  . ."

"Until you do, maybe you'd better keep quiet," she says.

I can't.  I, ah."  She can't know what makes him grimace and I bite his
knuckles before he says, "You might as well know, have a hard time
going out.  I wouldn't go all these places and say this stuff if it was
nothing.  What it is, is.  There's a thing aboutIt the family?"  He
tilts his head as if it will help him find a way around her barriers.

"Either it's in the blood or else it's something with twins?

"Whatever it is, it's awful.  I think."

Listening, Carroll sorts a series of impressions - the shadows , that
haunted Steve, the legacy of pain that seemed to come with these
relationships - Vivian, her twins.  Oh, Steve, she thinks, and grief
almost overturns her.  Oh Steve.

"Their grandfather was this rich boozer named Hal Oliphant.

This priest tried to stop the wedding.  I went to see him - he's crazy
now, but he did say Hal had a twin.  No," he says, hung up on the
significance.  "Was a twin.  His brother died, if it wasn't murder, it
was something else.  Something weird.  The family wouldn't have
anything to do with Hal.  He landed in California, and married this
rich woman with a big house in the hills?  My dad worked for the
Archers and he knows."

"Billy Graver," Carroll, says.

"Billy."  Kurt nods.  "Did you know this Hal Oliphant hit on my mother
and took her away from him?"

"I'm sorry."  Hearing a click, Carroll thinks, Please don't take it out
on my girls.

"He did worse things."  Kurt Graver seems to be sorting his material,
figuring out what parts to lay out for her.  "He used to beat Meredith
up, my dad says, that poor nice lady.  Finally she divorced him, but by
that time she had his children.  Twins."

"What does that have to do with my girls?"

He looks at her sharply.  "Your girls?"

"Jane.  Em.  My family."

He sighs.  "Please don't be in such a hurry to make them family.

just give it a little while, OK?  Until I talk to their grandfather,
OK?  There are some things about this that we don't either of us
know."

"The poor kids have lost both parents," Carroll says.  "What they need
now is love and a little trust."

"And youjust need to be careful.  Careful."  His next sigh sounds more
like a groan.

What is most frightening about this is that in that second of
inadvertent grief, he reminded her of Steve.  Shaken, she says, "Don't
worry about me."

I tell you the rest of it.  I'll start with "Maybe you'll the easy
stuff, OK?"  His face is irregular and his brows go straight across
like the grease-pencil slash in a caricature but intensity makes him
shine.

"About Hal's twins.  We grew up together on the place.  We played all
over the house and the grounds and on Saturdays we took picnics across
the cliff road and down the wooden steps to the observation deck on a
ledge halfway down.

From there you could see everything - the sky over the water, the
waves, and if you wanted you could go down the rest of the way and
climb out on the rocks and swim.  We did everything together.  Viv was
beautiful, lovely, maybe a little crazy but wonderful.  But her
brother.  He was something else.  One day - I didn't even know what I
was doing, it was an accident.  What happened was, I made him mad."

This is one echo too many, without wanting to Carroll recalls rued her
twins.

She is quick, defenthe warning label that accompa sive.  "And he took
out a gun and shot you.  Sure.

"No."  It is at this point that he takes the left hand out of his
pocket and she sees there isn't any hand at all.  "He did t IS.

This brings tears to Carroll's eyes.  "I'm so sorry."  She has to
squeeze the words out.  "I am."

He shrugs.  "It's just a cheap way to make my point.  It's no big
deal.

It didn't even bother me much.  I got over it.  I even got used it.  We
kept on playing together, Vivian and me and Zane.  We to Lrrew up, I
was in love with Vivian and I thought she loved me.

"But there was Zane.  Something between them.  Something so strong no
outsider could understand."

He says, with some pain, "Do you know they used to have fights without
even talking to each other?"

Carroll flinches.  This is too close.

"I came back from college and I was seeing Vivian, I wanted to make
love with her.  No.  I wanted to marry her.  Forever.  She loved me.

And all the time there was Zane in the background and his shadow just
kept getting bigger and bigger, it's hard to explain.

"When I wasn It around they spent all their time fighting, I couldn't
hear words but I knew they were sawing back and forth.  Then I started
having these little accidents, cleaning fluid in my water bottle,
something the matter with my car, one of the steps down the cliff was
sawed halfway through and I don't know what would have happened to me
dead, I guess - if Vivian hadn't ...

"If she hadn't.  . ."  He can't go on.

Then suddenly, he can.  "I don't know how she knew.  And then."

Carroll strains to hear words he can't bring himself to say.

"I understood what happened when I was little.  Zane did what he did
because I was in love with her."  Finally he reaches some point he has
been approaching all his life since then.  "No.  Because he was in love
with her."

He stares into this hard truth for a long moment.

Carroll is trembling.  "God."

The silence expands.

"The cliff.  We were out there drinking one nigh I t, the three of us
just hanging out there on the ledge.  It was foggy and Zane and Viv
went back to the house for more champagne.  When they came back down
the cliff steps they were arguing, out loud, that same old fight, you
know.  I think it was over me.  I heard Vivian say, "No!"  Then
something happened in the dark and the next thing I knew I heard Zane
scream.  Vivian was screaming too, crying as if he was killing her, but
it was Zane whose voice was going away.  Down.  I could hear it going
down in stages, a scream coming out of him all the way down to the
bottom of the cliff.  Somehow he had slipped or else she'd pushed him
off the steps.  I heard him howl every time he hit a rock until he hit
the big one and he wasn't howling any more.  God, you should have seen
Vivian.  You'd think she'd lost everything she'd ever cared about.

That's when I knew ... Listen.

"This is the worst part."  He drags his fingernails down his face.  "I
was nothing, compared to Zane."

Gently, Carroll touches his sleeve.

"I knew we could never be together."  He rattles like a cheap machine
held together with safety pins.  "The widow.  No.  She loved Zane like
part of herself."

Now he looks up at her.  "Maybe he was."

Once again Carroll is struck by the shadows in Kurt's face too much
like Steve's at their first meeting, she recognizes the traces of deep
grief.

"Whatever he was, his death was destroying her.  With him gone, she
might as well be dead.  She ran away."

So they are at the intersecting point.  Carroll gasps.

t see him cry "I never knew if she killed He ducks so she won him.  I
never wanted to know."

"Let me get you some coffee."  She feels like a fool because it's all
she can find to say.

Is o that's why I had to come.  Even though I don't have anything
certain, I knew I had to come.  When I leave here I'm going to
Tennessee to see Hal Oliphant.  He may know what to do to keep this
thing from happening and if he doesn't He keeps trying to find the
right piece of the problem to lay out for her.  "At least he can tell
me what it is."

"I'm sorry," she says.  "I am.  But so far you've told me a lot of
stuff about the family and nothing about the kids."  g terrible in
"It's the blood.  I talked to the priest.  It's something the blood."

"Not Vivian.  You were in love with Vivian."

"And I was afraid of her."  Drained, he sits with his elbows on his
knees and his head bowed.  His voice comes from a deep, murky place.

"And I'm afraid of her girls."

"But they're only children."  She hears her own voice break and hates
herself for this weakness.  "Steve's children."

He won't stop.  "And somewhere deep they're Oliphants."

She hates her tears.  She wants to hit him for bringing her this close
to the edge.  "Well that isn't enough."

"Did you know that their dolls used to fight and kill each other?"

This brings her to her feet.  "I think you'd better go."

He studies her.  "I guess I'd better."  Rising, he looks at his o the
airport now.  When watch.  "I'm supposed to be on my way t I come back
maybe I'll have something ... Try to look at it this way something that
will keep this -" Baffled, he shakes his shaggy head.  "This whatever
it is - from happening again."

"If you're late, you'd better hurry," she says when what she means is,
please leave.

He lingers on the porch.  "Look, I'm sorry.  I'm sorry about ev I Why
can't he erything but what I in hoping is.  I just want ...

explain?  He can't.  He shakes I his head again.  t finish.

"So thanks for coming.  I in sorry I can't."  She doesn Can't believe
you.  She can't afford to believe him.  This is already hard enough.

Inside she hears the phone ringing - Charley, probably - she hasn't
phoned in - and she hopes Laine will pick up.

She wants to slam the screen and turn her back on him but there is
something so shaky and vulnerable behind the scowl that she can't.

He seems to be being tugged in different directions - toward the car,
back into the house.  He waves the left arm distractedly, a gesture so
earnest and unselfconscious that it completely disarms her.  By this
time they are both crying.  Backing away he says, "Oh look, take care
of yourself, OK?  Please take care."

And she is sorry about everything - that they met this way, that they
are at cross-purposes, that they are both so torn by circumstance that
they can'tjust meet and be friends and maybe even something more.  She
is aware of Laine bustling and pulling her sleeve, yes it's Charley on
the phone, he says it's urgent, and so even though some part of her
wants to go running down the walk with Kurt Graver and get into his
car, Carroll turns to her aunt.  "What, Laine.  What is it?"

When she turns back she's lost him.  She hears him gunning the motor as
he throws the car into gear and takes off.

T H E S TA K E S just went up," Charley says.  "By tonight every major
daily in the state is going to have somebody over here.  Ten more
minutes and we're standing in line to talk to our own sources."

Behind her in the hall Elaine is jiggling up and down in agitation.

Now that Kurt is gone she wants Carroll to apologize, she wants to
apologize, she wants to know what Charley Penn has to say that's so
important.  Carroll turns her back on her aunt, hunching over the
receiver "What's going on?"

"There's been another murder.  They found him late last night.  Same
deal."

Carroll's voice is sharper than she intended, "What do you mean, same
"You know.  No apparent marks.  Local kid named Randy Hummer, fry
cook at Frisch's Big Boy."

"At the mail, right?"  Carroll's jaw unclenches.

"Yeah, that one," Charley says, so intent on the next thing that he
mistakes her question.

he mall OK, she thinks, misapprehending his answer.  Better at t
than.

Than what?  She's too pressed to name the thing she's afraid of.

"Anything in common with the others?"

"Too soon to tell.  He was single.  Last kid in a big family.

Twentysomething, went to junior college nights.  I've sent Russell out
to the house to try and get a picture."

She notes this and files it, Russell off in the suburbs, out of the
thick of it.  "Where's the body?"

IC ounty medical examiner's working on it.  They got him in on his day
off because they didn't want to leave it to the weekend staff.  They
know this is big."

"Terrific."  Carroll has the phone caught between her shoulder and her
chin so she can make notes in the reporter's notebook she packs like a
revolver.

It's more than a tool of the trade.  Carrying it makes her feel
stronger.

"Cause of death?"

"They aren't saying."

"You said no marks."

"No apparent marks."

"Then how do they know it's murder?"

"They know.  Theyjust won't say.  The press conference is set for
noon.

A canned statement, probably.  We need to find out more than the chief
wants to tell us."

"I'll get on it."  As she makes notes Carroll is aware of a general
uneasiness whose source she can't locate.  She can't ask the question
until she figures out what it is but there is a question nagging her.

What she asks instead is, "What's going on?"

"I don't know.  Nobody's used the words yet but everybody's thinking,
serial killer.  A first in this county.  it's your job to get somebody
to come right out and say it."

"You've got it."  Question, she thinks, because And it's my story.

ed to ask Chariev one this other thing is still bothering her.  the
more question.

"You need to work fast.  We were here first, it's our town and it's
your story."

"You want me to cover the press conference?"

"I'll do that.  The TV guys will catch most of it anyway.  You can go
deeper.  Get with the coroner."

"What about Russell?"

"Russell.  Oh, Russell."  Charley's impatience gives her a lift.

"Russell can't get shit out of a baby.  I need you on this."

Question, Carroll thinks, without knowing why she's so uneasy.  What is
it I need to ask?  Oh.  The body.  "Where did you say they found the
body?"

"Just about the same place as the other one."

She discovers she's leaning forward, rushing toward the answer she
wants to hear.  "In the mall parking lot, right?  Somebody must have
gotten him coming out of work."

"No.  The beach.  I thought I told you.  It's the same deal as Lanny
Raynor."

"The beach."  There it is.  It leaves her chilled and queasy.  To think
the girls were there yesterday, to think she was going to let them go
today.  "Are they going to close the beaches?"

"No.  The park police came at me with the usual reasons, request from
the cops and the county sheriffs office.  Don't alarm anybody, don't
tip off the perp, you know.  Until they know what they have, it's
business as usual.  I ... He senses a disturbance at her end.  "What
did you say?"

"Something's come up."  She can't wait to get off the phone.  "That I
have to do."  Close, she thinks, with no way of explaining even to
herself what's implied here.  Too close to home.  Anybody could get
hurt out there.  "I have to speak to my kids before I leave."

"Your kids?"

Flustered, she rushes him off the phone.  "OK, OK, Steve's kids."  She
hurries upstairs to wake the twins.

The beach.  She doesn't want her girls going anywhere near the place.

She'll make Laine take them to Orlando if she has to, anything to keep
them off the beach until this thing is over.  Even if it means waking
them up to tell them, she has to settle this.

It's only when she stops cold inside the door to the twins' empty
bedroom that Elaine catches up with her.  The beds are still neatly
made with the ancient Bates spreads pulled tight, just the way Laine
left them yesterday.  The precision with which the pillows are centered
and the spreads tucked on all sides makes it clear they haven't been
slept in.  What is unusual in the context of the twins' ritualistic
neatness is the fact that the rest of the room is a mess.  The top
dresser drawer is open, trailing beach shirts and bathing suits, and
discarded tank tops and flowered boxer trunks are in in a path to the
mirror as if before they left for the beach strew the girls had tried
on and discarded a dozen costumes.

"I "Those children, Lain e says weakly.

"I thought they'd sleep late today."

"They went to bed so late."  "it looks like they didn't sleep at all.  At
least, not here."  Elaine is so pink with anxiety that it's clear she's
afraid Carroll is going to ut all night?"  blame her.  "Oh my God.

What if they were o he next thing "They were still here first thing
this morning."  T uickly that she almost doesn't hear what comes out of
Carroll so q e attic."  she's saying.  "I heard them in there.  "I told them
not to go to the 'Laine murmurs at cross-purposes beach alone any more,
all those bikers and tough trash and nobody to protect them."

"At least I think I heard them.  I was so sleepy.

"I told them not to go at all."

"I took something last night because I couldn't sleep and I was so
grogged out that I wasn't really awake, either."  Carroll shakes her
head to clear it of fuzz, she can still feel the aftereffects.

'Laine is "I told them not to go alone, but they went anyway." 
completely wrapped up in her own sad little recital.

resin flashes, "I just hope the cops aren't Carroll gets pictu police
turning up some grim evidence as her girls cross the sand and happen
into one of those shocking moments people never get over.  What if they
accidentally stumble on a body?  Or meet the murderer?  "I'm going to
get them."  o take them."

,Why didn't they wait?  Peyton promised t Carroll is worried now,
rushed, but this does not go by unmarked, Peyton.

She kept one step ahead of her uncle all through haned made her her
adolescence but she was different.  Being orp tough and resourceful and
these girls are ... Beautiful, she thinks.  Satiny and privileged and
completely unused to the rough world outside their grandmother's
grounds.  They're only children.  Got to keep an eye on Peyton.

"I don't want them going anywhere with Peyton."

Even though this isn't her fault Elaine is so busy trying to make
amends that she doesn't hear.  "Peyton can do it.  I'll get him up.

No, I'll go myself.  I'll take an umbrella so I can sit out on the sand
and keep an eye on them.  It's OK, Carroll, it is.  I'll keep a close
eye on them."

"Thanks, but no.  They have to come home."

"Then I'll go right out there and get them for you."

"Elaine, I need to do this."

"But you have all this work!"

"Don't tell me what to do, OK?"

She stops just long enough to call the coroner while he's still
reachable.

At first she thinks she's already too late because she gets the
machine.  But the doctor hears her leave her name and picks up.  "Sorry
to hear about your husband.  Why did they send that kid to talk to us
yesterday, instead of you?"

"Oh Sam," she says, falling into the old routine, where were you
yesterday when I needed you?"

"The fools said the Dispatch called."

"I am the Dispatch."

"Not these days.  I thought it was that dumb kid they sent.  No body
said it was you."

"What's the cause of death?"

Because she and the medical examiner are friends, she gets more from
him than Russell ever could.  She's mulling the information as she
drives to the beach.  Like Lanny Raynor's, this body bears no
immediately visible signs of trauma, but close investigation .  . . "I
don't have to tell you to let the chief think he's breaking the news,"
he said before he laid it out for her.

"One's a coincidence, two is strange and three's a pattern.  We had to
check the first one pretty thoroughly before we found the puncture
wound.  Yesterday it was the same story, but today we knew what we were
looking for."

Going on yesterday's news, Carroll asked, "The base of the skull
again?"

"No.  That was the first place we checked on Number Two yesterday, but
no soap.  It took us a while, but we found it.  When we started on
Number Three, we knew where to look.  The puncture was right where we
thought it would be."

"So they're all punctures."

"Yes.

if she can just get him to respond to this next thing, she'll have what
Charley wants today.  Using an old reporter's trick she frames "So all
three deaths it as a statement.  All he has to do is say yes.  are
related."  ering, he continues his thought.  "Re Instead of answ
member, both bodies had been in the water.  The wounds were small, but
I they went deep, right straight into the brain.  The punctures were in
the eye socket."

"Ice pick?"

"I don't think so.  There wasn't enough damage at the point of entry.

Whatever it was, it barely grazed the eyeball."

"Who'd know that was how to do it?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," he said and that was all he'd say.

"Anything else you get, you're going to have to get from the county
sheriff or the chief in Jenkins.  it's their territory, and they're in
charge."  lot with a sense of familiarity She pulls into the beach
parking that leapfrogs yesterday and puts her back in high school,
Carroll Lawton, aged fifteen.  She spent her summers hanging around the
Dairy Queen waiting for Bobie or Skeet or somebody else from backed-up
beach buggies with the school to come along in their ja d out there in
the balloon tires, on the way to the ocean.  She'd stan gs watching the
shadows of the palm trees white summer mornin sun got high.  Each
oncoming recede across the parking lot as the car caught her standing
on her toes, straining to see who was at omebody she knew.  the wheel
because sooner or later she'd see s She was a younger, dumber creature
in those days, parked with ow and her hip her elbow on the counter of
the takeout wind and lean out the cocked, waiting for one of the boys
to spot her window, going, Hey babe, come on, life's a beach.

Memory softens her.  "Poor kids.  No wonder they sneaked out."  By the
time she locates the twins just east of the refreshment most
apologetic.  Even in the welter of Satur stand she is gentle, al y
aren't hard to spot.  The sun catches the day beach traffic, the ds,
surrounding them bright hair on their identical shining hea ing parts
with haloes, and their neat bodies lie side by side like mov of the
same machine.  By the time she reaches them, they're sitting up.

They're putting suntan lotion and their little portable radio where did
they get a - into the beach bag and getting ready to go.  It's as if
they have consulted and decided, what, that it's too hot today?  Too
crowded?

Too something, it's clear.  They are more than ready to go.

Without letting her know what they're thinking they pick up their
blankets with sweet smiles and slip into their flip-flops so they can
cross the hot parking lot without burning their feet.

Strange.  Carroll doesn't have to promise to buy them clothes or
jewelry to soften the blow, she doesn't even have to promise to take
them for ice cream to win their acceptance.  It's fait accompli.

There's even an attractive little scramble over who's going to sit in
front, my turn, no, my turn.  The attention is flattering.

It's Em's turn really, they aren't wearing the slap wraps so she sneaks
a surreptitious look at the rings and turns to the wearer of the
sapphire.  "You, Emily," she says.  "It can be your turn."

They both start giggling.

"OK, guys, what is it."

"We swapped the rings."

They're so giggly that it makes her smile.  It's a delight to find them
so relaxed with her.  She turns to the wearer of the ruby.  "OK, Emily
Archer, you and you alone can sit up front with me."

They cover their mouths, still laughing.

"What?"

They're so pleased with themselves that they can hardly speak.  "We
swapped back again."

"OK."  She matches their grins.  "Will the real Emily Archer come sit in
front with me?"  Then, although at times they prefer to sit together in
the back, the one with the sapphire - she thinks it's Em - slides in
front, settling into her seat with a little thump.  The car fills with
the fragrance of shampoo and scented sunscreen released by the
combination of sun and the girls' body temperature.  It is like an
extra presence in the car.

Absorbed, Carroll is deciding which sources to see in which order after
the girls are safe at home, but the silence in the car distracts her.

The girls aren't talking.  They're just going along fixed on something
she can't see.  Because this makes her uneasy she asks, "How was the
beach?"

"OK," Em says.

In back, Jane says, "OK."

When she tries to explain without really explaining that they he beach
for a couple of days, they sit passively and cart t go to t don't
complain.  She says, "Do you feel all right?  Did you get too much
sun?"

They both say, "No, we're fine."

"Look, I'm sorry you have to stay in today, but when I get home
tonight, I'll explain.  If you're bored, Laine can take you to a movie
this afternoon."

"It's OK, we'll watch tapes," Jane says.

"Or MTV," Em says.

"you won't get bored?"

"We have plenty to do."

"OK, if you're sure.  And when I get home tonight, we'll have some
fun."

She doesn't have to promise to take them to the pool at pleased the
Holiday Inn after work but she does, and they seem enough.  "And the
three of us can have supper there.  OK?"  She shoots an apprehensive
glance at Emily, who catches her looking and smiles.  She knows without
having to check in the rearview mirror that Jane is smiling too.  it It
is a surprise, therefore, when back at the house the twins spl' up, one
heading for the bathroom and the other for the second floor back
porch.

It's Em, at least she thinks it's Em, who seems momentarily surprised
that Jane is nowhere around.  With her mouth making an uncertain little
curlicue the child says, "You want to sit on the porch with me?"

Carroll's surprised by the rush this gives her.  I'd love to but I have
to go.  She has twelve things to do before the press conference and for
the moment, forgets all of them.  "You bet."

So there they are sitting in the two rockers, she and Em, creaking back
and forth, back and forth more or less in silence, when her calls.

she ought to be heading over to the newsroom to start on This is nice,
she thinks, but if Em isn't going to talk to me, I might as well go.

As if she's spoken, Emily says abruptly, "So, ah, i somebody, ah.  If
.

. ."  The sentence squeaks to a stop.

so instead of running at She wants to win the girl's confidence her
with questions, the reporters habit, or is it curse, Carroll doesn't
say anything.  instead she rocks and waits.

"If," Steve's daughter says again.

"So, like ... If?"

So Carroll murmurs encouragingly, Squirming in discomfort, Emily says,
"Oh nothing.  just if."

Schooled in getting information out of people, Carroll tries another
old trick, Don't ask.  Tell.  "Look, I know this is hard for you and
all, being stuck down here with people you don't even know, but it's
hard for us too.  I know how hard it is.  And I know how much you miss
your father, it must have been terrible."

This leaves her gasping but she keeps going for the girl's sake.

"It was sofast.  I miss him too, and any time you want to talk about
it.

She's rambling on, babblingjust to maintain the illusion that they're
both talking when Emily cuts her off with a swift, executive chop of
the hand.

Astounded by the silence she creates so authoritatively, Carroll leans
back and waits.

Em clears her throat in a little series of explosions and begins one
more time.  "If somebody ah, did something and something happened She
seems to be gathering momentum.

"Something that.  Then for no reason that Carroll can identify, she
stops.

Alarmed, the girl jerks her head around so fast that Carroll sees white
rings around her irises.  She stands.

"If what, Em," Carroll says gently.

Nothing comes.  She's watching the door.

Carroll prompts.  "If what?"

But the girl remains fixed on the door.  She is fixed on it for a full
minute before Jane Comes out.

"Oh, there you are."  jane's scrubbed face glows.  Her smile is lovely,
melting.  "Em, come on.  It's time to get ready.  Laine is taking us to
the mall."

Something makes Carroll cry, "Wait!"

Emily is already at her sister's side.

"Tomorrow.  It's my day off.  Let's do something."  She has to think
fast, their faces are already glazing over with impatience.  "Tell you
what.  We'll drive to the lake."

"Lake?"

"Inland, by a couple of hours.  Picnic.  We'll rent a boat.  What do
you think?"

One says, "We don't know."

The other says, "We'd like it."

As they turn to go she calls after them because strange as they are,
they're Steve's - no, hers.  They're hers now and she wants more than
anything to please them.  "Don t forget, as soon as I get off work,
we're going swimming."

Emonamus, queen.  You watch your mouth or I will watch it for you.

- Emenan)'a, janemanja, I'm so scared.  Too much!  I'm sick of this.

- Not!  It's only starting.

- So man police on the beach.  What - y if they catch us?

With what?  We tied him to the buoy.

- What if hefloats up?

We tied him way down, OK?  At the tippy bottom of the cable.

- He was so cute.  I liked him.

- He disobeyed the queen.

- But they all keep disobeying us.  Nobody behaves!  I don't want to do
This.  I want to stop.  We have to stop before they catch us, and if
you won't stop then I'll have to stop us.  Ow!

-Nobody stops the queen.  Now shut up or I the queen will shut you.

- Ow.  Don't!  Ow ow!  What are you doing?

- Changing rings, OK?  Now shut up or I'll do worse to you.

- Don't, please!  Stop hurting!

- Then change rings with me.  That's good.  Again.  Again.  We change
so many times that we forget whose rings they are.  And which we are,
OK?  OK, better.

Now you are I and I am you and if you say one word to one single person
about this you know what I am going to do to you.  More changing.  Good
now.  I don't care if you don't want to.  We keep changing until you
forget which one you are, because if you don't, I'm going to have to
kill you.

- Ow, please, ow!  What if they catch us?

- Kill them too.  We are the queen, and we kill who we have to.  Yes.

By the time the day is out Carroll has all the victims'family records
for the story.  She and Charley have a statement from the chief
tentatively labeling these serial killings.  They have his answers to
some of their questions.  They have something quotable about the nature
of the murder weapon, which has not been located.  The chief has one
other thing for her, but strictly off the record.  The two bodies that
washed ashore weren't wearing rings or watches in spite of tan marks
that suggested they always wore them, but that wasn t the strange
part.

The strangeness was that they were both naked.

The mayor is on the six o'clock news live, reassuring citizens that the
police are on top of the problem.  He asks them to exercise caution for
the next few days until Jenkins police apprehend the killer.  The
county sheriff turns up on the opposite channel, telling everybody that
because it happened not in Jenkins but at one of the county beaches, it
is the sheriff who will bring in the killer.

But Lacy has told Carroll off the record that the police don' t have a
clue as to where to start, much less any idea what kind of madman is
doing the killings.  She also says, not for publication, that details
that overlap with the killing at the mall suggest that the killer
comes from Jenkins.

Putting her story together, she keeps whipping her head around to look
at the phone, half-expecting to have somebody call to report that
they've found another body.  Nothing comes in and she goes back and
rewrites her lead with a sense of relief because when she's done she's
done, for the day at least.

Feeling generous, she lets Russell do a sidebar with quotes from the
new v'cum's neighbors and his fellow workers at Frisch's Big Boy.

By the time she gets home the house is in deep twilight.  She stands
for a moment in the dim front hall.  The aunts and the uncle are gone
out for their ritual Saturday night supper at the Mayflower, she
supposes.  For a second she's afraid she's alone here.  All her losses
converge and catch her in the midsection so that she staggers in place,
Carroll now and at the same time that lost child here for the first
time without Violet.

Then she hears the girls.  The sound of their voices draws her through
the front parlor to the music room.  The voices go on and on, twining
in a concatenation of chords and trills that transcends the ordinary.

Whatever they're about, they're deeply engaged in it.

She finds them on the floor in front of Great-Great-Grandmother's
gilded chair under the ancestral tapestry.  The chair was shipped down
to Jacksonville from New York by train after the War Between the States
and it came the rest of the way overland by oxcart.  Pretentious Suzy
makes a big point of this.  "You should be proud of your Southern
heritage."

She is and she isn't.  Even though growing up in this house has left
Carroll with a hatred of antiques, this one is a beauty.  Wooden
cherubs on clouds cavort around the velvet cushion in the back, carved
in fruitwood and gold-leafed by some French craftsman.  Golden snakes
emerge from a rosette at the crown of the design and slither down to
ornament the arms, and the legs are carved to represent vine-covered
trunks of trees whose leaves spread around the base that supports the
velvet seat cushion.

The fight, if that's what it is the girls are engaged in, seems to be
about the chair.  At least she thinks so.

She has no way of knowing.

o engrossed in the business at hand to notice her, the tw' TO ins are
talking.  They go on and on in such recognizable cadences that it takes
her a second to realize they're speaking in that weird language of
theirs, not in isolated words, now, but completely.  It's like nothing
that she's ever heard before.

These aren't the girls she knows.

They aren't like anybody she's ever seen or heard of.  They are
beautiful, absorbed, completely submerged in whatever is going on
between them.  They might as well be two Martians, touching antennae on
some alien chip of rock orbiting endlessly in the peculiar sky of an
alternate universe.

They'vejust come in from a late dinner when the phone rings.  "Are you
all right?"

"I'm fine.  Who is this?"  She already knows but the girls are milling
in the hallway and she doesn't want to have this conversation in front
of them.

"It's me."

"Oh.  Hi.  Can you hold a minute?"

"I just wanted to be sure you're all right."  Forlorn, he seems to be
trying to hold her.

Exasperation makes her brisk.  "I told you, I'm fine.  Now would you
please hang on a minute?"  Carroll props the phone and sees the girls
into the TV room.  She shuts the door before she picks it up again.

She can't say why she keeps her voice low.  "Where are you?"

"Still in Knoxville," Kurt Graver says.  He sounds exasperated.

"They've been giving me the runaround all day.  They won't let me see
him until tomorrow."

She thinks irrationally that she doesn't care if Kurt never sees him.

She can't cope with the twins' grandfather right now.  She doesn't want
any more information than she already has.  Right now it's all she can
do to deal with the girls themselves.  He's waiting so she says,
"That's too bad.  Is there anything else?"

"Not really."  He can't seem to get off the phone.  "I just wanted to
be sure you were OK, OK?"

"Well I am, really.  But thanks anyway."

"Well, great."

"But thanks for calling."

He sounds so sad when he says, "I guess that's it," that she's sorry
when he hangs up, breaking the connection.

I N T H E H I L LS outside Knoxville, it's just getting light.

Sitting in the rented car in front of the posh, secluded country place
where Hal Oliphant is a patient - correction, prisoner, Kurt Graver is
alone with a lot of bad material he doesn't want to think about.  He
fled into the computer network so he wouldn't have to think about it.

Living through his past was tough enough.  Discovering he can't shake
it is worse.

Writing elegant and sophisticated programs, he may even solve some of
the world's problems.  He just can't deal with his own.

He needs to get this over with.  Then he can go back to Jenkins and
take care of the twins for good and all.  He'll get them
institutionalized if that's what it takes.  He'll have them put where
they can, t hurt anybody ever again.

Wait a minute, Kurt.  As far as you know, they haven't hurt anybody.

In his extreme state, facts have blurred and fused.  The generations,
Hal Oliphant and his unknown dead brother, Vivian and Zane, Jane and
Emily Archer have become one.

Is this the puzzle or the key to its solution?

He doesn't know.  So many bad times crowd him that he can't think,
unbidden memories piling up in the car like layers of ghosts.  On top
is the night his mother ran away, riding to her death in Hal's car.

His and Billy's lives were never the same.

An agonized growl makes Kurt jump.  Is that coming out of me?  Idiot.

Be cool.  There's nothing the matter with you.

's itching all over.  Even the inside of his mouth itches.

Things He he's suppressed for years are crowding him but bad as they
are, they aren't as bad as the prospect of leaving the car.  He seems
to be OK about being outside today, he's just a little weird about
getting out of the car.  He can't do it until he has a certain
destination.  He'll be OK when the porch light switches off and the
watchman opens the front door.  Then he can go up and ring the bell.

Until then he's at the mercy of his past.  He's like a pilgrim walking
by a series of roadside shrines, forced to consider the and his faith
in love scenes.  Here's his pretty mother, he lost her hing about her
was negated with the night of the wreck.  Everyt she'd lied.  He sees
five-year-old Kurt playing the discovery that outside with the twins.

Zane's grin still makes him shudder.  He sees Vivian crying, in spite
of his bleeding arm they hug in a silent, binding pact to make it not
make any difference.  Daddy heard him scream.  Sobbing, he fumbled with
a tourniquet.  Zane's mother ran out with her hair down, weeping.

Vivian sent drawings to the hospital and Zane apologized.  So they put
themselves back n again.  Three children, lifelong together and smiled
and bega friends.

But, God!  He used to come in unexpectedly to find the twins in silent
communion.  It was unearthly.  He'd surprise them sitting with their
bowed heads almost touching, Zane and Vivian, Vivian and Zane, and in
the deep, ugly part of him that forever reads the bottom line, Kurt has
to wonder exactly how deep and how far their strange love took them.

So the worst thing, that he can't bear to talk about, is what happened
at the end.  If he didn't tell Carroll Lawton this part it was for a
reason.  it's just too painful.  It beggars the moment in which he
looked down into the blossoming smoke and saw blood spurting from his
wrist.

That healed.  This hurts all the time.

In the end it was his fault, for making Vivian fall in love with ry
person.

For loving her him.  For pretending she was an ordina s old.  After the
accident they went ever since they were five year I behind on playing
in the gazebo at the bottom of the grassy hill ane with their heads
to the Archer place, Kurt and Vivian and Z gether, laughing and
colluding as if nothing bad had ever haping ever would.

pened and noth He got blown up and they grew up together anyway, and by
the time he was at Stanford Kurt knew he wanted to marry Vivian.  She
and Zane were in Florence, studying.  When the twins came back to
California they had stopped being pretty kids.  All three of them were
grown - two grown men and a beautiful woman who loved Kurt, she did!

He told her everything he hoped for and everything that had happened
while she was gone and everything he knew.  He was so stupid he
wondered how Zane knew his secrets too.

When he charged Vivian with it she didn't explain.  She only said, "He
knows everything about me.  He always has."  Flushing, she touched his
cheek.

"Oh Kurt, he's my brother."

Swallowing his memories, Kurt said, "He's my brother too."

He should have paid more attention to it, how uncannily Zane knew
without being told.

Which is what brought Zane into the gazebo one night when he was
supposed to be at a party in San Francisco.  He was silent and
intrusive as smoke.  Kurt and Vivian were together in the darkness, she
burned brightly, so silky that Kurt lost himself in her, making love
fiercely, as if he'd never made love before.  And Vivian?  For the
first time they were alone together and Zane wasn't expected until
sometime near dawn.  Vivian murmured, "So beautiful!

I want us to be this way always."  But Zane?  He had turned the motor
off and left the car outside the gates so he could move silently
through the deep grass.  In the darkness he slipped down the hill and
came into the gazebo so quietly that Kurt didn't know he was there
until he spoke.

He knows now what at the time he refused to recognize.  That the two
were linked and no matter what happened or who tried to come between
them, they were twins first and the bond would always prevail.  Minutes
before, sweet Vivian stopped moving under him.  She was trembling even
before her brother spoke.

Before any ordinary person could have seen or heard Zane approaching,
his twin sister knew.

Rigid and pale, Zane spoke out of a white fury.  "OK, Viv."

She and Kurt sprang up, still clinging.  Kurt couldn't know, but it was
over.  "I love you," Vivian whispered anyway.

Kurt locked his forearms against her back as if he could bind her with
steel.  She pressed close.  Foolish in love he whispered, "I'm going to
take you away."  She didn't speak.  She had lost the power.  She just
raised her hands and pushed him away.  As she began moving him the
sheen of tears blurring her face.

The string of coincidences began.  Falling objects.  Malfunctioncars.

Somebody was trying to hurt him.  Vivian's color changed.  ing When she
touched his mouth her hands trembled.  Kurt thinks now she killed Zane
to save his life.  This then, is how far the twins' e love pushed
them.

Far enough to make Zane try to kill strang Kurt to keep Vivian from
loving him.  Far enough to make Vivian do what she did to save his
life.  e a fresh widow when he went over But she raged and keened like
the cliff.

When the medics brought Zane's body up from the rocks at the in, Kurt
looked into Vivian's eyes and saw there was no room bottom carried for
him.  So he died too.  It killed them all.  As they left there the body
across the highway and through the main gate onto the Archer place,
Kurt reached for Vivian, trying to pull her to his side so they could
walk up the drive together.  "Don't," she cried.  "Don't touch me, I'm
a murderer."

"No," he said passionately, "you're fine.  It was an accident."

Then, God how she pulled back and wheeled on him, Vivian, who bared her
teeth in a flash of savagery, she might as well have I raked them
across his throat.  "Get away!"

"Please," he said, "it's OK, really.  Now we can be happy."  ils across
his cheek, scoring it so he "No!"  She dragged her na hissed at him.

would feel the sting and remember.  Weeping, she So it's this that he
can't tell Carroll.  This, then, is how she demolished him, "it could
havejust as easily been you."

He doesn't want to be alone with this another minute.

nto the modern wing He wants to go past the front desk and where, he is
told, the father of all this is in the psychiatric equivalent of
Intensive Care.  The first year was prepaid, they said.  Committed
himself.

Then things happened with him, they won't say what.  "Heavily sedated,"
they said yesterday.  "Can't talk to you."  s, Florida, police.  They
didn't look He said he was from the jenkin closely when he flashed his
Stanford Computer Center ID.  "He "We'll hold off his meds tomorrow has
to."

"You can try," they said.

until you get a chance to question him, but don't expect much."

father's He expects a lot.  He expects to look into the corrupt eyes
and see Zane Archer's face.  He would like to push it in.

Stand up, you old bastard.  I don't care how sick you think you are.

He'll straight-arm this Hal Oliphant and put some hard questions.  If
the old man really stands for everything that's happened, Kurt will
look into his face and know.  Crazy or not, it will show.

I If Kurt raises even a flicker of the power or is it truth that he can
t describe but knows he'll recognize, he will press until he gets the
rest.  If he has to, he'll batter it out of the old man.  Then maybe
he'll know what to do about the twins.

At nine, they let him in.

They're courteous enough.  At the rates Hal's lawyers are paying to
keep him in treatment and out of jail, they'll do anything for a
person.  They usher Kurt through the Victorian parlors to the new part
of the building, delivering him at the nurses' station.  "There he is,"
the head nurse says, indicating an isolated figure in a wheelchair at
the far end of the gleaming corridor, framed in a window through which
the morning sun shines.  Looking down at Hal's chart she says, "I think
he's aware.  Since you're from the police you already know his
condition makes him immune."

"I'm not here to prosecute," Kurt says.  Questions boil and he can
hardly hear.  "I'm here to find out."

"Don't count on much," she cautions and then adds unexpectedly, "And
whatever he says, don't let him get you upset."

But he is fixed on the figure at the far end of the hall.

Passing half-open doors that offer glimpses of patients pacing,
staring, turning faces to him like wearerless masks, he goes along the
apparently endless hallway, skating over the shiny linoleum on silent
feet.  By the time he reaches Hal Oliphant he's almost figured out what
he's going to say.  A part of him wants to grab him by the throat and
shout, You bastard, you killed my mother, but he won't.  He'll come in
from the direction of reason, hoping to get reasonable answers back.

Light frames the old man with the patrician face and the remnants of
silver hair flying in wisps around the gaunt head.  Hal's face is
raised, halfturned to the window and he does not respond immediately
when Kurt speaks and then waits.  "Mr.  Oliphant?"

In the little interval when he still imagines Hal Oliphant is going to
respond to his greeting, Kurt studies him, the sloping shoulders in the
starched blue pajama top, the garish afghan pulled over the useless
legs.  How could my mother ever have been in love with this?  How could
she give up her life over something like you.

ve come a long way to talk to you."  When it "Mr. Oliphant, I becomes
apparent Hal Oliphant isn't going to speak, Kurt begins.  ,you won't
remember me but I am Kurt Graver.  My mother was Esther Graver.

You wrecked our life but you may not remember her."  hatred or
indifference The steely eyes are filmed, whether with ha he can't
know.

w if twins like you even remember what Kurt says, "I don't kno o.

Good.

Evil.  Are they all the same to you?"  they d le of fluids moving
through He hears nothing but the faint gurg some hidden drain.

"I'm here because Father Franklin Davage told me about that girl that
you probably tortured and killed.  No he didn't tell me v what you said
in that confession but you know and I know you ant to know the truth,
you wrecked wrecked that person.  If you w Father Davage too.

Priests know the devil on sight and I could tell he'd looked the devil
in the face.  Right, Hal?"  one of He imagines he sees a fly walking
across the surface of those unblinking eyes.  He leans close, "And
poor Veda, that you were married to?"  trying to read some hint of an
expression in the face.  "She says you murdered your twin brother.  So
you killed your own brother and you knew what happens with twins like
you but you got married and had twins anyway.  And never told.  And
went on doing like you do.

He can't be sure exactly what kind of map of corruption this old man
followed once he left the Archer place but he can see its traces in the
shriveled face.  But age and disease have reduced Hal Oliphant, his
body has withered and his face cleaves to the skull.  Has all the evil
been leached away along with the flesh?  Kurt hopes soHe doesn't
know.

"What you don't know is that one of your own twin children was a killer
- Zane.  NO.  Vivian did it, but.  No.  It ... I was there and er
but.

. ."  He chokes.  I can tell you that one of your twins was a kill My
God!  Even today he can't say which one.  "Then.  Ah.  Your ied.  She
had twin daughters daughter.  Vivian.  Ah.  She got marr too.  Their
names are Jane and Emily," he says.

The old man doesn't stir.  He just breathes quietly with his thin chest
going in and out under the starched pajama top.  Unnerved, Kurt sees
that under the afghan, his scrawny legs are bare.

"Emily and Jane."  Kurt's voice is shaking.  "Do you know how awful
this is?"

Backlit by morning sun, the old man won't look at Kurt.

"Now Vivian is dead and the twins' father is dead and I can't prove the
girls did it but somebody else is in danger and I need to know.  I
 you, re the
only person who does.  Listen," Kurt says desperately, you have to
help.

"You have to tell me before somebody else gets hurt."  Carroll, he
thinks, realizing this isn't only about stopping the twins.  It's also
about her.

Pressed, he says, louder, "If you don't help me, somebody else is going
to die."

Still the old man does not speak.  Or won't speak.  He Just sits there
with his hands folded on the afghan and his eyes fixed on some point
just outside the window - the top of a tree, perhaps, or a bird
circling in the blue air above the hills of Tennessee.

"Turn around and talk to me, you old bastard."  Angry now, Kurt puts
his hand on the arm of the wheelchair and whirls it around to confront
the old man.

Thus Kurt goes head to head with Hal Oliphant, shouting into his
face.

When he looks into blue eyes milky with full-blown cataracts their
still, shallow surfaces are stupendously blank.  The old man moves his
mouth all right, but there is only noise.  The shapes it makes suggest
cadences, like sentences, but there is no meaning here.  The stroke, if
that's what it is the grim march of ischemic attacks across his brain
has left Hal's consciousness intact, but trapped.  Malevolent but
captive, Hal Oliphant is paralyzed, unable to tell Kurt anything he
needs to know.  At least he can't hurt anybody now.

Bubbling, the old man goes on in a drone that will not separate itself
into syllables and in time, fades into nothing.

Still Kurt stands staring into his face for too long.  Finally he turns
without speaking and starts to walk away.

And is riveted in his tracks by a phlegmy, guttural shout.

"You think I don't remember her?

Trembling, he wheels.

"The stupid little bitch."

Something inside Kurt cracks in two.

Then out it comes, words all mixed with mucus and saliva, so fast and
terrible that Kurt is riveted.  "You think I don't remember her, you
with your agonized face cracked wide and turning grey with guilt over
something you didn't even do.  Don't think I don't remember.  Kurt
Graver, yes!

Don't think I don't despise you too.  I would kill you if I could.  I
would poison you with memories.  You think I've lost all my power, well
wait."

If Kurt raises his hand now to ward off what's coming, it's too late.

Contorted by in issing teeth and the twisted tongue, the words keep
coming out.  "Listen.  I'll tell you everything she and I ever did to
each other, your mother and I, what we did with your father's knowledge
and without, oh yes Billy Graver was afraid of me.  I could have had
you killed.  His baby boy.

Which he knew.  This was the nature of our unwritten contract, see?

is only son's safety, in exchange for which "H .  . I took certain
pleasures."  Air r olis around somewhere inside the old man and lets
itself out in what may or may not have been a laugh.  And he resumes.

"Pleasures, yes.

The words are so distorted by the disability of the speaker that
they're hard to make out.  Repelled as he is, Kurt finds himself
leaning forward so he can make the twisted sounds make sense.

The old man's tongue lolls but still he speaks.  "Billy turned his back
and let it happen.  He did it for you.  I wanted more.  I had to throw
it in his face.  You bet I remember raunchy little underbred Esther
Graver with that hot mouth and her foolish hopes.  I remember my wife
Meredith's face when I came into her bed without even washing Esther's
body off of me.  I remember your fool of a father, the agony of
betrayal twisting his stupid, noble face, and as for you, you were too
little to factor.  A baby.  You were nothing to me.  Another newt
wriggling across the face of the universe."

Filmed as they are by cataracts the eyes glimmer evilly.

"A speck on the world I am ordained to swarm over and sully with my
mouth and my hands until it is destroyed.  I do it in the name of US,
whose destiny I alone am left to carry out."

Hoarsely he begins the obscene litany.

us.

"Me and my dearest brother Evan.  Paired in the womb, dark and light.

Death and life.  Evil, good.  Evil wears a smile on its face, while
good frets.

"All human beings are all both evil and good, but some of us are more
one thing than another.  And when we come in pairs ...

"Well.

"When we come in pairs, we come in pairs.

"'Oh look Mama said, after she got over the shock, Twice as much of
everything!"  She was frightened by some of the things I did.  She took
my face between her hands and looked at me with those wet, weak eyes
and when she said it, her voice shook.  My darling Hal.  That means you
can be twice as good.

Mmm hmm?"

"She couldn't know what fierce needs itched inside me, prurient, raging
like scabies.  Like lust.

"Evan knew.

"My brother Evan, who wanted to do good.  D'you know he wanted to be a
priest?

"That priest Davage came around, worrying it.  Worrying over US.  ('Oh
son, son.") Well I showed him.  Sullied and destroyed him and threw him
away.  Try holiness on my brother, will you.  Your hope and God.  God
indeed.  Never mind what lies I told to get rid of him.  Got him
hounded out of our church.  So much for you, Father.  Bye bye.  I would
have seduced him if I could."

Kurt flinches.

The old man sees it and his voice crackles.  "Or you."

Excited by his audience, the old man has wriggled until he slides
sideways in the chair so that his neck bends at a tortured angle and
one foot droops off the wheelchair footrest, it's clear he doesn't
know.  Muscle and flesh are wasted now, everything gone except the evil
spirit that drives the recital.

"And Evan, who should have known where the ugly stories about that
priest came from, my poor brother was too upset to see it.  Good.  He
prayed.

We are two, so we contain twice as much good,' he said.  He's half
right.

"When we come in pairs, we contain twice as much of everything.  And if
one of us is lost, nothing is lost.

"Whatever the other has, the survivor takes on.

"Evil.

"Good.  But good is weakness.  I saw it in Evan."  Something starts
deep in the old man's chest and surfaces as a desperate noise - is he
choking?  Kurt is trying to break free of his own paralysis to pound
the old man on the back when he realizes that, my God, he is
laughing.

"So good is weakness," Hal Oliphant says again.  "And if we discard the
good?

"Then the best survives and triumphs.  Evil.

"Evil.  Yes.  And proliferates.  And makes us strong."

There is that ugly sound again.  Vile laughter that makes Kurt
shrink.

Hal says, "We can do anything.

"US.  Me and Evan.  For I contain everything he was.  First it was US,
brothers in the flesh and in the bone.  Brothers in the soul, and the
current that flowed back and forth between us was stronger than any
force outside the pair, Mother.  The church.  The thing that bound us
came out of the major force that drives the world it we were bonded.

Evil.  Good.  and in "If I got drunk, my brother staggered.  When I
soiled a woman, he groaned in shame.  He caught me with a girl we
knew.

I had my g her open like a Delaware River shad knife, I was layin
"Look.  I grinned with glittering teeth "Yes it was a test.  He
failed.

My twin .  You want?

who did not have to scream for me to hear him screaming.  Noooo.

410 f course he had to die.  Never mind how.  And if it was like like
something more - that itch cutting out my own heart it was e squirm
elevated me.  I was writhing in evil joy.  or lust that made in "It made
me howl in pleasure."MORE."

"So if Evan hated the evil in us, then that evil was all mine.  And if
when I cultivated it, poor Evan tried to stop me ... Well.

"So in the end it is I. I became the repository of all the good along
with all the goods that we had shared and I alone harbored all the evil
resident in any two people.  Me.  With power comes responsibility.

When I finished with Evan the fucking frightened bastard wept like a
baby, not because he was dying but for what I, his twin brother, his
murderer, was becoming.  Had become.

"Look on my works ye mighty, and despair.

"I do what I must.  I will do it for as long as I can."

The old man is breathing heavily now, exhausted by his recital, and in
the silence Kurt gathers himself because he's scorched by what's just
happened here, raw in every nerve and fiber, drymouthed and beyond
tears.  Drained and shaking as he is, he has to pull himself
together.

He's just about to do it too, he's touched the wall to ground himself
and has begun backing along the endless stretch of corridor between him
and the nurses' station when the old man's voice catches him like a
bullwhip.  Paralyzed as he is, slanting sideways in the chair and
unable to right himself, Hal

Oliphant maims Kurt as surely and as permanently as Zane did when he
took his hand.  Every morning for the rest of his life Kurt will wake
up trembling.

"Fuck yes I remember her, your mother, that stringy, lascivious vain
little hungry bitch with the wet eyes and the dirty mouth and her heels
around my neck, I remember every woman I ever did and every evil thing
I do.  All the evil I am meant to do.

"So I rejoice, looking at you with the blunted arm and the agonized
face, because without being told I can see the marks of my only son on
you.  Evil lives.  It makes me proud.  Too bad his weak sister made
Zane die, but even that ... The evil persists.  It traveled through
her.  He took your hand, my Zane, but that's not a patch on what I
took, I took your mother and destroyed your father, yes.  I am the
king.  I took your life.  WAIT A MINUTE THERE," he gurgles as Kurt
finally pulls loose and starts moving.

"Slippery, hot Esther Graver, who wanted to sing the songs I was
humming.

She believed everything I said.  It was dropping a stone in a pond and
watching the rings of pain go out like ripples, while I sat laughing on
the bank.  WHERE ARE YOU GOING?"

But Kurt won't answer and he won't turn back.

Still the old man's voice follows him.  "For every evil act demands an
audience."

Until Kurt disappears around the corner and the speaker trails off.

"There is no performance without applause."  The old man tries his
voice again and finds that the only thing he can make come out is
unbroken, unpunctuated noise.

But shit, fuck, slithering excrement and dust and my own voice
struggling to get out and all I can make are these noises that make the
nurses laugh.  Damn you forever, you with your hurt look and all your
petty urgency, you don't even hear.

Don't think I don't want to tell you about your mother.  I want to
watch you wince and see her sins marching across your face.

And don't think I wouldn't rub yourface in the details if I could.  Id
tell you everything we did to each other and all the filthy things she
said to me in the middle of our secret bouts of sex.  If you can
imagine it, that dullnormal byproduct of some guttersnipe's coupling
had hopes and dreams, she wanted me, the foolish little pile of guts.

She thought we were in love!  And I?  If I could I would level the
halls of this hospital with my huge voice.

Then you would know what I thought of her.

Of all of you.

But my tongue swells up in my mouth and I can't speak.  My body won't
obey and the selfish nurse bitches leave me in this chrome-and plastic
torture instrument, and if I slip sideways, too bad.  All the evil I am
piles up nt'l I gargle to let t out but my limbs fail and my throat
inside like vomit u i clogs so I'm lodged sideways like a broken doll
with a plast'c smile on my plastic face.  I HATE!

lone, with nobody left to notice and nobody to be hurt by what I do or
say.  The lust ZS on me, it's burning me up!  The itch is killing and I
can't scratch.  My life is a trap!  Born to destroy, and now ...

The miserable God of that craven cleric Davage has struck me down.  he
corridors of the underworld with no I'm mute as a mole snuffling along
t way to strike and no more ways to hurt, all the hate in the world
bolls up in me like pus with no way to erupt, and I am powerless.  I
can't shoot you or stab you or lie about you or push you under a
truck.

I can't tell you that I wanted to kill your mother, all right, but she
was the one who wrenched the wheel.

Trapped as I am, I can't even hurt you with lies.  You may think death
ZS the ultimate punishment, but this stinking earthly prison is
worse.

If I strain at the tray I can push my food off on the floor while they
aren't looking.  A pathetic means Of revenge, the only power left to
me, when they remove the plastic bib I can puke in their hands, and
when they change these miserable plastic diapers they have to throw the
rag over me fast or else -just watch, ha ha I can pee in their face.

That's all!

And yet.  And yet.

I live again.  My child has children, so it lives again.  You meant to
hurt My blood and instead you brought me hope.  There ZS someone to
come next.

willfollow me.

Two girls, not far from here.  Their parents dead, and somebody else at
But instead he gave such risk, this fool has said.  He wanted to
take help, b satisfaction!  Yes!

Yes they come next.  Next they come.

My daughter dies but I live again.

In the next generation.

The next set of twins.

But Kurt is rushing out of the place with his eyes wild and his mouth
stretched wide, gasping for breath in a desperate race for his life.

He'll spend every day of his life from here on trying but he can never
erase the contents of the past few minutes.  Scarified as he is,
tortured and miserable, he has come away with what he flew to Knoxville
to get.  Trying to murder him with words, Hal Oliphant has verified
something that Kurt has suppressed ever since he first fell in love
with Vivian.  In giving him the words to frame it, Hal has brought it
home.

"Oh, God!"

Nurses swivel and stare.  He leaves the place at a dead run.

Kurt is so crazed and the nurses are so distracted that none of them
will see the old man straining in his chair so frantically that he
slips sideways in his rolling daytime prison with his face twisted and
his jaw cracked so that his mouth opens on a crazy diagonal, they won't
hear the cryptic, polysyllabic rambling that goes on and on and on.

At the airport, Kurt hurls himself out of the rental car and heads for
the nearest phone.  Frantic, he spends the better part of an hour
dialing and redialing the house on Arbor Street in jenkins, frustrated
by a busy signal.

He has to reach Carroll, he has to let her know.  As his plane is
called he redials for the last time.  Miraculously, the phone rings and
he is wild because he thinks nobody is going to answer, then at the
last minute she picks upjust as the final call for boarding comes over
the loudspeaker, announcement and he thinks it is her voice
overlapping, he has to take it on faith.  He has only a minute to
explain.  Rushed, he shouts, "It's me."  Then the urgency overtakes him
and before she can say anything beyond hello, he blurts the rest in
desperate haste.

"Evil," he says as the plane boards, and for a second tears strangle
him.

As soon as he can speak he finishes.  "One of the twins is evil and
from generation to generation the problem is, which one.  They're so
close they protect each other."  He is about to die of this.  "They
take on each other's traits.  Eventually one of them dies."

Too stricken to wait for a response or indeed understand who is
listening, he finishes.  He is weeping openly now.  "And until one
does, you have no way of knowing which is which."

EASY ENOUGH for Peyton Larrabie to get rid of his sisters today, they
are like sheep.  He needs them, but he despises them.

He's sent them off for a boat ride in the waters around Apalachicola
with his boss at the insurance agency.  Rudy Benson is happy to do the
favor and he'll keep them occupied for hours.  "I'd I'm having love to
go with you," he told the girls this morning, "but a lot of pain in
this back of mine."

Oh, Peyton," Suzy said with honest regret.

"Poor Peyton."  Patsy's softiowls shook with sympathy.

I'd hate to disappoint Rudy altogether.  That's why I'm counting on
you.  After all, he is my boss."

What about Only Elaine hesitated.  "A boat ride on a Sunday.

church?"

"Oh," he said hastily, "he isn't picking you up until nine.  I told him
you were going to the eight o'clock."  He already knew his Elaine
to pack food sisters would use the hour in preparation for armies and
Suzy and Patsy to try on and discard half a dozen beach costumes.  And
the ammunition he used on Rudy, to set this up for his own
convenience?

"I think my sister Elaine has a thing for you."  OK, he knew enough
about his employer to know his area of vulnerability.  Easy enough for
Peyton to lie.  Then heiced the cake.  "But she won't go unless you
invite the others too."

"Go ahead," he said to each of his sisters separately.  "Don't tell the
others, but I think Rudy has a thing for you."

So he despises his sisters, for being gullible.  For making him the man
of the family when all he wants is to be his own man.  But he needs
them too.

He needs them to look after his creature comforts - clean shirts in the
dresser, hot meals waiting every night, a ready excuse for any of the
women who have tried to marry him.  I can't make any long-term
commitment, I have to take care of my sisters.

This is both true and not true.  It's a two-way street.  His sisters
like having a man around to escort them so they don't look like hungry
women, which is what they are, they feel safe sleeping with their
windows open and taking the garbage out at night.  It's cheap living in
the family home, Peyton can spend his time off in clubs and singles
bars, taking women where he can, snorting and drinking until he's
completely wasted and then retreating until he's ready to fight
again.

It's like living in a well-run hospital.

Which has never been the real thrill.

Never mind what is the real thrill.  Something Peyton does every once
in a while and thinks about perpetually between times.  He loves the
secret slide of his hands in silky, forbidden places.  He doesn't know
what it is about it.  He only knows it makes him feel wonderful.  He
never lets himself notice exactly what he's doing.  Mmmmm.

When Violet's pretty daughter Carroll used to live here all the time he
pursued her down hallways and stalked her at the supper table with his
palms wet and his mouth watering, and if he writhes in frustration now
it's because the girl was quick and wary and never trusted him.  She
would have hit or yelled or both.  She and the guardian aunts stood
between him and what he wanted.

That and the pressure, what would happen if he made a misstep and
exposed his guilty secret to them.  It would have been the end.

But now he's looking forward to a day alone with the twins.

Those pretty, tawny things with their sultry, veiled looks, He thinks
they may even be looking forward to a day alone with him.

Ever since Carroll brought the girls into the old house, some,thing has
changed.  The place is so filled with new possibilities that
everybody's on edge.  Peyton himself has been squirming in
anticipation.  His mind rings a change on the chewing gumjingle, double
the trouble, double thefun ...

He's been busy planning.  Buying presents and taking them out to dinner
with one of his sisters at the table, not a chaperone exactly.  More
like a heard.  Do not think my intentions are really my intentions.

Collecting their polite kisses at supper, passing them in the hallways,
this close.  Succulent girls, beautiful, and with an off-thewall glint
in the china-blue eyes that makes him think he's on to something
special.  He can hardly wait to be alone in the empty in by this time
because of all the house with the twins, who like hi read them stories,
presents, who will sit on his lap and let him which is the best
beginning.  r - trying the youngest This, then, is the secret thrill he
lives fo and sweetest, taking from them.  This has always seemed best
to him, aging Peyton, who spends his best moments not in the act with
some compliant mature female, but in just this kind of crazed
anticipation of the one thing he's not supposed to have.

There will be an event today.  He'll see to it.  It will be subtle,
with the little dears.  just far enough slight - he never goes too far
to get that thrill when, cringing, they permit his touch because they
don't know enough to refuse.  Never so far that they go to the police
station and press charges, he never gives them anything to tell the
officers.  There will be no way for an outsider to took at them and see
what's happened.  All he wants is a little private, secret time in
which he can get too close and do some things.

So he's sent his sisters off to Apalachicola for a day trip on his
boss's Chris-Craft.  The stupid, frustrated old girls can bomb around
the bayous all day and come back tonight limp with exhaustion, with the
skin on their Larrabie noses crisp from too much sun.  And Peyton will
greet them at the front door with a big smile and his face gleaming
with innocence.  Unless the boat drops into the Bermuda Triangle or
they're blown to perdition.  Then he will have the house to himself.

He and these foxy girls can settle in for a long spell alone.  There's
food for the month in the larder and he has a week's worth of clean
shirts and socks and underwear in his dresser.  He can do just fine
without his sisters.  He wishes they'd never come back.

And Violet's standoffish daughter Carroll is taken care of for now.

She's off at work, she left at dawn, following a hot tip.  He wouldn't
mind if she never came back either, that stubborn little girl has
turned into a militant woman who sees right into him.  She thought her
aunts would be here when she canceled her trip with the kids for today,
he thinks.  Too bad for you.  Peyton knew what to do.  He called Rudy
at seven-thirty this morning, when his boss wasjust putting on his hat
with the fish-flies and sticking a six-pack in a cooler to take on his
boat.

And Peyton?  "Don't you worry about the girls," he told Elaine, who was
fretting as she put deviled eggs into the picnic hamper.

"But I promised Carroll I'd keep them today.  All that trouble at the
beach .  .

"I won't let them get near the beach," he promised.  He was already
listening for their footsteps, his prey.  Where were they anyway?

Sprawled on their beds in their shortie nighties with the matching
ruffled pants?  On the screen porch with their pink feet propped on the
rail, painting their toenails?

Absently, he picked up ajar of celery sticks and jammed it into
Elaine's hamper.

"You know they can be a handful."  Elaine looked tired, torn.

He played on her weakness.  "Rudy Benson would be disappointed if you
didn't come."  He lowered his voice, sinking the hook.  "To tell the
truth, he planned this whole thing especially to see you."

Poor Elaine.  This is how she relinquished responsibility, in a voice
shaky with uncertainty.  "Carroll doesn't want them anywhere near the
beach."

"No problem."

She wouldn't let go.  "I promised her to keep them home today."

"Home.  I promise.  We'll have a good time."

Elaine was so intent on Rudy Benson that she didn't catch the
overtones.

"We need to keep them safe today.  All that Her voice broke as she
repeated, trouble at the beach."

"Don't worry, Laine.  We're a million miles from the beach.  Peyton
picked up the plastic bag of peaches and stuffed it in the hamper
without regard for bruising.  "Or we might as well be.  I promise,
Laine.  I'll take good care of them."

Now they are gone and the house is his.  Standing in the kitchen, he
can hear his niece Carroll's charges stirring in the back bedroom above
him.  He calls.  "Oh, girls."

When they don't answer, he goes to the bottom of the back stairs and
calls again.  "Oh, girls."

He hears them giggle.  He hears bare feet scurrying.  He tries again.

"Oh girls, I've got something for you."  And when nobody answers he
starts up the stairs.  "All right for you, then," he calls.  "Here I
come."

As Kurt speaks the Archer twins face each other with strange smiles.

They recognize the voice.  The bold twin puts her fingers over her
mouth.  Her sister puts her fingers over her mouth.  They don't
identify themselves.  When he hangs up, they repeat.  "Eventually one
of them dies."  They grin, one says, "In hell."  The other f knowing
parrots him.  "Until one of them does, you have no way   They shed
which is which."  This is too much to consider. the ry themselves after a
shower that words like puppies shaking to d nge looks.  If one of them
is wets but does not drench.  They excha unsettled by the events of the
past few days - the suddenness, the violence, now this, there is no way
to tell by looking at them which one it is.  As the message finishes,
the girls grimace.  both with I says.  She surprises them 'Prince
Kurt," the bold one a smile.  "Did you hear that?  He's on his way." 
here soon," the other says apprehensively.  Jade, "Kurt!  He'll be
hanged the rings again so no outor is it Emerald?  They have exc going
to do?"  sider can be sure.  "What are we dy."  The the kingdom, of
course.

It's almost rea "Take him into e machine, "Prepare to meet your bold
one says to the mut queen ...

The other shrinks.  "Oh cut it out.  I'm afraid."

"TO o late for afraid, OK?"  ave always loved."  They are agreed "But
our prince.  That we h on this.  Or are they?  "What if he She can't
finish.

I "He's mine."

"Mine,' the bold one says nsettled, she goes on.  "Maybe And her
sister?  "No, he's mine."  U em.  He hates us.  You heard."  not either
of ours, janemanjen oming all this way to get us, right?" "I did!

That's love.  He's c us how?"  ut her twin remains apprehensive.  "Get
B .  h a terrible grin.  "Get "I don't know."  The bold sister goes on
wit us in love, I think.  We are the queen."  id love us.  He sounds so
stern, so mad!" "If only he'd im, that's all."

'He's afraid we don't love h the of them dies.  Aren't you scared?"

"But what he said, se ...

"What's scared?  He loves us, right?  The queen.  Or el makes a gesture
they both recognize.

"Oh no, not again."

"What s one more?"  ape by.  "He does "No!"  Thinking fast, she builds
a ladder to esc love us.  He just doesn't know it yet.  We just have to
make him know it, right?"

This brings a sly smile.  "Men-hmmm."  The bold sister's arms describe
a sensual, intricate tangle of bodies.  "You and me, Emerald and jade
and him, him and jade and Emerald."

" She

This is moving too fast!  Her twin shakes her head.  "Too many too
soon.

He's so square!  One of us, I think, just one to start with, and when
he loves us enough.  .

"We'll switch.  Me first."

"No, me.  It was my idea."  Cleverly, she waits to see how her bold
sister will take this.

She is considering.  She has dark plans of her own.  "But if it doesn't
work.  - ."  Her hand slashes the air.  "Got him.  Krazgo."

"Krazgo nervous.  Please don't get him!  We love him."

Relentless, her sister shrugs.  "Or not.  It all depends.  Let's go fix
the room."

The careful twin is biting her knuckles.  "What are we going to do
about the Peyton?"

"Oh, that.  Our prince won't see.  The Peyton was an asshole anyway."

"Too much!  Too many!"

"We had to do it."

"Well I don't want to do it any more."

"Then get Prince Kurt for us."

Therefore when the worried Kurt Graver arrives at the Larrabie house on
Arbor Street near three on that sunny Sunday, the I Archer twins are
waiting for him.

Or one of them is - Her hair is freshly washed and brushed dry in the
sunshine so that it has a lemony glow.  She has on a rhinestone ankle
bracelet and rhinestone earrings that look like full-fledged
chandeliers.  Her mouth is colored and she's even put mascara on those
thick black eyelashes.  It has taken her a long time to prepare.  She's
sitting in the glider at one end of the front porch in laced sandals
that twine up her long, perfect legs and a white dress that makes her
look even younger and lovelier than she is.  The corner is overgrown
with honeysuckle and the leaves make such complicated patterns on her
face that he has no way of interpreting her expression.

He says, "You remember me."

She smiles but does not speak.

"I'm looking for Carroll Lawton."

When the girl doesn't answer he tries, She still doesn't answer.

"Jane?"

Kurt says warily, "Emily?"  ow.  When she answers, her voice i Her face
is in shads soft.

"Whatever."  Then she astounds him.  "I'm So glad you've come."

This makes him fall back a step.  ,You two have always hated me."

"Oh, no!  we just didn't know how to let you know."  Emotion makes her
voice shaggy, like deep velvet.  "I'mjust so glad."

Careful, he thinks, but he also thinks he may have walked into exactly
the circumstances he needs to resolve this.  He's caught one of the
girls alone and if it's what, the good twin .  . . "Where's your He
doesn't know the right word for the relationship.

"Where's Ms.  Lawton?"

"Something came up."

"Is she at the paper?"

"Yes.  No.  Maybe.  I A series of expressions races across her face.

don It know."  Then she looks at him brightly.  "She'll be back soon,
if you want to wait."

"How soon?"

"I don't know.  You can sit with me."

He tries again.  "Where is she?"

Her face is locked tight as a china box.  "Something came up, I
said."

Beautifully groomed and made up as she is, even w hinestone chandeliers
glittering at her earlobes, the g ith the r irl looks about twelve
years old.  Together, the twins have always been in scrutable, powerful
because they move in tandem, the invincible matched pair.  Their
defenses are impregnable.  Taken one at a time, Kurt thinks, they may
be different.  He looks at the twin, who shifts as if to make a place
for him on the glider.  Her sweet expression is disarming.

Separated like this, they're not anything terrible.  After everything,
they're only little girls.  He makes his voice gentle.  "Can I talk to
you alone?"

She greets him with a little shrug.  "I am alone."

"Where's your sister?"

She does not answer.  "Sit down."

Is this what I have to do to deal with them?  Divz'de and conquer?  He
sits.  A long time passes.  He thinks he knows how to begin.  "I saw
your grandfather."  What does he expect her to do, break down and
confess everything?  What's she got to confess?

She doesn't even stir.  "Our grandfather is dead.  Did you really Come
to see us, Kurt?"

"Sort of."  She looks so pretty and unsullied, so pleased to have him
be here that he's almost ashamed of his real reasons for being here.

"Yes."

She smiles and considers.  The silence is profound.  It is like waiting
for a clock to strike.  Then in a fluid movement so swift and natural
in its passion that he is astounded, she softens and relaxes against
him, body pressed to body, heart close to pumping heart.  "I knew you
had.  I knew you belonged to us."

"What!"  He tries to pull back.  The girl's arms tighten around his
neck as he says, "I - what?"

She does not so much slide as flow closer with her mouth touching his
ear.

"Prince Kurt.  We've been waiting for you.  You don't know how long
we've been waiting for you and listen, yes we do love you, yes, and if
you love us .  . ."

Her soft lips slide down his jaw, moving toward his mouth as she keeps
g like warm breath mingling
with his.

just say you love us, OK, OK?"

"Don't!"

Her hands are at his throat, sliding up, around the back of his neck
and then slithering down as she murmurs, "You will be our best knight,
our best, most beautiful prince."

To his horror Kurt feels his body responding and in a desperate thrust
he pushes her head away with his right hand.  "What are you doing?"

"Don't," she cries, and trying to pull him close she whispers harshly,
"Please stay, it's important."

"I can't!"  Then as she gurgles and cries out Kurt straight-arms her
with his stump.  And as he jumps to his feet and makes for the porch
rail without regard for the drop he sees her twin sister roar out with
her hair flying and her teeth bared, hurtling out the front door and
thudding along the porch like a witch with skewers for fingernails, but
who is she angry at anyway, lunging in his direction with her eyes wide
and her mouth ajar like a heartrap ready to snap shut?

Oh God, he thinks, vaulting the rail as the girl on the swing hurls
herself between them.  God, he thinks, landing below with a thud that
squeezes out all the breath he has.  What's going on?

But on the porch above him, sister has fallen on sister now, he can
hear them hissing and raging.  The good one and the bad one, he thinks,
because he thinks the one is grappling for freedom so she can pursue
him and the other's struggling to hold her back so he can escape.

They're entwined now, snarling, so tightly knotted that there's no
telling which is the good twin, if there is a good one, and which is
the twin to fear, so that instead of staying to see how this resolves
itself or to step between them and help resolve it, Kurt Graver, who
has been through a lot, picks himself up almost before his breathing
has jump-started and crosses the lawn and gets in the car.  He locks
himself in and for a second sits at the wheel and trembles, shocked by
the violence and even more shocked by his own susceptibility.

Shaken and humiliated, he thinks, Maybe it i'sn't them.  Maybe it was
me.

There he was in her arms, caught short and practically sucked in like
some half-assed Lancelot, too homely and pure and stupid for his own
good.  And even now he doesn't know which one is good and which is bad
or whether they both need to be destroyed.  But how can you destroy a
child, when you don't even know whether she's guilty or innocent?  Can
you destroy a child at all?  He thinks he can hear old Hal Oliphant
laughing, I tried to tell you.  What?  The whole thing makes him feel
filthy, violated, soiled.  Unaccountably guilty, he's so preoccupied by
his own weakness here that he hardly notices when the Chinese puzzle of
arms and legs and fingernails and gnashing teeth rolls across the porch
and separates in a single graceful movement.  For a second the girls
stand, facing.  Then the one twin follows the other who runs,
screaming, into the Larrabie house.

Blind to this, Kurt guns the motor, and too pressed and rattled to make
a K-turn, he backs down Arbor Street to the cross street, where he
straightens the car and roars toward the newspaper offices, whose sign
he passed on the way in.  It's all he can manage right now.  He needs
to talk to somebody who understands, and if she doesn't understand, he
has to shake her and yell into her face until I she does.  He should
have stopped and called ahead, but there was no going into the house.

Maybe he should call the police, but he's not sure what he has to
report.  Besides, there isn't time.  Right now Carroll Lawton is the
most important thing.  He has to catch her before she heads home.

He can see the Dispatch sign some blocks ahead.  It seems so close!

He has no evidence to convince her, but at least he can keep her from
going into that house.

Their cars will almost converge three blocks from here in a near-miss
caused by Kurt's anxiety and Carroll's own informed urgency - she's
headed home because she's just found out something she doesn't want to
know.  Each driver is so intent on the problems at hand that the
acquaintances, or allies, pass without recognition and without
reference, like Einsteinian streetcars hurtting into infinity on tracks
that will never meet.

DISTURB ED AND GOADED by a sickening sense of betrayal, Carroll roars
toward the old house on Arbor Street.  She needs an explanation from
Steve's twins.

What's making her sick is the fact that she can't figure out how to
begin.

If she can only do this right the girls will blink in puzzlement and
prove she has nothing to worry about.  They'll give chapter and verse
as to their A hereabouts and which of her aunts was with them at the
times in question.

Wasn't there a thing about Patsy taking them out for the local
equivalent of Fribbles or Suzy getting them gold chains?  She needs to
place them at the mall with Laine or Patsy, or with Suzy at
thejeweler's.  Anywhere except where She's afraid they were.

All she needs is something definitive to tell the police.  You see?  It
couldn't have been them.  The trouble is, she doesn't know.

If she does this wrong, the girls will be offended by her even
asking.

She can see the hurt looks, Em.  Jane.  "You don't trust us."  They'll
withdraw into their innocence and shut her out for good.  She'll lose
everything she's gained in the past few days with them.

But in another hour or two, depending on how quickly the police move,
people are going to be pressing her for an explanation.  She and the
twins have to be prepared.  On what she thinks is slender evidence,
somebody will link Steve's twins with the bad business at the beach.

tness to the beach killings reaches Charley Penn's desk at the It's
only a matter of time before the statement of the apparent WI
Dispatch.

He's always been quick to jump to conclusions.  He's going to look at
the report and call her.  "Twins.  Didn't you say you were taking care
of twins?"  Then he'll call the chief.

Her fault, she supposes, for being so glad to be back that she confided
in him.  She should have waited to tell him about Steve's twins until
.

. . Until what?  She isn't sure.  Until she was feeling stronger?

Until she got over Steve?  Until she took hold with these kids and
learned how to handle them?  She doesn't know.

She does know.  Until I got used to them.

She never should have come back here.  She never should have gotten
involved with this story.  No.  That isn't true.  She needs this proof
that she didn't die with Steve.  Her copy is moving on the AP wire,
which means readers all over the country are reading this story as she
wrote it, under her byline.

If she wants to, she can do a "special to" for one of the national news
magazines or take a run at the New York Times or the Washington Post.

But before she can file today, before she can even start making calls,
there is this detail she has to cope with.  She doesn't know whether
she's angry at the twins for running off to the beach against her
orders or at the alleged witness who called the station early this
morning and messed up her life.

Lacy Cotwell alerted her without even knowing what she was doing.

Ignorant of Carroll's private life, she thought she was offering a hot
tip.  "I thought you'd like to know.  This was on the night man's book
when I came in this morning - call from some lady who lives at the
beach.  I shouldn't be telling you this and you won't let anybody know
how you know, but you've done me a lot of favors and I owe you a tip.

She thinks she can place this person no.  People.  She thinks she can
place them with the victims right before it happened.  It's crazy, but
she says the murderer is twins."

All Carroll's alarms went off at once.  "Where!"

The would-be witness was a weatherbeaten old sand rat who swims a mile
every day.  She starts out at the north end of the public beach every
day and swims to the south end and then walks back.  Approaching the
ramshackle box she lived in, seeing the screens punched out and doors
sagging on their hinges, Carroll was relieved.  just another beach
crazy.

Then the caller came out on the dilapidated steps and her eyes were so
clear in the delicately boned face that Carroll had to think again.

The sun-browned old lady wore a faded white coverall and her white hair
straggled like a heron's nest, but when she spoke the accent could have
been formed at an old-fashioned girls' boarding school like Madeira or
Ashley Hall.

The cultivated voice commanded belief.

"You know how it is when you see something that doesn't quite make
sense to you and your mind turns it around and around until you make it
make sense?"

Carroll nodded.

The old lady said, "You'll go into exquisite contortions just to get
comfortable with it.  Well that's how it was with this.  Three people
go in the water and only two come out.  It didn't make sense."

This was so troublesome that Carroll kept her head bent over her
notebook.

If she couidjust keep writing, maybe she could keep her distance from
this.

"It was so strange that I had to keep telling myself stories to make
the pieces fit.  Even yesterday I told myself there was a perfectly
simple explanation.  The three of them were testing some kind of
underwater breathing apparatus, so the third was still out there beyond
the sand bar, but submerged.

Or else the boy, or man, had sneaked away from the girls underwater and
come out of the water farther down the beach?  I thought he must have
waded ashore while I wasn't looking.  Still it was troublesome.  I told
myself all right, Babs, pass it off, you didn't see anything unusual.

Until I picked up the paper today.  And then!"

There was a silence.  Carroll had so many questions to ask that she
couldn't frame any of them.  She looked up to find the old lady
regarding her with those beautiful, clear eyes.

"Then it did make sense.  What I saw.  Each time it was the same.

Three people would be coming in the water as I swam south, two
beautiful girls and some third person.  Boy.  Or man.  Then when I was
on my way back up the beach on foot, I'd see them coming out.  Where
three went in the water, there were only two of them.  The girls.

Twins."

"What makes you so sure it was twins?"

"I saw them."  Her certainty made Carroll feel foolish for asking.  "I
don't know who they are or who they belong to, but they're beautiful in
their bikinis.  Sweet children.  Lovely tans."

"All right.  Twins."  Carroll was scrambling, looking for an exit.

"What makes you think they were with the victims?"

"Everybody on the beach knows Lanny Raynor," the old lady said.  "And I
recognized the other one's picture in the paper, but I yesterday's
young man "Yesterday's!"  A body I don't know about?

"I'd never seen the boy before.  He looked so young.  You can never
tell how many things you make up in retrospect, but looking back, I
wish I'd found some way to warn him off!"

So there's this, that Carroll has to deal with, the suspicions of an
old lady who doesn't seem at all senile or crazy, and who claims to
have seen her girls.  But look, she tells her unseen adversaries, there
is the business of the puncture wounds.  Too bizarre for kids.  The
murder at the mall was too much like something in the movies, a
puncture wound in just the right spot at the base of the skull.  The
other two were so skillfully placed in the eye socket that they didn't
even rupture the eye.

I My kids would never ... Forget it, Charley.  I'll just have this out
with them and then I can explain.

She pulls up in front of the house.  Suzy's car is gone.  Where are her
aunts anyway?  Even though he's her least favorite relative, she's
relieved to see Peyton's car is here.  She can't say why exact y, but
she just doesn't want the girls to have to be alone.

She notes absently that Elaine hasn't swept the front porch.  It's
gritty with sand from the twins' beach shoes and still littered with
stripped filters from Peyton's cigarettes and crumpled paper napkins
from last night's cocktail hour.  One of the rockers is overturned but
she's too distracted to give it much thought.

Opening the screen door she calls, "Girls?"  The front hall is empty of
everything except the Larrabie ancestral furniture, Eastlake pier table
and carved mahogany side chairs clinging to the wall like huge,
submissive beasts.

"Janey?  Em!"  The girls don't answer.  If she hears a faint ripple of
sound, like a suppressed giggle, she can't be sure where it's coming
from.  They're here, she thinks, relieved.  At least they're safe.  The
hall seems unnaturally dark today, so still that the pattern in the
flocked wallpaper seems to move and the figure in the Persian runner
writhes underneath her feet.  Unaccountably, Carroll finds herself
wrenching the oddly shaped door open so she can took into the closet
under the stairs.  There's nothing there that wasn't already there,
rain gear, dressy coats her aunts bought and stored for special events
that never took place.  She calls her aunts.  "Elaine?"  When there's
no answer she tries Suzy, Patsy.

Reluctantly, she calls her uncle.  "Peyton?"  She's glad when he
doesn't answer.  Better alone than alone in the house with him.

Still she is aware of a stir in the air as if of somebody moving
somewhere just out of sight and so she calls the twins.  "Emily?

Jane?"  Everything is so still that the house might have been deserted
by the last Larrabie some time in the Twenties but kept preserved, a
diorama of the way America used to live.

She checks the downstairs rooms, formal living room with its velvet
portieres, music room, something different but what, dining room with
the surface of the long table completely bare, family TV room looking
too neat for an ordinary Sunday, with the crisply folded Sunday papers
unread.  She flashes on the lost colony in Virginia.  History books say
they just disappeared.  Did searchers come in and find warm pillows
bearing indentations from the heads of late sleepers, and pots still
bubbling on the stove?  It must have been something like this.

She ends in the kitchen, where she finds Aunt Laine's excited little
note.

Apalachicola excursion!!!

Back soon.  I left lunch for the girls.

Don't worry, the note concludes, oh Elaine, you fool!  Peyton's taking
care of them.

Peyton, she thinks with her teeth on edge.  She's left them alone with
Peyton.  Oh Elaine, how could you?

If that yellow-haired old bastard has taken them off somewhere,
Carroll's going to kill him.  If he lays even one finger on them ... If
he's tried anything with her girls either here or out in some
restaurant, she's going to cut out his heart and hand it to the
police.

Anger propels her back into the main hall and up the wide staircase to
the front of the house, where she skids into Peyton's room.  There's
nothing.  She sees a few of those yellowing white hairs on the satin
bolster, that's all.  She doesn't have the heart to check his sisters'
rooms.  They are too filled with sad memories and dated dresses the
Larrabie sisters have cherished like discarded shells.  Instead she
stands on the worn green carpet that runs from the front of the house
back into the new rooms her grandfather built above the kitchen, and
she calls again.

"All right, Peyton, where are you?"

When he doesn't answer she goes through the back hall, calling for the
girls.  Every few steps she stops and listens but there's no tition of
the murmurous noise she thought she heard when repe she first came into
the house.  For the moment, there's nothing, no muttering, no ghostly
giggles, no thumping as if of somebody tryhard to hold still that she
twitches accidentally and thumps ing so the wall with her elbow.  It's
as if the house is holding its breath.

Even though she's certain the twins' room is empty, she knocks.  She
waits a few seconds too long to open the door.  What is she afraid
of?

Nothing.  Something.  Not knowing.  Finding out.

n, making a yellow lig The shades are dow lit in the room.  She stands
in the doorway for a moment longer and then she goes inside.

The twins' room is in disorder, the beds tumbled as if they've just
gotten up.  Their ruffled nighties are strewn across the rag rug,
joining the trail of discarded clothes they'd left the day before.

Upset without knowing why, Carroll tries the dresser.  She can't know
whether she's looking for some clue to the girls'character or whether
she simply wants to count the bathing suits, to assure herself that
they haven't disobeyed and taken off for the beach.

In spite of the litter on the floor, the dresser drawers are as neat as
though the girls were preparing for inspection at summer camp.  In the
top drawer they've piled underpants here, bras there, night things
here.

Most are folded the way they were when they came home from the stores
at the mall, with price tags still attached.  Of course she slips her
hand underneath the pile of shortie nighties and of course she finds a
notebook.  She thinks it may be a diary.  All girls keep diaries and
they all keep them in the underwear drawer.  The only difference here
is that the girls have put their secret thoughts into one of those
old-fashioned granitefinished composition books with lined pages.  She
remembers now that they had notebooks with them when she picked them up
in the hospital.  Poor things, she thinks.  When they lost Steve they
lost everything.  But.  They pick up and begin again.  Girls are the
same everywhere, she thinks, debating whether to open it.

It doesn't take her long to win that battle against her honor.

"Jane?"  she calls, just to be sure they won't walk in on her.  "Em?"

Then she stands there riffling the pages until the thing just falls
open in her hands.  She is at the last entry.

For all the good it does.  The book is dense with ink.  The writer or
writers were so intent on getting everything in that when they finished
the page they turned the book sideways to get everything in,
disregarding the lines.  The writing is so small that it takes her a
minute to realize that it's incomprehensible.  The girls' secrets are
written here, all right, but they're laid out in no language Carroll
has ever heard of, inscribed in ideograms and letters so complex that
most of what's on the page bears no recognizable resemblance to the
Roman alphabet.  It's as if somebody, has chased a flock of gulls
across an ink pad and turned them loose on the neatly ruled and
formerly pristine page.

She sighs and puts it down.

Then she moves on to the second drawer.  The new T-shirts are here,
along with some gaudy, silky shifts completely inappropriate for
fourteen-year-olds.

Only Suzy could have imagined these would look right on her girls.  Her
aunt seems determined to trick Steve's daughters out like a pair of
little hookers.

A look into the new velvetjewelry case bears this out.  Suzy has
burdened the girls with costumejewelry that is surprising in its
vulgarity.  Well, Carroll thinks like a convicted mother, making a note
to herself, have to do something about that.  The third drawer yields
nothing but shorts and slacks and she's about to turn to the closet
when she realizes that she's stopped short of the bottom drawer, with
its yellowed varnish stained with rust where the handles sit.

She has to ask herself why.

Creepy, she thinks, and she doesn't know whether it's her suspicions or
her fear of finding something that makes her back hairs prickle and her
teeth clench as she bends to open the bottom drawer.

There's nothing at first, a pair of T-shirts, the ones the twins had on
yesterday.  The only thing strange about it is that as far as Carroll
can make out, everything else the twins have worn in the past few days
is knotted on the rug or thrown on a chair.  She puts her hand in the
drawer to feel underneath the shirts and yips.

She's stuck herself on something sharp.

Sucking her finger, she stoops to see what it is.  She's trying to
disengage the shirts from the other contents when she becomes aware of
a shadow behind her, something caught out of the corner of the eye that
makes her breath sharp as a little knife.

"What are you doing in our room?"

The mess in the drawer rattles as she drops it guiltily.  She stands so
fast that she cracks her head on the open top drawer.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm sorry, I After everything, after all her anxious calling, the
girls are standing right here.  "Carroll?"

They look fierce, judgmental.  This is getting off to a bad start.

you're all right."

She tries again.  "Thank heaven "All right?"

Carroll's eyes flick back and forth between them looking for the rings
but they've turned them so only the gold shows, which means "We're
fine."  she has no way of knowing which twin says, "Why wouldn't we be
fine?"

"And what are you doing here?"

They are lovely, flawless, cold as a pair of china shepherdesses in
their Laura Ashley dresses - the flowery, girlish clothes she to
replace.  They have thought they hated, that she was so eager fully
tied the put them on today and fluffed up the sleeves and care et
little sandals sashes, completing their costumes with the swe Patsy
bought for them and the gold chains they must have gotten from Suzy
yesterday before Carroll came in from work.  They are beautifully
dressed as if put together for some ceremony whose s at.  Their meaning
they must know, that she can't even guess smooth blonde hair is brushed
and the ends have been combed into little curls.  Their bearing is so
regal that for a moment, she falls back.

Then Carroll thinks, Wait a minute.  Who are they to question me?

They see her falter.  "What are you doing in our room?"  they stand
They are so cold-looking, almost arrogant in the way and judge that
even though it's not the way she planned this, Carroll feels anger
flare.  "What do you mean what am I doing here?  This is my house.  And
what the hell have you girls been doing?"

Murmuring, they fall back a step.

She snaps, "What have you been doing anyway?"

All their greedy demands, these girls, all the anxiety they've cost her
so far and now their coldness when all she's trying to do is help
them.

She has to prepare them to refute the surprise witness, and here they
are giving her a hard time - it's just too much.  "Come on!"

Their heads swivel so their eyes lock.

She hears herself barking, "And don't you go talking in your goddamn
sinister secret language.  Something's come up here, and we have to get
together and work this out."

There is a little buzz in the air between the girls.  Carroll thinks it
is a push-pull situation but she can't know what the girls want, or
don't want, only that the twins move a little closer like figurines
bonded by contact cement.  (Is one holding the other in place?  Is one
of them good and one of them bad?) They move in close, standing
shoulder to shoulder, flank to flank, and they turn to her as one,
blinking those perfect eyes.

'Why Carroll, what is it?"

"What's the matter, Carroll?"

"Something.  Well I don't know exactly.  Oh God," Carroll groans,
pushed beyond the limit.  "It may be something awful."  She blurts,
"There's this lady at the beach who says you were out there when those
people got hurt."

"But you don't think.  . ."  The eyes are blue.

"I have to ask."  God, she thinks.  They can't both be bad.

"You couldn't possibly think .  The eyes are blue and innocent.

But is one pair slightly rimmed in red, bearing faint traces of a
recent fight?

If only she knew whether she had an ally here!

What was the child, she thinks it was Jane, trying to tell her
yesterday?

"Jane?"  If one of them is her ally here, she needs to find out
which.

"Or is it Em?"

They say in unison, "It's us."

"Cut it out!"

They are so cool!  "Us, OK?  So tell.  just tell us what you think."

She isn't exactly crying, it's more of a howl.  "I don't know any
more.

I don't know what I think.  I Through this exchange she's been nagged
by something - oh, it's her finger, still bleeding from something in
the drawer.  It's ... Their next word slashes through her thoughts.

It's so sharp and ugly that she lifts her head as if at the sound of a
shot.

"Krazgo!"

Carroll cries, "What?"

One of her girls is barking at the other, "Nemo krazgo!"

"I told you girls not to .  .

But they are deep in a frenzy of language.  "Fronamus glebo.

Krazgo.  Hemus.  Mot!"

She shouts, "You can damn well quit it with the language."

They don't even hear.  "Nemo naja."

Or else they hear and it doesn't matter.  "Krazgo.  Mot!  Mot!  Mot!"

"I said stop!"  it doesn't matter in the least.  Lost in their fury,
the twins have turned away from her and in on each other.  Hissing and
snarling, they are gripped in a moment so complete and intense, so
powerful and exclusive that they exist only for each other.  Locked in
twinship, they are the only thing in each other's world.  They have
clamped hands on each other's forearms now, so deeply engaged in a
fierce, emotional tug-of-war that Carroll has to wonder if they know
she's in the room.

The girls are tweeting and clicking, talking fast, muttering through
clenched teeth in that weird and hateful language that leaves Carroll
helpless and mesmerized.  They fade through the doorway in a vise-like
tangle of anger, kicking the door shut so they can continue their
pitched battle elsewhere in the apparently deserted house.  But in the
second before the door slams they respond to her at last, hurling a
single spiteful word at her, "You!"  It's like a gauntlet thrown
down.

"Come back!"  Carroll goes to the door to open it and finds it
locked.

She shouts, "I haven't finished with you, so come back."  Where there
had been a flurry of sound, squabbling and angry 0 profound that it
strikes her cold.

thumping, there is a silence s What replays in her head then is not
their angry squalling but a speech remembered.  Meredith Archer's
warning.  Enough!

"Cut it out!"  she says loud enough to be heard through the locked
door.

"You're only ki S.

Whatever you do ...

She pulls herself together.  "And this door is not the only way out of
this room."

This is what finds Carroll Lawton lifting the drawn window This puts
shade and raising the back window so she can climb out.

ck of the her on the screened back porch that runs across the ba
house.

She'll go along the porch.  Passing the hall door, which the Is have
probably locked, she'll duck through the window into r' gher room.  If
she has to break glass to do it, fine.  She's in a mood to break a
little glass.

She is so intent on this that it takes her a minute to notice that
she's not alone on the porch.  Then she sees him sitting moodily in a
rocker at the far end, like a retired captain looking out to sea.  He
looks downcast with his head bowed and his arms in the white coat
hanging so his knuckles brush the floor, but the sight of him makes her
teeth grind, an ugly taste forces itself up her throat.

"Peyton!"  It figures, she thinks.  Still he doesn't move and he
doesn't turn.  She's tolerated her uncle all these years but she's
always hated him and somehow his presence here makes sense.  "I should
have known this was your fault.  All right you old bastard, what did
you do to set them off?"

When he still doesn't respond she goes the rest of the distance.

She'll push him out of the chair if she has to.  She wants her uncle
standing when she has it out with him so he won't try one of his old
tricks and try to pull her onto his lap.  "Are you afraid to face me?

Is that it?"  She's hung up on a sentence from her morning's
interview.

When you find something that doesn't make semse, your mind will do
anything to make sense of it.  Over the years she's found Peyton asleep
in his chair so many times that OK, maybe he really doesn't hear.

Maybe he really is asleep.  She's always hated touching him, so instead
of shaking him awake she says, loud, "OK, Pay, I know you've done
something you're ashamed of, would you rather admit it to me or do you
want to tell the police?"

And finally comes around in front of him and sees what she has probably
known all along, that her uncle is dead.  She doesn't have to grab his
head by that yellow-white hair and pull it back to know that she'll
find a puncture wound right where the pathologist located the ones on
the floaters, at the outside corner of the left eye.  Nor does she have
to go back to the girls' room to know what's underneath the shirts in
the bottom dresser drawer.  Not ice picks.  Hatpins, the clutch of pins
she remembers from her childhood forays into the attic, larger than
life, long, rusty but still sharp.

"Who was it, Pay," she shouts, outraged.  "Who did it?  Why in hell
don't you tell me which one?"  Without even knowing how she arrives at
the next thing she finds herself vibrating with urgency.  My God, I've
got to save the other one.

She's too smart to think she can do this alone.  She's in the upstairs
hall, just discovering that somebody's pulled the phone out of its jack
and removed it, she's just about to throw herself downstairs to dial
911 when an uncanny whistle that she does not immediately recognize
arrests her where she stands.

"Caaaaa.  .

It's so thin and shrill that it will take her a minute to identify it
as a scream.  In the next second, it's cut off.  Whirling, she sees the
attic door stands open.  Whatever is going on is happening up there.

The scream unfurls like a black ribbon.

terrible.  At ...

rooollll The voice is relentless, piercing, first she can't make it
out.  Then she can.  Faint as it is, almost drowned out by the sounds
of thudding feet, overturning furniture and the sound of a struggle, it
sounds like a plea.  Her name.

She is riveted, frightened, torn.  She needs to call for help but
whatever is going on overhead is going on so swiftly and so violently
that she has to hurry.  A girl is shrilling in agony, tortured, caught
between life and death.

"Jane!"  she cries.  "Emily!"  Which is villain and which is victim?

She doesn't know.

All she knows is that there's a life at risk.  If she wastes time
running for the phone, somebody's going to die.  She has no choice.

"I'm coming," she cries.  Foolhardy as it is, terrifying and dangerous,
she has to go up there and stop whatever is going on.

THE MINUTE she starts up the narrow attic stairs the wailing stops.

Nothing moves.  Instead of rushing to the rescue with a clear-cut sense
of what to do and how to help the crying girl, Carroll is climbing into
the unknown.

At the wedge-shaped landing where the stairs make a sharp turn, she
hesitates.  Until she completes the corner, she can't see the rest of
the way.

What if something terrible has happened to the girl so she can't cry
any more?

What can she do against the enemy?  She is reluctant to go forward.

She calls.

"Jane?  Em?"

There is no answer.

She hates the attic.  Even when she fled here in adolescence, dodging
chores or hiding from Uncle Peyton, the place made her uneasy.

The old clothes and pictures abandoned here, the discarded furniture
reflect several generations of frustrated ambitions and wasted lives.

Building this house, the early Larrabies intended to make their fortune
and conquer society.  They bought grand furniture to ornament rooms
where the powerful would come to beg favors.  The entire attic would be
finished off and furnished for an expanding staff.  Instead their best
things ended up here, shelved, along with the family's hopes.

Now the amalgam of half-finished rooms and unfinished spaces is filled
with pitfalls, scorpions' nests and uncharted areas where the flooring
gives way to naked beams and only a thin skin of lath and plaster
separates the unwary from the downstairs bedrooms.  Carroll doesn't
know which is more frightening, the shadowy crawlspaces between rooms
and eaves or the dingy, rawlooking maids' rooms, identical as slots in
an egg carton.  With their ruined mattresses and stained window shades
and cracked plaster they speak of sorrow, like abandoned movie sets or
staging areas for unspeakable crimes waiting to be committed.  The open
spaces in the attic are even worse.  They're hung with racks of old
gowns and stacked with paintings and chests and trunks and cartons all
crowded by grotesquely ornamented furniture covered in tattered velvet
and encrusted with rosettes and angels, all these bits and pieces of
the Larrabie family past shoved under the eaves and covered with canvas
like so many guilty secrets.

The twins could be anywhere.

it could be too late.

She isn't breathing.  Even so, she can't hear anything.

Fueled by the climbing Florida sun, the heat in the attic is
staggering.

When she does breathe again, it takes a minute to get used to.  God,
she thinks, what am I doing?

But even though there's an uncanny absence of sound she's certain that
somewhere up here, one of Steve's girls is trapped with her beautiful
eyes flooding and her mouth stretched wide in a silent cry for help.

She can't let anything stop her.  She needs to find the twins and see
them up close.  She needs to look them in the face and bore in,
staring, until she knows once for all which twin she has to save.

And which one is the enemy.

She doesn't know what she has to do then, only that she has to IL nks,
and feels her heart being pulled inside out.

do it.  Steve, she thi I'm trying, Steve.

The top of the mean little staircase is partially blocked by a big,
troublingly familiar shape.  She has to suck in her breath to slide it
and up into the attic.  Clearing the staircase Carroll stands, past
trembling, in the storehouse of her family's secrets.

he just has time to recognize the object before somebody tilts s it and
sends it toppling.  Oh, it's the ... With a shattering crash the thing
crunches into the stairwell, effectively sealing the exit.

Arrested by the crash and the dust rising from the wreckage that closes
off the staircase, Carroll is only half-aware of the sound of
footsteps, the girl or girls retreating.  The object that blocks the
way down is the oversized, incongruously carved chair from the music
room.  Why dr'dn't I see what was wrong down there?  High and wide as a
throne, with its double seat and paired lions' heads, the thing is so
big she wonders how the girls managed to get it this far.  What did
they do, make Peyton help them haul it up the stairs and then turn on
him?  What did they have to promise him to get him to bring the chair
this far?  Shuddering, she can imagine, and is sickened by dislike for
the old lecher, who came on to the girls and then let them lure him
into some what.  Something that caused his own death.

But they couldn't both be ... One of them is acting against her will,
she thinks.  No.  Knows.  Her breath catches.

Has to be.

"Jane?  I've come to help."

Jane doesn't answer.  She tries again.  "It's me, Emily.  If you can't
talk, at least thump so I can find you."

She listens.

"If you would just try and make some kind of noise!"

This time she's almost certain she hears laughter.

"Please.  God, no tricks!"

Laughter again.  Chilled, she understands.  They've lured her here as
surely as they lured Peyton.  Or one of them has.

For all she knows, the cry for help was a fake.  Oh God, was it their
way of getting her attention?  She goes on in a low, level voice that
she knows will carry even to the recesses under the eaves.  "OK,
girls.

That's enough.  This has to end."

Something above her shifts - birds in the rafters?  She feels sand
sifting into her hair and into her eyes.

She lifts her voice.  "You might as well come out.  You know I won't
leave until I find you."

The space between her and the finished rooms where the Larrabies kept
their maids is filled with furniture.  She advances steadily but
cautiously, skirting the neatly piled forties modern chairs and tables
at a slight distance, speaking as she goes.  She is in the main part of
the attic now.  She calls.

"OK.  It's time.  I'm coming after you."

For the moment there is a complete absence of sound.

Cautious but determined, she advances.  "I want to help."

There is a little stir, a disturbance in the stifling air.  The sound
she hears could be somebody sobbing.  Or somebody snickering.  It could
be coming from the row of abandoned maids'rooms or the area beyond,
which is dark and heaped with discarded treasures.  Or it could come
from the treacherous space near the front of the house where the skin
of the place is thin and easily broken.

"You might as well come out."

A light goes on in the last bedroom.  She sees it coming from under the
closed door.

"If you don't, I'm coming to get you."

Then she hears the girls, or one of them.  The voice is neither
hysterical nor threatening.  It is clear and chilling.

"Very well, Lady Carroll.  This way."

Approaching, she passes the open door to the adjacent room.  Unlike the
one where the twins are hiding, where a lamp glows, it is only
partially lighted.  Sunshine filters through the grimy window shade.

From here she sees objects have been tugged into the room from the
attic and turned to the twins' purposes, portraits, a mounted horsehead
she's never seen before, a dressmaker's dummy with its bared muslin
breast studded with GreatGrandmother's pearl-handled fruit knives.  And
in the center of the room a little marble table with vigil lamps in
place but not yet lighted.

She does not go in.  When she sees what's enshrined there she doesn't
want to.  Something silver lies half-covered by a piece of cloth.  It's
probably just as well she doesn't get close enough to recognize it as
her dead husband's bracelet, she already has too much to deal with.

Rags that might be the victims' bathing suits lie in a little heap, and
wiped clean and lying next to them in a sunburst pattern are four of
her great-aunt's longest, fiercestlooking hatpins.

The reporter in her clicks, This is how they did it.  She wishes to God
this were just another story she could phone in and have done with, but
it isn't.

She knocks on the last door.  Her voice is low, grave.

"I'm here."  , one or both of the As she tries the knob and finds it
locked .  will say in an elevated tone of authority that is both
incongruous twins and chilling, "Very well.  You may come into the
presence."

Damn, damn, goddamn, kicking the rented car along the dusty, nearly
deserted streets to the Larrabie house, Kurt Graver leans forward in
anger, hatred and anxiety.  The rest of the world seems to be at home
with the shades down or out to lunch, so what is this wn, the last
place in the world to honor blue laws?

Everything is to closed.  He found the offices of the Dispatch
shuttered and he had to hammer on the back door for ten minutes before
Charley Penn down and told him Carroll hadn't reported in yet.  Damn
all came those people out there at the beach or rereading the Sunday
funnies without a clue as to what's about to come down here.  Damn all
stupid inefficiency, damn ignorant Carroll Lawton for ignoring damn his
own susceptibility, damn his warnings and most of a ck by his own
unbidcraven Kurt Graver for being so thunderstru den lust that he fled
the Larrabie house and those eeyie girls instead If on the front steps
like a troll with an axe to of planting himse keep anything worse from
happening.

Damn his eyes for not throttling Hal Oliphant until he came back to his
senses and disgorged the truth, and damn every minute it's taking him
to get back to the house where he's certain something ugly is
happening.

urt for going looking for Carroll And double-damn stupid K Lawton at
her office when any fool would have known that forewarned or not, it
was the house she would come back to.

He is trembling with insufficiency.  Did he live through every let the
twins get away thing and hunt down Hal Oliphant just to with this?

Confronting the incomprehensible, he's spent his life to now trying to
make sense of it.

Everything depends on what comes next.  it is this that makes him
hurtle down the main drag toward Arbor Street in the sleepy large town
or small city of Jenkins, Florida, with an undeniable sense of
urgency.

The feeling that he is fated.  No, ordained.  To do what?  Some
thing.

More.  It bubbles up in his throat, all his memories converge and he
can taste it.

Die, if I have to.  Or kill someone.

Inside the biggest of the maids' rooms, the girls wait side by side on
the draped cartons they have assembled to substitute for the gold chair
with the lions' heads, which they couldn't manage to wrestle the rest
of the distance into their makeshift throne room.  One thinks, or both
of them think, audience platform.

"YOU May come into the presence."  They know she can't.  The door is
locked.  But as long as Carroll stands outside, they have her
located.

They need to keep her in place until they can decide what to do about
her.  What one wants, the other fears.  But to survive as an entity,
they both need it.

Closer than Chang and Eng, who were joined at the belly, these two are
bonded by hate and blood and a terrible sense Of urgency, so tightly
linked in this moment of crisis that their thoughts flow back and forth
in a rush of sound that needs no words to complete the intentions.

- Not.

- Will.

Desperately they push back and forth - Not yet.

- Have to, yes.  This one is pushing harder.  Want to.

Her sister resists.  - Not if we don't have to.  Which is the
stronger?

Which is the queen, really?  The bold one presses forward.  Our life is
at issue.  We are the queen.  We need the execution.

The other temporizes.  - No execution without trial.  Besides, we need
her.

Which twin is smarter?

- For what?

- She gave us the rings.

And which more dangerous?

- No trial without its execution.  The bold one is breathless, almost
lascivious, in her drive toward completion.

There is a pause before the other continues.  Trialfirst, yes?

Cleverly, then, but is she effective?  - We like trials.

Her twin agrees grudgingly.  - If you say so.

- The queen is fair.

Her sister stands.  - And we are the queen.

She goes to the door and turns the key in the lock.  Then with a
thunderous look at her twin, she resumes her place on the throne.

They repeat then, "OK, Lady Carroll.  It's open."

At Greycrest in the wooded foothills just outside Knoxville the staff
is riveted by a huge inarticulate howl, an apparently unending river of
pain and rage that winds through corridors and penetrates even the
private offices.  It is coming from the private room where that
lewd-eyed, blathering, pinchy old bastard has just been put down for
his nap today.  He hasn't said a comprehensible word since he got here,
instead, he screams.  He mutters angrily sometimes, just noise, but
it's nothing like this.  The ugly open-throated wail is accompanied by
thudding sounds and the crash of a metal bedpan being hurled against
the wall which is a puzzle to the nurses pounding toward the scene of
the crime as so far as they know, his strokes have left Hal Oliphant
halfparalyzed, speechless isabled.  "Don't worry," they tell each of
and d her, rushing for the room.  "He can't hurt anybody."

But he can offend.  The room is foul.  In spite of the security bars on
the bed he has managed to get out.  Lashing around like gry lizard, he
writhes on the floor.  In the absence of words an an to express his
violent rage and loathing, Hal Oliphant has spread himself around human
waste in every possible form, and when they rush to keep him from
hurting himself, the old man collects all his anger - what set it
off?

in one final explosion of hatrebefore his eyes glaze over and his body
jerks once and then goes rigid in the ultimate coma.

"It lives!"  he gargles, and they have no way of knowing that he means,
evil.  It is a hideous outcry that will leave the staff puzzled and
shaken.  "I live!"  In the next generation.

When she tries the door again it is unlocked.

"Hello Carroll."

"Hello Carroll."

Their voices are as sweet as their aspect, two pretty girls with
shining hair looking at her out of Steve Harriman's blue eyes, with her
lost love Steve's expression shimmering just below the surface, Steve's
smile writing itself across their lovely, regular features.  How can
they hurt her?  They look beautifully put together, out of place here
in this garishly papered maid's room with its pattern of stained
poppies and even younger than they are in their little gold chains and
their full-skirted flowered dresses.

Standing in the doorway, Carroll feels crowded.  There are heavy
mahogany pedestals flanking her like the pillars in the palace of
Samson's enemies.  The girls have used them to hold vases filled with
dying flowers.  An old bridge lamp stands behind the makeshift throne,
striking highlights in their hair.

They have put on velvet capes and artificial wreaths left over from
some Christmas pageant.  They wear them like queens.  They are secure
here in this place they've made for themselves, serene.  How could she
have thought they were anything other than lovely?

Yet one has done the murders.  The evidence is in the next room, neatly
arranged on the little marble table.  When she gets out of here she has
to call the police and turn them in.  Or one of them in.  The knowledge
gives her the dry swallows.

They smile at her as if they know none of this.  As if they don't even
guess there is anything behind her pursuit but simple curiosity.  She
looks at the velvet-draped boxes where they perch, at the clutter of
bronze maquettes and camphorwood boxes and onyx eggs on the Queen Anne
side tables and the family portraits dragged in from under the rafters
and propped against the violently patterned wallpaper.  The room looks
bizarre enough but strangely elegant, as if in assembling all these
objects the girls had been acting on instinct, in the same kind of
prescience that makes the infant Dalai Lama select the objects
belonging to his predecessor.  If they are not descended from royalty,
they might as well be.  Graciously, they greet her.

"Welcome," Jane says, if it is Jane.

"Welcome into the kingdom."

"Welcome to Amadamaland."

"No.  To the colony.  Later we'll take you into the kingdom."

Jane says, "After we explain."  She seems honestly pleased to have
Carroll here.  "It's hard to tell now because we don't have the throne
in place yet, but this is the throne room."

"Audience hall."

"Where the trials begin.  Whatever."

"Yes."  This one's eyes glitter.  "The trials."

She swallows hard.  "It's very nice."  How strange they are, Carroll
thinks and, trying to bore deeper and divine what's going on here, she
thinks, how cold the eyes are, looking from one to the other.  But she
does not know.  is this the case or is she projecting the evil of one
on the innocence of the other?

And later," one says, blindsiding her with the information, "an altar
to our King, Saint Stephen."

She cries out in pain.

They say as if it's the most natural thing in the world, "Our dear
father."

How bizarrely savage, closed as they are inside a circle of their own
making.

How sinister.

he is so fuddled by pain and confusion that she s falls back on a
cliche.  "We have to talk."

"See," the one says knowingly, "I told you she'd be glad to see us.

"We'll see," the other says, glaring not at her sister but at
Carroll.

"Emily."  Carroll does not quite know how to begin.  "Jane."  r off.

"No.  The queen.  And we'll see But the bold twin cuts he with this.

After we explain to you- Even our how well you do courtiers must
survive the trials."

Her sister echoes, "Yes, the trials."  the makeshift throne while her
"But first."  She slips down from "You have to sister holds back.

She's holding a pair of scarves.

S.

prove you trust u d gag me?  "No Way."  what's she going to do, offer
to bind an Ps back.  "You have to prove you trust Shaking her head,
Carroll ste me.  otherwise to help you.  I said we have to talk."  can
on't.  Not that way.  We talk."

The girl retreats.  "No we d "She and I talk," Jane, if it is Jane,
says to her.

you listen."

So it may be Emily who says firmly, "And s the tale of Amadamaland and
of Thus it is that Carroll hear mily must be Queen EmQueen.lade -Jane,
she supposes, and E eraid.  Strange how it spins itself out,
frightening and hypnotic, an il they are uncommon duet in which the
girls' voices intertwine until t, sweet from malevolent, the Queen
inextricable, quiet from violen of Amadamaland who has lost their
beloved king, Saint Stephen, and to commemorate his death has tried to
collect knights to fight the wicked stepmother in his honor.

"Not his fault it went wrong," Em says.

"And not our fault either."

Oh my God, Carroll thinks.  Did they kill Steve?  Tears have begun
sliding down her face.  She may understand that she is approaching the
intolerable.

Before she can think about that - Steve - she has to hear this.  She
has to get them out of this room.  She has to get them to the ground
floor, where she can call the police.  "Can we talk about this
downstairs?"

"No," Emily says.  That's all.  When she goes on it is reflectively,
shaking her head as if surprised by the news she has to deliver.  "They
brought it on themselves.  Bad knights.  But you never know a knight is
bad .  .

Regretfully, Jane completes it...... until he's bad."

"You have to know your men before you knight them.  You know, the
knightly ordeals.  Not our fault that some were found wanting and
others Emily's voice slashes through everything.  "Others tried to
defile the queen."

Rage makes her chin tremble.

In an angry flash, Carroll sees it clearly.  Peyton.

"Nobody defiles the queen," she says.  "Nobody crosses us."

The twins make their own world, and in it everybody marches to their
imperatives.  Whatever you do, don't make them ang7y.

Jane, if it is Jane, says, "So we didn't mean bad things.  But what
happened - happened."

"And now it is over with, OK?"  The girl fixes her with those
irreproachably blue eyes and says, "So no problem, right?  As long as
you let it rest right here."

Her twin is entreating.  "So please let's let it rest right here.

Right, Carroll?"

Carroll keeps her tone level but she will not say what they want to
hear.

"I think we'd better go downstairs."

The other is firm.  "Not now.  Not yet.  Not until you promise."

Jane, if it is Jane, says hurriedly, "So no harm meant and no harm done
and this is our secret, OK?"

"Look at it this way, yes OK?"  Her twin's voice is coming and going in
little hiccoughs that devolve into a giggle.  "The queen can't help
it."

Jane prods gently, "And you love us, right, Carroll?  So you promise.

You said you came to help us."

Carroll is rattling like a jar full of marbles.  She doesn't know why
the girls don't hear all of the parts of her clinking against each
other.  "I don't know what I came to do."  She draws herself up.

f L.

"But I do know what we have to do.  As soon as we get the chair out of
the stairwell."

"Our throne!"

"We have to talk to the police.  I think you'd better take the wreaths
off first."  promised if we explained to you "But the queen "Yes if we
explained, that you would, you know.  Understand?"

"Understand," the sister says.  "So it's OK, right?"

Carroll says, "No it's not OK.  Something awful's going on and I can't
help either of you unless you'll say who did it."

The one is pleading.  "No."

The other is emphatic.  "No."  Her face darkens, it's like a solar
eclipse.

Then something unexpected happens.  It's like catching the werewolf in
the middle of the change.  The sound is savage, ding.  She is reaching
abrupt.  "Krazgo."  it is ugly, wolfish.  Comman in her pocket.

"Krazgo!"

Her sister is crying.  "Neemo!"

"Krazgo!"  The word, if it is a word, dissolves into a fierce, wet
snarl of sheer hatred.  The two rise as one.

Anything can happen now.

Then before Carroll can turn and hurl herself through the door the
girls are upon her, the dominant one first.  In the next second the
other hurtles after her sister, clawing at her back.  Attacking
Carroll, they turn on each other at the same time, locked in a pitched
battle over what to do here.  With nails raking and their frenzy so
completely that foam flying, they disappear into the Carroll manages to
extricate herself.  Trembling, she sees as they tangle that the one has
her hand raised with something so sharp a kitchen knife!  -that fear
makes her teeth clash even as the other shouts "Noooo."

And Carroll throws herself against them, knocking them offer voice
whistles balance.  It's like trying to break up a dogfight.  H in pain
as the knife rakes her forearm.  All fingernails and gnashing teeth,
the girl turns on her sister.  "You!"

"No!"  Desperate, the victim hurls herself against the attacker ith her
hand raised - is that a rock she brings down on her sister's temple?

The other shrieks and drops the knife.  Then they all go down together
in a knot of arms and legs, rolling and thrashing until the pedestals
wobble and fall into each other, wild twins and desperate woman,
tumbling vases, dead flowers, all, in a crash that leaves Carroll dazed
and frightened as the twins clear the room and flee into the attic.

She discovers that she can't get up.

"Watch out," she cries, not quite sure what she means.  She calls out
in warning.  "It isn't safe!"

Then she hears them rolling down the hall and away from her, she hears
the continuing struggle, pleas for help and guttural outcries and then
the terrified, childlike shrilling that drew her up here in the first
place, so that once again she is plunged into doubt and confusion.

She doesn't know who they are.  Or where they are.

They could be rushing into the unfinished space above the front of the
house where there are hazards, bent spikes and broken glass panels,
paper-thin flooring.  She struggles to raise herself on one elbow.

"Watch out," she cries again.  "Watch out!"

She hears a voice trailing back.  "Carroll.  Help!"

What's expected of her here?  Who, can she trust?  She is so drained by
the events of the past few days, so leveled and shaken that she finds
herself stuck to the floor, dizzy and trembling.

Then she hears another sound, thumping and cursing.  The noise is
coming from the bottom of the attic stairs.

Stunned, she tries to stand.  "What is it?  What?"

She can't make out the words but she recognizes Kurt Graver's voice.

He is hurling himself against the unwieldy, ruined chair that bars the
stairway, pounding and desperate.

Carroll is on her feet now, with a pageant of fireworks breaking behind
her eyes.  She touches her hair and feels blood and understands that in
the seconds when the twins made their escape, a toppling vase had
bashed her into unconsciousness.  She becomes aware as she staggers
into the attic that the twins could be anywhere - in the crawlspaces,
behind the heaped furniture, hidden in the shadows, waiting to lurch
out at her or sneak up from behind with an ancestral sword or a poker
and club her senseless.

But the clatter of footsteps is receding.  If the girls were heading
for the stairs when they broke away from her, the sound of Kurt's voice
stampeded them.

She hears Kurt hacking at the chair with something heavy and then she
hears, "Carroll, please help!"

It comes from the unfinished space near the front of the house.

Carroll follows, and with a gasp, stops short.  She's at the point
where the attic floor gives way to naked lath and a shell of plaster.

From here exposed beams make a narrow path over the master suite and
MorMama's bedroom.

In the shadows, one of the girls calls, "Out here, Carroll."

The other cries, "No, don't come out here, it's scary!"

She can't see clearly, but she knows what's happened.  In their fury
the girls ran out on the beams before they realized they were still
locked in unholy opposition.

in danger.  They are teetering, Any distraction, any blow, any hurled
object will destroy their concentration.

A breath could throw them off balance and send them crashing through
the amalgam of lath and brittle, weakened plaster that is all that
separates them from the high-ceilinged bedroom that has been sealed
ever since MorMama died there.

's voice quivers.  "I can't come back!"  ane "Wait," Carroll says
foolishly, "Wait there.  I'll help you."  The other girl's voice is like a
whip, "Krazgo, bitch!" "Oh please help me, Carroll!"

So here she is, Carroll Lawton, close to the end and brought up do, who
needs her help here.  She can arm heragainst it, What to self and try
to bring down the enemy with a curtain rod or throw a brick and hit
her, or she can stand here at the brink of the open space and try to
reason the girls back to safety.

But they are clinging,.whether for safety or in combat, she can't
know.

They sway precariously.

ow if you'll just let go "Don't," she pleads.  "Wait.  Don't move.  N
of each other."

Come help us!"

"We can "Don't come!"

"Please help us!"

"Wait!"  She casts around for a curtain rod, anything to steady them.

"I'll find something for you to hang onto."

"There isn't time.  Come get us."

Then she hears the most seductive sound.  One of them starts to
whimper.  Whatever they've done, they're still children.

Steve's children.  Her toes curl over the edge of the floor.  In
another second she's going to launch herself.  "Oh please don't cry.

I'm coming to get yours her.  "In hell!" Kurt Graver has His voice
is so big it stagger hem.

cleared the stairs.  The floor shakes as he thuds toward t Hearing, the
girls hiss like cornered cats.

Carroll teeters.

"DO YOU BELIEVE ME NOW?"  Kurt pushes her out of the way.  Carroll
falls to one side, safely short of the spot where the flooring gives
way to open rafters.

She cries "Kurt, don't!"

Before she can stop him Kurt Graver shakes her off.  He's running so
fast that he flies off the finished floor and his foot comes down so
hard on the beam that the house shudders.  He's angry enough to do
anything to end this, even kill the girls.  Instead his violent
footfall hits the beam with such force that the sisters panic and their
arms fly.  As Kurt realizes where he is and pulls himself up short,
shuddering, the twins let go, terrified and furious.  Off balance, Kurt
extends his arms and pulls himself upright like a rope walker as the
girls note his presence and scream as if at the first sight of a
conquering army.  Embattled, they back away chattering and before
Carroll can do anything to stop them the girls hurl themselves on each
other in a frenzy of recriminations, and in the strange dark-light
entanglement that has driven them all their lives each fights to save
herself and finish the other.

Cursing to the skies in their strange language the twins tangle,
grappling and rolling without regard for the beams or what lies between
them.

For Carroll, every backward step Kurt takes seems eternal.  To wait is
torture.  She won't understand until later that all this unfolds in
seconds.

Finally Kurt is standing beside her.

And in their transport of fury the girls have hurled themselves off the
beam, toppling, deaf to her cries and blind to what lies below them.

In that second, they seem to be suspended over nothing.  Locked in
hatred, they fall on the thin skin of lath and plaster in a frenzy of
flailing fists and sharp knees and elbows that shakes the flimsy
surface until it shatters and they plunge in a cloud of plaster dust,
screaming as they disappear beneath the shattered surface.

Trembling, Carroll hears a single knife-like scream as they fall into
the high-ceilinged master bedroom below.  She turns to Kurt in
horror.

He nods as if for him at least, something has clicked into place.

In seconds they clear the attic stairs and run the length of the house,
sprinting along the worn green carpeting.  The door to the oversized
bedroom where MorMama died is closed.  There is no sound coming from
the room.  Nobody cries for help and nobody comes running out to greet
her.  Unsteady now, she takes Kurt's arm and does not know why he puts
her aside when they reach the door, settling her with a firm hand so he
can go in first.

When he comes out his face is white with plaster dust and he is
coughing.  "It's OK, hey aren't going to hurt anybody."

" he says.  "T n the bed, And it is OK, she supposes.  Instead of
landing o which might have saved their lives, the girls have landed in
the r, or one has.

The other is sprawled over the middle of the floor ine cracked so she
lies at a terrible splintered towel rack with her sp iling.  The floor
angle and her blank blue eyes stare at the ruined ce is a morass of
broken lath and chunks of plaster and, horrifyingly enough, the tiny
skeletons of rats or squirrels that must have died in the attic over
the last century.  The air in the violet room is thick with dust and as
Carroll approaches the form huddled on the floor in the middle of the
littered carpet, more plaster sifts down from the splintered hole in
the ceiling.  One of the children is moaning.

The girl may not know that her sister has died or - and it is this
chills Carroll and sets her teeth on edge forever - or she may that ing
to do with it.  The surviving twin hears Carhave had someth roll's
little sob of grief.  Sighing like a waking princess, she rolls over
and sits up, rubbing her eyes and blinking.

She does not speak.  Oh God, let it be the right one.  "Jane?"  she says
cautiously.

The girl sits up.

"Careful," Kurt says in a low voice.  "OK?"

"Shh."  She's hardly aware she has spoken.

The girl tries to smile.  "Carroll?"

Approaching, she has no way of knowing which of the girls has risen out
of the carnage to greet her.

The child rubs her face and then looks at her right hand.  Carroll says
uncertainly, "Emily?"

The girl rubs the ring finger and then looks up, blinking.  "It's me,
Carroll," she says.  "Jane."  is it?  The tone is right.  At least she
thinks it is.  "Jane?"

See, it's me.  I have the ring!"  She holds out her ban d and Carroll
sees the ruby.

She puts out her arms.  "Oh God, sweetie!"

But as they hug Carroll is aware of Kurt Graver stirring behind her.

"Right or wrong," he says urgently, and as the girl in her arms
stiffens at the sound of his voice she knows exactly what he means.

"Carroll, right or wrong?"

"Why, right.  I think."  Standing back, she helps the girl step through
the wreckage.  "It's Jane," she says with her eyes filling, and as she
does so she understands as she never before has the near-impossibility
of making, in this world at least, absolute and final distinctions
between good and evil.  Taking her hand, the girl smiles up at her as
Carroll gathers the strength to go forward, saying, "It has to be." 
the end.