"And mine," Edwina muttered.

Her children had gone through the usual period of adolescent rebellion, loudly declaring that no one understood them and that they would show Edwina how things ought to be done as soon as they were out of the house and running their lives their way. They didn't need her to tell them what to do, or to do anything for them. By heaven, they didn't need anybody, if it came to that! Just let them hit the legal age of adulthood and then, look out! They'd make their own marks in the world, and they'd do it widescreen, big time, and Broadway style.

So what had happened when that day of dear-won independence finally dawned?

They went to work in the family business. Dov manned the Miami office, Peez held down the fort in New York City, and both of them still looked to Edwina to handle all the really big management decisions for E. Godz, Inc. Not since they'd nursed at Edwina's ample bosom had her two children been so dependent on her for their daily sustenance. She called the shots and they hastened to implement every word of her orders. They trusted her business sense implicitly, and so far, that trust had paid off for all concerned. Edwina couldn't have asked for more attentive corporate lieutenants, to say nothing of more biddable children, even if solely in this aspect of their lives together. It was all so very sweet, so drenched in the heady musk of family traditions, solidarity, and mutual support that they might as well have belonged to the Mafia.

"Ha!" Edwina remarked to the air. "At least a Mafia family knows enough to fight its real enemies."

As embittered as she felt at the moment, she couldn't help but smile when she regarded the image of herself in the family photo. It was, of course, the likeness of a much younger Edwina Godz, made back in the days before all of her hair had gone from a rich auburn to a sparkling silver-gray. There were plenty of white streaks lacing the younger Edwina's tawny mane, but the effect was both charming and attractive.

"You had it then, woman, and you've still got it now," Edwina told herself complacently. She looked up from the photo in her hands to a trio of larger pictures hanging on the wall just above the parlor fireplace. The one in the middle was the largest of the three: an old-fashioned, sepia-toned example of turn-of-the-century photographic art. A walrus-mustached man in what was clearly a very uncomfortable suit stood behind a seated lady with her hair done up in the fashion popularized by the Gibson Girl. She wore a high-necked lace dress with a small cameo brooch at her throat and she held a large bouquet of orange blossoms on her lap. She wasn't a beauty, by common cultural standards, but despite her wedding-day air of socially acceptable unease she still managed to project confidence and self-possession that was somehow ... sexy.

There was an unmistakable resemblance between Edwina and the woman in the sepia picture. "I'll bet if you'd been the one who came through Ellis Island instead of him"—her eyes flicked to the walrus-moustached gentleman in the photo—"you'd never have stood for it when the Customs officer got your name wrong. What's so hard about spelling 'Goetz' anyway? You'd have made him change it back in short order, and no arguments about it! On the other hand, I suppose I ought to be grateful that Grandpapa was such a don't-make-waves wuss about how the Customs man changed his family name. Having a name like 'Godz' is so much more effective in this business, from a marketing standpoint."

Edwina gazed fondly at this relic of her ancestors' wedding day. Marriage was such a quaint, dated concept. Still, some of the attendant trappings were alluring—on a purely aesthetic level—even for a product of the '60s like Edwina, who had come of age in the full flowering of the Sexual Revolution. She then let her eyes drift from the big photo above the mantelpiece to the pair of smaller ones flanking it. They too were framed with gold-leafed wood, but color photos and streamlined, minimalist frames alike spoke of more modern provenance than the sepia centerpiece.

The resemblance between Edwina and the people in the two companion photos was even more pronounced. The man in the photo on the left had supplied most of the genetic input evident in Edwina's appearance, while the woman in the photo on the right had provided a good deal of much-appreciated editorial tweaking. Thus the keen, gung-ho go- getter looks of Edwina's father were nicely softened by her mother's influence, leaving their daughter looking less like a hawk and more like a lamb. For this, Edwina was thankful.

"Not that I'm not deeply grateful to you, Daddy," Edwina told the photo. "After all, looks aren't everything. Especially at the bank."

You know it, kiddo, the photograph seemed to reply, and Edwina liked to believe she could see the long-gone yet still beloved twinkle in her father's eye when he said that.

It was the same sort of twinkle that had lit up his face when he was about to make a fresh "kill" in his ongoing role as a highly paid, extremely effective corporate lawyer. Litigation was his lifeblood, but investment savvy was his vocation. He took his income and sank it into a portfolio that fairly gushed profits. His dream had been to make enough money to buy one of the smaller Hawaiian islands and set himself up as an independently wealthy writer of science fiction, his first true love.

Alas, the dream was not to be. (And a good thing, too. Edwina had found some of her father's old notebooks with ideas for his Great American Sci-Fi novel. Nothing good could come of a book that began "Captain Studs Poleworthy arose from the bed of the sated Bazinga slave-girl, dabbed lime-flavored eroto-gel from his magnificent chest, and said, 'Sorry to come and go, my dear, but the starfields beckon.' ") While visiting Hawaii to scope out potential real estate buys, both of Edwina's parents had died in a tragic accident. They were touring a poi factory when one of the holding tanks broke and they drowned in the glutinous flood.

Their untimely deaths came just at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, when their daughter was first beginning to scent the cultural changes in the air, to hear the distant beat of a different drum, and to inhale ... her destiny. An only child with no living close relatives, Edwina had mourned the loss of her small family—for family had always been important to her—but then had dealt with her grief in what seemed to be the best available manner, at the time. Having been rendered an orphan, she performed a series of reverse adoptions, for want of a better way to describe matters. Independently wealthy, thanks to her late father's savvy for high finance, and just plain independent on account of the Great Poi Flood of '64, Edwina Godz set out to replace the family she had lost by making herself a part of every ragtag tribe, clan, commune or gaggle of rock band groupies that took her fancy.

Now, settled into comfortable middle age, a rich and respectable businesswoman, Edwina looked back over her wild, freewheeling youth without so much as a blush. And why should she be embarrassed to recall her counterculture odyssey and the many lovers she'd enjoyed en route to Enlightenment? She'd hurt no one by her amorous escapades, and even in the pre-AIDS era she'd had the foresight to take certain precautions that had preserved the robust health of her girlhood from pesky STDs.

Besides, it was thanks to the Summer of Love—which had somehow slipped into the Autumn of Eros and the Winter of Whoopee—that Edwina had obtained not only her darling children, but a method of earning more money than her dear, departed Daddy had ever imagined, even had he lived long enough to invest in Microsoft.

Her darling children ...

Edwina turned her back on the family portraits above the fireplace and returned her full attention to the framed photograph in her hands. She shook her head sadly. The smiles frozen in the instant of a camera's shutter click meant nothing. A photograph was a moment's illusion artificially preserved. The reality of the situation concerning her precious offspring had nothing at all to do with smiles.