"The family was stunned," Butterfield said, "when not more than a few months after she'd left home for England, Gloria wrote to announce she'd fallen in love with a rich man's son."

I felt my eyebrows shimmy up my forehead. Nic Knuckles knew what it was like to fall in love with someone with more money, greater status, and a father who called her Princess. It was amazing at first, then six months later, when her daddy lost his job, went broke, and asked you to pay his gambling debt, it all went to hell.

"Gloria planned to convince this rich boyfriend to marry her and then she'd become a member of the British aristocracy. It was crazy."

"I get the feeling this love affair thing didn't work out," I said.

The skin on Butterfield's face took on a shimmer of emotion. "No," she whispered, raising the back of her left hand to dab her eye. "It didn't work out at all. After that, there was no more written correspondence, no phone calls, nothing. It was as if Gloria had fallen off the face of the earth."

William Ade resides in Northern Virginia, and writes short stories and novels full of mystery or humor, or both. Ade's latest novel, Big Scream in a Wee Village is the second in the Nic Knuckles Collection.