Paige imagined Noah at his desk talking with Angie. No doubt he would be reassuring. He was articulate, smooth, clearly dedicated to his cause. Given that his was only a year's appointment, he might have easily maintained the status quo. Instead he had gone out on a limb, taking unpopular stands. Paige might not agree with some of those stands, but she had to respect his courage.

She hadn't seen him since the morning he had left her bed. Not in real life, at least. In her mind, a dozen times, and each time in the buff.

"Paige?"

"Hmmm?"

"What's that look?"

"No look," she said, embarrassed. "Just irrelevant thoughts."

"Then add these. The last school Noah Perrine worked at was a private school on the outskirts of Tucson. He had worked his way up from science teacher to director of development and was on a direct track to the headship when he suddenly resigned his position. It seems that his work required a fair amount of travel. His wife, who was a native New Yorker and wasn't wild about being in the desert to begin with, was even less pleased when he was gone. She felt he was abandoning her to raise their daughter alone.

So she took up with another teacher at the school. By the time Noah returned from his last trip, the whole school knew what was going on."

Paige's heart went out to Noah. "How awful."

"It was a small school. Word spread quickly.

He knew right away that he couldn't ever be Head there, so he left."

"He must have been humiliated" Paige argued.

She didn't believe he had left solely because he would never be Head.

He didn't strike her as that ardently ambitious. "In such a close environment, it would have been an untenable situation."

Angie went on, seeming steadier now that she was imparting information.

"The wife and her boyfriend left soon after he did. They moved to San Francisco and married, and for years they were part of what they thought to be the academic elite. Last year they split."

Ahhhh. That might explain problems between Sara, whom Paige had always seen as more wounded than malicious, and her mother. If the tension of a failing marriage was rocking the home, if Sara blamed her mother for it, if she was losing the father whose name she had taken years before and turning to Noah as a source of stability, the move made sense.

Of course, that said nothing about the dubious involvement Noah had had with Sara over the years and the fact that their relationship was far from strong.

Angie was looking crushed. "It seems to happen more and more, parents splitting, kids suffering. That's what worries me most."

Paige forced herself back. "Dougie?"

"What he's thinking about Ben and me."

"What are you thinking about Ben and you?"

Paige asked just as the phone buzzed. She pressed the intercom. "Yes, Ginny."

"The examining rooms are filled."

"Be right there." She hung up, looking at Angie expectantly.

"I'm not thinking much," Angie said in dismay, and rose. "I'm trying to get through one day at a time."

"But if you talk with Ben" "If I talk with him," she went to the door, "I may hear things I don't want to hear."

Paige was right beside her, holding the door shut. "Like what?"

"Like without Dougie there's nothing. Like we've grown in different directions. Like he wants a divorce. Like he loves her."

All painful things. Paige wanted to deny each, but she wasn't an expert on Ben or on any other man, where matters of the heart were concerned. The only thing she knew was that she didn't want the demise of Angie's marriage to haunt her the way Mara's death did.

"So you're not saying anything, hoping the problem will go away. But it won't, Angie. It may recede for a time, but if it's there, it's there. You can only ignore it for so long.

Talk with him. You have to."

"I know," Angie wailed softly. "I know." She drew herself up, the professional once again.

"Have to go to work."

"Will you talk to him?" ill'll think about it.

"Please, Angie? Talk soon?"

With a look that said, "Enough," Angie opened the door and left the office.

Paige and Angie saw all of the scheduled patients and then some between that midmorning point and the lunch break that was built into the appointment book. As happened often, Paige lingered with her last patient, leaving herself ten minutes to eat a tuna sandwich and call home to check on Sami, before starting on the afternoon cases. She had until three, when she would pick up Sami and head for Mount Court.

Jill had asked for the afternoon and evening 9 d n off to help the mother of one of her friends prepare a surprise birthday party for the girl, and Paige wasn't about to refuse. Jill needed to be with her friends. And Paige liked taking Sami along.

Shortly after two, though, Jill called, out of breath and upset. "I took Sami for a long walk, like I told t you I would, and when we got home, the back door was open. Someone's been in there, Dr.

Pfeiffer.

Someone's gone through your things."

Paige's stomach lurched. "Someone broke in?"

"Well, I didn't lock the door. But I'm sure I shut it.

I wouldn't leave it open. Not with kitty running around. I called to her, but she didn't come." ills Sami all right?"

"She's fine."

"Where are you now?"

Next door at the Corkells'. I don't know what to do."

Paige put her fingertips to her forehead and tried to think. Her heart was pounding. "Don't do any thing, Jill. Just stay where you are.

Whatever you do, don't go near the house until I get there. I'll call Norman Fitch. He'll meet me there."