Amelia stopped the car and craned her head to see the house. "I've changed my mind. I don't want to live here after all," she said, as if she had been seriously considering it. "If I owned this place, I'd sell it and buy myself three cozier homes."

"I think it has a view of the bay from the other side."

"I'd never see it," she replied. "I'd always be glancing over my shoulder. I didn't realize there was a graveyard here."

"Most old estates have them."

"I'd dig it up."

I laughed. "Then you certainly would have something ghastly standing at your shoulder, looking for a new place to rest," I said as we climbed out of the car.

Fortunately, an older gentleman, an employee I didn't know, answered the door. Mrs. Hopewell might have recognized me, at least, recognized a young "Victoria." During the last year I had cut my hair several times, starting with it well below my shoulder, shortening it to shoulder-length, chin-length, and finally having it snipped to wisps of gold that barely made it to the tips of my ears. I told Dad it was "sympathetic hair," for he was bald from the cancer treatments. But actually, it was my resemblance to the woman I remembered from twelve years back, her green eyes and cascade of blond hair, that had motivated me.

Amelia was asked to wait in the library on the left side of the spacious entrance hall, and I was escorted to an office on the right. A few moments later, Emily Westbrook entered. She was a slender woman with strawberry blond hair-probably tinted, for her eyebrows were much redder. She moved quickly, elegantly, as if she had been raised on ballet lessons.

We sat in chairs placed by a large, mahogany desk. While she studied my hastily created resume, I studied the family pictures displayed on the fireplace mantel, curious to see the people whom I knew only through a child's eyes.