"The girls are angels," Margo said as she sat down at the round glass table under an arbor of sweetly blooming wisteria. "Josh was the devil's spawn." She spread foie gras on a toast point and bit in. "What's the crime?"

"Do you remember that night when you and I went out to Seraphina's cliffs with Matt Bolton and Biff Milard? It was summer, we were just fifteen. Kate wasn't with us because she was a year younger and couldn't date yet."

Margo cast her mind back. "We double-dated with Matt and Biff a lot that summer. Until Biff tried to unhook your bra and you bloodied his nose."

"What?" Josh immediately came to attention. "What do you mean he tried to unhook your bra?"

"I'm sure you've attempted the maneuver once or twice, Josh," Margo said dryly.

"Shut up, Margo. You never told me he'd tried to…" His eyes took on a warrior's glint. "What else did he try?"

Laura sighed and decided she was enjoying the salmon cakes more than she'd anticipated. "Nothing worth you flying to Los Angeles to hunt him down and shoot him like a dog for. In any case, if I'd wanted him to unhook my bra, I wouldn't have punched him in the nose, would I? To get back to the story, that was the night we heard Seraphina's ghost."

"Oh, right, I remember."

Margo helped herself to more pate. It was the Tiffany porcelain lunch service today, she noted. The Monet pattern with its cheerfully bright blue and yellow. And to set it off, a silver vase filled with yellow frangipani from the greenhouse. Her mother's touch, she thought. She'd used the same china, the same flowers when she allowed Margo to have the tea party she'd so longed for on her thirteenth birthday.

Was it, she wondered, her mother's quiet, unspoken way of welcoming?

With a shake, she brought herself back. "We were sitting on the cliffs necking."

"Define necking," Josh demanded.

She only smiled and stole one of the matchstick potatoes from his plate. "There was a full moon, and all this lovely light on the water. The stars were so huge and bright and the sea went on forever. Then we heard her. She was crying."

"Like her heart would break," Laura added. "It was intense, but very soft, like something carried up into the air. We were terrified and thrilled."

"And the guys were so spooked they forgot all about scoring and kept trying to get us back to the car. But we stayed. We could hear this whispering and moaning and crying. Then we heard her speak." Margo shivered remembering it. "In Spanish."

"I had to translate because you'd been too busy painting your nails in class to pay attention to Mrs. Lupez. She said, 'Find my treasure. It waits for love.'"

Even as Margo sighed, Josh was chuckling. "It took me three days to teach Kate how to say that without fumbling it.