Abruptly, Phyllis dropped Melissa's arm and smiled at her. "No buts," she said. "And I don't think we ought to fight on your birthday. Besides, you have to get ready for your party."

Mellissa stared at her mother in disbelief. "What party?" she asked. "I'm not having a party."

"But I am," Phyllis announced. "And believe me, it wasn't easy, putting a proper birthday celebration together at the last minute. But I knew how disappointed you were when your father had to leave, so I explained the situation to all your friends' mothers..."

Phyllis chattered on about the children she'd invited, but Melissa heard no more With a sinking feeling, she realized what her mother had done.

The Cove Club.

Phyllis had called all her women friends at the Cove Club and insisted they send their children over to Maplecrest for Melissa's birthday. And, of course, after Phyllis had explained what had happened, and why Melissa's dad had suddenly left, everyone had felt sorry for her, and agreed that she should certainly have a party.

And they'd all show up, but they'd do the same thing here that they all did at the Cove Club.

They'd talk to each other, and ignore her.

"And it's going to be wonderful, darling," she heard her mother saying as they went into the house. "You can wear your pink organdy, and I've even hired a disk jockey so everyone can dance. It will be such fun for you. After all, you're a teenager now, and it's time you started doing more things with the crowd. What better time for you to start than on your birthday?"

Though she already felt faintly sick, Melissa knew there was no point in trying to argue with her mother.

Silently, she went up to her room and started getting ready for the party.

Melissa sneaked a look at the clock as she escaped into the small powder room under the main staircase and locked the door. It was only four, which meant that the party was going to go on for hours yet-the disk jockey hadn't even arrived, and the caterers from the club had just started setting up the buffet on the terrace around the pool. And yet to Melissa it seemed as if the afternoon had already gone on for an eternity.

She'd at least saved herself the humiliation of wearing the pink organdy dress her mother had picked out for her. She'd had it on, had even been ready to go downstairs, when she'd heard a car pull up in front of the house and seen Brett Van Arsdale arrive in the black Porsche he'd gotten for his sixteenth birthday two weeks earlier. There were six people crowded into the little car, and as they untangled themselves, Melissa had seen what they were wearing.

Tennis whites.

The boys' shirts were still soaked with sweat, and it had been obvious to Melissa that they'd come straight from the club, not even bothering to change first.

As she heard the door bell ring, immediately followed by her mother's voice commanding her to come downstairs, she'd rushed back to her room, wriggled out of the dress, and pulled on a pair of shorts and a blouse, which she realized as she fumbled with the b.u.t.tons had fit fine last summer but was too tight now. She'd shoved her feet into a pair of sneakers and started downstairs, but had to stop to tie her laces when she tripped and almost fell the last ten steps. When she looked up from her shoes, the kids were already in the foyer, staring up at her.

Among them was Jeff Barnstable, on whom Melissa had had a secret crush for the last two summers. Next to him-holding his hand-was Ellen Stevens.

"We already played tennis," Ellen said, pointedly staring at Melissa's shoes. "We thought we'd take a swim now."

Without waiting for a reply, the kids had trooped through the house and out to the pool, where they'd found bathing suits in the pool house. By the time Melissa had gone upstairs to change, a game of water polo was in progress.

Melissa had stood silently at the edge of the pool, waiting for one of the teams to invite her to join them.

Neither had.

When her mother had come out to watch a few minutes later, and asked Melissa why she wasn't playing, Melissa had insisted she didn't want to.

But she could see clearly that her mother knew the truth.

The next two hours had been more of the same. Now, Melissa wondered how long she could stay in the powder room. It wouldn't be long, she knew, before her mother would come looking for her.

Suddenly she saw the doork.n.o.b turn, the impatient rattling immediately followed by the sound of Ellen Stevens's voice: "Well, is this dismal, or what? First we have to come over here for a mercy party, and now you can't even get into the bathroom."

"Let's go upstairs," Cyndi Miller replied. "Maybe I can find one of Melissa's lipsticks."

The powder room echoed with Ellen's sharp laughter. "Melissa's? Even if she has one, it'll be some terrible color. Why don't we just leave?"

"We can't," Cyndi answered. "My mother said we have to stay until at least nine, no matter how bad it is. Otherwise she'll have to listen to Mrs. Holloway talking about how rude we were to her precious little daughter."

Suddenly Melissa had enough. She pulled the door open and stared at the two girls, willing her tears not to overflow and run down her cheeks. "You don't have to stay," she said in a low voice. "I never wanted you to come in the first place."

The two girls, only a year or so older than Melissa, glanced at each other. It was Cyndi who finally spoke. "You shouldn't have been in there listening to us," she said.

Melissa felt her self-control slipping away. She hadn't done anything to them, hadn't tried to hear what they were saying. But they'd just stood there, talking about her. Why was it her fault? And then she saw her mother coming down the stairs, stopping to look at her.

"Is something wrong?" Phyllis asked.

Melissa started to shake her head but was too late.

"I think we'd better go home, Mrs. Holloway," Ellen Stevens said as if she were trying to find a nice way to handle the situation. "Melissa just told us she didn't want us here."

Seeing the look of cold anger that flashed into her mother's eyes, Melissa fled up the stairs to her room. She flopped onto the bed, her body wracked with sobs, her fists pounding the pillow with frustration.

But soon her sobs subsided and her anger toward Cyndi and Ellen and the rest of the kids died away.

After all, it wasn't their fault-they hadn't wanted to come any more than she had wanted them to. And they wouldn't have, if her mother hadn't called their mothers and begged.

So the anger dissipated, only to be replaced by fear. For after what had happened this afternoon, she was certain that sometime tonight, sometime after Cora had gone to bed for the night, her mother would come into her room.

Come into her room, for one of her little "talks."

CHAPTER 3.

Charles Holloway had the same feeling of vague disorientation that always came over him when he arrived in Los Angeles. Part of his confusion was caused by the fact that all the freeways seemed to run north and south, even when they crossed at right angles. But at last he'd worked his way out into the vast suburban mora.s.s of the San Fernando Valley, turning onto the block where the MacIvers lived only a little more than an hour and a half after leaving the airport in his rented car. It was the first time he'd ever seen this part of the valley, and he knew immediately why it had attracted Polly.

The houses in this area all had a feeling of permanence to them, their yards dotted with large shade trees, their gardens having the look of being carefully tended for decades. Nowhere here did he see the too-bright green of freshly laid sod or the patches of "beauty bark" with which the newer subdivisions were littered. No, this particular area had a look of stability to it, a certain middle-cla.s.s solidity that would have appealed to Polly.

To himself, of course, it simply looked dull, like a California version of all the small towns in the East that he had always found unutterably boring, but to which Polly had always been drawn like an iron filing to a magnet. "At least they're real," she'd said over and over again in those first few months of their marriage, when he'd still hoped it was going to work out. "I just can't stand the idea of raising children in Manhattan and Secret Cove-it's so horribly insular!"

In a way, of course, Charles had understood what she meant. Certainly, both of them had grown up with a lifestyle greatly different from that of the vast majority of people. Charles had always simply accepted it, and when he'd married Polly, he'd a.s.sumed that she had, too. But the truth, he'd soon found out, was that Polly had resented both the wealth and position of her birth. Not that the Porters were as wealthy as the Holloways. They weren't, and never had been. Nor had they thought the same way as the Holloways and most of the rest of the "Secret Cove Crowd"-as they tended to think of themselves, complete with quotation marks-though Charles hadn't really been aware of it when he'd married Polly. Oh, he'd known Polly had gone off to Berkeley when the rest of them had headed for Harvard, Yale, Bennington, and Va.s.sar, but he hadn't realized how much she'd been affected by the West Coast until long after they'd married.

"But if you didn't like the way we lived, why did you marry me?" he'd asked her after the divorce had become final.

"Because it was expected of me," she replied. "Good G.o.d, Charles-we both knew we'd get married from the day we were born! And I really thought it would be all right! But after Berkeley, the whole thing just seems so unreal! I mean, Lenore Van Arsdale not only doesn't know what's going on outside of Secret Cove, she doesn't even care!"

Charles's mouth dropped open. "Lenore is your best friend! You grew up with her."

Polly had smiled ironically. "I know. But I grew away from her, and you, and everything else in Secret Cove. I can't spend my life planning parties that cost three times as much as the money they raise for whatever cause the Crowd has fastened on each year. I can't keep spending piles and piles of money on clothes when I know how many people can barely afford clothes at all."

"So what are you going to do?" Charles had finally demanded. "Give it all away?"

To his shock, that was exactly what Polly had intended and exactly what she had done. After the divorce she'd set up a foundation, picked a board of trustees that hadn't included a single member of the Secret Cove Crowd, and then turned over every a.s.set she had to the foundation. There'd been no one to stop her-her parents had died in a skiing accident three years earlier, and though Charles had considered at least fighting her over custody of the infant Teri, in the end he hadn't. Polly, after all, had never been anything but a devoted mother, and Charles was less willing to put his tiny daughter through a protracted legal battle than to allow Polly to raise her as she saw fit. Indeed, he'd even approved of the adoption after Polly had married Tom MacIver and moved west, where both Polly and Tom had built careers in the university system.

He, on the rebound from the divorce, had promptly married Phyllis, whom Polly herself had first brought into their life as Teri's nurse. Though not born into the Secret Cove Crowd, Phyllis had at least respected its values; and the marriage, if far from perfect, had allowed him to continue the lifestyle he'd grown up with and hoped to die with. Only a few months after the marriage, Phyllis presented him with a baby girl who had quickly filled the void left by the loss of Teri. For all of them, things had worked out.

But now, as he gazed at the charred remains of the MacIvers' house, he knew that everything had changed once more. Teri was about to be transported across the country and thrust into an unfamiliar environment, filled with unfamiliar people. And he suspected that Polly had never prepared her daughter for what life would be like in the East. After all, why should she have?

He turned away from the blackened pile of rubble and crossed the street to the house bearing the address he'd scrawled on a sc.r.a.p of paper earlier that morning. It was no different from the rest of the houses on the block-a small frame structure, modest, but substantial-looking. As he mounted the short flight of steps to its front porch, he found himself wondering if it would burn as fast as Polly's house had.

He suspected it would.

Charles pressed the b.u.t.ton next to the front door and heard a soft chime sound inside. A moment later the door opened and a plump woman peered out at him. "Mrs. Barrow?" he said through the screen door. "I'm Charles Holloway. Teri's father."

Instantly, the door opened wider, and Lucy Barrow pushed the screen door open, too. "Mr. Holloway," she breathed, her relief apparent in her voice. "Thank G.o.d-I just don't know what to say. It's all been so terrible, and when Teri told me to call you-" She broke off and stood almost still for a moment, her fluttering hands betraying her confusion. "I-Well, I'm afraid none of us even knew you existed. I mean, Polly and Tom never told us-" Once again she fell silent.

Charles reached out to take her arm, gently guiding her toward her own living room. "It's all right, Mrs. Barrow," he told her. "I understand what you must have thought. It's..." And then his own words died in his throat as they stepped over the threshold and he saw Teri, huddled in a corner of the couch, her thin robe wrapped tightly around her slender body. Her eyes, wide and uncertain, were fixed on him, and she seemed to be holding her breath, as if she had been waiting to see if he would actually come for her.

For a long moment neither of them said a word. Then Teri stirred on the couch and got uncertainly to her feet. Her mouth opened, and when at last she spoke, her voice was rough, as though she'd spent most of the day crying. "F-Father?"

Choking with emotion, Charles strode across the room in three quick steps and slipped his arms around the girl. She stiffened for a moment, but then seemed to relax, her face resting against his chest. He clumsily stroked her hair, then tipped her face up so he could look into it. "It's all right, Teri," he whispered. "I'm here, and you're not alone, and I'm going to make everything better for you." He held her close again, and though he couldn't see her face as she pressed it once more against his chest, he imagined he could feel a tiny smile breaking through her grief.

Until this moment, he knew, she must have felt totally alone in the world.

Alone and terrified.

Melissa sat at the small vanity that stood between the two large windows of her bedroom, toying with the supper that Cora had brought her an hour ago. Try as she would, she had managed to eat no more than half of it, and even that was lying like a lead weight in the pit of her stomach. She stared disconsolately at the plate, wishing she could summon up the appet.i.te to finish the food. Cora had made all her favorites for her birthday supper-a small steak cooked just the way she liked it, with corn on the cob (the white kind, which didn't even seem to get caught in your teeth) and sugar snap beans she herself had helped Tag plant last spring in Cora's little garden behind the garage. And she should have been hungry-she'd barely eaten anything all day.

She heard a footstep in the hall outside her room and quickly picked up her knife and fork, certain it was her mother coming to check on her. But when the door opened, it was only Cora, and Melissa felt herself relax. Then she flushed with guilt as the housekeeper eyed the half-filled plate. "I-I'm sorry, Cora," she said. "I just couldn't eat much tonight."

"Now don't you worry about it, Missy," Cora replied, using the nickname that Phyllis Holloway had long ago forbidden. "You just eat what you want, and save a little room for this." She set a thick wedge of chocolate cake on the vanity, nodding with satisfaction as she saw a smile break through Melissa's gloom. "The way I look at it," she went on, "what happened at the party's just as well. None of those kids would have appreciated my cake half as much as you do, and this way we got a lot left over. Tomorrow, you and Tag can poke away at it all day long."

Abandoning the remains of the steak, Melissa picked up her fork and plunged it into the moist bulk of the cake. But just as she was about to put the morsel into her mouth, her mother appeared in the doorway.

"Now, Melissa," Phyllis said. "You know we don't have dessert until we've finished our dinner."

The brief flicker of eagerness died in Melissa's eyes, and she obediently put her fork back on the plate. "I-I guess I'm too full, Cora," she said, her eyes pleading with the housekeeper not to argue with her mother. "Maybe I'll be able to eat some tomorrow."

Cora, her own eyes carefully avoiding Phyllis, picked up the plates containing the remains of Melissa's dinner and slipped out the door.

Without another word to her daughter, Phyllis followed the housekeeper out, firmly closing the door behind her.

Melissa, left alone once more, moved back to the bed, where she huddled, waiting for the inevitable.

She picked up a book, tried to read it, but found herself going over and over the same page, her eyes taking in the print, but her mind refusing to absorb the sense of the words. The minutes ticked by, and finally, when the sound of Cora's voice calling out to Blackie signaled that the old woman was on her way back to her own house for the night, Melissa put the book aside. Five minutes later her bedroom door opened once more and her mother stepped inside. Wordlessly, Phyllis went to the windows and closed them. At last she turned to face her daughter.

"How dare you?" she asked, her voice quivering with the indignation she'd been nursing all afternoon. "Doesn't anything matter to you at all? Do you have no appreciation for everything I try to do for you?"

Melissa shrank back on the bed, her knees drawn defensively up against her chest. Her eyes fixed on her mother, and in her mind she began whispering silently to D'Arcy.

What did I do, D'Arcy? What? I didn't do anything to anyone. Why can't Mama understand that they don't like me?

"Your dress, Melissa?" Phyllis suddenly demanded. "Where is it?"

Melissa was silent for a split second, but as her mother took a step toward her, she forced herself to speak through her constricted throat. "The closet," she whispered.

Her eyes narrowing, Phyllis turned and moved to the closet, hurling the door open with enough force to make it bang loudly against the wall. The pink organdy dress lay crumpled on the floor where it had lain since slipping off the hanger Melissa had hastily put it on earlier. Phyllis s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, then turned to face her daughter. "Is this the way you treat your clothes?" she demanded. She grasped the dress in both hands, then jerked hard. There was a tearing sound that made Melissa want to sob.

Then, as if brought back to life by the violence of Phyllis's action, Melissa jumped off the bed and rushed toward her mother. "Don't!" she cried. "Don't tear my dress!" She reached for the dress but stopped as her mother's hand snaked out and slapped her sharply across the cheek.

Melissa gasped, and staggered back toward the bed. As Phyllis followed her, the torn dress clutched in one hand while the other tightened into a fist, Melissa cowered back against the headboard.

Help me! she silently cried out to the room that was empty except for herself and her mother. she silently cried out to the room that was empty except for herself and her mother. Please, D'Arcy, help me. Don't let her hit me again! Please, D'Arcy, help me. Don't let her hit me again! As her mother came closer, Melissa's eyes darted around the room, as if searching for someplace to hide or for someone to come to her aid. As her mother came closer, Melissa's eyes darted around the room, as if searching for someplace to hide or for someone to come to her aid.

And then, in the corner of the room, she saw the familiar shadow. Barely visible at first, the diaphanous form quickly took on the shape of a girl and moved soundlessly toward the bed.

Stop her, Melissa whispered silently to the strange form she alone could see. Melissa whispered silently to the strange form she alone could see. Oh, please-tell her I didn't do anything. Don't let her punish me! Oh, please-tell her I didn't do anything. Don't let her punish me! And then D'Arcy was beside her, whispering softly, directly, into her mind. And then D'Arcy was beside her, whispering softly, directly, into her mind.

Sleep, Melissa. I'm here now, and I'll take care of you. Just go to sleep...

As her mother came to the bedside, Melissa felt the soft warmth of D'Arcy's arms slip around her, cradling her. She closed her eyes and listened only to the sound of D'Arcy's musical voice, crooning to her. Her mother's angry words died away, and then the familiar darkness of sleep began to close around her. She drifted away, leaving D'Arcy alone to absorb her mother's wrath.

Phyllis's hand closed on Melissa's arm and jerked her upright. "Why shouldn't I rip up the dress?" she demanded. "Did you pay for it? Do you even take care of it? Will you even wear it? Of course not!" She shook Melissa then, pushing her back onto the pillows. Methodically, she tore the dress into two pieces, then ripped it again, jerking the sleeves from the shoulder seams and flinging them in Melissa's face.

"I don't know what to do with you!" she grated, glaring at her daughter. "Do you know how hard it was to get those children here today? Do you think they wanted to come? And how do you show your appreciation? You insult them, that's how!"

Her right hand closed on Melissa's shoulder again and jerked her around. Melissa flopped to the side but made no sound, nor did her arms move up to ward off her mother's anger. Her eyes, wide open, stared straight ahead as Phyllis began shaking her violently, flinging her against the headboard.

Through it all Melissa remained silent, saying nothing, not even crying out at the sharp stabs of pain in her neck or the hard crack when her head struck the headboard.

And her eyes, still wide open, seemed to stare sightlessly straight ahead as her mother's fury finally spent itself.

Panting with her own exertions, Phyllis released Melissa's shoulders and let her drop back onto the bed. Then she picked up the torn remnants that had been the pink party dress and flung them once more toward Melissa. "By tomorrow," she said, her voice low and dangerous, "I'll expect the dress to be mended and back in the closet."

Glowering darkly at her daughter, she turned and stalked from the room.

As soon as the door closed, Melissa rose from the bed and moved over to the vanity. c.o.c.king her head in a faintly curious manner, she gazed into the mirror with blank and empty eyes. Her own image stared back at her, but in the reflection it seemed somehow different. Her face seemed thinner, the layer of fat peeled away to expose her bone structure, and her features had softened. Tentatively, she reached up to touch her hair, pushing it back and away from her face, then let her fingers caress her stinging ears, still sore from the blows they had received from her mother. At last, turning from the mirror, she picked up the pieces of the dress and moved to the door. Switching off the lights in her room, she stepped out into the darkness of the hall. She paused, listening, but the house was silent now.

Carrying the ruined dress with her, she moved down the long hallway until she came to the steep flight of stairs that led to the attic. Once more she paused, then went on, carefully climbing the stairs until she came to the closed door that led to the attic itself.

She slipped inside and closed the door behind her. The attic was almost pitch-dark, lit only by a pale glow of moonlight that penetrated the small dormer windows in the roof. But Melissa, her eyes never wavering, moved easily through the gloom, threading her way through the piles of boxes, the ancient steamer trunks, and the old furniture that had been consigned to the attic over the years.

Unconscious of her surroundings, she didn't pause as she trod the attic floor, finally coming to a small room tucked beneath the sloping roof. Inside there was a worn sofa and a chest of drawers. On a small table in front of the sofa there was an oil lamp, and Melissa, putting the tatters of the dress on the sofa for a moment, struck a match and carefully lit the lamp.

The tiny room glowed with a soft orange light.

She moved to the dresser, and from the bottom drawer took an old wooden box filled with an a.s.sortment of needles, thread, thimbles, and pins. Carrying the box with her, she returned to the sofa, sat down, and opened the box. Carefully, she chose a shade of thread that nearly matched the dress.