"What's wrong, Mom?"

"It's… it's about… Ward."

"Oh, mom! Don't be silly. He's really very nice. You'll like him."

"I…"

"We can talk about it tomorrow. I've got to go now. Kevin's due any second. See you tomorrow. Bye."

The line clicked dead with finality, but Donna Howell held the phone to her ear for several seconds longer. Finally, the unspoken questions still choking in her throat, she replaced the receiver in its cradle.

She stood quite still for a long minute, then finally with a shrug, she headed for her bedroom and the unfinished packing. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow I've got to talk to her.

Kevin Howell gave the address to the taxi driver, then sank gratefully into the security of the cab's seat cushions. He looked upon the busy, late afternoon streets of San Diego with apprehension, his thoughts of that day more than a little bewildering; first the bus ride from Riverside that had seemed unending, then the arrival in this strange city, and now the cab ride itself.

At sixteen Kevin was nearing physical maturity, but having lived a rather cloistered life, he was not fully prepared to cope with adult decisions and adult anxieties in a suddenly adult world. His six-foot frame, still youthfully slender, was the only feature that did not bear a startling resemblance to his mother and seventeen year old sister; a resemblance that bore very little likeness to the man in the old and wrinkled photograph in his wallet. In the past there had been many times when Kevin removed that photograph and studied it intently, but of late this practice had all but disappeared. It was the only picture he possessed of a father he had never known, and along with the fragments of the past passed on by his mother, it had ceased to hold much sentimental value for him. Yet, he did not discard it. Nor did he fail to inquire on the rare occasions his mother mentioned his father. The fact that these occasions were rare was not a deliberate attempt on Donna Howell's part to suppress any knowledge about her long-dead husband, but stemmed more realistically from the absence of Kevin and his sister Sheri from their Pasadena home.