"Goodbye, Susan."

"Goodbye, Gaelen."

Gaelen stood by the window and squooshed.

Next stop, the hospital.



Chapter Five



Annabelle sat at Erin's bedside, her sister finally asleep. Lucas's visit had calmed Erin more than all the Prozac in the joint.

Now that he was gone, though, Annabelle didn't know if she'd made the right decision. Helping Lucas was the same as supporting Erin in her delusion about him.

With a long sigh, Annabelle rose from the chair and went to the window. The hospital was on the southern edge of the university campus, but what had been a wide boulevard lined with important-looking brick buildings housing the pharmacy and public health schools on one side and the hospital and medical library on the other, Cameron Street had become overbuilt as the hospital complex had spread. Even so, Erin loved it here, even hoping to work in the UNC hospital itself when she graduated next spring.

Daddy would be happy, Annabelle thought. Vern was a Tarheel born and a Tarheel bred, and had stayed on at the university as an administrator in the athletics department after his own graduation some thirty years ago. "Uncle Jumbo" they had called him, for his size and his appetite-both prodigious-and his memory, which never forgot a name or a face.

He was as tender as he was large, though. Never did one of Jumbo Tinker's athletes spend a holiday in their dorm room if they couldn't get home. The Tinker home was open. He played Santa Claus for children in the hospital, often buying the gifts himself. And people weren't the only recipients of Daddy's generosity. Annabelle thought of the dishes of milk he always left out. "For the fairies," he'd said, but she'd known it was for the stray cats in the neighborhood.

Annabelle turned from the window, arms wrapped around herself. Even a year after his death, she missed him so much, his droopy brown eyes, his ever-present smile, and his childlike wonder with everything.

Wonder Annabelle had once shared.

"Ummm."

Erin's muttered moan and smile as she twisted in her narrow bed caught Annabelle's attention.

"Lucas," she said, her eyes popping open. "Where is he?"

"He left." Annabelle sat down in the chair beside the bed. "He's waiting in my car, and I'm going to take him to the house when Mom comes back to stay with you."

"Oh. That's right." Erin glanced around. "I'm still in the hospital." She flicked her eyes to Annabelle. "I dreamed I was at home. Well, in my home, with Lucas. And two of the most adorable children you've ever seen."

"Erin," Annabelle moaned, "don't-"

"What's wrong with you? You used to be happy and laugh and have fun." Erin stared, making Annabelle uncomfortable. "You used to dream. I remember once," she smiled, "you saw a tiny man in the tool shed."

"That was a just dream."

"Oh, I don't think so. You talked about him for years."

Annabelle hadn't thought of that dream for what seemed like centuries. She'd been barely twelve and had just read Peter Pan to Erin. Again. Annabelle had just entered that hormone-driven romantic time, and she often imagined herself as Wendy. In her own private version, of course, Peter stayed with Wendy/Annabelle in London, and they grew up and got married and had many children and lived happily ever after. She'd cried when Tinkerbell drank the poison and clapped louder than Erin had to save the fairy's life.

Then one night she'd been sitting by her window, gazing into the spring night.

Annabelle smiled at the memory. "He wasn't tiny. As a matter of fact, he was taller than Daddy."

"Was he handsome?" Erin asked.

"Very," Annabelle said, warming to her topic, "with wheat-blond hair and eyes the color of the sky.