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“Where are you looking?”

Adam gazed out the window that faced the sea and watched the rain hit the beach in the distance. “Somewhere on the water.
Diane dislikes the ocean, but I’ve always loved it.”

Liz did, too, but she refrained from lumping herself with him in opposition to his wife. “I know of one that’s just been put
up for sale. The Reid house in La Jolla. I remember years ago you told me you loved that old house, that you used to caddy
for the owner.”

His eyes took on an excitement. “Is that house
really
available?”

Suddenly he looked like the younger man she’d once known, eager and enthusiastic. “Yes. It’s less than half a mile up the
beach from my parents’ home.” She wondered how she’d feel, visiting them and knowing he might be close by.

“I didn’t know that.” He wanted badly to ask her to come look at the house with him. If he did, would she go? “How are your
folks?”

“They’re fine. Dad’s semiretired, but he still goes in occasionally. Can’t seem to stay away from his office.” She heard
the mantel clock chime seven, the sound echoing in the still room as his eyes again locked with hers. She had the feeling
that neither of them was saying what they were really thinking. “Sara and I had a late lunch, but now I’m getting hungry.
Have you eaten? I have homemade soup and some cold lobster salad.”

How often they’d shared late-evening suppers that long-ago summer. Memories nudged at Adam, warming yet disturbing. “You know
what you used to make that I liked best when I’d show up after a speech?”

Liz, too, remembered those evenings and didn’t want to. Or did she? “No. Tell me.”

“Scrambled eggs. And you’d grate in cheese and toast English muffins.” Suddenly awash in nostalgia, Adam shifted on the couch,
struggling to stay in the present. She looked so damn beautiful, so quietly vulnerable. He ached to touch her, to hold her.

“I could make that instead.” She rose. “Come into the kitchen with me.”

Adam shook his head, shook off the past, as he stood. “I don’t think I’d better. The driver’s sitting out in the limo in a
downpour.” The driver who reported to Special Services might mention that Senator Adam McKenzie had stayed for a long while
at the home of the widow Fairchild after hours, when she was all alone.

She swallowed her disappointment, knowing she should have felt relief. “Of course.” Yet she couldn’t resist another try. Suddenly
the thought of being alone in her big empty house loomed lonely and bleak. “You could let him go. I’ll drive you back to your
hotel.”

The possibility of being with her for another hour or more, plus the drive back, had him almost dizzy with longing. “I’d like
nothing better. But…”

“But I should know better. You’re a public figure.”

He sighed as they left the den. “There are days I wish I weren’t.” And this was definitely one of them. “It was a nice
thought.” He picked up his raincoat, folded it over his arm. At the door he turned to her. “Get some rest. You’re too pale,
too thin.”

She made a stab at lightening the mood. “A woman can’t ever be too thin, don’t you know?”

He wasn’t buying it. “Perhaps you’re right, because you’re still the most beautiful woman I know.”

Her eyes warmed, moistening a bit. “You say the loveliest things, the sort every woman wants to hear.”

“But you’re the only woman I want to say them to.” Before she could react, he dipped his head and kissed her cheek, his lips
lingering a tad too long for mere friendship. Then he opened the door to the rain-swept porch.

“Thank you for stopping by.”

“Good night, Liz. Sleep well.” And he hurried to the limo.

That night, to her amazement, lying down with thoughts of Adam, she slept better than she had in months.

Gardening was another something to occupy Liz’s hands and mind, to help her along the road to healing after Richard’s death.
As she knelt on the grass alongside one of the backyard flower beds and prepared the soil for new plantings, Liz decided she
was glad she’d taken it up. In the box from the nursery were yellow and purple pansies, clumps of white sweet alyssum, clusters
of yellow marigold, and, to go along the back wall, high-strutting snapdragons. Trowel in hand, she turned the damp earth
and yanked out weeds as she moved along the bricked edge.

The April spring sunshine was warm on her back, and perspiration beaded her forehead, but it felt good to do something physical.
Her other two escapes, sculpting and volunteering at Helping Hands, didn’t wear her out physically. By the time she finished
planting this flower bed, had some iced tea, and took a shower, she’d be comfortably tired. She needed to be in order to manage
even six hours of nighttime rest.

The nights were the worst, though the long evenings alone were nearly as bad. Sara often offered to stay home, but she was
young and popular, heading for her sixteenth birthday in July and her senior year in the fall. Liz felt it would be wrong
to chain her daughter to her side on what should be one of the happiest summers of her teen years.

Easing back on her haunches, Liz examined her progress and decided she’d soon be enjoying the colorful fruits of her labor.
She rose, stripped off her gloves, and climbed the stairs to her bricked terrace for a cooling taste of her iced drink. As
she finished, she heard the phone ring and walked to the table to pick up the portable. “Hello?”

“Liz?” The voice was wavery, thin.

“Mother? Is that you?”

“Yes. I need you to come over, Liz.”

She felt her heart leap to her throat. “What is it?”

“Your father’s had a stroke.”

The address on the slip of paper was in a sleazy section of San Diego. Driving slowly down the street, Liz searched for the
number on the odd assortment of run-down frame houses, each shabbier than the last. She finally found the one she was looking
for and coasted to a stop in front.

The house was a peacock blue, the paint faded and peeling. A rusted car sat on cinder blocks on the cracked cement of the
driveway. An overflowing trash barrel was near the bottom of the rickety stairs leading to a swaying porch. A skinny dog lay
curled up on a sagging old brown sofa and lifted his head disinterestedly, then went back to sleep.

Bracing herself for what was bound to be an unpleasant scene, Liz got out of the car and carefully climbed the steps. She
pressed the bell, but it was broken, so she knocked. She could hear no sound from inside. She knocked again, longer and louder.

Finally she heard footsteps, then a dead bolt sliding back, and at last the door swung open cautiously.

Nancy blew her long bangs out of her eyes and eyed her sister with suspicion. “Well, well. If it isn’t Mrs. Blueblood. Slumming,
sister?”

Annoyed and impatient, in no mood for Nancy’s sharp tongue, Liz pushed past her and went inside. The interior smelled of stale
cooking and body sweat; the dilapidated furniture looked as if a thousand renters had used and abused it. Ignoring it all,
Liz turned to her sister.

“Why were you so cruel to Mom on the phone?”

Nancy rummaged in the pocket of her soiled white shorts and found a cigarette. Lighting it, she moved to a lumpy easy chair
and sat down. “What made her think just because dear old Daddy’s not well that I’d want to rush back to the family manse and
join hands in a prayer vigil around his bed?”

With a great deal of effort, Liz held on to her temper. “She doesn’t deserve that kind of treatment from you. And neither
does Dad. For your information, he’s had a stroke. He’s in a coma, and we don’t know if he’ll ever come out of it.”

Nancy blew smoke toward the already stained ceiling. “So? He doesn’t need me. He’s got his favorite by his bedside.
You
hold his hand. I’m fresh out of tea and sympathy.”

Furious now, Liz plunked herself down on a hardback chair she prayed would hold her weight and leaned toward her sister. “What
the hell’s the matter with you? Your father’s dying, your mother’s a basket case, and you sit in this… this hovel slinging
diatribes at them. You’re thirty-five years old. When are you going to grow up and take responsibility for your actions? I’ve
got a news flash for you. The mess you’ve made of your life isn’t your parents’ fault.”

“No. It’s yours.”

Stunned, Liz stared, confused. “What?”

“Oh, don’t look so innocent, sister mine.” She took another drag on her cigarette, then viciously ground out the unsmoked
half in an overflowing ashtray. “All our lives, you’ve had everything and I’ve had nothing.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. We both had the same privileges, the same opportunities.”

“Except for a few tiny differences. You were the pretty one, while I was
average looking,
as Dad used to point out frequently. You got friggin’ A’s on every paper, while I had to study night and day to get a C.
Not good enough for a Townsend. Hell, I wasn’t even well-coordinated. You remember when Dad tried to teach us to play baseball?
I couldn’t hit a goddamn throw. Oh, but you! You slammed ‘em out of the ballpark. And the old man didn’t even see me go running
home, crying my heart out.”

Taken aback, Liz took a deep breath. “Look, I never tried to beat you in anything. I can’t believe you’re still carrying around
all these silly childhood resentments and blaming your present behavior on things that happened more than twenty years ago.”

“They may have been silly to you. Not to me.” With hands that shook, Nancy lit another cigarette. “I couldn’t compete with
the golden girl, so I stopped trying. After a while, I became what they always thought I was, a failure at everything I tried.
You graduated at the top of your class. I could barely keep passing. One day I realized I’d never catch up, so I quit school.
Dad was already telling me no college would take me. And when you left for Stanford, he talked about how he was grooming you
to work alongside him in the law firm. He wouldn’t even give me a summer job there filing. And you want me to go sit with
him now?”

Liz felt her shoulders slump in weariness. Yesterday she’d dropped everything and rushed to be with her mother. Overnight,
Katherine’s appearance had changed. She had always been thin, but now she looked fragile, a word Liz had never associated
with her mother. She said Nancy had refused to come home and had hung up on her when she’d called. Having slept very little,
Liz was weary and suddenly angry.

“All right, then, if not for Dad, go home for Mom. She’s—”

“She’s had her head in the sand for years. Whatever Dad said was the rule of the day, as if she didn’t have an opinion in
the world she hadn’t gotten from him. If she only knew her precious husband like I know him, I wonder what she’d say.”

Liz’s head shot up. “What do you mean by that?”

Nancy watched the smoke from her cigarette curl upward, as if trying to come to a decision. “You want the truth, big sister?
Let’s see if you have the guts to handle it. Five will get you ten a protected, hothouse flower like you won’t be able to.”

It was close and stuffy in the small house. Liz wanted to bolt and run. Instead she challenged Nancy. “Try me.”

Eyes narrowed and resentful, she accepted the challenge. “Do you remember when I got my driver’s license the day I turned
sixteen? You were getting ready to go away to college in the fall. I asked you if you wanted to drive up with me to the cabin
in Grass Valley, but you were too busy. So I went alone. It was dusk when I got there, and I was surprised to see lights on
inside. I figured Dad had left a timer on, so someone passing by wouldn’t think the cabin wasn’t occupied full-time.”

Liz watched Nancy inhale deeply, as if needing the nicotine to continue. Silently she waited.

“I didn’t see another car around, so I unlocked the door and went inside. The first thing I saw were clothes tossed in a path
from the main room leading to the bedroom Mom and Dad always used. Clothes belonging to a man and a woman. Mom had been home
when I left, and I’d been told Dad was away on a business trip. My first thought was that someone had broken in. I picked
up the heavy flashlight from the hall table and followed the trail. The bedroom door was closed, but there were no sounds
coming from inside. I was a pretty
innocent sixteen, you know, and maybe a little stupid. Anyway, I jerked open the door.”

Slowly Nancy put out her second cigarette and met her sister’s eyes. “Surprise! Dad wasn’t on a business trip, but in bed
with a woman I didn’t recognize. She screamed, and Dad started swearing. I turned and ran back toward the car. He pulled on
his pants and came chasing after me, yelling at me to wait. But I didn’t want to wait, so I drove off.”

Liz let out a ragged breath. It was hard news to assimilate when she was already ready to drop with fatigue and worried sick
to boot. But looking at Nancy’s face, she had no doubt her sister was telling the truth. “Did you ever talk about the incident
with him afterward?”

Nancy’s laugh wasn’t pleasant. “Oh, yeah. I drove home and made up some story to Mom about not feeling well and holed up in
my room, struggling with my disillusionment. I always felt that Dad loved you more than me because you were prettier, smarter,
quicker. Maybe some of the cockamamie things I did were to get his attention, so he’d love me, too. But after what I’d seen,
I didn’t want his love. I knew him for what he was, a big phony who talked one game and played another.”

“I’m not condoning what he did, Nancy. He’s human. He made some mistakes. But he’s still your father.”

“Yeah, right. That night, he arrived late and came to my room. He told me he’d appreciate it if what I saw at the cabin would
remain our little secret. He said it would hurt Mom a lot if she found out. He claimed he loved Mom, but some men needed more
than one woman in their lives. And… and he said he loved me.” Unaware tears were streaming down her face, Nancy looked up.
“That was the only time I ever remember hearing those words from him. Sure he loved me. Because he needed me to keep his dirty
little secret.”

For one of the few times in her life, Liz truly didn’t know what to say. She wanted to hug Nancy, to try to make up for
all the misery she’d apparently suffered, through no fault of Liz’s, yet real pain nonetheless. But they hadn’t been affectionate
since their early teens, and the distance was hard to bridge.