Strangers

physically imposing, certainly not intimidating. Likewise, she was shapely but not a blond bombshell. She was blond, however, and the particular silvery shade of her hair was what caught a man's eye, whether he was seeing her for the first time or the hundredth. Even in bright sunshine her hair recalled moonlight. That ethereally pale and radiant hair, her delicate features, blue eyes that were the very definition of gentleness, an Audrey Hepburn neck, slender shoulders, thin wrists, long-fingered hands, and her tiny waist - all contributed to a misleading impression of fragility. Furthermore, she was quiet and watchful by nature, two qualities that might be mistaken for timidity. Her voice was so soft and musical that anyone could easily fail to apprehend the self-assurance and underlying authority in those dulcet tones.
        Ginger had inherited her silver-blond mane, cerulean eyes, beauty, and ambition from her mother, Anna, a five-foot-ten Swede.
        "You're my golden girl," Anna said when Ginger graduated from sixth grade at the age of nine, two years ahead of schedule, after being promoted twice in advance of her peers.
        Ginger had been the best student in her class and had received a gilt-edged scroll in honor of her academic excellence. Also, as one of three student performers who had provided entertainment before the graduation ceremony, she had played two pieces on the piano - Mozart, followed by a ragtime tune - and had brought the surprised audience to its feet.
        "Golden girl," Anna said, hugging her all the way home in the car.
        Jacob drove, blinking back tears of pride. Jacob was an emotional man, easily moved. Somewhat embarrassed by the frequency with which his eyes moistened, he usually tried to conceal the depth of his feelings by blaming his tears or reddened eyes on a never-specified allergy. "Must be unusual pollens in the air today," he said twice on the way home from graduation. "Irritating pollens."
        Anna said, "It's all come together in you, bubbeleh. My best features and your father's best, and you're going places, by God, you just wait and see if you aren't. High school, then college, then maybe law school or medical school, anything you want to do. Anything."
        The only people who never underestimated Ginger were her parents.
        They reached home, turned into the driveway. Jacob stopped short of the garage and said, in surprise, "What are we doing? Our only child graduates from sixth grade, our child who - thinks she can do absolutely anything - will probably marry the King of Siam and ride a giraffe to the moon, our child wears her first cap and gown and we aren't celebrating? Should we drive into Manhattan, have maybe champagne at the Plaza? Dinner at the Waldorf? No. Something better. Only the best for our giraffe-riding astronaut. We'll go to the soda fountain at Walgreen's!"
        "Yeah!" Ginger said.
        At Walgreen's, they, must have been as odd a family as the soda jerk had ever seen: the Jewish father, not much bigger than a jockey, with a Germanic name but a Sephardic complexion; the Swedish mother, blond and gloriously feminine, five inches taller than her husband; and the child, a wraith, an elf, petite though her mother was not, fair though her father was dark, with a beauty altogether different from her mother's - a more subtle beauty with a fey quality. Even as a child, Ginger knew that strangers, seeing her with her parents, must think she was adopted.
        From her father, Ginger had inherited her slight stature, soft voice, intellect, and gentleness.
        She loved them both so completely and intensely that, as a child, her vocabulary had been insufficient to convey her feelings. Even as an adult, she could not find the words to express what they had meant to her. They were both gone now, to early graves.
        When Anna died in a traffic accident, shortly after Ginger's twelfth birthday, the common wisdom among Jacob's relatives was that both Ginger and her father would be adrift without the Swede, whom the Weiss clan had long ago ceased to regard as an interloping gentile and for whom they had developed both respect and love. Everyone knew how close the three had been, but, more important, everyone knew that Anna had been the engine powering the family's success. It was Anna who had taken the least ambitious of the Weiss brothers - Jacob the dreamer, Jacob the meek, Jacob with his nose always in a