Colin woke up that next morning with a smile on his face. Oh, yesterday could have been better, but not by much. He would have liked to have seen Milda again, but by the time he got back from his afternoon session she was off somewhere.

He had waited up a little while, ostensibly practising in the parlor. When he had heard the front door open he had swung into 'Oh, Pretty Woman'. He had stumbled to a twanging halt, blushing like a fire engine, when Naresha appeared in the door and purred, "Oo, is that for me?"

"Uh... Yes!"

She had laughed, coming in and sitting beside him. "Colin, you don't have to lie to flatter me--I have an excellent opinion of myself already. That was for Milda, wasn't it?"

Colin had smiled sheepishly. "Um... yes."

"Ah, a troubador. How absolutely perfect for Milda."

Colin had given up on trying to be subtle--it just wasn't his nature. "Where is she?"

Naresha had waved her hand vaguely. "Mm, around--somewhere. We don't keep a leash on each other."

Colin remembered the flare of anxiety that had swept over him. "Aren't you worried about her? This isn't the greatest area in the world for a woman alone to be out at night."

Naresha's smile had softened. "Don't worry, Col. We three are very, very good at taking care of each other, and besides--Acacia is with her. You need not worry when Acacia is on the job."

"But even two women can be a target, and..."

Naresha's silvery laughter had interrupted him. She had patted his hand in an almost condescendingly comforting manner. "My dear, I pity any single thug who thinks that Acacia is an easy mark." Her smile had become almost cruel. "No, I lie. I do not pity him. He'll be getting exactly what he deserves." She had stood up. "In case you're thinking of waiting up for Milda--don't. She'll be very, very late." She had started out of the room. At the door she had paused. "And Acacia might not be up to meeting new friends."

He had waited up, till almost midnight. Finally he had gone to bed, but had spent another hour lying awake, listening. It was near impossible to move about in this old house without the sound being broadcast to every corner, and he heard nothing but the usual creaks and groans.

But now she should be home, and he wanted to invite her to spend the day with him again. He dressed quickly, wondering if she'd prefer it if he pressed his jeans, and making a note to ask Nana what she thought. The sweet old gal had offered to iron anything, anytime, but, well, with a wardrobe consisting mostly of tee-shirts and jeans, that just wasn't a priority.

Colin was halfway down the stairs when he paused, cocking his head to listen to what was going on in the kitchen. Silence. Even Nana wasn't in there. He eased back up the stairs and considered his next action. Getting his own breakfast would be no problem. Nana did pretty well--there were only a few days lately that she stayed in bed. He'd been living here almost a year, and it had been a lot worse back then. He thought that having someone to take care of helped her stay steady.

He stared at the door to the other bedroom for almost a minute before approaching it. He tapped lightly. There was a low grumbling sound from the other side of the door. He suddenly reconsidered, thinking that it might be too early to bother Milda, but it was too late to back down.

The door swung open, but it wasn't Milda, nor Naresha. He was confronted by a rough approximation of the other girls. Hair that looked like a mixture of caramel and cream stuck up all over her head. Her eyes were bleary with sleep, but they were a familiar bright blue. Her rather pointy featured face was a little puffy with sleep, but the family resemblance was striking. This had to be Acacia--the eldest.

The girl focused on him, and her expression went from slack to sharp. "What?"

Colin found himself gaping. The girl was dressed in a gauzy set of pink babydoll pajamas, which meant she was about one step up from naked with the sunlight from the half-shaded bedroom window behind her. Milda wore loose, baggy clothes, but if the figure they were hiding was anything like her older sister's...

"I said what? The fucking house better be on fire for you to wake me up this early, and what the hell are you starin' at?"

Colin took a quick step back, looking down quickly. That just gave him a view of shapely, muscular legs, and he had to drop his eyes even more. What he saw made him blink. *Those are the longest toenails I've ever seen, but they look better cared for than most fingernails.* "I'm sorry. I was just wondering if Milda was up."

"Up and gone, her and Naresha both. Now get out of my face." She slammed the door.

Colin winced. *Whoa. Looks like Milda got all the mellow in that family.* "Okay. Sorry again."

He started to turn away, but he heard a gusty sigh, and the door opened again. Acacia stood there, one hand on the door and the other on the curve of one hip. "I'm not a morning person, okay?"

"Sure, I understand. You got to bed late. I just didn't think..."

"Stop it, you've been abject enough." she raked her eyes over him and said flatly, "You're Colin--Milda's friend. I'm Acacia."

"Yes, you certainly are."

Acacia frowned, then startled him with a bark of laughter. "It's that obvious, is it? My fame preceeds me." She scratched her head, ruffling her short hair even more. The sharp blue eyes narrowed as she studied him further, then she said, "You like Milda, don't you?" Before he could answer she snorted. "Of course you do. She's almost impossible not to like. But the question is..." her tone sharpened, "do you like her?"

Colin wasn't a virgin, but he hadn't had a lot of experience, either. There had been girls that he'd had crushes on and girls that he'd desired, but there was something different about Milda. He hadn't known her much more tha a day, but when he thought about her he just felt a sort of glow. He nodded. "Yes, I like her, like her."

Acacia pursed her lips, then said, "Okay. I'll say this one time--she's my little sister, I love her, and if you hurt her I'll rip your balls off and feed them to you."

Colin took a good look at her eyes, and knew that while some people might take such a statement as an elaborate threat, it wouldn't be wise to underestimate Acacia Ballard. "Okay. I'm glad Milda has someone like you to take care of her. If you see her before I do, tell her that I'll be working near the duck pond at that park near the town square, okay?" He blushed, mumbling, "If she's interested."

As he went down the stairs Acacia muttered to herself, "Oh, she's interested, all right." She shut the door and turned back to look at the red-haired girl sitting crosslegged on the bed, peering at her over the tops of her spectacles. "Aintcha, sis?"

"I am, and you might have been a little more polite, Casey," she said severly.

Naresha, stretched out behind her, yawned. "Milda, sweet, for Acacia that was positively the epitome of etiquette. She refrained from kneeing him in the balls and didn't lay even one scratch on his face."

Acacia flopped down on the bed beside Milda, laying her head on Naresha's legs. "You wanna spend the day with the guy?"

Milda picked at her skirt. "It's your turn to go out today, Casey."

Acacia poked her in the side. "But you want to, don't you?" Milda dipped her head, her hair falling forward to obscure her face. Acacia kept poking. "Dontcha? Dontcha?" She leaned up and drew aside the hair, revealing Milda's shy smile. "Ha! Knew it. Son of a bitch, baby sister's got it bad already." She whistled. "He musta looked pretty good in that towel."

Milda swatted at her. "Stop it, Casey!" She grinned. "From what I saw."

Acacia laughed. "Well, I'd rather see you settled down with a nice girl, but I guess it had to happen sometime. I'll just hang here today--you go ahead."

"You won't mind?"

"Nope. Me and Naresha will just do the sister thing. If he's going to be your fella, you need to spend time with him."

Milda kissed Acacia on the cheek. "Thank you!" she said sincerely.

Anyone peeking in the room would have seen the single occupant, a blonde girl who's expression was more open and cheerful than usual, spring up and begin to dress. The final touch was a long, copper wig that she took out of a dresser drawer, fitting it on carefully and pinning it tight. When she was done, Milda Ballard went down to the kitchen to find Colin. When she entered the kitchen he looked up at her with a burst of such honest pleasure that it made her heart feel full.

The Ballard sisters had been living with Nana Collins for a little over two weeks. The sisters agreed that, even though they were living much more closely with others than they had since they had left The Hellhole, they felt more secure than they ever had before. Nana never asked questions. Colin did, at first, but he quickly curbed his curiosity when he saw how it disturbed Milda.

It was a quiet evening. Acacia and Nana were in the parlor. Acacia was absorbed in a program, but Nana was dividing her attention between the television and her knitting. Autumn was coming on, and the weather would soon turn cool. She was working on a muffler for Colin, to protect his throat while he sang out of doors.

Acacia kept laughing and making rude noises at the television. "God, that cracks me up!" she chortled. "It is just so ridiculous!"

Nana watched the pretty blonde woman on the screen talking animatedly to a rather exotic looking dark haired girl. "Yes, modern day witches are a bit far fetched."

"Oh, it's not that. I can deal with the idea of witches easy enough, though I seriously doubt they'd be able to do much by just twitching their noses. No, it's the other one." She pointed. "She's supposed to be a cat turned into a woman, right? A siamese cat?" Acacia blew a raspberry at the screen. "And they had it be just a plain old normal sized cat! I can go for transformation of matter, but not creation of matter! Hell, that doll should be no more than about a foot high, looking at the size of puss-puss. If they wanted Julie Newmar to play the catwoman they should have started out with a puma or something."

Nana nodded. "That makes sense."

Acacia straightened in surprise. "It does?"

"Yes, dear. It rather reminds me of Milda's explanation about why my poundcake was messing up because of the sugar substitution. All three of you girls are so bright, in your own ways." Nana knitted a few rows, watching Acacia's face in the flicker of light from the television. "Colin was so disappointed that Milda couldn't come with him to that party tonight."

Acacia shifted. "Well, he'd have been playing most of the time anyway, and, uh... I think Milda's a little sick. She isn't feeling too chipper right now."

"Oh, that's too bad!" Nana started to lay aside her knitting. "I ought to go up and check on her."

"No," Acacia said quickly. "Naresha is with her. She'll let us know if Mildy needs anything."

"Mm." She worked a little longer. Finally she said, "Acacia, have you ever wondered how I support myself?"

Acacia said slowly, "It's not a very polite thing to mention, but yeah, I've been curious." She half smiled. "Must be the cat in me. I don't know how much Colin pays you, but it can't be much. You sure couldn't perk along for long on that and what we give you." She cocked her head. "I thought maybe you had, like, a trust fund, or something."

"No, dear. All the money my parents left was eaten up rather quickly." Her eyes met Acacia's. "Hospital bills."

Acacia's voice was soft. "You sick, Nana?"

"No, dear, not really." She shrugged, "I don't think so, anyway. There were... problems when I was younger."

"What kind of problems?"

Nana shrugged. "Nothing I ever thought was too very bad. I never hurt anyone, or anything." Her eyes grew thoughtful. "I didn't like this house then. My parents didn't get along." She shook her head. "I mean they really didn't get along. Father used to hit Mother. Oh, never where it showed. He slipped once and blacked her eye. She couldn't go out for two solid weeks. He never hit me, except that one time I tried to get between them. I think what started my problems was when they found out that I was climbing out into that big tree that you girls use sometimes. But I'd go up on the roof instead of down to the ground, and I'd spend the night on the roof. I did it to get away from their yelling. They didn't like that. Of course they couldn't be bothered to stop fighting, and father didn't want to cut down the tree because it would damage the property value, so they just put bars on my window."

She heard Acacia's soft swear, and smiled. "They told the neighbors that it was an ornamental screen, but everyone knew, of course. If you look on the outside of that window, you can still see the holes in the sideing where the bars were attached. So, word got around that I was 'odd'. You know, if you tell someone often enough that they're a certain way, sometimes they come to believe it? The neighbors started telling their children not to play with me, because I was peculiar. By then I didn't mind, because I didn't play with them, they played with me. It's really amazing the number of cruel things children and young people can say and do. I tried to commit suicide the first time when I was twelve."

She held out her hand, and Acacia saw the scars across her wrist--thin, pale streaks, several of them. "It took two more tries before they had me committed. I was in a 'private nursing facility' for almost twenty years. I got to come home some weekends, so my parents could keep up the illusion that I was delicate, and had to live in a sort of managed care home." She sighed. "That stopped the last eight years, when they realized that I'd hurt myself after I came back."

She knitted. "They kept fighting. They never divorced. Father died when I was thirty-seven, and Mother couldn't afford to pay my keep, so they sent me back. When she died, I..." Nana smiled gently. "Well, I didn't tell anyone for over a month. The mailman finally reported the smell. Goodness, what a fuss! You'd have thought I killed the woman." She frowned. "If I remember correctly, one of the policemen did think I'd killed her, but the autopsy showed she'd died of natural causes. When they asked why I hadn't told anyone when she died, I just laughed, and laughed." She paused. "And laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Till they gave me a seditive." She shrugged. "The doctor said I could do all right, if I took my medication, but I couldn't work, so every month the government gives me a little check, and I get my medicine for free. It isn't enough, of course, so I take in borders. Actually, dear, if you girls and Colin paid me any more, I think they'd cut my check, so this works out well."

Acacia was quiet for a moment, then said slowly, "I sort of knew someone who was in one of those places once. She killed herself."

"If you're really determined, dear, there isn't much anyone can do. So I suppose that I must not have been really determined." She paused to examine the scars, frowning. "Though I must say, I certain thought I was at the time."

Acacia grunted, eyeing Nana. "Well, I've known a lot of so called 'normal' people in my life, and believe me, you strike me as better adjusted than most of them."

"Thank you, dear." Eyes still on her work Nana said, "Acacia, do you or the other girls ever go to the movies?"

The abrupt change of subject didn't seem to bother Acacia. "Sometimes. Milda loves the cartoons, Naresha likes those foreign films with subtitles, and I like horror."

"I've just been thinking about a drama, but I don't suppose you would have seen it. It came out, oh, eight years ago, and you would have been just a little girl then. I doubt your parents would have taken you to see anything so mature."

Acacia's voice was flat, "Yeah, but only because The Bastard believed in home education."

Nana waited for an explanation. When none came, she continued. "This starred Joanne Woodward. Lovely woman, and such a fine actress. She won the best actress Oscar for her performance, I think. It was called The Three Faces of Eve."

"Yeah? It wasn't a horror movie, was it? Three faces?"

"No, it was a psychological drama. It was about a woman who suffered from something called multiple personalities."

Acacia went very still, watching Nana with shrewd eyes. "Yeah?"

"Yes. The poor woman had a traumatic emotional incident when she was a child, and her personality just split. It was like two different people in one body."

"Interesting. Pretty weird chick, huh?"

"No, not really. She was very confused by her situation, and it made a lot of trouble in her life. You know, I can't help but think that there might be some people who had that same condition who just... just got on with their lives."

"Yeah. It could have its advantages." She was quiet for a moment. "Nana, you know, I bet Milda would really like a cup of tea. Want to take one up to her, with me?"

"I think that would be wonderful, dear."

Nana brewed the tea, then followed Acacia up the stairs to the sisters' room. Acacia knocked on the door softly and called. "Nar? Mildy? I'm bringing Nana in with some tea." She hesitated, studying Nana. There was a wary hope in her eyes. "I think we need to talk to her."