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The house creaked and the flames of the Advent candles danced in the draft from a gale wind coming off the bay. Two days before Christmas and they were at dinner, Ellen serving, Mother and Papa, Uncle Pete and Aunt Daria and Jan herself, sitting across from the promising Mr. Ted Phillips, one of Papa’s engineers. His flight home had been postponed due to the weather, and Papa had asked him to dinner.

Just now, Farris is in the computer room showing off a glamour shot of his daughter. She looks like an ad for an escort service, a ponderous wonderbra-ed decolletage welling up around her feather boa. There is a stamped foil signature in one corner of the picture. She is thirteen, and Farris is a proud papa.

Ellen Gladney, starched an jewel-bedecked, swooped suddenly upon Delia and Katy, who were mopping up spilled punch.