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collar. Amazing! What colour hair would our children have, she wondered, and then bit on her tongue to control her wild imagination. Change the subject, quickly, she commanded herself! ‘Where do you want the baby to sleep?’
    ‘If you don’t mind, perhaps in here with you? It would only be for a few days. I can’t believe that Amanda would need longer than that to bring her husband to heel.’
    ‘I don’t mind having the baby with me, but you have to understand that I can’t possibly stay too long. I have to go to a wedding. My sister Marion is getting married. The last one in the family—except for me, of course.
    All the rest of them are married. Would you believe that? Three brothers and two sisters, and they’ll all be married. It never ceases to amaze me.’
    ‘Yes, me too,’ he said coldly. Katie gave him a sharp look. Something had turned off his smile, left his craggy face with a look of distant reproach. ‘So how come you’re the only Benedict in the crowd?’
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘How come you’re not married? I get the impression that all the rest of them are happily settled in Ohio, doing whatever, and here you are, a long way from home, and still not married. How come?’
    ‘I’m not sure that I want to tell you anything about myself,’ she said, in equally frigid tones. ‘After all, you’re just a stranger to me. I’m passing through, so to speak.’
    ‘Ah!’ The laughter was back, lurking behind the words, peeping out of those deep blue eyes. ‘But since you’ve already confessed everything to Aunt Grace, and you are going to be living in my home, surely you can tell me a little?’
    ‘Well—’ She had picked up the baby in her arms, swathed only in a diaper, and was rocking him. The little eyes were blinking, as if the lids were too heavy for them. A few pacing steps would put the lad away, for sure. ‘It’s not such a big story,’ she said softly. ‘My dad ran a photographic studio in our home town, and I worked with him. And then he died very suddenly. My mother thought I was too young to run things. Probably she was right. I was only sixteen. She hired a man to run the shop. Jef Stowbridge. And then later, when everyone else except Marion and me had grown up and left home, she married Jef. Only—’
    ‘Only you couldn’t get along with your stepfather?’
    ‘Well, yes—but—it’s not what you’re thinking. Jef is just right for Mom. But he and I didn’t see eye to eye about the business, and Mom felt she had to be on his side. I could see that it might cause a split in their marriage—so I just packed my bags and I split. That was two years ago and, from what I hear, they’re very happy.’
    ‘And you?’
    ‘Well—things didn’t work out exactly as I expected. The Chicago Tribune, the Boston Herald, the papers in Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and Richmond—they just didn’t seem to know they needed a photographer fresh out of college, with three cameras and no experience. But I did find a niche, made a living wage, and even had four photographs of my own in a national exhibition last year. It’s a living.’
    ‘But you’re not wedded to it?’
    ‘No—hardly. I like what I do, but photographers are a dime a dozen, and you have to conform. I hate that word.’
    ‘Me, too,’ he said quietly. She had been watching the baby, but his comment brought her head up. He was solemn, appraising. He has something on his mind, she told herself. Something big. Oh well.
    He started to say something more, but she stopped him. ‘How about hushing up,’ she whispered. ‘The little fellow’s finally asleep. He must have missed a great deal of rest, what with all the newness of things, and his non-stop crying.’
    The bed was a Hollywood type, pushed up against one of the walls. She took two pillows and arranged them to make a little pen for him. He was smiling in his sleep. His long blond eyelashes were tightly curled against his cheeks, and his tousled hair