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out on my own by now. A lot of people our age are already married and settled down.”
    â€œThat doesn’t answer my question. And how old are you?”
    â€œWhich question do you want me to answer?”
    â€œBoth.”
    â€œI’m eighteen. And you’re right, I skirted your other question. It was my father. He loved the theater. I think in his secret heart he wanted to be an actor. Or maybe a playwright. Whatever it was he truly wanted to do, it wasn’t to be found in Busted Heights.”
    â€œThen why was he there?”
    â€œMy mother,” said Jamie bitterly. “My stepmother, to be totally accurate, though she was all the mother I ever knew. My real mother was gone long before I can remember. Anyway, I don’t know a lot about what brought them out here, just bits and pieces of information my father dropped when we were talking. I wish I had asked him more, before he…” He stopped for a moment, to collect his emotions. “Funny thing. You always think you’ll have all the time in the world to ask those questions. Anyway, they lived back East when they were young. So did I, for that matter. I was born in Philadelphia.”
    â€œThat’s where I was born!”
    Jamie smiled. “Obviously they know how to have children of the finest kind in that city. But whatever else Pa was doing besides having me, he wasn’t successful at it. So he and Ma headed west to try to make a go of things, settled in Busted Heights, and then just kind of withered and died.”
    â€œBut I thought your mother—your stepmother—was still alive. Wasn’t that her boardinghouse?”
    â€œYou can call that living if you want. I don’t. She’s a bitter, shrill old woman. Except she’s not really old; she just acts and thinks that way.” He paused, and when he continued his voice was cold. “I know I shouldn’t talk that way about the woman who raised me. But I can’t help it. She killed my father.”
    Fortune sucked in her breath.
    â€œOh, not literally,” he said quickly. “But I believe Pa would still be alive if it weren’t for her forcing him to give up everything he loved.” He stopped to get control of his emotions. When he began again, he was calmer, as if he had hidden something away. “You asked about the theater. My father’s most precious possessions were his books of Shakespeare. They were the only things he owned that he really cared about. He used to read to me from them, starting when I was little. But once Ma started getting religion we couldn’t let her hear, on account of she thought any kind of playacting was the devil’s work. So we had to sneak off whenever we wanted to read together. We had a couple of secret places we liked to go.”
    Fortune began to understand why Jamie loved his books so much. The expression on his face when he talked about them cut right to her heart. He looked just as her father used to when he got talking about the theater.
    â€œOf course,” continued Jamie, “Ma would be furious whenever she caught Pa reading to me. That only happened in the winter, when we had to do it in the barn instead of outside. But despite all the screaming and shouting, neither of us was willing to give it up. We used to read the plays over and over, acting them out together. I know a lot of them by heart.”
    â€œYou don’t, either!”
    â€œTry me.”
    Rummaging through her mind, Fortune dragged up a line from Romeo and Juliet that she had always enjoyed for its wild romanticism. “All right, try this. It’s Romeo speaking. ‘I am no pilot; yet wert thou as far as that vast shore…’”
    Jamie paused for a moment. Then he nodded, as if he had caught the thread. Jumping to the floor, he stared up at her, stared directly into her eyes. For one strange moment, sitting there on that rough stable wall, Fortune had the sense of being