"That's flattering," Peter said with a smile.

"Was it true?"

"She never said so to me."

"Not even in the heat of passion?"

Peter didn't answer. He figured that silence, coupled with a bored stare, was his best denial.

Charlie offered a defeated, "I gotcha." Beer in hand, he slid from his booth. "You're one dull guy. I swear, if you weren't my brother, I wouldn't love you at all."

He gave Peter a fond nudge and walked toward his booth in back, leaving Peter in worse spirits than ever. Once, just once, he wanted a legitimate reason to hate his brothers. He waited for them to say something disparaging about his profession. He waited for them to call him a nerd, or blame him for misdiagnosing one of their friends' kids, or criticize him because he wasn't married. But they never did. They were good guys, all three of them, stagnant in their lives, but good guys. And he, with his academic accolades and his advanced degrees and the reverence of the townsfolk who loved putting one of their own on a pedestalhe was still bringing up the rear when it came to character.

Hi," Lacey breathed, sliding into the booth "Sorry I'm late.

The most incredible thing happened to me when I left the estate. Jamie ox was waiting by the gate, wanting to talk."

Peter relaxed. Jamie Cox was harmless, more an annoyance than anything else. He might own half the town, but he didn't own Peter. gWhat did he want to talk about?"

"Mara O'Neill."

Peter should have known. He couldn't escape her.

"And you," Lacey went on. "He wanted to know whether you were going to pick up the fight against him where Mara left off. He said he got that impression when he saw you here, and I can see why he did. I remember what you said. I told Jamie that your points were valid. He argued that they weren't and that they'd only get you into trouble."

"Was that a threat?" Peter asked.

ill asked him that, and he denied it. Still, it sounded that way to me.

I told him that as a doctor here, it was your responsibility to speak up when you felt that the well-being of the people was being compromised."

"What did he say then?"

She smiled. "He asked me to repeat what I'd said. He hadn't understood it. So I repeated myself. I'm not sure whether he understood it the second time either, but he started to defend everything he was doing around town. He paints himself as the good guy and everyone else as the bad guy. You're going to fight him, aren't you?"

Peter hadn't really thought about it. Up until the week before, he hadn't had to. Mara had appointed herself his opponent. "I don't know."

"You have to," Lacey said in alarm.

"Why do I have to?"

"Because someone has to, and you're in a better position than anyone else to do it. You knew Mara. You knew what she stood for. You know that she was right."

He didn't like Lacey's tone. He didn't like her suggestion that she knew what he knew. He didn't like her telling him what to do. "That doesn't mean I have to take on her fights."

"But it's the right thing to do," Lacey pressed.

"It may also be futile. Jamie Cox has a perfect legal right to do what he wants with his property. Sure, lower Tucker looks scummy, but that's a matter of aesthetics. There's nothing illegalor unhealthyabout that."

What about the old movie house? You said it was a fire trap."

"Jamie has a permit to keep it open, issued by none other than Tucker's building commissioner."

She sat back, looking disappointed. "You said that there was a conflict of interest, since the commissioner lives in one of Jamie's buildings."

It struck him that her disappointment was aimed at him. Angry, he leaned forward. "Look, Lacey, if you want to throw down the gauntlet, be my guest. You can fight Jamie Cox. You can take him to court but it'll cost money. Why do you think Mara didn't do it?"

"She died before she could."

He shook his head. "She didn't want to spend the money."

"She didn't have to. She had an ongoing working relationship with the public defenders in town. They would have gone to court for her.

They'll do it for you."

"Christ, that takes time and more energy than I have. I'm up to my ears in patients because Mara O'Neill decided to off herself, and you want me to take over her causes, too? Dream on."

Lacey didn't respond. She frowned at a gouge in the table. Finally, in a quiet voice, she repeated, "It's the right thing to do."

Peter swore. He knew that it was, but, damn it, he had enough on his mind without taking on Jamie Cox. He couldn't believe that Mara had saddled him with that one, too. So now he looked somehow less of a man because he refused to fight her cockamamy wars.

Struggling to contain his annoyance, he said, "I see patients from eight in the morning until fivethirty or six, and in between I squeeze in phone calls to parents, pharmacists, labs, radiologists schoolteachers even, sometimes"he glanced at his watch"and in thirty minutes I have to address the Rotary Club two towns over. I think I do pretty well, with or without Mara's noble causes. I'm more productive than most everyone else in this town. If that isn't enough for you, what is?"

"Peter, I wasn't saying" "You were." He pushed himself out of the booth. "You were saying I'm not good enough.

Well, fine. Go find someone who is. Better still, go back to the city. You want big-time philanthropists? You want diehard do-gooders?

You sure as hell won't find them in Tucker."

Disgusted, he stalked out of the Tavern. He didn't care if Lacey did have to pay for his beer. If she thought so poorly of him already, a little more was of no account at all.

Paige STOOD ON MARA'S FRONT PORCH ONLY until the realtor had backed her car from the driveway. Then she reentered the house and went to work.

She wasn't up for it, but she didn't have much of a choice. When one had a house to sellwhen one hadn't even put it on the market before a realtor approached saying that the new family in town was asking about itone didn't waffle. One tidied up the house, moved the furniture around a little, set the fireplace with the new birch logs the realtor suggested, and packed up anything and everything that was lying around loose.

The fact that Paige wasn't emotionally ready was secondary to practical considerations.

Besides, she wasn't sure that emotionally she would ever be ready.

Like Sami, Mara's house was a little bit of Mara. Paige had known wonderful times within its walls. Selling it was final, another nail in the coffin, further proof that Mara was dead.

One of the problems was that Mara, in death, had become a mystery as she hadn't been in life. She was unfinished business. Paige couldn't stop thinking shallt hPr So maybe it was just as well that the realtor had forced the issue of selling the house. On her own, Paige might have postponed it forever.

She had promised the realtor that the house would be sparkling clean and ready to show by nine o'clock the next morning, which gave her little time to waste and even less to change her mind. She was wearing a T-shirt and the cut-offs that she had changed into when she had come back from Mount Court. Now she called Jill and explained that she would be late, left Mara's number, and told her to forward calls.

Armed with a dustcloth, a can of furniture polish a roll of paper toweling, a bottle of glass cleaner, and the vacuum that she had herself given Mara as a housewarming gift six years before, she set to work in the low orange glow of the evening sun, polishing the table in the front foyer, wiping down the mirror above it, polishing the swirling mahogany bannister, vacuuming the stair runner. She cleaned the front parlor in a similar manner, doing her best with furniture that Mara had collected much the way she had collected people. Just as she had always been drawn to the wounded, so the long leather sofa was an irregular with one discolored cushion, the woven carpet had a pattern that ran off the edge, and the coffee table was gouged in a way that only Mara's magnanimous eye thought artistic.

The back parlor was another story. The furnishings there were simplea Shaker bench, two Windsor chairs, bookshelf upon bookshelf of planks stretched over bricks. Three things saved the room from being stark.