own game, and she could only lose at that. Lionel had gone into film, but in a totally different vein, and he was curious to meet the other two now. Greg arrived next, talking constantly of playing ball, drinking beer, chasing girls. It was almost exhausting to be in the same room with him, but whenever Jason watched Ward talk to him, he saw his eyes light up. This was his adored son, his hero, his jock. And he could only begin to imagine the pain it must have caused Lionel for most of his life. He attempted to talk to Greg once or twice, the day he arrived, but he had nothing much to say, and he always seemed to have something else on his mind.
And then finally Val arrived with Anne. She had stayed in town as long as she could, and agreed to drive her sister up, although she wasn't in the mood to leave town just then. There was a new horror movie being cast, and she didn't want to get passed up. But she couldn't do everything, and she knew there would be another one being cast in two weeks. They were practically a specialty with her now, and she didn't care how much her friends made fun of her. She was working almost all the time, and she was making money regularly.
“Come on,” everyone teased once they'd all arrived, as Lionel turned off the lights in the living room, “let us hear it, Val, the famous Valerie Thayer scream.” She had done dozens of them now, and everyone begged as she laughed, and then finally, standing up in the dark, near the fire, she began to clutch her throat, made a hideous face, and let out a long piercing scream. It was so convincing that they all watched her, horrified, thinking she was choking at first, and then realizing what she had done. She was doing it for them, and she seemed to go on for hours and then suddenly, collapsed in a heap. The audience was thrilled and they clapped and cheered, Jason loudest of all. He and Van had gone canoeing with her that afternoon, and she'd been funny as hell. He was rapidly becoming one of her most ardent fans. And to prove that it was mutual, she had calmly handed him a frog on the way back to the house. He had jumped, Van had screamed, and Val had accused them both of being ridiculous.
“Hell, I worked with two hundred of them at once on the movie I did in Rome.” And then suddenly all three of them started to laugh, and they raced each other back to the house. It was like being kids again. And Lionel, Ward, and Greg had gone off fishing somewhere that day, and returned with several trout, which they tried to convince Faye to cook, but she told them it was their treat instead. Lionel thought that Greg was a little quiet, and he wondered if there was anything on his mind. But all in all, everyone was having fun. And Faye had spent a quiet afternoon, lying on the beach with Anne. She hadn't wanted to go canoeing with Jason and the twins, or fishing with the boys, and Faye wasn't even sure she wanted to lie on the beach with her. But she had nothing else to do, so she stuck around, and read a book. In the end, her friend Gail had decided not to come along. She didn't want to intrude on their family reunion, and had gone to San Francisco with her father instead, which left Anne feeling lonely again. She wrote a letter, and went quietly into the house at one point, and Faye had glimpsed her on the phone. Faye suspected that she was just at the age when she didn't want to leave her friends, and she wasn't thrilled about the trip, but it was doing them all good. By the second week, they were all relaxed and brown. Ward and Jason were great friends, the twins hadn't enjoyed each other as much in years, and Greg seemed to have relaxed finally. Even Anne was having fun, and she went on a long walk with Vanessa one day, when Jason had driven Faye into town. Vanessa glanced at her, thinking again how grown up she looked now. She was sixteen and a half, but her experiences seemed to have matured her far more than her years.