"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.

I'd learned about my "long-lost" relatives in the course of an investigation the year before, and so far, I'd managed to keep them at arm's length. Just because they wanted a relationship didn't obligate me. I'll admit I might have been a little crabby on the subject, but I couldn't help myself. I'm thirty-five years old and my orphanhood suits me. Besides, when you're "adopted" at my age, how do you know they won't become disillusioned and reject you again?

I picked up the phone and dialed Tasha's number before I had time to work myself into a snit. She answered and I identified myself.

"Thanks for calling so promptly. How are you?" she said.

"I'm fine," I said, desperately trying to figure out what she wanted from me. I'd never met her, but during our previous phone conversation, she'd told me she was an estate attorney, handling wills and probate. Did she need a private detective? Was she hoping to advise me about living trusts?

"Listen, dear. The reason I'm calling is we're hoping we can talk you into driving up to Lompoc to have Thanksgiving with us. The whole family's going to be here and we thought it'd be a nice time to get acquainted."

I felt my heart sink. I had zero interest in the family gathering, but I decided to be polite. I injected my voice with a phony touch of regret. "Oh, gee, thanks, Tasha, but I'm tied up. Some good friends are getting married that day and I'm a bridesmaid."

"On Thanksgiving? Well, that seems peculiar."

"It was the only time they could work out," I said, thinking ha ha tee hee.

"What about Friday or Saturday of that weekend?" she said.

"Ah." My mind went blank. "Mmm… I think I'm busy, but I could check," I said. I'm an excellent liar in professional matters. On the personal side I'm as lame as everybody else. I reached for my calendar, knowing it was blank. For a split second I toyed with the possibility of saying "yes," but a primitive howl of protest welled up from my gut. "Oh, gee. Nope, I'm tied up."

"Kinsey, I can sense your reluctance, and I have to tell you how sorry we all are. Whatever the quarrel between your mother and Grand had nothing to do with you. We're hoping to make up for it, if you'll let us."

I felt my eyes roll upward. Much as I'd hoped to avoid it, I was going to have to take this on. "Tasha, that's sweet and I appreciate your saying that, but this is not going to work. I don't know what else to tell you. I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of coming up there, especially on a holiday."

"Oh, really? Why is that?"

"I don't know why. I have no experience with family, so it's not anything I miss. That's just the way it is."

"Don't you want to meet the other cousins?"

"Uh, Tasha, I hope this doesn't sound rude, but we've done all right without each other so far."

"How do you know you wouldn't like us?"

"I probably would," I said. "That isn't the issue."

"Then what is?"

"For one thing, I'm not into groups and I'm not all that crazy about being pushed," I said.

There was a silence. "Does this have something to do with Aunt Gin?" she asked.

"Aunt Gin? Not at all. What makes you ask?"

"We've heard she was eccentric. I guess I'm assuming she turned you against us in some way."

"How could she do that? She never even mentioned you."

"Don't you think that was odd?"

"Of course it's odd. Look, Aunt Gin was big on theory, but she didn't seem to favor a lot of human contact. This is not a complaint. She taught me a lot, and many lessons I valued, but I'm not like other people. Frankly, at this point, I prefer my independence."

"That's bullshit. I don't believe you. We'd all like to think we're independent, but no one lives in isolation. This is family. You can't repudiate kinship. It's a fact of life. You're one of us whether you like it or not."

"Tasha, let's just put it out there as long as we're at it. There aren't going to be any warm, gooey family scenes. It's not in the cards. We're not going to gather around the piano for any old-fashioned sing-alongs."