LITMIR.BIZ

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he smiles at me across the room in math class, I go all—”

      Vanessa screamed, dropped the receiver and lunged at her little brother.

      Ari dodged away from her and ran around the kitchen, still reading. “I go all shivery inside, and then I feel…”

      The teenager continued to scream. Steven, Jon’s elder son, watched idly from the adjoining family room where he lounged on a couch, watching television. None of the children seemed to be aware of Jon’s arrival on the scene.

      Vanessa tripped on the kitchen tiles and fell sprawling to her knees. She crouched on the floor, glaring furiously, long dark hair falling messily around her face.

      When Jon strode into the middle of the room, an abrupt silence fell. He crossed the kitchen, lifted the telephone and said, “Vanessa will call you back.”

      Then he hung up and turned to face his children.

      “Where’s Margaret?”

      Nobody answered. The only sounds were Vanessa’s heavy breathing and the roar of gunfire on the television.

      Jon looked from one young face to another. “Where’s Margaret?” he repeated.

      “In the garden,” Steven said at last. “She went out to pick some tomatoes for the salad.”

      “I see.” Jon turned to his younger son, who stood near the archway leading to the family room. “What’s that book, Ari?”

      “Van’s diary,” Ari said reluctantly.

      “What are you doing with your sister’s diary?” Jon asked. “You know better than to go into somebody else’s bedroom.”

      “It wasn’t in her room,” Ari said.

      Amy stood close behind him, lending support with her presence. She nodded earnestly.

      “Where was it?” Jon asked.

      “Under the couch.” Ari gestured toward Steven in the family room. “She left it right over there in plain sight. We found it when Margaret made us clean up our Lego.”

      “You horrible little monsters,” Vanessa muttered, getting to her feet. “Do something, Daddy,” she added bitterly. “You always let them get away with everything.”

      Jon looked at his elder daughter with a familiar mixture of sympathy and exasperation. At sixteen, Vanessa was a beautiful girl, and bright enough that she was already in her final year of high school. But her looks and personality were so similar to her mother’s that he often worried about her.

      Jon and Shelley Campbell had suffered through a dozen years of a stormy, unhappy marriage, complicated by the fact that they shared almost nothing in the way of tastes, dreams or attitudes. In fact, they shared nothing at all except their children, and Shelley’s interest in her offspring had always been so limited that even this tie was tenuous at best.

      Jon had met her when he she was nineteen and he was twenty-two. It had been immediately after the most distressing experience of his life, a painful time that he still remembered with frustrated sorrow.

      Lonely and desolate, Jon had been an easy target. He’d mistaken Shelley’s sexuality for warmth, her frenetic gaiety for intelligence, her possessiveness for loyalty. By the time he discovered his mistake, it was too late. She was pregnant with Steven, and both Jon and Shelley came from families where getting married was the only possible course of action.

      After Steven’s birth, Jon couldn’t bring himself to leave, for fear of losing his child, though the marriage was increasingly miserable. By the time Vanessa was born, less than two years later, Shelley had interests of her own and was seldom home.

      The twins had been the unexpected result of a final attempt at a reconciliation. Shelley was appalled when she discovered her third pregnancy. She demanded an abortion.

      Jon had talked her into carrying the twins to term, but it was the last straw for their marriage. Soon after the birth, angry and bitter, claiming that the kids were all he’d ever cared about, Shelley dumped all four children with him and left for good.

      At the moment she was living in Switzerland, using her lavish divorce settlement to support the young ski instructor who was her current lover. She barely managed a couple of trips a year back to the States to see her brood of growing children, and when she did fly in for visits, all of them were invariably hurt and disappointed by her flippant, erratic manner.

      Still, she was a beautiful woman, Jon thought ruefully. Even at forty, Shelley looked a lot like her older daughter, with the same violet-blue eyes, delicate complexion and slim figure. But Vanessa at least had an excuse for her selfish behaviour, since she was caught in the miserable throes of adolescence. Jon had hopes that his daughter might yet develop into a mature and caring person. Shelley, on the other hand, simply refused to grow up.

      Jon turned from Vanessa to look at Ari. “Just because Van left her diary out here doesn’t give you the right to read it,” he said. “Everybody’s entitled to privacy and respect for their belongings, Ari. Give me the book.”

      Ari moved forward silently and handed the diary to his father.

      Behind him, Amy’s green eyes filled with tears. Jon knew his children well enough to understand a little of what was going on with the twins.

      They’d never known the security of a mother who loved and cared about them. Over the years Jon had tried hard to make up for their loss, but he knew they were as hurt and confused as the older children by their mother’s carelessness. As a result, they tended to cling fiercely to familiar and comforting things.

      Now they’d been uprooted from the isolated ranch home they both loved. Their security was further disrupted by this move to a strange new environment, a different kind of school and a modern, unwelcoming house.

      Their loneliness and homesickness tore at Jon’s heart. He knelt on the kitchen floor and took Amy’s little body in his arms, reaching for her brother. “Come here, Ari,” he said.

      Ari hesitated, then pressed against him.

      “Tell Van you’re sorry,” Jon whispered. “Tell her you’ll never do it again.”

      Ari gulped, swallowed hard and turned to Vanessa. “We’re sorry,” he mumbled.

      “We won’t touch any of your stuff ever again,” Amy added.

      “Daddy, for God’s sake,” Vanessa began furiously. “Don’t let them get away with this! You should make them…”

      But Jon was holding the twins again, cuddling them tenderly. “How would you both like to come with me to the ranch this weekend?” he murmured against their dark curls.

      Ari’s gray eyes shone. “Really, Daddy?” he whispered huskily.

      “Really. But you have to be super-good between now and then.” Jon kissed Amy’s cheek and wiped her tears. “Now run and wash your face, sweetheart,” he said gently. “Let’s eat our supper.”

      While the twins ran out of the kitchen, he got up and seated himself at a big oak table that was neatly set for seven.

      When the twins came back, all four children joined him silently. A side door opened, and Margaret came in from the garden, carrying a basket of ripe tomatoes.

      The housekeeper was a big, friendly young woman with a mop of red hair and plump freckled arms. She had a boyfriend who worked on the oil rigs north of Edmonton, and who came home infrequently to visit his sweetheart. This erratic courtship seemed to suit both of them well enough, much to Jon’s relief. Margaret was the only housekeeper he’d ever found who was able to deal patiently and lovingly with all the children, and he dreaded the thought of losing her.

      She greeted Jon with a smile and carried the tomatoes to the sink.

      “What’s all this?” she asked when she saw Amy’s reddened cheeks.

      “They’ve

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