thy, tanned and full of mischief. I don't think he really spent much time clubbing, knowing he had a wife and children to support and wanting to get it right this time. He didn't go into great detail about his life during this time, but from the sadness in his face I could see it didn't last.

Collette had an older son from a previous marriage, and Frank raised him as his own, just as he intended to raise my brother. He did actually finish the job, and it was from this oldest son — and from my half-sister and brother — that I learned how Collette vanished from their lives. Frank could never speak about it to me without trailing off and going silent.

Collette suffered from a severe form of schizophrenia in her early 30s, and all the horrors of that condition made life difficult for Frank's new family. I remember Patty describing how her mother was forcibly taken away for the last time "by some men in white coats."

My half-sister was the very image of her mother, and yet it was also readily apparent that she was in every respect her father's daughter and my sister. I remember

first meeting her in 1970, when Frank brought her and Norman up to Sacramento to meet me.

He drove up to the curb to pick me up for a day, and when I got into the car she was sitting in front next to Frank. Immediately she took my hand and looked into my eyes. We both had the same hazel eyes and olive complexion — and there it was, this deep, unspoken connection between us. She was maybe 15 at the time, and I was 20.

Norman, on the other hand, was more of a challenge. I knew he hated and resented me from the first moment we met. He really resembled Frank far more than I did, with his thick chestnut hair and piercing blue eyes. My hair was dark brown, same as Patti's, and I had hazel eyes like hers. My mother and Collette had similar coloring, so I guess Norman took more of his genetic profile from Frank than his mother, and Patti took more of the Grummons side from her father, as I did. Either way, while Patti welcomed me warmly, Norman was coolly cordial at best.

By this time I was pretty much formed; and so, being my mother's youngest and raised in that environment, and being my father's oldest and being introduced to that environment for the first time, I was genuinely con-