Free Love Among the Walnuts by Jean Ferris

dropping things. Finally the sleepers were settled in their room, Sunnie's suitcase was unpacked, and Sandy and Bentley were sadly contemplating returning to Eclipse alone.
    "Oh, you might as well stay for supper," Opal said, looking at their crestfallen expressions. "It's nothing special."
    Sunnie decided to eat her dinner on a tray in her patients' room so she could make sure the travel hadn't harmed them, but the others gathered around a single long table in the dining room.
    Opal had made a great pot of spaghetti and a big green salad, and as she dished up the plates, she announced that dessert would be canned peaches from Walnut Manor's own trees and anybody who didn't like that could just lump it.
    Sandy thought Opal's spaghetti sauce was the best he'd ever tasted, but he didn't say so for fear of hurting Bentley's feelings. Bentley was quite proud of his own spaghetti sauce.
    Mr. Moreland leaned across the table toward Sandy and said, "That's a good-looking nurse you've brought along. I seem to remember her from somewhere. What's her name? Stormy? Windy? I can't remember anything anymore."
    "Her name's Sunnie." Sandy loved to say her name. "And you saw her a few days ago when we came to take a tour of Walnut Manor."
    "Is that so?" Mr. Moreland asked.
    Everett nudged Sandy with his elbow. "'She had curves in places other women don't even have places.' Cybill Shepherd said that about Marilyn Monroe."
    "She may be right," Sandy said. "I don't know much about women."
    "I must be forgetting what I knew about them," Mr. Moreland said. "Today I pinched Opal. She almost broke my arm after I did it."
    "'Happiness? That's nothing more than health and a poor memory.' Albert Schweitzer," Everett said.
    "What a bunch of balderdash," Mr. Moreland retorted grumpily. "I've got them both and they don't add up to happiness. I used to be able to hold a full day's quotes from the Big Board in my head, and now I can hardly remember the difference between stocks and bonds. There was a time L. Barlow Van Dyke and I were making money so fast we didn't have time to count it. We were young, stubborn, ambitious, competitive. I beat him by one week to making my first million, but he made his second before I did. After that, we quit counting. Now look at us. I can hardly remember my own name, and he sits around looking like a thundercloud. Who'd ever have thought we'd end up like this? Last time I saw him out in the world he was making a speech at some big function, and now he's not only mute, he's a cat molester."
    "A cat molester?" Bentley asked, alarmed, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the sound of Graham's chewing. Graham was already on thirds, while everyone else was still on firsts. "You mean he teases cats? Manhandles them? Torments, harasses, badgers, and annoys them?" Bentley had spent many hours reading the thesaurus.
    "I suppose. That's the last thing he said the day he checked in here. Opal asked him what we should call him, and he said, 'Cat molester,' and he's never said another word. I guess he's ashamed of how far he's fallen."
    There was a little commotion at the other end of the table where Boom-Boom sat. He had spilled his milk and now was scolding himself while his other half cried. Opal got up for a sponge and cleaned up the milk before she went back to taking one bite for herself and then giving one bite to Eddy who lay on his padded, wheeled platform next to her chair.
    After dinner, which Sandy had enjoyed immensely, he and Bentley went upstairs to say good night to Sunnie and the sleepers.
    As Sandy and Bentley drove back to Eclipse in the dark, Sandy sighed and said, "It doesn't feel right, just the two of us going home. Two's not enough. I want Horatio and Mousey and Flossie and Attila back." He was afraid to say he wanted Sunnie back—afraid Bentley would hear the longing in his voice. "I wish there was something we could do."
    "I've been reading up, and I'm going to try something," Bentley said. "Remember