"Welcome home, sugar baby," Dad said, hugging her close.

"You look splendiferous, as always. Is that a new suit? And don't say, 'What, this old thing?'"

"What, this old thing? Nope." Grinning wryly, Jenna shook her head. "Actually it's something I've had in my closet for ages. But I brought something better for tomorrow. I want to look nice out of respect for Maribeth."

"You always look nice," Dad said. Then leaning down he picked up the carry-on, lying at her feet, and taking her arm led her through the busy Denver airport and out to the parking lot. It was a beautiful day, clear and golden, the sky almost porcelain, as they got in the car and started driving. The traffic was heavy, but in a reasonable amount of time they had left the city behind them and were on their way to the mountains. The road wound in and out through great stretches of pine and blue-green fir trees, with occasional glimpses of quaking aspen in the distance.

"How's Mom?" Jenna asked. "Still telling those big-shot doctors at the hospital how to run the place?"

Dad grinned. 'You'd better believe it. She took off from work early and can't wait to see you."

"Hm-mm. I'm looking forward to seeing her, too. What's the agenda for this thing?"

"Well, Maribeth is going to be cremated, and there're no calling hours. A memorial service is slated for eleven Monday morning at the funeral home, with a reception afterwards. Your friends Annie and Molly are already here checked in at the Lodge, and that's where the reception will be held after the service. Sister Corky has planned everything pretty well I think. She wants to do Maribeth proud."

"God!" Jenna shivered as a spasm of pain shot through her. "I still can't believe she's gone. It seems impossible."

"I know. It was a shock for everyone, especially since she never complained of heart trouble. Dr. Scobey thinks she'd been dead for several hours by the time Corky found her. But he feels she didn't suffer."

"Well, that's a blessing."

"Yes, it is," Dad sighed. "But this certainly isn't the ending that anyone predicted for Maribeth."

"Hardly," Jenna agreed, and unconsciously shivered again, recalling the beautiful young woman who'd made heads turn everywhere she went. Suddenly they turned a bend in the road and she spotted Evergreen Lake, sparkling like a bright, silver dollar down below, and knew they were almost home. "I remember the first time I saw Maribeth like it was yesterday. It was right after we moved to the mountains."

"You must have been all of five or six."

"Seven," she said, "and looking forward to starting second grade in the fall." She'd grown so much, she recalled, that her school uniforms no longer fit, and one day as she remembered that she looked up from the crossword puzzle she was working on and reminded Grammy Barry that they'd better order new ones for the new year. But Gammy said that wouldn't be necessary; she said the new school Jenna would be going to probably wouldn't be a Catholic school and wouldn't require uniforms. That was the first Jenna had heard of a new school.

There'd been some talk between Grammy and Aunt Dot about Aunt Rita and the new fella she'd met at the Veterans hospital near Boston where she worked, and had recently married. They said when the man was released from the hospital he and Aunt Rita had decided to move out west and start a whole new life. They kept saying how relieved they were that this guy, whoever he was, didn't mind taking on a package deal. But Jenna had no idea at the time that she was part of the package.

As she resumed working on her puzzle she heard Grammy tell Aunt Dot that it would be better for 'you know who' if she became just part of the family. "There'll be no talk of out-of-wedlock births," Grammy said, (whatever that meant), "since they'll just be strangers out there. She can just blend in like their natural child; know what I mean?"

"Exactly," Aunt Dot said. "Although there're so many people living together today and giving birth without marriage, I don't think anyone thinks much about it anymore. Which is all to the good, in my opinion."

"Right," Grammy said, and leaning down she gave Jenna a hug. Then she went on talking about the new school and how she was sure Jenna would love it

"But where's this new school at and why am I changing schools anyway?" Jenna asked, since she was happy at Saint Aloysius. They weren't Catholics, but the school was right up the street, and Grammy liked the nuns. But Grammy didn't answer Jenna. Instead she got out the suitcases and got very busy packing Jenna's clothes and talking about what a nice vacation Jenna was going to have.

"Why are you packing all my clothes if we're just going to Myrtle Beach?" Jenna asked puzzled. They had gone to Myrtle Beach, near Charleston where they lived, and rented a cottage for two weeks every August for as long as she could remember. And all she wore at the beach were shorts and a bathing suit. But Grammy said this year was different. She said Jenna would not be going to Myrtle Beach, but to some strange place called Denver, Colorado, which was very nice by all accounts, and which she was sure Jenna would love.

"But who decided this?" Jenna demanded, and she crossed her arms across her chest and stared hard at Grammy. But again Grammy seemed to have trouble answering. She simply sighed as tears filled her eyes, and she said something about how she was too old to have her heart broken. And the very next day Aunt Dot called a taxi and Grammy hugged her close as she whispered, "Be a good girl now," and a cold feeling took over Jenna's body. It was like a chill that started in her chest and spread to her arms and fingers and right down her legs, all the way to her toes. And although she didn't understand it somehow she knew that change, inexorable and unalterable, had begun in the charmed circle of her life, and there was nothing she could do about it.

The taxi took her and Aunt Dot to the railroad station – Aunt Dot didn't like planes – and they got on a train for the long ride to Colorado. It took two-and-a-half days to get there and since she'd never been on a train before she found the experience different and kind of exciting. She enjoyed eating in the dining car, where the colored waiters always gave her a big smile, and there were flowers on the tables. And it was fun climbing the ladder to the upper berth at night and falling asleep to the clickatee-clack of the train wheels.

Then the train arrived in Denver and they got off, and she saw Aunt Rita, Aunt Dot's sister, who used to visit them in Charleston from time to time. Aunt Rita was small and trim, with a sweet, pretty face, and Jenna liked her well enough, although she hugged you so hard it almost hurt, and for some reason she always cried when she told Jenna good-bye.

"See you soon, honey bunch," she'd say, and her mouth would turn up bravely at the corners, but her eyes were always sad and forlorn.

Today though she was all smiles as she crushed Jenna close in her arms. "Oh, it's so good to see you!" she exclaimed. "And here's your new daddy, who's just been dying to meet you."

She gently pushed Jenna forward, and Jenna glanced up at the man standing beside her. He was a tall man with sparkling blue eyes and pale, silvery blond hair, and he carried his head slightly forward as though he didn't want to miss anything. He looked pleasant enough as he smiled and said jovially, "Why, hello there, Miss Jenna. Your mom told me you were pretty, but I must say she didn't do you justice. You're a lot more than pretty, in my estimation. Why, you're a real knockout, sugar baby."

"I am? Well, thanks. What's your name?"

"Ned. Ned Albertsen. And I hope you'll consider me your friend."

"I'll think about it."

"Great! I couldn't ask for anything more." He smiled again, he had a nice smile, very warm and inviting, and his blue eyes crinkled up at the corners. And it was funny, but the cold knot of fear and uncertainty that had lodged in her chest ever since Grammy hugged her good-bye mysteriously began, if not to evaporate exactly, at least to diminish a bit.

There were lots of new things to discover all of a sudden. Like the fact that Rita was her mother, not her aunt, and had had to leave her with Grammy and Aunt Dot while she went away to nursing school. "I hated to leave you, sweetheart," her mother said. "Oh, my, I surely did, but I had to become a nurse, make a living, so I could eventually support you."

"But where was my father?" Jenna asked. "I thought fathers supported their families."

"Not always, not in this case," her mother snapped, and her usual smiley mouth became a thin, harsh line. "I hate to tell you this, honey, but you might as well know –" She sighed. "Your father was just no good! He had no sense of responsibility, no decency. He simply took off, like a scared rabbit, when I got pregnant and wanted to get married--and that's the God's honest truth! But," her voice trembled, "we won't talk about the loser anymore. Now I've found Ned, and he's going to love you and take care of you and just be a wonderful father to you, you'll see."

And she was right about that, Jenna thought. From the moment Ned Albertsen entered her life he became the father she'd never had, and she couldn't have asked for anyone kinder or more understanding. He always had time to listen to her, give her an encouraging word, and he was never too busy to stop what he was doing and help her. Like the day she was complaining about her homework.

"I get so bored with these old problems in addition and subtraction." She sighed. "I know we have to learn this stuff, it's necessary. But it's the writing assignment the teacher gives us that I really look forward to – writing is always such fun. But I can't truly enjoy it because all the time I'm doing it I know I've still got these dumb old math problems waiting for me. And it just ruins everything!"

"Hmm-mm. I can see how that might cause you a bit of difficulty," Ned said. "But look, suppose you changed the order in which you do things."

"Whatta you mean?"

"Well, say you tackled the arithmetic problems first, got them out of the way. Then you could relax and enjoy the writing assignment."

"Hey, that's an idea," Jenna said. And the very next day she implemented his suggestion and discovered to her delight that just by doing the boring problems first, then being free to take her time with the writing that she loved, it made all the difference in the world. Which was just one of many ways in which Ned Albertsen helped her in his gentle, easy going way.

When he found out how much she liked reading he took her to the library and helped her select books he thought she'd enjoy. She loved to sit on his lap while he read to her in the evening; The Little Prince and Sleeping Beauty were two of her favorites. So it was easy to call him Dad, as Rita wanted her to do. Actually it was easier calling him Dad than it was calling Rita Mom, but she managed to do both after a while without too much trouble.

Dad came from a prominent Virginia family, one of the FFV's, First Families of Virginia, Mom told Jenna proudly. There were two senators and a governor in his background, and one of his ancestors was a signer of the Declaration of Independence – and you couldn't get much better than that! she exclaimed. His grandfather had owned a pharmaceutical company that he wanted Dad to take over, but Dad wasn't interested, so he sold the company. However, he left Dad a trust fund of thirty thousand a year. It wasn't a lot, but it was his, free and clear, for his lifetime. However, on his death it was to revert to the University of Virginia, his alma mater.

Dad had taught eighth grade at a private school in Charlottesville for five years when he first got out of college. Then he quit teaching to find himself, he said, and a few months later was drafted in the Vietnam war. He served two years in Vietnam, mostly as a desktop correspondent in Saigon, then after his discharge kicked around the whole U.S. for several years. Mom said he told her he'd always enjoyed writing and seriously thought of becoming an author. But then he got tuberculosis and ended up in that veterans hospital near Boston where Mom was working, and where they'd fallen in love.

"I knew as soon as I saw your mother I'd found my destiny," Dad confided to Jenna later. "When I got better and was released from the hospital I thought of going back to teaching, but I still had this crazy yearning to write. 'So do it,' your mom said. And she suggested, after we got married, that we go out west, New Mexico or Colorado maybe, where we didn't know anyone and could start a whole new life, a writing life for me."

"Did you have any idea what you wanted to write about?" Jenna asked him one day.

He smiled and said, "As a matter of fact I did. As I told your mother, for quite a long time, I'd had this idea for a novel set in Vietnam; I'd even tentatively titled it Without Remorse. It was about this second lieutenant in Intelligence that I became friends with over there named Tyler, "Tiny", Sedgwick. Tiny was six feet five and weighed close to three hundred pounds and had a sweet Vietnamese girlfriend named Nya. Nya had smooth, golden-copper skin and beautiful red lips, and she'd done things in her past she wasn't exactly proud of. But Tiny didn't hold it against her. He said she'd had to do certain things just to live, but all that was behind her now, and they were very much in love and hoped to marry."

"Sweet," Jenna said, already caught up in the story. "That sounds so sweet."

"Yes," Dad said, sighing sadly, "it really was sweet. But unfortunately Tiny already had a wife, a stranger he'd married on a drunken binge, one weekend before he shipped overseas. He'd written the woman and asked her for a divorce, even before he got involved with Nya, telling her she could have his car, which was new, and all the furniture in his apartment, as well as what was left in his bank account, about ten thousand dollars. But she wasn't interested. He knew she didn't love him, she barely knew him, but she liked the allotment the army sent her every month, and if he got killed, which was a good possibility in Nam, she'd get his insurance. So she wouldn't cooperate. Then Nya got pregnant. It was a blow they hadn't expected. But Tiny said they'd make the best of it and have the baby. He felt they could straighten things out when the war ended and he was back in the States. Then he'd get a divorce and he and Nya could marry."

"He sounds like a nice guy," Jenna said. But for some reason a flicker of apprehension coursed through her. "So did they eventually get married?"

Dad shook his head. "Nope. Unfortunately Nya had a father who had other ideas. His name was Minh, but everyone called him Smiley because of the grin that was continually plastered on his face. He worked in the commissary and the mess hall, or anywhere on the base where he was needed.

"My friends, good American liberators," he'd say, as he ladled out the soup, his diamond rings flashing on his hands, which were surprisingly big for a Vietnamese. "Happy to serve you gen-tle-men."

"And we're happy as all get out to be here in your beautiful country," one of the 'gentlemen' might reply. Then everyone would laugh and someone might thump Smiley on the back and ask where he got that fancy car he drove around in. And Smiley just smiled. "But he wasn't all smiles when it came to his daughter, sweet Nya," Dad went on. "Which was understandable, I suppose, since she'd helped to support the family for years."

"Oh? What kind of work did she do?" Jenna asked. But Mom, who'd come into the room in time to catch the tail end of this conversation, interjected, "Well, that's something we don't have to discuss right now, darling. Maybe when you're older –" she shot Dad a warning glance, and actually Jenna was quite a bit older before she discovered exactly what kind of work Nya did and heard the whole story behind Dad's novel, Without Remorse.

But in the meantime they were happily living in Denver, Colorado and things couldn't be better, Dad said, although if truth were told money was a little tight. He'd managed to save quite a bit when he was teaching and he had his trust fund to fall back on. But thirty thousand didn't go very far with three people to support. So they looked around for someplace a little cheaper than Denver to live in, and a real estate agent told them about Star Crest, outside the village of Evergreen. It was mainly a summer resort, but some people lived there year round, the agent said, and rents were low in the winter. They looked at several places, then the agent found them a house that the owners, who were moving to Florida, wanted to sell "as is".

It was a fairly good sized but completely unprepossessing structure made of peeled logs, with an open porch running across its full length and a steeply pitched roof to handle heavy snows. Inside the furniture, a conglomeration of big, burrowing couches and second hand odds and ends, was comfortable enough if definitely old shoe.