The Sleeping Doll

. . . .
    Which was ultimately Wes’s fear. The concern was unreasonable, of course, but that didn’t matter. It was real to him. She’d be more careful this time. Keep Wes and Kellogg separate, not mention the word “date,” sell theidea that, like him, she had friends who were both male and female. Your children are like suspects in an interrogation: It’s not smart to lie but you don’t need to tell them everything.
    A lot of work, a lot of juggling.
    Time and effort  . . .
    Or, she wondered, her thoughts spinning fast, was it better just to forget about Kellogg, wait a year or two before she dated? Age thirteen or fourteen is hugely different from twelve. Wes would be better then.
    Yet Dance didn’t want to. She couldn’t forget the complicated memories of his taste and touch. She thought too of his tentativeness about children, the stress he exhibited. She wondered if it was because he was uneasy around youngsters and was now forming a connection with a woman who came with a pair of them. How would he deal with that? Maybe—
    But, hold on here, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
    You were making out. You enjoyed it. Don’t call the caterer yet.
    For a long time she lay in bed, listening to the sounds of nature. You were never very far from them around here—throaty sea animals, temperamental birds and the settling bed sheet of surf. Often, loneliness sprang into Kathryn Dance’s life, a striking snake, and it was at moments like this—in bed, late, hearing the sound track of night—that she was most vulnerable to it. How nice it was to feel your lover’s thigh next to yours, to hear the adagio of shallow breath, to awake at dawn to the thumps and rustling of someone’s rising: sounds, otherwise insignificant, that were the comforting heartbeats of a life together.
    Kathryn Dance supposed longing for these small things revealed weakness, a sign of dependency. But what was so wrong with that? My God, look at us fragile creatures. We have to depend. So why not fill that dependency with somebody whose company we enjoy, whose body we can gladly press against late at night, who makes us laugh? . . . Why not just hold on and hope for the best?
    Ah, Bill. . . . She thought to her late husband. Bill. . . .
    Distant memories tugged.
    But so did fresh ones, with nearly equal gravitation.
     . . . afterward. How does that sound?

T HURSDAY

Chapter 39
    In her backyard again.
    Her Shire, her Narnia, her Hogwarts, her Secret Garden.
    Seventeen-year-old Theresa Croyton Bolling sat in the gray teak Smith & Hawken glider and read the slim volume in her hand, flipping pages slowly. It was a magnificent day. The air was as sweet as the perfume department at Macy’s, and the nearby hills of Napa were as peaceful as ever, covered with a mat of clover and grass, verdant grapevines and pine and gnarly cypress.
    Theresa was thinking lyrically because of what she was reading—beautifully crafted, heartfelt, insightful. . . .
    And totally boring poetry.
    She sighed loudly, wishing her aunt were around to hear her. The paperback drooped in her hand and she gazed over the backyard once more. A place where she seemed to spend half her life, the green prison, she sometimes called it.
    Other times, she loved the place. It was beautiful, a perfect setting to read, or practice her guitar (Theresa wanted to be a pediatrician, a travel writer or, in the best of all worlds, Sharon Isbin, the famous classical guitarist).
    She was here, not in school, at the moment because of an unplanned trip she and her aunt and uncle were going to be taking.
    Oh, Tare, we’ll have fun. Roger’s got this thing he has to do in Manhattan, a speech, or research, I don’t really know. Wasn’t paying attention. He was going on and on. You know your uncle. But won’t it be great, getting away, just on a whim? An adventure .
    Which was why her aunt had taken her out of school at 10:00 A.M. on Monday. Only, hello, they hadn’t left yet, which was a little odd. Her aunt explaining there were some “logistical difficulties. You know what I mean?”
    Theresa was eighth in her class of 257 students at Vallejo Springs High. She said, “Yes, I do. You mean ‘logistic.’ ”
    But what the girl didn’t understand was, since they were still not on a fucking airplane to New York, why couldn’t she stay in school until the “difficulties” were taken care of?
    Her aunt had pointed out, “Besides, it’s study week. So