“What difference?” He swung his feet around and sat up on the edge of the cot, occupying the place she’d just left. “Hell, Devon, what are we without memories? Memories are…” He raked a hand through his hair, leaving it endearingly tousled while he searched for the thought. “Jeez-they make us who we are.”

Endearingly? Confused and distressed, she looked away. “Well, I guess that’s just who I am, then,” she said, brittle and defiant. “A person who was never a child.”

“Everyone was a child.”

She wanted to hate him for the sorrow in his voice. She wanted to think of something sarcastic and clever to hurl back at him. Because she couldn’t, she kept silent, while a pulse ticked crazily against her belt buckle, and the tension coiling inside her felt like a watch spring coming unwound.

“What about pictures?” Eric asked suddenly, straightening with inspiration brightening his eyes. “Your folks must have pictures…photo albums.”

She shook her head and grimaced impatiently, not meaning to lie, really, just not wanting to explain that she never looked at the photographs in her parents’ house. Except for the one on the shelf in the bookcase in the living room-she could hardly miss that one, the professional portrait of two little red-haired girls, one sitting tall and smiling with the gawky self-consciousness of adolescence, the other a chubby-cheeked baby in ruffles, propped on a pillow and clutching a stuffed Winnie the Pooh toy. A portrait of strangers. Devon felt no connection to the children in the picture whatsoever.

“What’s your earliest memory, then?”

God, he was relentless. She wanted to stamp her feet, tear her hair, cry-ironically, all the sorts of things a child would do, and which she had no memory of ever having done. But in any case, she was an adult now, and all she could do was lift her hands to her head and give a tiny moan. “Oh-I don’t know-jeez, I’d have to think-”

“You want to know what mine is?” She most definitely didn’t, but of course he ignored her whimper of denial. “At least, I guess it’s my earliest-I don’t know how old I was, but I must have been maybe…two. I was sitting on my mom’s lap…” His voice was gentle with remembering.

In spite of herself, she found herself turning toward it, then moving instinctively closer like a chilled animal seeking warmth in the darkness. And when she saw his face, not gaunt and full of shadows but lifted to her, smooth and light and young, her heart turned over and the anger in it drained away.

“And we were on this great big tractor. I had my hands on the steering wheel, pretending I was driving it-scared to death, you know? But so proud, too. And I know I must have been pretty small, because that steering wheel seemed huge. I had to stretch my arms wide to grip it on both sides. It felt warm in my hands…almost too warm…hot, actually.”

“That’s it?” She made her voice light, but there was a quiver of envy in it.

He spread his hands and smiled his lopsided smile. “That’s it. Hey, memories don’t have to be big, you know. They can be anything-a smell, a song, a certain food, a particular toy…a moment. Just one little moment in time, captured up here-” he tapped his temple “-forever. Like a photograph.” And he grinned at her, cocky over the aptness of his analogy.

In capitulation, she sat beside him on the cot with her hands pressed tightly between her knees and drew a deep breath. “Okay…” she said on the exhalation, “I guess the earliest thing I remember is…I was packing, so I must have been getting ready to leave for college. Susan was watching me. She didn’t want me to go.”

Incredibly, she wished with all her heart that while she was telling him these things he would put his arms around her again, gather her in and hold her close and enfold her in warmth and safety. And prayed he wouldn’t.

“Details?” Eric prompted softly.

Her mouth was dry. Her throat ached. She tried to swallow, and it felt like thorns. “The suitcase was open on the bed,” she whispered. “She was leaning against it…crying.”

Please don’t go. Don’t leave me here, Devon…please don’t leave me…

“That’s all-I don’t remember anymore-I’m sorry.” And she was on her feet, heart thumping, racing. Yet she was cold. Cold clear through.

She jerked away from him, and as her gaze swept past the window, a movement caught her eye. A spurt of relief-and guilt and anguish-shot through her. “Oh, God-” Bobbing to see past the tangle of a climbing rosebush heavily laden with red-gold hips, she managed a breathless, “Look-your mom and dad are back. I don’t want them to see…” Snatching up her jacket, she ran from the cottage.

Shot through with guilt-adrenaline himself, heart pumping like a runaway freight train, Eric stood in the bunkhouse doorway and watched her make her way across the yard to the house, sliding a little on the trodden-down pathway through the snow. He felt jangled and shaken, but exhilarated, too, as if he’d just missed capturing a Pulitzer-winning shot, or a wild bird in his hands.

Coming up the lane in Lucy’s old Ford 4X4, Mike and Lucy watched the stumbling red-haired figure in the unzipped ski-jacket half running through the well-trampled snow, accompanied and impeded by a pair of excited Border collies.

“Look, isn’t that Devon?” said Mike. “Wonder where she’s been.”

“With Eric, I imagine.” Lucy didn’t even try to keep the satisfaction out of her voice.

Mike frowned at the windshield. “So who’s minding the kid? Is that why she’s in such a hurry to get back?”

Lucy was shaking her head emphatically. “They wouldn’t be so irresponsible. Look-there she is.” She nodded toward the bunkhouse, where Eric was just coming out of the door with a comforter-swathed bundle tucked under one arm.

“Huh. What in the heck would they be doing out there in the bunkhouse?” Mike still looked puzzled as he pulled the Ford into its usual parking spot under the trees.

Lucy gave him an exasperated jab with her elbow. “Oh, Mike, don’t be dense.” He threw her a startled look, and she couldn’t resist smirking at him. “I’m sure he was showing her his darkroom. What else?”

He let go of a gust of laughter. “Lucy, you are incorrigible.”

“I love it when you talk writer to me,” she purred, batting her lashes outrageously. She was feeling outrageously pleased. Her plan was working. She was sure of it.

“Hi, Mom…Dad.” Eric paused beside the car as they were opening doors. “Need a hand unloading?”

“You get that baby in out of the cold. I can handle the unloading. Your mom’s got to get ready for chores.” Mike grinned. “Hey, how’s the darkroom? Just like you left it?”

Eric grinned back at his dad, and Lucy’s heart gave a little shiver of happiness. They didn’t really resemble each other, those two, and yet, in the indefinable way of fathers and sons, they were so alike. “Pretty much. Need fresh chemicals, though.” He turned to Lucy with a look of innocence she remembered well. “Hey, by the way, Mom-the photo albums? Where’ve you got ’em stashed?”

“Oh, heavens,” she replied in pretended exasperation, “all over the place. Some in the parlor, some in your room…my sewing room. There’s so many, I wouldn’t begin to know where to…”

“That’s okay, don’t worry about it. I’ll look.” He turned back to Mike. “Dad, is it okay if I use your computer for a while this evening?”

Mike’s eyebrows went up but all he said was, “Sure, go ahead. With all this yet to wrap, I can’t imagine I’ll be using it. Help yourself.”

“Okay, thanks.”

When their son had disappeared inside the house with his quilt-wrapped bundle, Mike said to Lucy out of the side of his mouth, “What d’you suppose he’s up to now?”

“Who knows? It’s Christmas,” Lucy replied serenely. At last…

The rest of the day was devoted to preparations for the coming holiday-and, in Devon’s case, avoiding Eric.

While Lucy and Mike were outside doing the evening chores, she stayed barricaded in her room like a hostage, listening to the intermittent sound of his footsteps going past her door. Up and down the stairs they went, in and out of his room, and her nerves jumped every time she heard his door click open or shut. Restless beyond bearing, she paced like a caged cat while the tension inside her tightened to screaming pitch.

When she finally heard the sound of banging doors, the clank of buckets and loud cheerful voices drifting up from the service room, she was so relieved she almost wept, and even though cooking had never been among her hobbies, went skipping down the stairs to volunteer to help with dinner.

Apparently delighted by Devon’s offer, Lucy banished Mike, who-equally delighted to be relieved of kitchen duty-immediately went off to the parlor to help Eric with his mysterious computer project. She then handed Devon a knife and set her to cutting up vegetables for a salad to go with the beef stew that was already thawing in a Tupperware container in the microwave.

While she worked efficiently alongside Devon, Lucy chattered about all that had been and still remained to be done to get ready for the coming holiday. She sounded positively happy at the prospect of peeling and chopping the endless array of fruits, nuts and vegetables that would go into the various traditional family dishes-potato soup for Christmas Eve, corn bread and walnut stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey giblet gravy, candied yams, creamed onions, cranberry Jell-O, fruit salad and pumpkin pies for Christmas dinner.

Devon had never heard of so much food. She asked, with twinges of alarm, how many people Lucy was expecting for dinner on Christmas Day.

Lucy smiled and explained that this year it was to be just her brother Earl, his wife Chris and their daughter, Caitlyn. “And you and Eric, of course,” she added, and her smile was so radiant Devon had to look away, and wonder at the traitorous prickles that had come to the backs of her eyes.