“But how can I ever live with them again?”

“You could go to Washington with your father,” I suggested. “Yeah. You know he calls me every hour on the hour.”

It wasn’t quite that often, but he did call from Washington once or twice a day, alternatively cajoling and ordering Catherine to follow him east.

“Daddy can’t believe I’m not ready to embrace the right. He thinks seeing that Grample was a fraud means I should abandon all his and Granny’s ideals. Daddy’s fed up with me trying to defend them.”

“So I gathered. You can’t stay here forever, you know. After a while, the romance of living on a trundle bed would pall; you’d start wanting your private bath, your wide-screen television and all the other simple pleasures of home. Anyway, aside from your grandmother, you need to be in school.”

“Back to Vina Fields, with everyone staring at me and talking about me?” I grinned. “A chance to show what you’re made of But you’re a rich girl, and a smart one: you have choices. You can go to Washington, but insist on a school with more progressive values than the one your father picked out. You could go to boarding school-doesn’t your family have a tradition with Exeter? But you only have one more year after this one; transferring for your senior year might not be in your best interest. Isn’t there a friend you could stay with?”

She muffled her face in Peppy’s fur. “I’ve been through too much this winter. None of my friends is close enough to understand. And anyway, school seems totally pointless. Lacrosse, who’s dating who, it’s like-after seeing Benji die, none of it means anything.”

“You could take a year off to work with Habitat for Humanity or a similar group that tries to help people as poor as Benji’s mother. My lover-if Morrell-when Morrell comes home, he can help you find a good program.”

That suggestion appealed to her at once. We spent the next several days discussing hows and whens. Catherine finally decided to finish out her year at Vina Fields, since she couldn’t do much until her arm recovered, then try to start in a program like Habitat during the summer.

I hadn’t heard from Darraugh since the night I’d abandoned him in his bedroom, but he surprised me again after Catherine had decided to go back to school: he called to offer her a home for the balance of the school year. To my relief, Catherine accepted: I was more than ready for someone else to have care of an ardent adolescent.

She decided to spend a weekend in New Solway with her grandfather. She would collect her things and move in with Darraugh on Monday

morning. She talked to Renee, making her promise to stay in town, and on the last weekend in March, when daylight savings time began, climbed with me into the Mustang for the drive west.

I brought the dogs with me. After I’d seen Catherine into the Bayard mansion, where Ruth Lantner refused to say a word to me, I drove over to Larchmont and let the dogs out. I took Mitch and Peppy with me through the woods, retracing the route that Catherine followed as she slipped home after bringing Benji supplies. The dogs loved it: they found deer and chased them through the woods.