"There's nothing to talk about."

She pushed a wayward blond curl behind her ear. "Molly, you don't have to go back to camp if you don't want to. You're more than welcome to fly to New York with me tomorrow for the rest of the summer. I've subleased an apartment from a friend who's in Europe. It has a great location."

"I want to go back."

From the pallor of Molly's skin, Phoebe didn't believe her sister enjoyed camp any more than she had. "You can if you really want to, but I know what it's like to feel as if you don't have a home. Remember that Bert sent me to school at Crayton, too, and packed me off to camp every summer. I hated it. New York is fun during the summer. We could have a great time and get to know each other better."

"I want to go to camp," Molly repeated stubbornly.

"Are you absolutely sure about this?"

"I'm sure. You have no right to keep me from going back."

Despite the child's hostility and the headache that was beginning to form at her temples, Phoebe was reluctant to let the issue pass so easily. She decided to try a new tack and nodded toward the book in Molly's lap. "What are you reading?"

"Dostoyevski. I'm doing an independent study on him in the fall."

"I'm impressed. That's pretty heavy reading for a fifteen-year-old."

"Not for me. I'm quite bright."

Phoebe wanted to smile, but Molly had delivered the statement so matter-of-factly that she couldn't. "That's right. You do well in school, don't you?"

"I have an exceptionally high IQ."

"Being smarter than everyone else can be as much a curse as a blessing." Phoebe remembered the trauma of her own school days when she'd been brighter than so many of her classmates. It had been one more element that had made her feel different from everyone else.

Molly's expression never altered. "I'm quite grateful for my intelligence. Most of the other girls in my class are dolts."