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Then she was quiet. She wasn't crying, but she kept on covering her eyes with her hand like she might.

I thought she was upset about her parents all over again, plus Henry. So, I told her all of the nice things my brother had said about her, every compliment I could remember, and every comment that could be interpreted as a compliment. Then I listed all of her positive traits, and all the things I'd seen her do well.

"It doesn't work like that," she said, and I was hoping she would tell me how it did work.

Maybe she could see that, because she went on. "Sometimes you're loved because of your weaknesses," she said. "What you can't do is sometimes more compelling than what you can."

For a second, I felt hope for myself. But loving for weaknesses seemed like a weakness itself. "I think Henry does love you," I said, and then realized that I didn't know. "How could he not?"

She looked tired.

I told her the truth, that he was different with her than with other girlfriends he'd brought home. With them, he'd acted like they just happened to be there. As I said it, though, I remembered him not sitting with her at dessert. That was how he'd been with girlfriends before.

She looked right at me. "He doesn't say he loves me."

She seemed to be asking if Henry had told me he loved her—which made me feel even worse for her. "Did you ever tell him?" I said, and wondered at my advicey tone. I was acting like I knew something when I didn't—maybe like I knew Henry well enough to tell her what to do about him.

But her face smoothed out and looked new again, and she was nodding, like maybe I had a point.

I tried to go backward and talk about what I did know. I told her about one girl he'd brought home from Cornell; I'd asked if she was his girlfriend, and he'd said, "When you define something, you limit it."

Julia smiled, as though she could feel sorry for this other girl.

Everything I said now seemed to assure her that her problems with Henry were minor, and I worried that they weren't. Finally, I said, "If it doesn't work out with Henry, there's always Cinders."

She laughed and said that Cinders had been dead for years.

"Well," I said, "there are plenty of other horses."

—•—

When we got back to the house, only the hall light was on, and Julia said, "I'm going to talk to Henry for a little while."

"Good luck," I said, and just as I did, my grandmother came into the hall, so Julia was forced to stay in the manless land of bunk beds with us.

I woke up late. My grandmother had already left. "She didn't want to wake you," my mother said. "She had a party to go to in Philadelphia."

"She's a party animal," I said.

My mother smiled. "I wish you'd seen how pretty she looked."

It made me remember my grandmother saying that I might be pretty if I tried. I hadn't told my mother, but I still felt betrayed by her spirit of forgiveness. I said, "Isn't beauty an accident, Mom?"

"She puts herself together so well, though," my mother said, and went on to describe the knife-pleat skirt, high heels, and white gloves her mother had worn.

I let her finish. Then I asked where Henry and Julia were. They'd just left to play tennis, my mother said. "Why don't you get your racket and join them?"

I was surprised that they were playing tennis instead of talking about their problems. But maybe they had already talked. Maybe everything was fine now.

In case it was, I put my racket in my bike basket and rode over to the courts.

They were still warming up and didn't see me. Julia was wearing a tennis dress and looked clean and tanned. Henry had on cutoffs and high-tops, which you weren't supposed to wear on the courts.

"Let's play," my brother said.

Julia spun her racket. I heard her say, "Rough or smooth?"

He said, "Rough," like it was a joke.

Then they saw me, and Henry said, "You want to play?"

I said that I wanted to watch.

It was Julia's serve. She had beautiful form—I could see years of lessons in every stroke. Henry had taught himself how to play and was just batting