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dusty-rose flowered fabric. There were chairs with high carved backs upholstered in a matching rose damask. On a fireplace with a high mantel rested a pewter candlestick and a china clock, and there were several pieces of massive, richly glowing furniture. The whole thing was beautiful, but so grand . . .
    “You can put your clothes here—this chest is solid mahogany,” Cassie’s grandmother was saying. “The design is called bombé, and it was made right here in Massachusetts—this is the only area in all the colonies that produced it.”
    The colonies? Cassie thought wildly, staring at the decorative scroll top of the chest.
    “And this is your dressing table and your wardrobe . . . Have you looked out the windows? I thought you might like a corner room because you can see both south and east.”
    Cassie looked. Through one window she could see the road. The other faced the ocean. Just now it was a sullen lead gray under the darkening sky, exactly matching Cassie’s mood.
    “I’ll leave you here to get settled in,” Cassie’s grandmother said. “Alexandra, I’ve given you the green room at the opposite end of the hallway. . . .”
    Cassie’s mother gave her shoulder a quick, almost timid squeeze. And then Cassie was alone. Alone with the massive ruddy furniture and the cold fireplace and the heavy draperies. She sat gingerly on a chair because she was afraid of the bed.
    She thought about her bedroom at home, with her white pressed-wood furniture and her Phantom of the Opera posters and the new CD player she’d bought with her baby-sitting money. She’d painted the bookcase pale blue to show off her unicorn collection. She collected every kind of unicorn there was—stuffed, blown glass, ceramic, pewter. Back home, Clover had said once that Cassie was like a unicorn herself: blue eyed, shy, and different from everyone else. All that seemed to belong to a former life now.
    She didn’t know how long she sat there, but sometime later she found the piece of chalcedony in her hand. She must have taken it out of her pocket, and now she was clinging to it.
    If you’re ever in trouble or danger, she thought, and a wave of longing swept over her. It was followed by a wave of fury. Don’t be stupid, she told herself sharply. You’re not in danger. And no rock is going to help you. She had an impulse to throw it away, but instead she just rubbed it against her cheek, feeling the cool, jagged smoothness of the crystals. It made her remember his touch—how gentle it had been, the way it had pierced her to the soul. Daringly, she rubbed the crystal over her lips and felt a sudden throb from all the places on her skin he had touched. The hand he had held—she could still feel his fingers printed on her palm. Her wrist—she felt the light brush of cool fingertips raising the hairs there. And the back of it . . . She shut her eyes and her breath caught as she remembered that kiss. What would it have felt like, she wondered, if his lips had touched where the crystal touched now? She let her head fall back, drawing the cool stone from her own lips down her throat to rest in the hollow where her pulse beat. She could almost feel him kissing her, as no boy ever had; she could almost imagine that it really was his lips there. I would let you, she thought, even though I wouldn’t let anyone else . . . I would trust you. . . .
    But he’d left her. Suddenly, with a shock, she remembered that. He’d left her and gone away, just as the other most important man in Cassie’s life had.
    Cassie seldom thought about her father. She seldom allowed herself to. He’d gone away when she was only a little girl, left her mother and her alone to take care of themselves. Cassie’s mother told people he had died, but to Cassie she admitted the truth: he’d simply left. Maybe he was dead by now, or maybe he was somewhere else, with another family, another daughter. She and her mother would never know. And although her mother never