"I didn't think you'd want to know."

"Well, I did. I thought about you all the time. I never let a birthday go by without a visit or a call, certainly never without a present. There were cards for every other kind of holiday, and I didn't just sign them love, Dad,' I always wrote something that I thought would be meaningful, either about what the card meant or what I was doing with my life or what I thought you might be doing with yours."

He smoothed aside a swath of long hair that was just the color as his.

"I cared, Sara. I cared all those years, and I care now."

"But you hate it here. You only took the job because you needed somewhere to put me. At the end of the year, you'll be gone, and I'll be stuck here alone for two more years."

"If you stay, I stay She grew still. After a minute's quiet she asked "You're not leaving?" "I don't know, but if I leave, you come with me."

She was quiet for another minute. "That's because I get a free ride at whatever school you're at."

UCutie, I'd pay tens of thousands if you desperately wanted to be at another school that didn't happen to be mine. It's not the money. I want you with me. That's all."

She started crying again.

"This was always the best and the worst about being a parent," he mumbled against the top of her head. "It was the worst, because crying meant you were unhappy, and the best, because I got to be the one who made it better. I wish I could do that now the way I could when you were a year old, but the issues are more complex." He held her until the sobbing slowed, then he said, "I do love you, Sara. I know you don't believe me, but it's true. Give me half a chance and I'll prove it to you."

She sniffled. Turning away from him, she pulled a tissue from the box.

"I don't know why you'd love me. I'm not a very lovable person."

"Whoever told you that?" he asked, suspecting that Liv had said as much more than once. He held up a hand. "No matter. I don't want to know. Whoever it was was wrong. Everyone in this world is lovable in some way, shape, or form. It's sometimes just a question of getting aroundgetting around" What the hell, "Getting around the shit to the lovable part."

She was standing by the dresser with her back to him.

"So, let's start getting around the shit," he said more gently. "How about it?"

When she remained silent, he knew it wouldn't be easy, but then he had never thought it would be. One didn't wipe out years of misperception in a single conversation, no matter how ardent the speaker was.

Whether because of Liv, Liv's husband, Jeff, or something in Sara herself, she had grown up thinking the worst of him. Changing that would take time.

"I really did love that purple outfit," he coaxed. "Come on. Stick a few things in the backpack, give me some clothes on their hangers, and we'll go over to the house. I have something to show you."

The something was a bedroom set for Sara's room. Noah had shopped around for days, not only for the bed, nightstand, and dresser, but for a thick quilt that matched soft floral sheets, which matched a pale green wall-to-wall carpet. Sara didn't say anything when she saw it, but he could tell that she was pleased. She stood at the door for a long time, just looking with wide eyes and what might have been, with an optimistic stretch of the imagination, the tiniest ghost of a smile.

Pleased, he hung her clothes in the closet and left her alone to change. Fifteen minutes later, lightheaded with his stunning daughter next to him in the car, he directed the Explorer toward Bernie's Bearnaise. Passing Tucker General and the medical building beside it, he could have sworn he saw Paige's car turn in.

Had he been alone, he would have stopped and shared his little victory with her. He thought about her often, usually in the middle of the night when he awoke in a bed that seemed too large, too cold, and too sterilewhich was incredible, since he'd been sleeping in the very same bed for years and had never felt quite those things. Paige was a tickle at the base of his spine that, if left to its own devices, spread to his front and lower. She was unfinished business.

For a minute, even with Sara, he thought of stopping. Then he decided against it. This was a time for Sara and him. It was important that nothing at all intrude.

Paige parked and trotted into the building and up the stairs. When she entered the office, Ginny was standing by the phone clutching a brown paper bag.

Worriedly she whispered "I bought a quart of milk during lunch and left it here by mistake.

When I stopped back to get it, I saw him."

Paige patted her arm. "I'm glad you did.

Thanks, Ginny. I'll go see him."

Peter was in his office, sitting at the desk, but barely. He looked as though the weakest nudge would send him crashing to the floor.

"Hey." Paige smiled as she approached the desk. "What're you doin'?"

Peter moved his forearms over something that had been crushed and unfolded. "Jus' neaten' up." His fingertips glanced clumsily across two bottles of Scotch. The nearly empty one fell over. He grabbed for it and missed. Paige set it straight. While he swore under his breath about the waste of good brew, she mopped up what little had spilled.

"You're usually over at the Tavern by now.

Have you had any dinner?"

"Don' wanna eat. No point."

"Sure there is. You have to keep up your strength. You have patients who depend on you." None of whom, she prayed, would be calling with an emergency this night. Then again, she could cover any emergencies, but if he went staggering down the street, the whole town would know by morning that its favorite son had been drunk.

Paige had never known him to be drunk before.

She wondered what was behind it.

He moved his forearms again, as though trying to hide what was beneath them.

"Whatcha got there?" she asked.

"Not a thing," he answered, enunciating each word.

It was a photograph. She could see that much, though no more, and felt a wrenching depression deep inside. "Oh, Peter. You told me you destroyed them."

"Tried," he said. "Right in the basket. But I pulled em back out.

Therrrrre all I have of her now."

"But it's not right," she pleaded. "You know it's not. Those pictures are inappropriate, whether she was eighteen or not."

He barked out a laugh. "Hah! She wazzzzn't eighteen! Maybe wished she was, but she had these teeny-weeny lines on her hands," he gestured "and on her neck, and these teeny-weeny veins on her thighs, she din't like those, lemme tell you."

Paige took the opportunity of his gesturing to lift the photograph from the desk, but even before she turned it right side up she had an odd sense of what she'd find. It was a picture of Mara, fully dressed, grinning for the camera with a silliness that few people ever saw in her.

The great depression widened inside her. Not pedophilia, but what?

Fascination? Obsession?

Love?

"It's beautiful," she whispered. "I didn't know you'd taken pictures of her."

He reached for the photograph, put it back on the desk, and scrubbed its surface with his palms in an attempt to erase the creases.