She said she knew the artist. Think she did?"

UFooooo."

ill like it, too. Chloe's a great gift giver.

A lousy mother, but a great gift giver. She should have been my rich aunt."

"If she'd been that," Nonny said from the door, "you wouldn't have been my granddaughter, and I wouldn't have led half as rewarding a life."

"You'd have been footloose and fancy free."

Nonny shook her head. "I need to do meaningful things, and the more the better.

I've felt younger since I've been here than I have in years."

"You're an angel, doing all this for me. I can't thank you enough."

"Don't you hear what I'm saying, Paige? I don't want your thanks. I just want you to let me keep on doing what I've been doing. Send me back to that apartment and I'll die in a week."

"Hush! Don't say that!"

"A week," Nonny repeated defiantly. "No more.

One week."

Paige rolled her eyes. "Well, I'm not sending you back yet, so you can forget about dying.

And right now I need you. I have to make a quick run to Peter's." She gave Sami a hug and felt a tug at her heartstrings when the little girl clung to her sweater. ill'll be back," she said softly. She pried the little fist free and kissed it. ill promise. I'll be back."

Peter didn't answer her knock, but his car was in the driveway, so Paige didn't leave.

She let herself in, thinking that if he had been behind the break-in at her house, fair was fair. She went through the first floor calling his name, to no avail.

The basement door was open and the light on.

She called again. When he didn't answer, she went down the stairs. He was standing with his back to her, hands on his hips, shirt cuffs rolled back over a handsome maroon sweater. He was looking at a row of photographs that hung drying on the line.

She stepped closer. She wasn't surprised to find that the picturesone shot, actually, printed at different levels of enlargementwere of Mara, but she would never have guessed at the feeling they captured.

Through a smile, a tilt of the head, a softness that Peter's camera had nabbed, it was a Mara she had rarely seen.

"Wow," Paige breathed, momentarily forgetting why she had come.

Patfor nodded. "Finally."

She couldn't take her eyes from the prints.

One was the echo of another, with no diminishing effect. "They're stunning, Peter."

"Thanks."

"This is how I'd like to remember her."

"Beautiful?"

"At peace."

He studied the prints for another while, before finally letting out a sigh of relief.

ill knew what I wanted. I just wasn't sure I'd be able to get it.

Negatives can be deceptive.

I've probably looked at this one ten times without seeing the potential."

"What made you see it this time?"

He shrugged. "My eyes. They're clearer. And my mind. Working better. Rational, rather than desperate."

"You're at peace with her death?"

"I've accepted it. I'm remembering her life more now. The good things. I feel like my own life is finally aimed right."

He didn't sound to Paige like a man consumed by guilt, or like a man with anything to hide, which surely he would be if he had impregnated Julie Engel. But he certainly did look handsome in his maroon sweater.

The color was perfect for him. Then again, maybe it was his acceptance of Mara's death that became him so.

"Can we talk?" she asked quietly.

He looked around in surprise, as though realizing for the first time that she was there.

She led the way back upstairsit would have been wrong to have said what she had to say in front of Maraand waited until he had shut the door before saying, "Julie Engel is pregnant."

His head jerked slightly. "Don't know why that surprises me. She was looking for trouble. It was only a matter of time before she found it.

"She's saying you're the father."

His expression spoke of the bizarre. "Me.

You're kidding."

"She told her father, who told Noah, who told me."

"Jesus." He dropped his head, then brought it right back up and speared Paige with a look.

"Do you believe her?" ill don't want to. You told me once that there was nothing going on between you."

"It's the Cod's truth. I never touched the girl. She might have wanted it differently.