She nodded again. "Not looking forward to it."

"Can I help?"

She shook her head. 41 have to." She owed it to Mara.

4We'll close on that day," Angie said. "Ginny can reschedule appointments once the plans are firmed up. In the meanwhile, I'll see as many of Mara's patients as I can. Peter will see the rest. Want me to call him?"

4No, no. I'll do it." Paige was, after all, the hub of the wheel.

Hard to believe a spoke had been taken out for good.

She woke Peter from a deep sleep. He sounded none too pleased. "This had better be good, Paige. I'm not due at work until one."

"It's not good," she said, too mentally taut to cushion the blow.

4Mara is dead."

"Dammit to hell, so was I.1 didn't get to bed until two" "Dead I just came back from the morgue."

There was a pause, then a more cautious, "What are you talking about?"

"They found her in her car in the garage," Paige said. With each repetition, the story grew increasingly surreal. "They're guessing carbon monoxide poisoning."

There was another pause, a longer one, then a puzzled, "She killed herself?"

Paige heard a mumbling in the background. She waited until Peter impatiently hushed it before saying, "They don't know what happened.

The autopsy might tell us something, but in the meantime we need you here. I have to make plans for the funeral, and Angie is already_ n "was there a note?" he asked sharply.

"No, no note. Angie is already seeing patients. We have to contact Mara's patients and let them know." "No note at all?"

"Norman didn't mention one, and I'm sure they looked."

Peter's voice rose a notch. "The police are involved?"

Paige was the puzzled one now. "They were the ones who found her. Is that bad?" gNo," he said more quietly. "Not really. It just makes the whole thing seem sinister."

"In that it was untimely, it is sinister, and if it's upsetting for us, just think of what Mara's patients will feel. She was so involved with them."

"Too involved," he declared. "I've been telling her so for years."

Paige knew that all too well. Peter and Mara had spiced up more than one group meeting with their banter. But Mara was no longer there to argue her side, so Paige did it for her.

"Mara's involvement was of the good-hearted sort. She felt a strong moral commitment to her patients. And they loved her."

"This has to be about Tanya John. She was depressed about that."

"Clinically depressed? Enough to do herself harm?" Paige couldn't imagine it. "Besides, her baby was coming. She had so much to look forward to." Paige was going to have to call the adoption agency with the news, but she figured it could wait until the funeral was done.

"Maybe the adoption fell through."

"No. She would have told me if it had, and she didn't say a word."

Certainly not the morning before, which was the last time Paige had seen her. "When did you see her last?" she asked Peter.

"Yesterday afternoon around, say, four-thirty. We were on the last batch of appointments. She asked me to cover so she could leave early."

"Did she say where she was going?"

"No."

"Was she upset?"

"She was distracted. Very distracted, come to think of it. But nicely so. She's usually so strident."

Paige had to smile at the helpless way he said it. But he was right.

If Mara wasn't fighting one war, she was fighting another.

She was an advocate for those who couldn't speak for themselves. Now, suddenly, the advocate was silent.

Paige bowed her head. "I have to make calls, Peter. How soon can you be here?"

"Give me an hour."

She swept a handful of hair from her face and looked up. "An hour's too long. Angie needs help, and you're five minutes away. Look, I know that I've interrupted somethingnthe mumbling in the background had been female, no doubt Lacey, Peter's latest love"but we need you.

The group works because we all care about the practice, and the practice is at stake.

Our patients depend on us. We owe it to them to minimize the trauma of Mara's death."

"I'll be there as soon as I can," he snapped, and hung up before Paige could press further.

Paige PLANNED THE FUNERAL FOR FRIDAY, TWO days after Mara's body was found, time enough to allow for the O'Neills' journey east and her own acceptance of Mara's death. But the latter didn't even begin to happen. Not only did Paige feel guilty making funeral plans, as though she were rushing Mara into her grave, but she continued to resist the idea that the woman she had known to be a fighter had taken her own life.

She was haunted by the possibility that Mara's death had been a rash and impulsive thing. Tanya John's defection was only the latest of the little disappointments Mara seemed always to be suffering. In a single weak moment, a combination of them may have overwhelmed her until sanity was lost.

Paige couldn't begin to imagine Mara's pain, if that were true. All she could think was that the tragedy might have been prevented if she had been more attentive, more understanding, or more perceptive a friend.

Her doubts were echoed, it seemed, by every adult passing through the office. They wanted to know whether anyone had seen Mara's death coming, and while Paige knew that their questions reflected their own fears regarding the mental health of their children, spouses, or friends, she wallowed in guilt.

It didn't help when the coroner's report came through. "She was full of Valium," Paige related, stunned.

"Valium," Angie repeated dumbly.

"She overdosed7' Peter asked.

Paige was thinking the same word but that wasn't one the coroner had used. "He said that the carbon monoxide did the killing, but that there was easily enough Valium in her body to have clouded her thought."