She was different, Ben thought. No one would ever mistake her for Miriam, or another of the sisters. He came around the table and looked at the drawing. Her sketch pad was open to a page filled with small, hastily done line drawings of buildings, ruined streets, hills of rubble. She was doing a full page of one section of Washington. For a moment he had a curious feeling of being there, seeing the devastation, the tragedy of a lost era; Molly had the power to put images from his mind onto paper. He turned and looked out the window at the hills, which were splashes of color now with the sun full on them.

Watching him, Molly thought: neither Thomas nor Jed would talk with her at all. Thomas shied away as if she carried plague, and Jed remembered other things, urgent things he had to do. Harvey talked too much, and said nothing. And Lewis was too busy.

But she could talk with Ben, she thought. They could relive the trip with each other, they could try to understand what had happened, for whatever had happened to her had happened to him. She could see it in his face, in the way he had turned so abruptly from her drawing. Something lay within him, ready to awaken, ready to whisper to him, if he would let it, just as it lay within her and changed the world she saw. It spoke to her, not in words, but in colors, in symbols that she didn't understand, in dreams, in visions that passed fleetingly through her mind. She watched him where he stood, with the sun shining on him. Light fell on his arm in a way that made each hair gleam golden, a forest of golden trees on a brown plain. He shifted and the twilight on the plain turned the trees black.

"Little sister," he began, and she smiled and shook her head.

"Don't call me that," she said. "Call me… whatever you want, but not that." She had disturbed him; a frown came and went, leaving his face unreadable. "Molly," she said. "Just call me Molly."

But now he couldn't think what it was he had started to say to her. The difference was in her expression, he thought suddenly. Physically she was identical to Miriam, to the other sisters, only the expression was changed. She looked more mature, harder? That wasn't it, but he thought it was close to what he meant. Determined. Deeper.

"I want to see you on a regular basis for a while," Ben said abruptly. He hadn't started to say that at all, hadn't even thought of it until he said it.

Molly nodded slowly.

Still he hesitated, puzzled about what else he might say.

"You should set the time," Molly said gently.

"Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, immediately after lunch," he said brusquely. He made a note in his book.

"Starting today? Or should I wait until Monday?"