"Hi, Mom,” the young man said, and absently flicked a strand of his chin-length black hair over his ear. Harriet could see the resemblance to Avanell in his angular face, but his eyes were unlike any she had ever seen.

The color was a pale yellowish-blue that stopped just short of white. They were large, and angled slightly, giving them a feline quality. His dark tan spoke to time spent somewhere much farther south than Foggy Point.

He came around the table and kissed Avanell then held her at arms-length.

"You look really good."

"This hairy young man is my youngest son, Aiden,” Avanell said, and tucked another unruly lock of hair behind his other ear. A slight blush darkened his cheeks. “He's been doing a research project in Uganda for the last three years, where they apparently don't have barber shops."

"How very nice to meet you,” Lauren said. “We've heard so much about you."

"All good, I hope,” he said, reminding Harriet of her own reaction to the same pronouncement and making her wonder what he might have to hide. He straightened up and turned toward the table full of women.

Avanell's oldest son was a few years younger than Harriet and had been a pimple-faced teenager with a crush on her when she'd left for college. Her daughter was a few years younger than that, and Aiden was the proverbial afterthought. He must have been around when Harriet had lived with Aunt Beth, but she was pretty sure she would have remembered those eerie eyes if she'd seen them before. Then again, she had been pretty self-absorbed in those days. Her anger at her parents for once again dumping her with Aunt Beth while they partied their way across Europe under the guise of academic research pretty well eclipsed anything that was happening in Foggy Point.