paused briefly by Steven Campbell’s desk, looking down at his thick, gold-streaked hair and his broad shoulders. Even his hands were shaped like Jon’s, lean and strong, with square fingernails.
Camilla remembered those hands…
“Is your father by any chance a student here on campus, Mr. Campbell?” she murmured, wanting to hear his voice.
The boy gave her a noncommittal glance. “Yeah,” he said. “My dad’s taking some classes. My little brother and sister are here, too,” he added grudgingly, looking down at his paper.
“I beg your pardon?” Camilla asked.
“My twin brother and sister,” the boy repeated. “They’re seven years old. They’re in some kind of special class for egghead kids.”
“That’s our accelerated study group. In fact, I think I’ll probably be meeting your brother and sister later this afternoon.”
The boy nodded without interest as she moved away.
A couple of tiers higher, Camilla noticed a darkhaired girl laboring over her paper. Tears glittered in the young woman’s eyes. Camilla mounted the stairs unobtrusively to stand next to her.
“Is something the matter?” she whispered.
The girl looked up at her in anguish. “I can’t do this!”
“It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece,” Camilla said. “Just a few words about yourself and your goals.”
The student shook her head. “I mean this whole college thing. I’ve been out of school for four years, working and saving to come here. Now I’m in a panic. It’s all so hard, and there’s a ton of reading to do, and I—” Her voice broke.
Camilla knelt beside the girl’s desk and put an arm around her shoulders. “I know it feels pretty overwhelming at this stage,” she murmured, “but it’ll all fall into place within a week or two. Trust me, you’re going to feel a whole lot better after a few more classes. In the meantime,” she added, “drop by my office anytime and I’ll do what I can to help out.”
The girl looked up, her face clearing a little. “Really, Dr. Pritchard?”
Camilla got to her feet, one hand still resting on the student’s shoulder. “I was a freshman once, too,” she said. “And I was even more terrified than you are. I’ll be glad to help.”
The girl managed a trembling smile. Camilla smiled back, then moved up the steps to watch as the others toiled away at their essays.
They’re my children, Camilla thought. All these young people are the children I’ve never had.
Involuntarily, she glanced at Steven Campbell’s bent head and felt a deep wave of sadness.
CONSIDERING ALL the bizarre things that were happening to her this term, it took a lot of courage for Camilla to head over to Gwen’s classroom after lunch and keep her appointment with the study group.
She went down the hall and knocked on the door of a comfortable suite of rooms where the gifted children learned everything from chemistry to judo.
“Come in,” Gwen called, and Camilla entered to find a lively session in progress.
The students, about a dozen of them ranging from six to ten years old, were constructing a solar system out of papier-måché, hanging their planets in proper scale from a sunlamp in the center of the room.
“Children, this is Dr. Pritchard,” Gwen told the students. “She’s going to be dropping in to play games with us and ask some of you a whole lot of questions. Say hello, class.”
“Hello,” Camilla said, smiling at them.
“Hello, Dr. Pritchard,” the children chorused, then went back to their project.
Gwen drew Camilla aside. “Look, I don’t know how you were planning to begin your study, but could you possibly take the twins for a few hours?” she whispered. “I need to work out a special program for them, but I haven’t had time yet.”
She indicated a corner of the room where two curly-haired children lay on their stomachs near the aquarium, sharing a book.
“What are they reading?” Camilla whispered back.
“A. A. Milne. They like to memorize stories.”
Camilla chuckled. “Definitely children after my own heart. Why aren’t they making planets like the others?”
“They’ve already done this same project at home with their father, working out the orbits and distances all by themselves. They’re bored with the whole idea by now. The thing is, I still haven’t had time to work out something that’s going to challenge them properly. So if you could…”
“Would I be able to include both of them in my study, do you think?” Camilla asked.
“Kiddo, if you can take those kids off my hands for a few hours a week, I’ll be eternally grateful,” Gwen murmured.
“Would it be okay if I took them down to my office? I need some time to get to know them properly before I start testing.”
“Sure. But you’ll find they’re pretty tense little kids,” Gwen warned. “It’s hard to get them to relax and open up, unless…Jason,” she called to the group, “I think we need to move Neptune a little farther out. You’d better check the book, okay?”
She turned back to Camilla who was frowning thoughtfully.
“How about my apartment? They might be more comfortable if they could sit around in a homey setting and play with my cats.”
“That’s a good idea,” the teacher said. “Just tell me before you take them out of the building, okay? I need to know where they are.”
“Of course.” Camilla moved closer to the two children, accompanied by their teacher.
“Ari and Amy, listen to me.” Gwen stood above their prone figures. “This is Dr. Pritchard. She’s a very, very nice lady who’s going to be working with us quite a bit over the next few months.”
Two pairs of wide eyes looked up at them, green and gray, quietly watchful. Camilla was relieved to find that these children, at least, looked nothing at all like Jon Campbell.
She knelt beside the twins, then sat next to them on the carpeted floor while Gwen returned to the rest of the group.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
“Stories about Pooh and Piglet,” Ari said. “We like to memorize them.”
“Why?” Camilla asked.
“So we can say them to each other when we don’t have the book.” He pointed at one of the pictures. “See? Pooh’s got his head stuck in the honey pot and he can’t get out.”
“Piglet’s
