Dawn and I went upstairs. Everything was little or low: a small dining room; a narrow, dark stairway leading to a narrow, dark hall. At the end of the hall was Dawn's bedroom, also small, with a low ceiling and a creaky floor.

"Wow, I like your room," I said, "but, gosh, the colonists must have been midgets."

"Maybe," said Dawn. "But there are two good things about this room. One is this/' She showed me a small, round window near the ceiling. "I don't know why it's there, but I love it."

"Kind of like a porthole," I said.

Dawn nodded. "The other thing is this." She flicked some switches and the room was flooded with brilliant light. "I can't stand dim rooms," she explained, "so Mom let me get lots of lamps and I put one-hundred-watt bulbs in all of them. I just hope the wiring in this old place can take it."

"Hey!" I exclaimed. "There's the VCR. It's in your room! Boy, are you lucky. Your own TV and VCR."

"They're only temporary, until the rest of

the house is in order. Then they go downstairs to the living room. What movie do you want to see?"

"What do you have?"

"Practically everything. My mom's a movie nut. She scours the TV Guide and tapes things all the time."

"Well," I said, "you probably don't have The Parent Trap, do you?"

"Of course we do. That was the last thing she taped before — "

"Before what?" I asked.

Dawn lowered her eyes. "Before the divorce," she whispered. "That's why we moved here. Because Mom and Dad got divorced."

"Why did you move here?"

"Mom's parents live here. My mother grew up in Stoneybrook."

"Oh! So did my dad. I wonder if they knew each other."

"What's your dad's name?"

"Richard Spier. What's your mom's name? I mean, what was her name before she got married?"

"Sharon, um, Porter."

"I'll have to ask my father. Wouldn't it be funny if they knew each other?"