Zander was in the study room at the house, teaching Mikhail some English. Amanda came in. She had been helping him, too.

She and Zander were looking at what he would take in summer session. "With all this, you can student teach in the fall."

Zander's eyes shone. He was starting to pull this together. It might really happen.

Later he read the local paper. There was an interesting incident described in one article. A juvenile, whose name could not be listed, had driven under the influence of alcohol, but only enough to get her car off the railroad tracks. A friend and witness was Clay Delaney, a local bartender and student, who had driven the car until it stalled there. He had not been drunk, the article emphasized, but driving the juvenile home, when the car stalled. He'd gone to get help, and when he did that, a train came towards the crossing, and the juvenile managed to get the car started and limp it to the road shoulder. The cops came and arrested the juvenile for DUI.

"Crazy," Zander said to himself.

Kara saw that item in the paper, too, and showed it to Peter at school. "I hope Clay isn't in trouble," she said.

"Doesn't look like it," Peter said. "I can't see that he did anything wrong."

Kara wanted to stay after school for volleyball practice.

"I have one more treatment next week," she explained. "But I can watch."

"Strategize," he said. "Observe the rest of the team."

"Yeah, like that," she said. "You have baseball practice?"

"Starting this week. And I have to keep skating to stay in shape. Dad is going to Yekaterinburg to coach Irina for a couple of weeks. And my uncle thinks Dad can convince Tatiana, that's her mother, that she is such a talent she should stay in the U.S. where he can coach her and I."

"So he needs to convince Tatiana that you're a big talent, too!"

"That's right. I'll wish him good luck with that!"

In the hall, Jeremy and Branwyn were walking.

"What happened to Clay, Branwyn?" Jeremy asked.

"Nothing, really," Branwyn said. "He was just a bystander. But he could get called as a witness. The district attorney could need him to prove the driver was drunk."

"Who was this juvenile?"

"Clay won't say."

"Are you suspicious?"

"There's only one juvenile he'd be with," Branwyn said. "I mean, if it wasn't me."

"And it wasn't you?"

"No!"

"The T person?"

"I wouldn't mind betting a big sum of cash on it."

"Me neither," Jeremy grinned.

Rick Friel went to Kelly's to meet his daughter for a cup of coffee. On the way in, he saw Sarah Webber and another girl coming out.

Cordially, he said hello to her.

"Did your daughter like Rachmaninoff at all?" she asked. "This is my sister, Elizabeth. This is Rick, he's a friend of Duane's."

"She liked some of it, though she won't admit it. Sorry about my mistake. Are you a relative of Duane's?"

"No," Sarah said.

"You're not - you're too young for him."

"That's up to he and I, isn't it?"

"Yeah, I guess, but what do you see in it? Money?"

"I'm a doctor," Sarah said, then she changed tracks, "If you'll excuse me, the stereotypes are getting a little too thick around here."

"Don't know what else you can expect, Sarah," Elizabeth said, as they walked away. "This is just the beginning."

"I'll get used to it," Sarah declared.

Elizabeth sighed. When Sarah was determined, she was determined.

"I'll come up with some standard replies," Sarah went on.

"Think of one for 'you must have some kind of father fixation,'" Elizabeth said.

"OK. Let me see. OK, I have one. I already have a perfectly good father, thank you."

"Money?"

"I'm a doctor! That was good enough, I think."

"And there are worse people than just friends of his - what if his daughters don't like it?"

"Rick is not a close friend. He guessed that I was Valerie, for heaven's sake. If he was such a close friend, he would know what Valerie looked like."

"I don't know, Sarah. People can get busy and lose touch and not know each other's children that well. Think about it. Mom and Dad have very good friends in Colorado who might not recognize us."

"A real friend is still in touch," Sarah said. "Anyway, Valerie and Yvonne are likely to be OK with it."

"How do you know that?"

"Duane says so."

"Like you think Dad can predict what you and I will think of anything?"

"Not everything, but bigger things, probably. Don't be absurd, Elizabeth. He knows us better than you might think. He raised us! It's like Duane said, he can tell from some of Yvonne's lyrics what she is thinking, where other people couldn't."

"You might feel differently once you meet them, Sarah. It might really hit you then, that Valerie is really your age and could be a friend of yours. You aren't like a mother figure to her."

"I've always known he was older. It might hit me as you say, stronger, still it's Duane I picked. That's not going to give way to secondary considerations. Other guys might have their own secondary considerations, even if they were my age. If I went out with AJ or Jason, they'd be closer to my age, but the secondary consideration would be the Quartermaines. You did enough complaining about them yourself."

"OK, you have a point. And these secondary considerations are at least predictable. Standard May-December comments. Money and father fixations. Does he like you for real, or just as arm candy?"

"There's no question of that. He'd be eager to get involved with me, not careful. He's more careful than you could be. If I were too immature for him, I'd have quit long ago."

"One of his daughters could have kids soon, and you'd be like a grandmother."

Sarah laughed.

"Well," Elizabeth said, "Have you thought about how you could be wasting your time, because he might not want any more children?"

"If he feels that way, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. That could be true with any younger guy, too."

"But maybe more likely with one who thought he'd already had his children."

"You could be right, but there's no reason he can't have more even if he hadn't planned it. You can only plan your life so much when it comes to these things. I could marry someone who is infertile but my age."

"OK, you make sense. You know what you're doing. "

"Thanks you for being such a sounding board. You came up with some good thoughts, Elizabeth."

"I'm glad. I really want it to work out if he is right for you and will make you happy, Sarah."

Back inside Kelly's, Amanda Friel drank coffee with her father.

"Well, that was a mean thing to say, Dad," Amanda said. Rick had told her of his two meetings with Sarah Webber. "You have no way of knowing. There have been May-December romances in the past."

"And they have those same facts," Rick said. "And Duane is not the type just to exploit her as a sort of, trophy, you know."

"Well, maybe she is not the type to exploit him, either," Amanda said.

"It's just that, we were in each other's weddings, and -"

"Now you have in common that you are unexpectedly single," Amanda said.

"But the reasons are so different," Rick said. "he's in much worse shape. That had to hurt, Allison leaving. I'm just worried, that's all."

"About yourself, or him?"

"I wouldn't even consider a woman that young."

"Did they look that bad together?"

"It's not that. They looked OK. You can just tell how young she is. She has a kind of elegance to her, but you can still see that she's so much younger."

"Don't you remember Valerie at all, Dad? She's cute, but elegant is a word I would never use to describe her."

"I'm trying to picture her. I just can't. How can you remember her?"

"I was never great friends with her, but I saw her at games, when PCH was playing Mercy, or some of those parties of you and your school friends. When we were little, we played."

"It'd be like you dating Duane!"

"But it's not, when she didn't know him. He knew me when I was a little girl, but not this woman."

"I hope not. He wouldn't remember you, maybe."

"He might have a better memory for faces than you do, Dad!" Amanda laughed and patted her father's arm, affectionately. "But Dad, at least don't judge this girl when you don't know her yet. She could be crazy about Duane for all you know. You were assuming things."

"I guess I was. But I won't be the only one who does it."

"And her. So how is Amy? I should get together with her. Teenagers can get so amazingly busy with their friends and school and activities."

"She's out and about all the time. And playing volleyball. And studying. Lately she's been complaining about that Delaney who is her history teacher, giving her an assignment about FDR. Apparently she announced to the class that FDR was a socialist, and Delaney gave her an assignment on what FDR should have done differently."

Amanda laughed. "And she's having a hard time solving the problem of the Depression a different way?"

"Yes, she is."

"I'll see if Zander can help her. He is really good at seeing alternatives."

"Yeah, and get Jackson to lean on his brother to back off."

Amanda laughed again. "No, Jackson would never do that! He knows I'd congratulate Matt. Exactly what I would have done."