” Just as her mother came to the kitchen, I heard my daughter threaten her brothers, “One of you took something from my room, I want it back or yo...’ll both catch a lot of hell from me.” I immediately knew what she was missing.Charlotte was edgy that morning. It was only after the twins left for the school bus that she regained some composure, was a little more at ease. Again, my wife asked her what her problem was, but our daughter assumed one of her puberty-driven Stephen King personalities. ” The change in him was painfully obvious. “What is it?” “It’s nothing, Kate. Really. Wanna go get a pizza?” Hank couldn’t look at me, a telltale sign that he was fighting an internal dilemma. “What’s wrong?” He finally looked at me. “I don’t want you to see that.” “Why not?” “Because it’s not for your eyes.” “What, is it going to blind me?” Hank quietly laughed. He shook his head and when I took a step toward the tarp, his smile disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. “Kate, don’t.” “You. It had a grand setof steps up to the superior part of the house and its ornate entrance,with a smaller set of steps to each side decending to the basementrooms. The once grand building had long since been deflowered andconverted to flats - or apartments for our American cousins.I stepped carefully down the very worn steps to the basement flat in my4 inch heels, minding the milk bottles as I went. Paint was peeling offwood and masonary everywhere. And it stunk to High Heaven of cat pee.You know. "Retrograde just means it orbits in the opposite direction." She used her hands to approximate what she meant, and Branny nodded her understanding."But surely the rings are just flat planes, like Saturn," I objected. "You just come in off the plane of the ecliptic." What does ecliptic mean?" asked Branny.I smiled slightly, and let Siân explain, which she managed to do simply and succinctly, and even Branny understood: Branny wasn't stupid, far from it, she just normally had little interest in.