Olivia (Logan 5)

"Oh no," Daddy said, his face, losing its robust color put there from all the wine he had drunk.

"Oh yes. I kept trying to get her to behave, but it was no use. Belinda will always be Belinda, Daddy. We might as well accept it."

He nodded, sadly.

"Well, I tried. I had an idea and I tried." He looked up at me, his eyes glassy. "I'm tired. Let's get some sleep," he said.

"Don't worry, Daddy. You'll figure something out yet," I said. He smiled quickly and patted me on the shoulder.

"Right, right," he said.

"As I suspected, Nelson Childs is looking for a woman of some substance," I added as I left the office. "Belinda just isn't right for him."

"I see," Daddy muttered behind

me, but he never suggested or assumed Nelson would be a good prospect for me. His attention was committed solely to Belinda as usual. "However, I'm not about to give up. I have something else up my sleeve," Daddy said.

I turned on the stairway.

"What?"

"Give me a few days to work out the details," he replied cryptically. I thought he meant he was going to come up with some other approach to getting Belinda and Nelson Childs together, but he had an entirely different prospect lined up, and this one was, in his terms, "more sensible from a business standpoint." Also, he thought it might help if we held one of our formal family meetings and he proposed the idea to Belinda himself.

"So we can avoid any further

misunderstandings and bad behavior," he explained when three days later, he announced his decision to have the meeting.

"You might as well wish for the whole world, Daddy, if you're going to wish for no further bad behavior from Belinda."

"We'll see. We'll see," he said, his eyes firm with determination.

From time to time, Daddy held these sessions to talk about our family, our business, our home and our lives. Mother even kept notes as he wished so he could look to her when he wanted to refer to something he had previously announced or asked. The journal she kept was our family history, as far as he was concerned. Mother entered all our important dates in it, birthdays, confirmations, vaccinations, childhood illnesses, graduations, and other significant events. Keeping the record of our lives was something very important to Daddy. It made us seem more like a country unto ourselves.

I finally decided I had better have a

conversation with Belinda about Nelson Childs just to see if she had hopes of ever being romantically involved with him. Nelson hadn't called or returned as he had promised, but trying to figure out what Belinda was thinking at any particular time was like trying to harness the wind.

I went into her room and brought up the subject as she was getting ready for bed.

"Nelson?" she said, tossing his name as if she had known him intimately for years. "Hardly." She gazed dreamily at herself in the mirror, fluffed her hair and then, with a painful grimace, studied a pale blemish on her chin.

"Yes, Nelson Childs."

"I don't think about him much," she said with annoyance. "I don't think he would be that much fun."

"What do you mean?" I was still suspicious. She could easily have contacted him without my knowing. "You sure enjoyed yourself with him at dinner the other night, getting down to your underwear and swimming in the moonlight."

"Oh that. Big deal," she said. She turned to me. "It's not the first time I've done something like that. It seemed like fun and he wanted to do it."

"Why don't you think about him now then?"

"He's too . . . career minded. All he talked about when you left to get us our towels was his school and his plans for being a successful politician. He thinks he's going to be President of the United States someday. I thought he could be a little boring and told him so," she added. "Just like he was with you when we had chocolate cake, remember?"

I was astounded. With as much concern as she might have for throwing away an old magazine, she could cast off a catch as good as Nelson Childs. And because he was boring? Nelson Childs could never be boring, I thought. She was the one who was boring.

"Let me understand this. On the beach, after you two had gone swimming, you told him you thought he was boring?"

"Yes, I did."