I was careful always to be looking down at the fact sheet when he turned to ask me something.

“You could use this back room for your gym equipment,” Barby remarked.

So that was where the athletic movement and the muscles came from.

They wandered farther back and looked through the kitchen with its informal dining nook, then into the formal dining room, which lay between the kitchen and the living room.

Was his sister going to live with him? What would he do in a house this large? He would need a maid, for sure. I tried to think of whom I could call who might know of a reliable person. I tried not to picture myself in one of those “French maid” outfits sold in the back of those strange confession magazines. (A junior-high girl left one in the library one time.)

All the time we were walking and looking, I kept in front of him, behind him, anywhere but facing him.

Instead of taking the kitchen stairs, I maneuvered Martin Bartell and Barby back to the main staircase. I had always loved that broad staircase. I glanced at my watch. Where was Mother? The upstairs was really the climax of the house, or at least I’d always thought so, and she should be the one to show it. Mr. Bartell seemed content with me so far, but having me instead of Mother was like having hamburger when you’d been promised steak.

Though I had a very strong feeling Martin Bartell didn’t think so.

This was turning out to be a complicated morning.

This man was at least fifteen years older than I, belonged to a world I hadn’t the faintest inkling of, and was silently bringing to my attention the fact that for some time now I had been dating a minister who didn’t believe in premarital sex.

And before Father Aubrey Scott, I hadn’t dated anyone at all for months.