All my love,
Jessica
She sat back and read the letter several times before putting it in an envelope and writing down Nicky's address in San Francisco.
"Jess," her father called from downstairs, "could you come down, please?"
"Sure," Jessica replied. She slid the letter into her purse and walked downstairs.
Her father and mother were sitting in the living room with Steven and Elizabeth.
"Did you get all unpacked?" her mother asked.
"Yes, thanks," Jessica replied as she threw herself into a chair.
"One good thing came out of all of this," Elizabeth said, smiling. "At least your room is clean."
"Well, it won't last long." Jessica laughed.
"We just realized that none of us has had dinner." Ned Wakefield walked up and put his arm around Jessica.
Jessica sat up. "Well, listen. Just to show you all how happy I am to be home, I'm going to cook a special dinner for all of us."
The Wakefields exchanged worried glances.
"I have a better idea," Mr. Wakefield said cautiously. "Why don't I give you some money, and you can take us all out to a really special dinner."
Jessica smiled slyly. "I've got a better idea. Why don't you give me the money for a really special dinner, and I'll buy us a pizza instead. Then I can use what we saved and buy myself this terrific sweater I've been dying for! How does that sound?"
Ned Wakefield laughed and hugged his daughter. "That sounds wonderful to me, Jess. Just wonderful."
Fourteen
"I can't believe it," Enid Rollins said, setting her sandwich down and listening in wide-eyed amazement as Elizabeth described how she and Steven had caught up with Jessica at the very last minute. Enid was Elizabeth's closest friend, aside from Todd, and it seemed hard to believe that they had so much to catch up on after only one week's vacation. But Elizabeth had been so busy over the break that she'd barely gotten the chance to see her friend at all.
"Gosh, imagine what would've happened if she'd gotten all the way to San Francisco," Enid added, shuddering. "Good lord, Liz—what an amazingly close call!"
Elizabeth leaned over the lunch table, her aqua eyes narrowing. She had just caught sight of something across the crowded cafeteria that made her very uneasy—but she didn't know if she should say anything to Enid, whose back was to the scene.
"What about Steve?" Enid demanded. "Did he seem any more like his old self?"
Elizabeth looked back at Enid, and her face brightened at the memory of her brother's transformation over the last five or six days. "You know, Enid," she confided, "I think the crisis with Jessica was exactly what he needed. It took his mind completely off Tricia and off himself. He decided that he's going to go back to school—he wants to give it another chance. If every cloud has a silver lining, what happened this past week proved that Steve is well on the way to recovery after all he's been through. In fact—"
"What is it?" Enid asked, staring at her friend as Elizabeth broke off in mid-sentence.
Elizabeth shook her blond head, her blue-green eyes darkening with concern. The scene across the lunchroom now had her full attention. DeeDee Gordon and Bill Chase apparently were in the middle of a terrible argument. Bill looked angry, from what Elizabeth could see. And DeeDee . . .
Well, DeeDee just looked stricken. Her face was white as a sheet, and Elizabeth could almost see the freckles standing out on her pale skin. Tears were running down her face, and she was trembling all over.
Enid turned around in her chair, following Elizabeth's gaze. "Wow," she said at last, shaking her head. "What do you suppose that's all about?"
"I don't know," Elizabeth murmured. The scene at the ice-cream parlor, which she had completely forgotten in the dramatic events of the last week, came back to her in a flash. Something's wrong between those two, she told herself.
But what?
"You know," Enid said confidentially, turning back to Elizabeth, "now that I think of it, I heard something the other day about DeeDee that really worried me. Caroline Pearce mentioned to me that DeeDee backed out of some English project they were doing together, and she got stuck with the whole thing."
"Mmm," Elizabeth murmured, remembering her surprise when DeeDee said she'd dropped out of her design courses.
"Whoa!" Enid gasped suddenly, watching as Bill stomped away from the table and out of the cafeteria—with DeeDee in hot pursuit, her face drawn and her eyes wet with tears. "What in the world do you think is going on with them?"
Elizabeth didn't know. But from the expression she'd just seen in DeeDee's dark eyes, she had a feeling it was something terribly serious.
Something that wouldn't stay under wraps for long.
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