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Chapter One

Out of the blue one winter day, Rosalind Slaymaster asked my mother and me to dinner. The reason for the invitation was a mystery to us.

Mrs. Slaymaster had restored the old Evans house, up on Canal Cliffs. It used to have another name: Evans Above.

That was changed, as the house was.Peligro, the sign said. danger -- because the road that led up to the house twisted sharply around the hill.

One of the Hispanic workers had made the sign as the house was being prepared for its new owner. When Rosalind Slaymaster was finally ready to live there, everyone in town had come to call the place Peligro.

In the town of Serenity, they said it was like her to leave it that way.

Rosalind Slaymaster sat at the head of the table that night. I was seated at the other end, facing her.

She was said to be the richest woman in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. She didn't look rich, not then and not when I'd see her around town. But it didn't take very long after talking with her to realize that she wasn't just like anyone else, either. It wasn't only because she had piles of money. It was the toughness of her, the hard twang in her voice, and this walk she had like she was Boss of Everywhere.

She looked and acted more Texan than Eastern. But she'd been born in Serenity, the last one anyone ever thought would come back to lord it over everybody. She still lived most of the time on The Lucky Star, her ranch near Ingram, Texas.

Next to me my mother perched excitedly on the edge of her cushioned chair. On the other side of me sat Mrs. Slaymaster's niece, Julie, age fifteen, a year younger than I was. Red Brillo hair.Thick glasses. Beside Julie was the real star of Peligro. Named for a preacher who'd baptized Mrs. Slaymaster's late husband, he was called Peale.

Peale was not a person, not an animal, but a large leather doll, dressed that evening in a black suit with a bolo tie, a black silk vest with silver threads, and black suede boots.

My mother was as nervous as a dog that knows a thunderstorm's on the way. Everything about Peligro, from its 10,000 square feet (five bedrooms, seven bathrooms) to its imperious owner, was too rich for my mother's blood.

There had been very little conversation through the soup course. Two teenagers who hardly know each other don't promise dynamite dialogue. Mrs. S., as everyone called her, seemed content to eat in silence. I had an idea they didn't talk much at the table, company or not. You know those couples you see out in restaurants sometimes who aren't saying boo to each other unless one needs the salt? I figured that was probably the way they were.

Mom made too much of everything: showering compliments on the meal, on the crystal chandelier hanging from the thirty-foot ceiling, on the white brick fireplace at the end of the dining room, even on the chairs we sat on. Anything she could toss in. She was overwhelmed.

Finally, desperately, after a long silence, she cleared her throat.

She said importantly, “They say I was royalty in another life.”

It wasn't the first time I'd heard it. Mom really believed it, and she resorted to mentioning it times she felt outclassed.

Mrs. Slaymaster did not even look up from her plate. “Who are they?” she asked.

“Those who know about spiritual things,” my mother replied. “Those who make a study of reincarnation.” Mom was little and thin, making me always afraid someone would treat her in a way that would diminish her further.

Mrs. Slaymaster roared, “Cow pie!”

“I beg your pardon?” my mother said, red-faced.

“I don't buy into that crap, Ann!”

“But what is ‘cow pie'?”

“Merde,” Julie spoke up. “Merde from a moo cow.”

“Number two,” I whispered, knowing Mom knew no French.

Mrs. S. said, “We get one crack at life, Ann! We go around one time.”

“One Life to Live,” Julie put in, pushing her eyeglasses back on her nose. “There used to be a soap called that.”

“Is that what you learned to do in your boarding schools?” Mrs. S. asked. “Watch television soap operas?”

“It's what I learned to do in Texas, Aunt. It's what you do when there's no one around for miles and miles and miles. You resort to the boob tube.”

My mother, a world-class viewer of soaps, Rosie -- Oprah -- all of it -- blushed again and offered the information that I rarely watched anything on TV.

“Good for you, Edward.” Mrs. S. looked across at me, almost smiling. I had an idea a smile didn't come easily to those lips.

“Edgar,” Julie corrected her. “But he's called E.C.”

Like Peale, I, too, had been named for someone. Edgar Cayce, a psychic of some importance in that far-out world of crystal balls and Ouija boards.

What Became of Her. Copyright © by M. Kerr. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.