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a new song—would you like to hear it? You do like music, don't you?" She threw the last question anxiously over her shoulder, towing him along behind her like a tiny tugboat pulling a battleship.
    Trevor laughed, but something about the moppet touched him in a way he'd never been touched before. It wasn't just her ridiculous sentences or apparently wild mood swings; he sensed that she needed something from him, something her clearly loving family couldn't provide. And he wondered if Jessie of the "least ability" felt that lack more than her family realized.
    He kept his voice casual and friendly when he answered her anxious question, determined to do nothing to set up barriers between himself and the child. '"I love music, Jessie; 1 took piano lessons when I was your age."
    Her gray eyes were neither vague like her mother's nor brilliant like her father's, but were distinctively her own: deep smoky pools that brooded one moment and gleamed with a disconcerting wisdom the next. But they flared brilliantly when he claimed some knowledge of music.
    "You know music? Really?"
    A bit uneasily, Trevor sought to dampen her enthusiasm in the gentlest manner possible. As the side door banged just behind them, he said carefully, "It was a long time ago, Jessie. I haven't played in years."
    "But at least you know," she said intensely. "No one else here knows. Oh, they all love music, but they can't play even a note. Not even Daddy, and he has clever hands."
    Thoughtfully, Trevor noted that Jessie's sentences became much less tangled when she spoke of music. He filed that knowledge away in his mind as they entered the cheerfully cluttered den and were immediately addressed by Sara, who was sitting between Jamie and Dory on the couch.
    "Jamie closed the laundry room door so Jack can't get out. Hurry and sit down; Solomon wants us to meet her babies."
    Pulled firmly down beside Jessie on the love seat, Trevor wondered distantly why no one had thought to close that door yesterday, then silently chastised himself for trying to make sense of anything in this house. But he couldn't help wondering how they could be so sure the cat was about to present her kittens for inspection. Did cats even do that?
    The Shannon cat did.
    She came around the corner just then, ignoring the poodle, which was sitting very still by the doorway. In a measured tread so careful that they could almost hear the music of a march, she entered the room—a tremendous Siamese cat with comically crossed blue eyes and a pure white kitten held securely in her mouth.
    Like everyone else, Trevor found himself sitting very still and gazing at the mother and child with respectful eyes. He watched as Solomon gently deposited the kitten on the carpet squarely in the middle of the room, then sat down and gazed—or, at least, appeared to gaze—at Sara.
    "How lovely, Solomon," Sara said instantly.
    The cat released a peculiarly contented rumble, picked up the kitten, and marched regally from the room. She was back moments later with a kitten, and the little ceremony was repeated.
    After she left with the fourth kitten, Trevor could no longer repress a burning question. "How do we know she isn't bringing the same kitten down every time? They're all identical."
    Sara's vague eyes focused on him reprovingly. "Of course she isn't, Trevor. A mother knows her children."
    Meekly, Trevor watched the fifth repetition of the ceremony. But when the cat had disappeared, he had another question. "Does she do this with every litter?"
    "Oh, yes," Sara answered.
    "Then why doesn't she wait for the whole family to be here?" Instantly, he felt abashed at the question, telling himself it was ludicrous to suppose the cat could count people or reason. But Sara's answer made his question quite logical and sane by comparison.
    "To tease Luke, of course."
    "I beg your pardon?" he managed.
    "Luke won't let her hide the kittens. He always finds them. So Solomon shows them to the rest of us to get even with