- Sorry again, mister Jordan Thurlow, - inspector Galbraith interrupted the prisoner for the second time. - From now on, I would like you to give only the main points of your story regarding Delia Yonce and her family.

- All right, as you will, - Jo agreed. - To be honest, I'm tired tame the tongue.

⁂

In general, as soon as Delia once visited the house of her neighbor, Jordan Thurlow, she became his frequent guest. For the last half of the summer and all of September, she, with or without her mother, visited Jo on any occasion, clearly reveling in every minute of her visits. What did they not do... Basically, she simply had intimate conversations with the owner of the house, who knew how to listen to her, and often sat next to her when he read books from his library aloud to her, and sometimes spent time in the kitchen helping Jo (and mother, in cases when she honored this house with her visit) cook according to recipes that he asked his friend and colleague Japhet over the phone.

Mister Thurlow was on good terms with missis Ivette Yonce herself, they got along well and told each other a lot. Pretty soon Jo found out exactly how his new neighbors met. As Ivette told him, she, being the daughter of a farmer (who at one time moved from Aveiro to New York), at twenty-two married her college friend, but alas, her first marriage was unhappy - mister Cynader, who not only was her peer, was also extremely capricious and picky in character. While married to him, Ivette constantly heard obsessive requests from him so that she would discard all romantic illusions and give birth to an heir as quickly as possible. To this, the then missis Cynader invariably answered him that the decision to give birth is primarily the woman’s initiative, and if her husband really wants to have a child, then let him first devote himself to more serious activities than golf in the company of drunk friends. But this was not the only matter, Ivette had problems with pregnancy - in the two years she spent married to this man, she had two miscarriages, which also did not benefit their union. In the end it all ended with mister Cynader divorcing her, which put her in a very disadvantageous position - in fact, Yvette had nowhere to go, her father-farmer did not want to house an adult woman who was already an independent person in the full sense of the word.

Out of grief, Ivette went to a certain spa in Verona, where she met her (then still future) second husband - mister Yonce, who treated his bronchi there. They mutually fell in love with each other at first sight, meeting for the first time in the hall near the fountain. The fact that he was twenty years older than her was not a hindrance. Next day, when it was lunch hour, the pharmaceutist sat next to her as she sat alone at the table. After talking about life, the two of them went to the spa's garden, where Ivette gave mister Yonce an apple, which he, having taken from her hands, began to eat, but immediately threw it on the ground, because it turned out to be wormy. Taking advantage of a man's confusion, the woman rushed to him and kissed him right there, under the tree, after which she rushed out of the garden to let the pharmaceutist know that he would take further actions himself. And mister Yonce did not hesitate - when the next day there was dancing at the sanatorium, he invited Ivette to tango and after several circles they began to order alcoholic cocktails. As a result, this resulted in the fact that, being in a tipsy state, the woman decided to take the pharmaceutist to her room, where, without unnecessary , they immediately fell on the bed and gave vent to their feelings...

The next morning, waking up in the same bed, mister Yonce in the heat of love told Ivette that he wanted to leave the sanatorium with her immediately, so that they could live together, to which she agreed without further ado. However, the pharmaceutist was in no hurry to marry her - as a result, they lived for a long time in his apartment in New York just as roommates. When her lover was missing at work, Yvette, having nothing better to do, read the books he kept at home. She was impressed by the work of a certain B. Taggert, which, in fact, gave the expectant mother an idea of what to name her child.

Ivette found out quite quickly that she was having a girl - medical ultrasonography, which she did two months after meeting the pharmacist, made it clear that that night spent in the Verona's spa was not in vain. Out of curiosity, she decided to play with her lover in game "Guess What I'll Name Our Baby", but after the pharmaceutist's futile attempts, Ivette opened up to him, that their daughter will be named Delia, because according to the book by B. Taggert this name means "always visible", which will bring good luck to their heiress. Ivette remembered that when mister Yonce heard this, he walked around for several days in deep confusion, the reason for which he never revealed to her. When Jo heard it from her lips, he thought that apparently the point was that the pharmacist had always dreamed of a son, but he did not tell his interlocutor anything about his guesses.

Be that as it may, it was the fact of Delia's conception that became the impetus for the further rapprochement of Ivette and mister Yonce - ten days before the birth of the heiress, the latter took care of obtaining a marriage license, and when the girl was finally born (and it was in the morning), pharmaceutist, upon leaving the maternity hospital, immediately took the happy young mother to his close friend, where a special person who arrived there held a marriage registration ceremony, after which the newlyweds of different ages began to live a happy family life. Ivette didn’t tell Jo why, after eight years, the whole family decided to move from New York to Portland. Based on her hints, he assumed that there was something more serious behind this than the baby’s complaints about life in a small apartment, but, be that as it may, he decided not to go into this topic.

But mister Thurlow talked not only with missis Yonce herself. He was also very interested in communicating with her little daughter. They were so good with each other, that when Jo had to travel to the center for work - usually for five days, but sometimes for a week - then the young heiress of the Yonce family immediately deteriorated, and the little one fell into a state that could be roughly described as a mixture of boredom and sadness (she was still far from depression). At such moments, she seemed to be locked inside herself, nothing brought her pleasure, and to her parents’ attempts to try to make her laugh, she responded only with a look in which a certain reproach was felt. Even her usual love for sweets faded at such moments, no matter what they offer her - ice cream, cake or fruit - little girl, without saying a word, pushed the plates away or shied away from the hands helpfully extended to her...

Only school, which started in September, began to bring her joy and pleasure in those moments when her neighbour was not at home - Apparently, it was due to the fact that the elementary school where she studied was located in the same area where mister Thurlow worked. They did not intersect at such moments for obvious reasons, and it was mutual consent - neither Jo went to school, nor Delia ran to him from classes - but it seemed that the fields of waves emanating from them intersected in this place. As for the school affairs of the young heiress of the Yonce family, she, contrary to Jo's suspicions, was not a bully - Delia had the fortitude to stand up for herself at some points, but she herself never got into a fight and she never - do you understand? - never occurred to bully her peers. It happened that, having witnessed bullying, the girl immediately came to victim's defense and it even happened that the hooligans later asked her forgiveness for unworthy actions, but none of those who knew her could describe her as an damned wretch.

She didn't have many friends - if Delia were asked who she was friendly with among her classmates, then she, after a little thought, would single out two girls, daughters of people who worked with her father. Both of her friends were six months older than her, and by nature they were somewhat arrogant excellent students who put themselves a little higher than herself. At first, Delia didn’t even pay much attention to them, but when she one day saw how a boy from another class called them bad words, she reprimanded him, involuntarily aroused respect on their part (most likely, it was simply beneficial for them to have such a girl as a girlfriend who would protect them). And if anyone had asked who she had warm feelings for, Delia would have blushed and pointed her finger at the boy with golden curly hair who invariably sat closer to the teacher's desk.

This boy was the same Jerry, born Jerome, the son of Taylor Myron, one of the richest listing brokers in Portland. The parents decided to send the boy to the school they themselves went to as a child, although in terms of status it would be more appropriate for him to study at an institution with a higher reputation, but what could he do, the will of his parents is adamant... At this school, Jerry Myron felt much like a prince disguised as a pauper - he looked down on his classmates, tried to stay away from everyone, and when other boys tried to offer him friendship, he looked at them with an arrogant look. It is not surprising that he often became the cause of fights in class, when the most hooligan boys got tired of this untainted angel and tried to take out their childhood anger on him. Tried - because the young heiress of the Yonce family, who, as was already known, always stood up for the weak, took Jerry under her, shall we say, protection from the very first day. True, on those days when, for family reasons, she was absent from classes, the hooligans seemed to break loose and, trying not to catch the eyes of the teachers, beat up her love interest during breaks...