her free foot back and forth at the knee. “You know a jack’s not a lady, Grampa. No fair trying to fool me.”
“Well, then, I’d better just say go fish.”
Gwen reached for the cards just as the kitchen door opened and her mother swept in wearing a swirl of bright color, her hair covered with a red-and-orange patterned turban. “Gwennie, why aren’t you ready? We have to leave for the library now.”
Gwen swung her foot harder. “Can I stay here with Grampa instead?” She didn’t want to go stand in front of a room full of kids and tell what it was like to live in Africa. She knew she ought to feel lucky to be able to do it, her mother told her all the time. She didn’t feel lucky, though. She just felt weird. They always looked at her like a zoo exhibit.
Her big sister Joss bounded into the room. Joss was nine, a whole year older than Gwen, and never felt weird about anything. Joss loved being the center of attention. She could make even Gwen think living in Africa was a cool thing. But then Gwen would remember that Africa was more than zebras and elephants.
Africa was heat and flies. Africa was longing for the cool blue San Francisco Bay that glittered now outside the window. Africa was driving into a dusty village with her physician parents to be surrounded and stared at, unfamiliar hands plucking at her sun-bleached hair, touching her white skin.
Africa was always being different.
“Let the girl stay with me, Glynnis,” her grandfather said. “You’re going back too soon as it is. We’ll play cards until Mark gets home and then we’ll all come meet you at the library.”
“Well…”
Gwen knew she ought to change and go with her mother and Joss, but she didn’t want to. Sometimes when she and Grampa were alone they’d play poker and drink cola from frosty mugs and he’d let her win all his pocket change. She crossed her fingers.
“Come on, Mom,” Joss said, bouncing impatiently.
“All right, she can stay.” Glynnis ran a fond hand over Gwen’s hair and Gwen felt a surge of warmth swamped by guilt. Then she turned to give her mother a kiss and wished, as she always did, that she could put the bad feelings away. She knew what her parents did in Africa was important. She just wished, oh, she wished as the door closed behind Joss and her mother, that it could be someone else’s parents doing it.
The tablecloth was a cheerful blue patterned in dancing teapots. Gwen rubbed one of the spouts. In Mozambique they didn’t have kitchen chairs, just stools, and the oiled wood of their low, round table was only covered with a brightly dyed tablecloth on special occasions. Some of the Physicians Without Frontiers workers lived in a special compound, but Gwen’s parents liked living out among the people they were there to help. It was a priceless education that they were getting, her mother insisted. It would make them like nobody else.
But Gwen didn’t want to be like nobody else. All Gwen had ever wanted was to be ordinary.
1
“YOU HAD SEX WHERE?” GWEN CHASTAIN stared at her sister, Joss, who leaned nonchalantly against the counter of the stamp shop’s kitchenette.
Joss adjusted the strap of her splashy red sundress. It was too provocative for the business of selling rarities, but Gwen knew better than to tell her. “In the elevator of the Hyatt Regency. Loosen up a little bit, Gwen, it’s not like we got caught.”
“Normal people don’t have sex in glass elevators.”
Joss rolled her eyes. “If you’d ever stop dating boring men, maybe you’d find out. You need to date a guy who’s not afraid to mess you up a little. You need to have sex on elevators, let your hair down a little while you’re still able. You act like you’re sixty already.”
“And you act like you’re sixteen. It’s a good thing Mom and Dad are in Africa,” Gwen muttered, pouring herself a mug of coffee, careful not to splash any on her tidy taupe suit. A faint hint of makeup accentuated her blue eyes, framed by stylishly discreet glasses that made her look older than her twenty-four years.
Joss snorted. “Are you kidding? Honey bunch, your mother’s done wilder things than that.”
“Way more information than I needed to know,” Gwen told her, doctoring her coffee with soy milk.
“Haven’t you ever talked with her about when she was young?”
Gwen gave her a queasy look. “This is not a conversation I want to have. I haven’t even had breakfast yet.”
“Shoot, when Mom and Dad were dating, they—”
Gwen stuck her fingers in her ears. “La-la-la, I can’t hear you,” she sang out.
“Oh, c’mon, you can’t say you’ve never been curious.”
“Not about the sleeping together parts, no. I suppose you asked her all about them.”
“Of course.” Joss grinned at her and turned to open the little refrigerator. “So how can we be sisters when you get so freaked out about everything that Mom and I do?” she asked as she fished out a can of Coke.
“Are you kidding? Sometimes I wonder if I’m even from the same family.” How else could a person who prized normalcy as much as Gwen explain her free-spirit mother happily taking her doctor husband, her young daughters and her six years of medical training into a life in the African bush? Gwen looked at Joss, vivid and curvy, her dark hair tumbling down her back in a gypsy mane, so unlike Gwen’s quiet not-quite-brown, not-quite-blond French twist. Joss had turned positively wild after Gwen had moved back to the States at fourteen. Joss had stayed in Africa while Gwen had settled into her grandparents’ San Francisco home and a college prep course with a sigh of relief.
And wished her mother’s wild streak good riddance. Gwen was all about discreet, down to her understated loveliness that was only apparent to those who looked. Her straight nose tipped just a bit at the end. Her chin was just strong enough to hint at a stubborn streak. Only her mouth spoiled the picture, a little too generous, a little too promising. Dusky pink lipstick accented it only faintly. Anything more, she knew, would only attract attention. It was hardly what she wanted during work hours.
“You just got the Chastain conservative gene,” Joss said, cracking open her Coke. “It skips a generation. God knows Daddy didn’t get it.”
“And you have no idea how that pains Grampa.” Gwen turned to leave the kitchen, passing through the door to the main showroom.
“Not nearly as much as it pains him that Daddy married a woman who was raised in a commune.” Joss grinned, trailing after her.
“I’m serious, Joss,” Gwen protested.
“I know, I know, he wants to leave him the stamp empire.” She snorted. “Giving up sunrise on the veld for little squares of colored paper.”
“Some of those squares of colored paper are worth half that veld.” Gwen punched in the multipart code that deactivated the sophisticated alarm system on the front door; as always, she left the back door armed unless they were using it.
“Okay, so Grampa plays in the big leagues. Dad would still be miserable doing it. Grampa
