"Must have been a shock."

"It was. I felt awful. I didn't even call first. He'd written me a note a couple months before, so I was all set to surprise him. Joke's on me, I guess. If I'd known, I could have saved myself a trip. Even driving, it's not cheap."

"How long have you been here?"

"Little over a week. I didn't plan to stay, but I drove over two thousand miles to get here and didn't have the heart to turn around and drive back. I didn't think I'd like California, but it's nice." Ray finished packing one box and tucked the top flaps together, setting that box aside while I started work on the next.

"Lot of people feel it takes some getting used to."

"Not for me. I hope Bucky doesn't think I'm ghoulish because I want to move in. I hate to take advantage of someone else's misfortune, but what the heck," he said. "Might as well have some good come out of it. Seems like a nice area, and I like being near the beach. I don't think Johnny'd mind. Here, let me get these out of your way." Ray lifted one box and stacked it on top of another, pushing both to one side.

"Where are you now?"

"Couple blocks over. At the Lexington. Right near the beach and room doesn't even have a view. Up here, I notice you can see a little slice of ocean if you look through those trees."

I looked around the room with care but didn't see anything else worth examining. Johnny hadn't had that much, and what he owned was unrevealing. "Well, I think I'll give up." I dusted my jeans off, feeling grubby and hot. I went into the kitchen and washed my hands at the sink. The plumbing shrieked and the water was full of rust. "You want to check anything while you're here? Water pressure, plumbing? You could measure for cafe curtains before I lock up," I said.

He smiled. "I better wait until I sign some kind of rental agreement. I don't want to take the move for granted, the way Bucky's been acting. You want my opinion, the kid's not all that bright."

I agreed, but it seemed politic to keep my mouth shut for once. I returned to the main room, found my shoulder bag, and slung the strap across my shoulder, then dug the key from my jeans pocket. Ray moved out of the apartment just ahead of me, pausing on the stair below me while I locked up. Once the place was secured I followed him down the stairs and we walked down the driveway together toward the street. I made a quick detour, moving up onto the front porch, where I tucked the key into the mail slot in the middle of the front door. I rejoined him, and when we reached the street, he began to move in the opposite direction.

"Thanks for the help. I hope you and Bucky manage to work something out."

"Me too. See you." He gave a quick wave and moved off.

When I reached home, Henry's kitchen door was open and I could hear the babble of voices, which meant that Nell, Charlie, and Lewis were in. Before the day was over, they'd be into Scrabble and pinochle, Chinese checkers, and slapjack, squabbling like kids over the Parcheesi board.

By the time I unlocked my front door, it was almost eleven. The message light was blinking on my answering machine. I pressed the playback button. "Kinsey? This is your cousin Tasha, up in Lompoc. Could you give me a call?" She left a phone number, which I duly noted. The call had come through five minutes before.

This was not good, I thought.

At the age of eighteen, my mother had been estranged from her well-to-do family when she rebelled against my grandmother's wishes and ran off with a mailman. She and my father were married by a Santa Teresa judge with my aunt Gin in attendance, the only one of her sisters who dared to side with her. Both my mother and Aunt Gin had been banned from the family, an exile that continued until I was born some fifteen years later. My parents had given up any hope of offspring, but with my arrival tentative contact was made with the remaining sisters, who kept the renewed conversations a secret. When my grandparents left on a cruise to celebrate their anniversary, my parents drove up to Lompoc to visit. I was four at the time and remember nothing of the occasion. A year later, while we were driving north to another furtive reunion, a boulder rolled down the mountain and crashed through the car windshield, killing my father on impact. The car went off the road and my mother was critically injured. She died a short time later while the paramedics were still working to extract us from the wreckage.

After that, I was brought up by Aunt Gin, and to my knowledge, there was no further communication with the family. Aunt Gin had never married, and I was raised in accordance with her peculiar notions of what a girl-child should be. As a consequence, I turned out to be a somewhat odd human being, though not nearly as "bent" as some people might think. Since my aunt's death some ten years ago, I'd made my peace with my solitary state.