“Did you hear they caught the guy who shot King? In Engnd!”

  Jam greeted her news with a zy nod. “My mom’s more interested in the new income tax surcharge. She’ll be grumbling about it the rest of the summer.”

  “And into next summer,” added Lin. Obviously, she was back, and soaking up sun in the Summerlins’ wn as if she’d never disappeared. Her bikini was, if possible, even tinier than her sister’s. Kris tried not to stare at the long, taut brown body, stretched on a beach towel.

  She definitely felt self-conscious about her own short freckled one. But then, why should she? Lin was no more intimidating, physically, than her friend Joey. Not even as good-looking. She’d certainly never minded being around Joey. It was just this woman’s air, her attitude, wasn’t it?

  “No Will this morning?” Jam went on.

  “He’s promised to wander this way ter. He’s pying with his friends right now.” The guys who’d been his teammates through school, Mackie and all the rest. Will was saying goodbye too, in his way, and that way involved sweating and yelling. To each their own!

  Lin sat up, removing her dark gsses. “I was unkind to your friend, running off after talking with her.”

  “So I’ve heard.” She was not going to be intimidated by either Summerlin sister.

  Lin’s ugh seemed genuine. Maybe it even was. “I can imagine! I may have decided to go on an impulse but I didn’t stay with the guy. He’d already bored me by the time we got to Miami. But I decided to spend some time as long as I was there. We have retives I’d intended to visit anyway.” She gave Jam a quick gnce. He might not care as much about those retives. Cuban, Kris assumed. “Then Angelica drove over and picked me up st night. She brought your friend with her.”

  “Joey?” That seemed unbelievable.

  “No, the mousy one. Ron, isn’t it?”

  “Ronnie,” said Jam. “They call her Ronnie.”

  Lin shrugged. It looked less elegant with her slightly bony shoulders exposed. “Angelica called her Ron. They seem to have hit it off.” She practically shuddered then. “They talked a lot about politics.”

  “Ronnie’s let everyone know she pns to go into w now,” Jam told her.

  “Yes, they talked about that too.” Lin picked up a wide-brimmed straw hat but only to retrieve a pack of cigarettes inside it. “Do you smoke?” She held out the pack to Kris, who shook her head. Jam did the same when she offered them to him. Because she was there? wondered Kris.

  Lin lit one for herself, and tossed lighter and pack back into her hat. She took a few puffs, holding the cigarette between slim, long fingers, the nails short but perfectly manicured. Clear polish, thought Kris. She hadn’t bothered with anything like that since graduation.

  Lin’s act was polished too, and almost as clear. She was pying her role as New York sophisticate, the girl who partied in Miami. She expected Kris to be awed. But she hadn’t been that way with Joey. Her friend had reported how approachable, how normal, Lin had seemed when they biked together. Maybe it was a matter of her mood. Maybe she would ask Jam about it sometime.

  Kris had no particur pns beyond waiting for Will so she settled onto the grass beside Jam. “Angelica’s been making noise about demonstrating at the convention in Miami,” he informed her. “Don’t let her talk Ronnie into going.”

  Lin looked up. “Weren’t you thinking of going too?”

  “Not with my sister. Neither one.”

  “I’ll be back in New York,” she said. “You’d do better to come visit for a while.”

  “Or go to Chicago and do the convention there too. No, sister mine, I intend to take things very easy until the st moment of my freedom slips away.”

  “It needn’t ever slip away,” replied Lin. She tossed her cigarette aside and again reclined. After a moment, she turned over. It seemed unlikely Lin Summerlin had any more to say.

  Jam gestured toward the house with his head. Kris nodded and both rose and headed for the porch. Jelly was seated there, sipping iced water beneath the slowly rotating ceiling fan. “Sylvie turned me out of the kitchen,” she compined. “Said I was distracting her.” She giggled. “Well, she didn’t use that word. She said I was bothersome.”

  “I can imagine,” said Jam. So could Kris, even though she barely knew the Summerlin’s cook. She thought Jelly could be bothersome herself.

  And maybe she should go bother Sylvie for some cold water. Later. Kris sat down in one of the rattan chairs by the siblings. “I get the feeling your sister doesn’t like me,” she said. “Not you, Jelly. I already knew you don’t like me.”

  Jelly only smirked.

  Jam seemed to consider this statement for a moment, looking up into the air. She knew this meant a theory was coming. Possibly an outndish one. “You’re the alpha females of your packs. Expect her to bristle at you.”

  “Me?” She could see that bel on Lin but not on herself.

  “You don’t realize you’re the leader in your little group?” He snickered. “The pushy one?”

  “Hey!” But she had to ugh too.

  “And where you push, they follow.”

  “What am I then?” asked Jelly.

  “The lone wolf,” decred her brother.

  “Hmm. I guess that’s acceptable.” With that she threw back her head and howled. Jam and Kris couldn’t help falling into hysterical ughter.

  Sylvie stuck her head around the corner. “Whatever is going on, children?”

  “My sister has discovered her inner wolf.”

  “Inner bitch,” amended Jelly.

  “Miss Angelica!”

  “Sorry, Sylvie. I’ll be good.”

  The diminutive, middle-aged bck woman—she must be shorter than Kris—seemed satisfied with that. “Do you need some cold drinks out here?”

  “Sure do,” said Jelly, jumping up. “I’ll come in and help get ’em.” For the first time in her life, Kris felt she might like Jelly a little.

  But she hardly knew her, really. Much of what she did know had been seen through Joey’s eyes. “Lin was being sort of, um, standoffish just now. She’ll get that way,” said Jam.

  “Oh. Like—no, I’d better not say that.”

  “She reminds you of someone else you know?”

  Kris nodded. “Lin is shy, isn’t she? That’s why she puts up a front sometimes.” Like Ronnie. “It must be difficult in her line of work.”

  “I think it is,” Jam agreed. Nothing more.

  Jelly emerged from the house with a tray of tumblers.

  “Still on the subject of our sister?” she asked, handing out the iced teas. Kris was happy to find them unsweetened. One never knew in the south.

  “Kris thinks she’s an introvert.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said shy. That’s different.”

  Jelly nodded. “Social anxiety. I’d buy that.”

  Everyone seemed satisfied with the diagnosis so they sipped their tea in silence for a while. I should try to sketch one of these two, Kris told herself, peeking at one or the other over the lip of her gss from time to time. Maybe both. Not at the same time. Or—she turned around to look at Lin, still lying prone on her towel. She’d moved her arms up to pillow her head now. Too far away to draw from here?

  At the moment she felt shy herself. She always did when trying to sketch around Ronnie or Joey, too conscious of their presence. But these two? They were like an audience that might appud or boo, but would leave the theater at the end of the show. She slid her sketch book and box of pencils out of her commodious bag. Kris had seemed to be toting that everywhere tely.

  She tried to ignore her companions and within a few seconds they truly did disappear from her consciousness. There was just the scene, the one when she lifted her eyes, the one when she looked at her paper. The same scene and not the same scene. It was good that she was backed off from her subject and couldn’t make out details. Even though she had slipped on her gsses! That was her usual mistake, wasn’t it? Getting too involved with the details, missing that proverbial big picture.

  Was that any good? She looked up, she looked down. That’s enough. Don’t overwork it. The palms weren’t bad. It wasn’t a picture of Lin at all. She’d become just another shape in the ndscape. Kris turned herself back around, started to return the sketchbook to her bag. Darn, all the ice had melted in her tea.

  “Hold up,” ordered Jelly.

  “We want more than a glimpse over your shoulder,” said her brother. Both stood up and came over to look at her scribble. The audience wasn’t supposed to do that!

  “Pretty decent,” Jam went on. “And through the screen yet.”

  That had disappeared as she drew, also.

  “The negative space could be handled better,” Jelly commented.

  “Yeah. It could be handled worse too. Okay, the art critics are done, Kris. You can put it away.”

  “But we’re going to expect you to come and draw all the time now.”

  “Paint too.”

  “Only if you py your guitar. And you—” She scrutinized Jam. “Do you have any actual talent?”

  “No,” said Jelly immediately. “He’s just a pretty face. And speaking of pretty faces, there’s a cute and very sweaty boy coming our way.”

  “It’s about time,” called Kris, as Will Booth made his way across the wn. “Let’s get right into the water.”

  She raced him to it but let him win.