Even though his tone was pleasant, the words bit through the comfortable feeling I'd gotten from being with Churchill.

"Thanks," I said warily, "but I can find it."

He wouldn't back off. "I'll start you off. It's easy to get lost in this place."

"Thanks," I said. "That's real nice of you."

But as we walked together out of the living room. I knew what was coming. He had something to say to me, and it wasn't going to be remotely nice. When we reached the foot of the stairs, reasonably out of earshot of the others, Gage stopped and turned me to face him. His touch made me freeze.

"Look," he said curtly, "I don't give a damn if you're banging the old man. That's not my business."

"You're right," I said.

"But I draw the line when you bring it into this house."

"It's not your house."

"He built it for my mother. This is where the family gets together, where we spend holidays." He looked at me with contempt. "You're on dangerous ground. You set foot on this property again and I'll personally throw you out on your ass. Understand?"

I understood. But I didn't flinch or step back. I had learned a long time ago not to run from pit bulls.

I went from crimson to skull-white. The rush of my blood seemed to scald the insides of my veins. He knew nothing about me, this arrogant bastard, knew nothing about the choices I'd made or the things I'd given up and all the easy ways out I could have taken but didn't. didn 't, and he was such a complete and unredeemable ass**le that if he'd suddenly caught on fire, I wouldn't have bothered to spit on him.

"Your father needs his medicine," I said, stone-faced.

His eyes narrowed. I tried to hold his gaze but I couldn't, the day's events had drawn my emotions too close to the surface. So I stared at a distant point across the room and concentrated on showing nothing, feeling nothing. After an unbearably long time I heard him say, "This better be the last time I lay eyes on you."

"Go to hell," I said, and went upstairs at a measured pace, while my instincts urged me to bolt like a jackrabbit.

I had another private conversation that evening, with Churchill. Jack had long since departed, and mercifully so had Gage, to take his size-zero girlfriend home. Gretchen showed Carrington her collection of antique cast-iron banks, one shaped like Humpty-Dumpty. another like a cow whose back legs kicked a fanner when you dropped a coin in. While they played on the other side of the room, I sat on an ottoman beside

Churchill's wheelchair.

"You been thinking?" he asked.

I nodded. "Churchill.. .some people aren't going to be happy if we go ahead with this."

He didn't pretend not to understand. "No one's going to give you a problem, Liberty," he said. "I'm the big dog here."

"I need a day or two to think it over."

"You got it." He knew when to push, and when to let it be.

Together we looked across the room at Carrington. who chortled in delight as a little cast-iron monkey flipped a penny into a box with its tail.

That weekend we went for Sunday dinner at Miss Marva's. The ranch house was filled with the smell of beer pot roast and mashed potatoes. You would have thought Miss Marva and Mr. Ferguson had been married for fifty years, they were so comfortable with each other.

While Miss Marva took Carrington back into her sewing room, I sat in the den with Mr. Ferguson and laid out my dilemma. He listened in silence, his expression mild, his hands templed on his midriff.

"I know what the safe choice is." I told him. "When you get down to it. there's no reason for me to take this kind of risk. I'm doing great at Zenko's. And Carrington likes her school and I'm afraid it would be hard on her to leave her friends. Trying to fit in at a new place where all the other kids are being dropped off in Mercedes. Ijust...Ijust wish..."

There was a smile in Mr. Ferguson's soft brown eyes. "I have the feeling, Liberty, that you're hoping for someone to give you permission to do what you want to do."

I let my head flop back against the back of the recliner. "I'm so not like those people," I said to the ceiling. "Oh, if you'd just seen that house, Mr. Ferguson. It made me feel so... oh. I don't know. Like a hundred-dollar hamburger."

"I don't follow you."

"Even if it's served on a china plate in an expensive restaurant, it's still just a hamburger."

"Liberty," Mr. Ferguson said, "there's no reason for you to feel inferior to them. To anyone. When you get to my age, you come to realize all people are the same."

Of course a mortician would say that. Regardless of financial status, race, and all the other things that distinguished people from each other, they all ended up na**d on a slab in his basement.

"I can see how it looks that way from your end of things, Mr. Ferguson," I said. "But from where I was looking last night in River Oaks, those people are definitely different from us."

"You remember the Hopsons' oldest boy, Willie? Went off to Texas Christian?"

I wondered what Willie Hopson had to do with my dilemma. But there was usually a point to Mr. Ferguson's stories if you were patient enough to wait for it. "During his junior year," Mr. Ferguson continued. "Willie went to Spain for a study-abroad program. To get an idea of how other people live. Learn something about how they think and their values. It did him a lot of good. I think you ought to consider doing the same."