Another time, maybe."

"But_n "Your dad could use some help. He's feeling a little down."

"But" She held up a hand, blew him a kiss, and left. Back downstairs, she put in a fast load of laundry, grabbed her car keys, called to Ben that she was leaving, and started for the door. But her mind was into organizing her thoughts, one of which was that life would be immeasurably easier for Paige if she didn't have to work in the morning.

Saturday office hours were nine to twelve.

With the time reserved primarily for acutes, of which there were rarely more than a handful, only one doctor had to be there. Who that doctor would be was always the source of much good-natured bickering and bartering.

Angie thought it would be super of Peter to take Paige's turn for free.

So she returned to the kitchen and gave him a call.

The Tavern had been the major watering hole in town for as long as Peter Grace could remember. His father had imbibed there, and his grandfather before that, and although rougShewn benches and bare bulbs had been replaced by polished pine and Tiffany lamps, it was still rustic. To hear his three older brothers talk, a Tucker male wasn't a man until he had staked out his booth at the Tavern. By that definition, Peter hadn't achieved manhood until he was thirty years of age, which was when he returned to Tucker with medical school and a four-year residency in pediatrics under his belt. Only then had the onetime runt of the Crace litter had the courage to choose his booth.

It was the second one in from the front door and offered a visibility that the darker rear booths did not. Peter liked being seen. He was an important man, having been places and done things that few natives had, and he was a doctor. He was respected l by the townsfolk, even loved by his patients.

Their adoration was like a tonic. It was a sign of success that no amount of money could buy and went a long way toward compensating for the days when he had felt like a loser.

Likewise, there was something gratifying about watching his brothers file past to the obscurity of their booths farther back. Once upon a time, the three had been hometown stars, headlining the sports section of the Tucker Trilvune, scoring touchdowns, swishing free throws, and hitting home runs, while Peter was fending off the taunts of his classmates. Small and uncoordinated, measured against unfairly high standards, he withdrew into a quiet world in which he read, studied, and dreamed of the day when his brothers' knees went bad and he would shine He was doing that now. While his brothers worked construction, he played God. In counterpoint to their callused hands, beer bellies, and, yes, bad knees, he was in prime shape. Once skinny, he was now tall and firm.

Once unruly curls had mellowed into dark auburn waves that were professionally styled.

He dressed like a man who had known the sophistication of metropolis and successfully adapted it to hicksville.

Tonight, he was celebrating. He didn't tell anyone that, of course.

As far as the general populace of Tucker was concerned, he was nursing his beer in an attempt to lighten the sorrow he felt over Mara O'Neill's death.

In fact, the sorrow had lightened with each clod of dirt that the cemetery workers had shoveled into Mara's grave. Peter had stayed to watch long after the crowd of mourners had left. He had wanted to be sure that the job was done right, had wanted to see with his own two eyes that she was six feet under and gone.

Mara O'Neill had been a dangerous woman.

She'd had the knack of befriending a man, drawing him close, then stabbing him in the back. She had done it to her husband and nearly done it to Peter. A dangerous woman, to say the least. He was lucky to have escaped.

He took a healthy swallow of his beer and was setting the glass down when several men from the steelworks entered the Tavern. They passed his booth en route to theirs at the rear.

"Too bad about Dr. O'Neil."

"Real loss for the town."

"She was a trooper."

Peter nodded, spared a response by the guise of grief, grateful when the men moved on. A trooper? Oh, yes, Mara was that. Once she set her mind on something, she didn't give up, and yes, this was a loss for the town. But another doctor could be found, and in the meantime, he, Paige, and Angie could service their patients just fine.

Susan Hawes, who owned the Tavern, slid in opposite him. She was a born hostess, a natural talker. "Beautiful eulogy the minister gave this morning," she remarked. "Makes it even harder to understand why a woman like Mara would take her own life. Of course, ministers don't always talk about the down side of folks." She grew reminiscent. "She wasn't a regular here by a long shot, but when she did come in, she could drink with the best of them. She used to sit with old Henry Mills and match him beer for beer until he felt so bad making her drunk that he stopped. He was always back the next day, drinking again, but for that one time, at least, he went home sober."

Peter cracked his knuckles. "She did have a different way about her."

ill honrti cliP same etanP {lnlnk in that ear " !

He shook his head.

"Then what?"

He shrugged. Sure, he had known about the Valium. But he hadn't dreamed she was taking so much. "Since I wasn't with her, I can't really say." aWas she seeing anyone local?"

"Nope."

"No man in her life?"

"Nope."

"Spud Harvey's gonna miss her. He used to watch her coming and going around town. Nearly drove him crazy when she had that little fling with his brother a while back. Spud was in love with her, but don't tell him I told you so."

Peter might have made a pithy comment to the extent that Mara had been worlds above the Harvey brothers, intellectually and in every other way, had his beeper not sounded just then. Susan pointed to the phone behind the bar and left him to it. He dialed the number of his answering service, thinking all the while about Mara. He knew about the thing with Spud's brother. It had been an impulsive weekend and had meant nothing. Mara had done things like that sometimes.

But death? Death was final. He still couldn't believe she had done that "Doctors' office."

"Trudie, it's Peter Grace."

"Oh, hi, Peter. Dr. Bigelow just left a message asking you to cover for Dr. Pfeiffer in the morning. She said to call her at home later if there's a problem."

Peter sighed. "Thanks." A problem? He supposed there wasn't. He had hoped to sleep late, but it was probably just as well this way. He hadn't slept late hadn't slept wellsince he had learned of Mara's death.

Demons kept waking him up, reminding him of the last time he saw her It had been late Tuesday afternoon. Mara had sent the nurse to ask if he could see her last patients for her. Covering for each other was a way of life, one of the very purposes of a group practice, still, he had been tired enough himself to be annoyed. So he had stuck his head in at her door and found her standing by the desk.

"What's the problem, Mara?"

She had looked at him in confusion. "Uh . .

"Are you sick?" he remembered asking. "You look like shit."

She hadn't said a word, had simply stared at him in that same confused way for another few seconds. Then, as though some spark inside had given her sudden momentum, she had bolted forward, pushing past him, running down the hall toward the door.

"Jesus, Mara," he had said, but she hadn't heard that, any more than she'd heard the "Crazy bitch" he had muttered on his way back to work.

He kept seeing her running down the hall, kept seeing it over and over again. He wondered if she was haunting him.

Lacey arrived at the booth just as he returned. "Good timing," she said with a smile. "Have you been here long?"

"Ten minutes," he said, sllpping a hand under his suspender as he settled down in the booth.

He took a long drink, using the time to shift gears from Mara to Lacey.

Lacey was a looker. At twenty-eight she was thirteen years his junior, but the age difference didn't bother him one bit. He was the knowing one, the experienced one, the one who called the shotsall the more so since he was a native. She had come from a publishing house in Boston four months before to help edit the biography of Tucker's oldest citizen, who at the age of one hundred and two had put together a collection of stories about turn-of the-century New England. Peter was showing her the local ropes. In return, she was an attractive and sophisticated feather in his cap. Squiring Lacey around, he was the envy of many a native, and he liked it that way.