Lightning

investment, and the boy was in no mood to entertain himself. He kept finding excuses to bother Laura in her office, and by eleven o'clock she gave up trying to work on the current book. She sent him to the kitchen to get the baking sheets out of the cupboard, promising to let him help her make chocolate-chip cookies.

Before joining him, she got Sir Tommy Toad's webbed-foot boots, tiny umbrella, and miniature scarf from the dresser drawer in the bedroom, where she had been keeping them for just such a day as this. On her way to the kitchen she arranged those items near the front door.

Later, as she was slipping a tray of cookies into the oven, she sent him to the front door to see if the United Parcel deliveryman had left a package that she professed to be expecting, and Chris came back flushed with excitement. 'Mommy, come look, come see.'

In the foyer he showed her the three miniature items, and she said, 'I suppose they belong to Sir Tommy. Oh, did I forget to tell you about the lodger we've taken in? A fine, upstanding toad from England here on the queen's business.'

She had been eight when her father had invented Sir Tommy, and she had accepted the fabulous toad as a fun fantasy, but Chris was only five and took it more seriously. 'Where's he going to sleep — the spare bedroom? Then what do we do when Grandpa comes to visit?'

'We've rented Sir Tommy a room in the attic,' Laura said, 'and we must not disturb him or tell anyone about him except Daddy because Sir Tommy is here on secret business for Her Majesty.'

He looked at her wide-eyed, and she wanted to laugh but dared not. He had brown hair and eyes, like she and Danny, but his features were delicate, more his mother's than his father's. In spite of his smallness there was something about him that made her think he would eventually shoot up to be tall and solidly constructed like Danny. He leaned close and whispered: 'Is Sir Tommy a spy?' Throughout the afternoon, as they baked cookies, cleaned up, and played a few games of Old Maid, Chris was full of questions about Sir Tommy. Laura discovered that tale-telling for children was in some ways more demanding than writing novels for adults. When Danny came home at four-thirty, he shouted a greeting on his way along the hall from the connecting door to the garage.

Chris jumped up from the breakfast-nook table, where he and Laura were playing cards, and urgently shushed his father.

'Sssshhh, Daddy, Sir Tommy might be sleeping now, he had a long trip, he's the Queen of England, and he's spying in our attic!'

Danny frowned. 'I go away from home for just a few hours, and while I'm gone we're invaded by scaly, transvestite, British spies?'

That night in bed, after Laura made love with a special passion that surprised even her, Danny said, 'What's gotten into you today? All evening you were so… buoyant, so up.'

Snuggling against him under the covers, enjoying the feel of his nude body against hers, she said, 'Oh, I don't know, it's just that I'm alive, and Chris is alive, you're alive, we're all together. And it's this Tommy Toad thing.'

'It tickles you?'

'Tickles me, yes. But it's more than that. It's… well, somehow it makes me feel that life goes on, that it always goes on, the cycle is renewed — does this sound crazy? — and that life is going to go on for us, too, for all of us, for a long time.'

'Well, yeah, I think you're right,' he said. 'Unless you're that energetic every time you make love from now on, in which case you'll kill me in about three months.'

In October, 1986, when Chris turned six, Laura's fifth novel, Endless River, was published to critical acclaim and bigger sales than any of her previous titles. Her editor had predicted the greater success: 'It's got all the humor, all the tension, all the tragedy, that whole weird mix of a Laura Shane novel, but it's somehow not as dark as the others, and that makes it especially appealing.'

For two years, Laura and Danny had been taking Chris up to the San Bernardino Mountains at least one weekend a month, to Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear, both during the summer and winter, to make sure he learned that the whole world was not like the pleasant but thoroughly urbanized and suburbanized realms of Orange County. With the continued flowering of her career and the success of Danny's investment strategies, and considering her recent willingness not only to entertain optimism but to live it, they decided it was time to indulge themselves, so they bought a second home in the mountains.

It was an eleven-room stone and redwood place on thirty acres just off state route 330, a few miles south of Big Bear. It was, in fact, a more expensive house than the one they lived in during the week in Orange Park Acres. The property was mostly covered with western juniper, Ponderosa pine, and sugar pine, and their nearest neighbor was far beyond sight. During their first weekend at the retreat, as they were making a snowman, three deer appeared at the edge of the looming forest, twenty yards away, and watched curiously.

Chris was thrilled at the sight of the deer, and by the time he had been tucked in bed that night, he was sure that they were Santa Claus's deer. This was where the jolly fat man went after Christmas, he insisted, and not, as legend had it, to the North Pole.

Wind and Stars appeared in October of '87, and it was a still bigger hit than any of her previous books. The movie of Endless River was released that Thanksgiving, enjoying the biggest opening-week box office of any film that year.

On Friday, January 8, 1988, buoyed by the knowledge that Wind and Stars would hold the number one spot on the Times list that Sunday for the fifth week in a row, they drove up to Big Bear in the afternoon, as soon as Chris came home from school. The following Tuesday was Laura's thirty-third birthday, and they intended to have an early celebration, just the three of them, high in the mountains, with the snow like icing on a cake and the wind to sing for her.

Accustomed to them, the deer ventured within twenty feet of their house on Saturday morning. But Chris was seven now, and in school he heard the rumor that Santa Claus was not real, and he was no longer so sure that these were more than ordinary deer.

The weekend was perfect, perhaps the best they had spent in the mountains, but they had to cut it short. They had intended to leave at six o'clock Monday morning, returning to Orange County in time to deliver Chris to school. However a major storm moved into the area ahead of schedule late Sunday afternoon, and though they were little more than ninety minutes from the balmy temperatures nearer the coast, the weather report called for two feet of new snow by morning. Not wanting to risk being snowbound and causing Chris to miss a day of school — a possibility even with their four-wheel-drive Blazer — they closed up the big stone and redwood house and headed south on state route 330 at a few minutes past four o'clock.

Southern California was one of the few places in the world where you could drive from a winterscape to subtropical heat in less than two hours, and Laura always enjoyed — and marveled at — the journey. The three of them were dressed for snow — wool socks, boots, thermal underwear, heavy slacks, warm sweaters, ski jackets — but in an hour and a quarter they would be in milder climes where no one was bundled up, and in two hours they would be in shirtsleeve weather.

Laura drove while Danny, sitting in front, and Chris, sitting behind him, played a word-association game that they had devised on previous trips to amuse themselves. Rapidly falling snow found even those sections of the highway that were largely protected by trees on both sides, and in unsheltered areas the hard-driven flakes sheeted and whirled by the millions in the capricious currents of the high-mountain winds, sometimes half obscuring the way ahead. She drove with caution, not caring if the two-hour drive home required three hours or four; since they had left early, they had plenty of time to spare, all the time in the world.

When she came out of the big curve a few miles south of their house and entered the half-mile incline, she saw a red Jeep station wagon parked on the right shoulder and a man in a navy peacoat in the middle of the road. He was coming down the hill, waving both arms to halt them.

Leaning forward and squinting between the thumping windshield wipers, Danny said, 'Looks like he broke down, needs help.'

'Packard's Patrol to the rescue!' Chris said from the back seat.

As Laura slowed, the guy on the road began frantically gesturing for them to pull to the right shoulder.

Danny said uneasily, 'Something odd about him…'

Yes, odd indeed. He was her special guardian. The sight of him after all these years shocked and frightened Laura.