Chapter 1

Penny was staring down at the floor and thinking back over her life. Just think, she pondered, there are actually girls my age who have lived in the same house since the day a doctor smacked them on their little asses and introduced this world to them. If they had had their choice, I wonder, would they have changed places with me.

Penny had known nothing but travel, excitement, and changing scenery all of her life. People! Thousands of different people, faces, and environments changing as often as most people change the sheets on their beds. And how she had loved it! The best of everything, no matter where. But that was because of her father's position and assignments around the globe. A silly thought hit her. Why, even President Carter, on his peanut farm, hadn't been as well traveled as she was. But now this! Her eyes darkened. This was a bit like a peanut farm, this dump they now called home.

Her stepmother rushed into the room, interrupting Penny's thoughts. "Great news," the woman grinned.

"Dad's been fired. Good. We can move out of this dump," Penny snapped.

"Penny-please don't be sarcastic," Erlene said, holding onto her temper with difficulty. "We are very lucky people-or didn't you know?"

Penny, an attractive girl in a darkly dramatic way, shrugged, and her eyes narrowed. "What's so exciting about living in a native village among characters who have never been anywhere, never seen anything, and are jealous of anyone who has? What's so marvelous about living in a house that's falling apart, with no servants, no anything? Lucky, did you say?"

"Yes, lucky," Erlene repeated firmly. "Lucky to be back in the States; back to a normal way of life-renewing old friendships, fixing up our own little home with our own hands. It's what your father and I dreamed of through all those fantastic years overseas. We could never stay anywhere long enough to take root. It's wonderful, being able to stay put for a change...." She broke off to smile at her stepdaughter in mute appeal, then raced on:

"It wasn't only of ourselves that we were thinking. We felt that our two girls-you and Gena-were missing a whole lot-the best things, I mean-and maybe getting false ideas about life. Now we're living, really living. After all, our roots are in America, right here. It's where we belong, dear."

It was a long speech for Erlene, whose shining red hair and flashing gray eyes implied impulsive action rather than guarded phrases. But there was no mistaking her sincerity.

Penny, absorbed in her own grievances, was not impressed. "Still flag-waving, huh?" she scoffed. "And still playing games with pails, mops, paintbrushes, and stuff. Now really, Erlene, how proletarian can you get?"

A quick flush mantled the older woman's face, but she said with resolute mildness, "I've been helping fix up the basement. It's to be a recreation room-a fun room, Gena calls it. He's using odds and ends of paint, so it's going to be a little on the wild side. Well, at least it will look colorful."

"You should take a good hard look at yourself, darling," Penny said, eyeing her stepmother's work attire with unconcealed distaste.

Automatically, Erlene pushed back an errant lock of hair and tried, with small success, to cover the unsightly safety pin with a paint-smeared hand. She had a wild impulse to knock the chip off Penny's shoulder and run screaming out of the sunroom. Then compassion took over and she was tempted to throw her arms around the unhappy girl and promise her anything and everything in the interest of peace. Instead, she took a deep breath and said with a feeble attempt at facetiousness:

"Well, anyhow, I've been fired from the paint job. Gena wanted to take over, and there was no extra brush. Funny thing about painting-it grows on you. Philip and Gena are having a ball decorating everything, including themselves. If you think I look a sight, dear, you should see them!"

"No, thanks. I've seen all I want, and more, of this corny do-it-yourself performance you and Dad dreamed up," Penny announced sulkily. "Now you've got Gena doing it, too, and thinking she likes it. But then, the poor baby is so blind she can't see the woods for the trees!"

Erlene's face softened, as it always did when she thought of Gena, Penny's younger sister, whose long blond hair was like a shimmering mantle and whose myopic blue eyes were all the more luminous through the thick-lensed glasses she wore.

"Gena," she said gently, "is not blind and never will be. She walks on the bright side of life and has perfect vision in her heart."

Penny's face softened, too, briefly. Her affection for her handicapped young sister ran deep. "Gena's an angel," she murmured. Then the moment was gone and she was saying accusingly:

"But look what's happening to her. Isn't it bad enough for her to be tearing around The Grove in a monkey suit, getting cozy with anybody and everybody? Must she be stuck away in a dreary cellar, painting a recreation room we'll have no earthly use for in this miserable town? I'm surprised you'd tolerate such a thing!"

Erlene's jaw dropped. During her twelve years as devoted wife to Philip Gilmore, ace newsman and foreign correspondent, and mother to his two orphaned daughters, she had been many things to many people in many places. But never before had she been thrust into the role of cruel stepmother in what appeared to be a hastily contrived version of the old Cinderella story.

"Gena's having fun," she said defensively. "She likes doing things with her hands, just as Phil does."

"Oh, Dad." Penny groaned aloud. "If he wants to make a spectacle of himself, nothing can be done about it, I guess."

"Working with his hands is a relief from the brain work that's been running him ragged all these years. And he's doing a fine job on the house, considering. He admits he's no great shakes as a handyman."

"Exactly," Penny said. "Dad's a journalist, an important one. It was my impression he was taking this leave of absence to write a book."

"He's doing first things first, dear," Erlene pointed out with a fine degree of patience. "Everything must be shipshape before he settles down to work on his book. He's like that, you know. There's a lot to be done on the house, naturally. Don't forget we've been away ten years and had a whole slew of tenants."

"Exactly," Penny said again. "Why, for heaven's sake, doesn't he bring in some of these local characters to do the menial work? Why must he go around looking like a common laborer, hobnobbing with riffraff, humiliating us, demeaning himself? Or," she added recklessly, "why can't we just skip all this nonsense, take a house in Washington or somewhere, and live like human beings again? Why?"

Erlene bit back the obvious retort: What would we use for money? Apparently Penny had chosen to forget that Philip was taking this leave of absence without pay. It would do no good to point out that, under the circumstances, the cost of hired labor was prohibitive and a house in Washington out of the question. It would be equally useless to explain that in the proud little town where they lived, the words "menia!" and "riffraff" were dirty ones. In her present frame of mind, Penny was not likely to listen to reason.

"Oh, I'll admit it's going to take time to get the place fixed up," Erlene said in a placating voice. "But just you wait, dear. This is really a doll of a house. You're going to love it, just as Phil and Gena and I do already."

"I should live that long!" Penny groaned, and turned her face to the wall. "Do me a favor, Erlene, will you? Leave me alone."

Sighing, Erlene started to leave the sunroom. Then, remembering the news she'd come to deliver, she sank into a chair, groping around in her mind for a suitable approach. Of late, Penny's reactions to any news, good or bad, were unpredictable.

Conscious of Penny's growing hostility, Erlene had found it increasingly hard to remain the patient, understanding motherly type since she, her husband, and two stepdaughters had returned to their Maryland home after a decade in faraway places. More than once her red hair and impulsive nature had almost betrayed her. And that was the last thing Erlene Gilmore, conscientious to a fault and beset by the various problems of readjustment, wanted.

Philip had forewarned his two girls that the transition from one way of life to a completely different one, while highly rewarding, would not be easy. However, they would be in their own home and among loyal friends, instead of living it up among people who spoke another and sometimes unfriendly language.

"What it amounts to," he'd said in his usual half-joking, half-serious fashion, "is that we're swapping the fleshpots of the East for the down-to-earth salt mines of the Western Hemisphere. There'll be no green stuff coming in for a while, and a lot going out. So we'll have to pull in our horns, maybe tighten our belts. Think you can take it?"

Fourteen-year-old Gena, thrilled at the thought of going home, had clapped her hands in delight. "Goody, goody!" she'd crooned. "No more bodyguards breathing down my neck; no more schools behind barbed wire, like in Saigon. No more scorpions, like in India. And no more Yankee-go-home signs, like in a lot of places. How soon do we start?"

Penny, almost twenty and just out of an exclusive school in Switzerland, had not rejoiced with her sister. Her grim expression, in fact, might have alerted her stepmother then and there had Erlene not felt that Penny eventually would realize the move was a wise one.

"And there'll be no more solid gold water taps, no more fur-lined bathtubs," Philip had gone on to say, quick to take advantage of Gena's lead. "You'll be doing things for yourselves for a change. That, my lovelies, is the American way. Fine thing, too. Something tells me you've had it too soft for too long."

"It'll be fun doing things," Gena had said.

"Don't be ridiculous, honey," Penny had scoffed. Dad's joking, of course. He can't do this to us. Erlene won't let him."

He was not joking, Philip had announced with a firmness that brooked no argument. "Erlene and I are counting on our chickadees to cooperate," he'd added, smiling fondly at his two daughters.

"We won't let you down, Dad," Gena had said, crossing her heart as though making a vow. And Penny, realizing she was outnumbered, had agreed to conform.

Gena, though handicapped by limited eyesight, was living up to her promise and adjusting beautifully, happily. She loved "The Grove," as their hometown was affectionately called by the people who lived there. It was fun, she declared, "camping out" in a beat-up little house that was being rehabilitated by loving, if unskilled, hands.

To Gena, it was exciting to renew acquaintances with young people, now teenagers like herself, whom she remembered as small fry. It was amusing, though a little disconcerting, to be told by oldsters that ten years overseas had transformed her from a troublesome tomboy into a comely, well-mannered young woman.

Penny, on the other hand, hated the whole set-up and made no effort to conceal her disdain. Apparently she considered herself a stripe above those ordinary mortals whose horizons were less far-flung than her own. Bemused by the superficial luxuries enjoyed by Americans living overseas and shielded from the various discomforts, she had acquired delusions of grandeur, along with a "high society" attitude that neither enhanced her popularity among the townspeople nor made for peace in the home.

Given time, Penny, being her father's daughter, would regain her lost sense of values, Erlene believed ... had to believe. Meanwhile, there would be heartaches for everyone concerned....

"The news I have, dear," Erlene said now, choosing her words carefully, "concerns you, only you. Listening?"

Penny turned to face her stepmother, and some of the hostility went out of her eyes. "I'm listening."

"Philip and I have been talking things over. We love you very much, Penny, and it distresses us to see you unhappy...."

"And so...." Penny prompted.

"We've decided to let you strike out on your own, as you call it; live your own life-if that's what you want."

"You mean that?" Penny's eyes widened in surprise, and her voice was wary.

Erlene nodded. "Phil has friends in Washington who will help you find a job there, and The Grove is within easy commuting distance. Of course, if you prefer," she said quickly when Penny made a sour face, "you can find an apartment to share right there in the city. But remember, dear, this is your home, and you'll always be welcome here."

"You mean I'm free, really free?" Penny was still skeptical. "I can't believe it. Why this sudden about-face?"

"Darling, your father and I have not made a sudden decision. We've been talking it over for some time. We decided if you were going to be so unhappy staying here with us, perhaps we'd better try it your way for a while. If you don't like working in Washington, you can always come home."

Penny, glavanized into action, sprang from the daybed, flung her arms around her stepmother, and danced her around the room till they were both breathless. "Then you do mean it!" she exclaimed. "I'm so happy I could explode. Washington-here I come!"

Erlene smiled. "It's good to see you looking happy again," she said when Penny finally released her. "Honestly, I've been afraid you'd come down with melancholia, though Phil and I kept hoping that nice young doctor from Medical Center would snap you out of it...." She broke off to grin adding:

"He must be quite taken with you, my dear, the way he keeps phoning and squiring you around, when he can't have too much time of is own."

"Oh, you mean David Stewart." Penny's face flushed and she spoke with an exaggerated airiness that suggested anything but indifference. "Dave is not a doctor, Erlene. He's only an intern, and he's in debt up to here for his schooling. It'll be ages before he has any time of his own or any money to spend on a date.

"The truth is," she continued when Erlene made no comment, "Dave Stewart's a nobody who never wants to be anybody. The height of his ambition is to go poking around in some research laboratory or clinic, while a dull little wife stays home, keeping his supper hot on the back of the stove. I'm not his type, darling, and he's certainly not mine."

Erlene, convinced that there was more than met the eye in Penny's protestations, smiled. "But he's very good looking. And he's got his feet on the ground-good American ground," she ventured.

"There you go again-flag-waving!"

"I suppose," Erlene said wistfully, "I can never make you realize how wonderful it is to be out of that international rat race; to come home, to have a place that's all our own...."

The precarious conversation was brought to an end by the arrival of young Gena, wanting to know what all the yakking was about. She stood framed in the doorway, a small figure in a paint-smeared monkey suit, her large blue eyes peering through heavy glasses, her long blond hair tied back in a rakish excuse for a ponytail.

"Dad and I could hear you all the way down in the cellar," she giggled. "You sounded like a team out of Gilbert and Sullivan, or something. What gives-a rehearsal? Sorry, Mom," she told Erlene, her face sobering. "I wasn't eavesdropping. I just couldn't help overhearing."

"Come on in, dear, and join the gabfest," Erlene invited.

"Yes, do," Penny seconded. "Of course you couldn't help overhearing honey. It's that kind of a house: cardboard walls, formfitting rooms, no privacy at all. I'm getting out of it!"

Erlene, at the end of her rope, murmured something about a Yankee pot roast she was preparing for the evening meal and went out to the kitchen. Gena sat down in the chair she had vacated.

"I'm taking a position in Washington-and an apartment." There was a note of uncertainty, almost of fear, in Penny's voice now that she was alone with her sister. Slight though it was, it did not escape Gena, whose poor eyesight seemed to sharpen her other faculties.

Gena nodded. "Dad said he was giving you the green light, and I heard you and Mom talking." She paused to regard her older sister with anxious blue eyes. "You've been claiming all the time you wanted to strike out on your own. Now you're stuck with it. I'm sorry, sis."

"Sorry? You're an angel, honey, and I love you, but...."

"Sure I'm sorry, just as you'll be when you stop to think about it, if you aren't that way already...." Gena hesitated and her face colored. "I heard what you said about your steady, too. You didn't mean that, either; you couldn't possibly. You were just mad about something and trying to shock Mom."

Penny took refuge in what was meant to be an indulgent smile.

"He's a living dream-Doctor David Stewart-and he won't always be poor," Gena murmured.

"That's what you think, honey. He likes being poor, working in clinics and stuff. Expects a girl to go along with the humanitarian act. It's the doctor syndrome, I guess."

"I will say he's beautiful," Gena persisted. "Why, there isn't a girl in The Grove who wouldn't be thrilled to pieces to be going out on dates with him!"

"Don't get excited, darling. Even the sidewalks have ears here in The Grove-don't forget that. I have a date with him tonight, and I'm keeping it. Does that make you feel any better?" Then, when Gena beamed her approval, Penny added sourly:

"Another dinner of frankfurters and beans won't kill me, I guess."

There was nothing exciting about a date with David Stewart, intern, Penny went on to say with a vehemence surely calculated to convince herself as well as her sister. This evening would follow the usual pattern. He would arrive early, before sundown, when all the busybodies in The Grove would be watching, so as to be back on duty at the Medical Center promptly at the stroke of ten. With his helpless date, he would proceed in his elderly Ford to a roadside diner where truck drivers ate, thus guaranteeing "good solid food and plenty of it."

"A girl has nothing to say about it," Penny interposed, then resumed her detailed account of an evening which she avowed was the ultimate in proletarian entertainment and even duller than dishwater.

Gena was not looking at her sister; she was only half-listening. Surreptitiously, she had slipped off her hated glasses and was staring sightlessly into space.

"Love," she murmured, smiling wistfully, "is wonderful. Maybe some day, something colossal like David Stewart will happen to me!"

Penny ran over and threw her arms around her young sister. "Wonderful things are going to happen to you, darling," she whispered. "That's a promise. Just you wait till I get to Washington. I'll be meeting scads of important people, and...."

She did not finish the sentence. Instead, she kissed Gena gently of the cheek, said, "Now put your glasses back on, angel," and hurried off to get dressed for her date.

Gena, she told herself fiercely, blinking back the tears that were burning her eyelids, must not know she was crying. Under no circumstance must Gena, blindly trustful of the ultimate Tightness of things, suspect how frightened she was, how unsure she was of herself and of what lay ahead....