The boy started out. He turned in the doorway suddenly, and spoke to me in a voice different from the one he had been using, a voice more deep and measured: `I wish you were my father.'
He turned away into the bleak sunlight.
Back in the car, I said to Stella: `Did Tom ever tell you that he was adopted?'
`Adopted? He can't be.'
`Why not?'
`He can't be, that's all.'
The road curved around a reedy marsh where the red-winged blackbirds sounded like woodwinds tuning up, and violins. Stella added after a while: `For one thing, he looks like his father.'
`Adopted children often do. They're picked to match the parents.'
'How awful. How commercial. Who told you he was adopted?'
`He told a friend at the school.'
`A girl?'
`A boy.'
`I'm sure he was making it up.'
`Did he often make things up?'
`Not often. But he did-he does have some funny ideas about some things. He told me just this summer that he was probably a changeling, you know? That they got him mixed up with some other baby in the hospital, and Mr. and Mrs. Hillman weren't his real parents.'
She turned toward me, crouching on the seat with her legs under her. `Do you think that could be true?'
`It could be. Almost anything can happen.'
`But you don't believe it.'
`I don't know what I believe, Stella.'
`You're an adult,' she said with a hint of mockery. `You're supposed to know.'
I let it drop. We rode in silence to the gate of El Rancho. Stella said: `I wonder what my father is going to do to me.'
She hesitated. `I apologize for getting you into this.'
`It's all right. You've been the best help I've had.'
Jay Carlson, whom I hadn't met and wasn't looking forward to meeting, was standing out in front of his house when we got there. He was a well-fed, youngish man with sensitive blue eyes resembling Stella's. At the moment he looked sick with anger, gray and shuddering with it.
Rhea Carlson, her red hair flaring like a danger signal, came out of the house and rushed up to the car, with her husband trudging behind her. He acted like a man who disliked trouble and couldn't handle it well. The woman spoke first: `What have you been doing with my daughter?'
`Protecting her as well as I could. She spent the night with a woman friend of mine. This morning I talked her into coming home.'
`I intend to check that story very carefully,' Carlson said. `What was the name of this alleged woman friend?'
'Susanna Drew.'
`Is he telling the truth, Stella?' She nodded.
`Can't you talk?' he cried. `You've been gone all night and you won't even speak to us.'
`Don't get so excited, Daddy. He's telling the truth. I'm sorry I went to Los Angeles but-'
He couldn't wait for her to finish. `I've got a right to get excited, after what you've done. We didn't even know if you were alive.'
Stella bowed her head. `I'm sorry, Daddy.'
`You're a cruel, unfeeling girl,' her mother said. `And I'll never be able to believe you again. Never.'
`You know better than that, Mrs. Carlson.'
Her husband turned on me fiercely. `You stay out of it.'
He probably wanted to hit me. In lieu of this, he grasped Stella by the shoulders and shook her. `Are you out of your mind, to do a thing like this?'
`Lay off her, Carlson.'
`She's my daughter!'
`Treat her like one. Stella's had a rough night-'
`She's had a rough night, has she? What happened?'
`She's been trying to grow up, under difficulties, and you're not giving her much help.'
`What she needs is discipline. And I know where she can get it.'
