“Joey is much better looking than I am. I would kill for such cheekbones.” Lin’s sigh might have been just a little too dramatic. “I look like our mother.”

  There was some truth to that. It was unlikely Maria Summerlin had ever been particurly attractive, as far as her face went. Age had not helped her cause. She must be in her mid-forties now. Late-forties, maybe? But she was tall. All the family was tall.

  That made up for much. “She still has a good figure,” ventured Ronnie. She probably did look quite a lot like Lin when young, though Maria’s features were a little heavier. Some might even say masculine.

  “True, but Mom is, well, pin. When I’m her age they’re likely to say the same of me.” She gave them a bit of a comical grimace. “If they don’t already!”

  “Never!” cimed Jam.

  “Almost never,” chimed in Jelly.

  Ronnie would never say it of her face, even if she thought it. It was a face almost rectangur, a little too much jaw, maybe, and not much to notice otherwise. It might be a pin face but Lin was not a pin person.

  “I’m going to swim before it gets any hotter,” announced Lin, and headed for the beach.

  “That seems backward,” commented Jam. “I’d want to jump into the water when it got hot.”

  “Have you been in the Gulf tely? It feels like a bath. Our sister will hole up in the air conditioning when it gets too hot for her. I think she’s writing.”

  Lin had seemed to be just filling time, keeping busy at doing nothing, until she would be flying back to New York. “Writing?” asked Ronnie. “Stories?”

  “Sketches, I think. Right?” Jam asked his sister. “We’re probably good material for her.”

  “Uh-huh. The sort of thing that goes over with her editors, or she thinks does. Editors in general, I suppose.”

  “The ones in the world she lives in now. It seems kind of a small world to me.”

  “Maybe not from where she’s standing. It might look like it’s everything to her.” Angelica turned her eyes toward the beach but her sister was no longer visible from their vantage. “The way school can until you get away from it.”

  “Run away from it, you mean?”

  “I had sense enough to do that.”

  James made no reply to that but looked as if he at least half-agreed with his twin.

  “But it’s a good job, isn’t it?” asked Ronnie, after a few empty seconds. “I mean, um, the world she lives in?”

  James shrugged. “It’s the track she wanted to be on. The sort of career Lin always talked about.”

  “She may have slept her way into her job,” added Angelica. “I guess she’s good enough to hold onto it.”

  Again, James had no reply. Whether he agreed at all now, Ronnie was unable to discern.

  “She doesn’t seem very happy,” she said. “Not really.”

  “I think she’s trying to forget she isn’t happy,” replied Jam.

  Jelly nodded. “Has she ever been?”

  The awkward silence was longer this time. “You should have brought your guitar,” said Angelica.

  “Not on my bike.” Ronnie had pedaled her old bike over this morning, the one she had inherited from her brother. It remained the dark green it had been when Richard rode it but she had added a white wicker basket to the front. The pstic daisy that had come affixed to that basket had gone into the trash. “Kris’s Bug was in front of her house when I biked by on the way here. They must have got back st night.”

  “We’ll probably see them ter, then,” felt James. “Let’s wait in the air conditioned comfort of the patial Summerlin home.”

  “Lin would say it’s the Sas home,” his sister reminded him. “I might too.” That st came a bit—what? Pensive? Maybe the girl didn’t see this old house as quite being her home.

  They passed through the porch and into the house, not through the French doors that opened into the dining room but the door by the kitchen, and past the staircase to the second floor Ronnie had never seen. She hadn’t seen much of this floor. “Are your parents here?”

  “No one’s here,” responded James. “Not even Sylvie.”

  “Oh, then you’ll have to cook. Joey tells me you cook.”

  “Maybe ter.” Ronnie somehow doubted that. They had entered the rge, dim living room, the couches and chairs all upholstered in greens and whites, echoed in the bamboo patterned curtains. A pair of fans slowly rotated below the high ceiling. They most likely predated the air conditioning.

  “We could settle in the library and drink Dad’s liquor,” suggested Angelica. She turned to Ronnie. “That’s where he keeps the good stuff.”

  “Which he wisely keeps locked up. Not because of us,” he hastened to add, “but lots of guests are in and out of here.”

  “So I’ve noticed,” said Ronnie. She was a little surprised she said it. She wasn’t the one to try to be witty.

  That was witty, wasn’t it? Jam did smile. James. She should call him, think of him as James. He drew back one of the pocket doors to the library, Preston Summerlin’s private sanctum. Oh, but James was sleeping there, she remembered.

  You couldn’t tell. The space had no resembnce to anyone’s bedroom. Angelica strolled over to one of the tall bookcases, reached behind a set of dark, leather-bound volumes, and produced a key. “This is where Dad keeps the key to the liquor cabinet, just in case you ever need it,” she announced, and returned it to its hiding pce. “I suspect the secret is safe with Ron.”

  “But not with me?” asked her brother.

  “Oh, you can always go over to the church and get a nip of the communion wine.”

  James only shook his head. It was a theatrical gesture. They seemed common in this family. “I would guess the rest of your triumvirate is sleeping in,” he said, turning to Ronnie.

  Two guesses as to who had used that name around him. “It’s a long drive to Miami and back,” she said, in their defense.

  “UM, right?” asked Angelica, settling into the most comfortable looking of the chairs and putting her feet up on the coffee table. “Maybe I should go there. They have a good music department.”

  “Right. Kris wanted to drive over to the campus and Joey rode with her.”

  But not her. Her friends had sprung the idea on her te Sunday, after they had decided to go. But then, Ronnie had been wrapped up with An and Angelica and not paying much attention to them. She hadn’t even realized they had gone off somewhere with James and Lin.

  Just maybe she had resented not being asked to go on that ride. She couldn’t sort all that out. All Ronnie knew was she hadn’t liked being asked to make a sudden decision.

  “Well, I expect all three of you to help me set up for our party. My sisters won’t be any use. They think it’s enough to sit around and be ornamental.”

  “That could be seen as a put-down, brother mine,” said Angelica. “Ron and her friends are capable of being ornamental too.”

  James chuckled. “True. Just bring your boyfriends and I’ll put them to work.”

  “You will have to bring your guitars on the Fourth too,” Angelica added. “No excuses allowed.”

  “Okay,” agreed Ronnie, looking about the room. Books lined the walls. There was a small, cluttered desk, a couple of arm chairs, a couch, all in subdued colors. Lawyer colors, she told herself and smiled a little at the idea. Dark leather, mahogany, all the cliches.

  Maybe she could have a library like it one day.