We're really close." Oh." Trish looked unsure what to say next, so I let her off the hook."It's okay," I said. "I just got over a bad breakup. Sharon'...s been my best friend through it all." Trish is my best friend," Jeff chimed in, squeezing her hand and smiling at her.She made mushy eyes at him in return. I took a big swig of wine, trying to look elsewhere. He turned to me."We were just friends when we first met because she was engaged to her high school boyfriend," Jeff said.Trish muttered. "I never had any intention of getting in touch with Bea. I just said that because I knew Brenda would tell Emily that I was considering replacing her with Bea. She knew all about Bea, and about Bea and my Aunt Clara. Emily thought Bea was very pretty, so she'd consider her a legitimate threat, and that was what I wanted.I had told Brenda to meet me at my house, at seven thirty the next morning. I still hadn't told my Dad about my hiring her as my assistant, but he wouldn't object if I told him. We continued to chip away at establishing some sort of foothold on that other Earth. Mostly it was just a matter of a little better organization and timing. We weren't really thinking about finding gold so much as just being able to move around, being safe and exploring. The resources my Dad started bringing to bear began to make me wonder just a little at whether all the McKesson wealth had remained behind in North Carolina as I'd always thought.At first, transportation had been a big issue,. The pamphlet they had given us when we bought the tickets was filled with interesting tidbits about the Sandia Mountains and the tram itself. It said that Sandia was Spanish for 'watermelon', and that they were first called that by Spanish explorers who visited the area around 1539-40 and named it that because the mountain usually turns a beautiful reddish color at sunset, with the evergreen forest running along the top ridge looking like a watermelon rind. It also said that the local Indians.