"May I help you?" she asked.

"I'm looking for Mara O'Neill," the woman said worriedly. "I've been trying to reach her. Are you a friend?"

Paige nodded.

"She was supposed to meet me in Boston earlier today," the woman hurried on, "but we must have crossed signals. I've been stopping along the highway at intervals to call, but she doesn't answer her phone."

"No," Paige said, studying the woman. She was middle-aged and Caucasian, clearly not the biological mother of the child, who had skin the color of pecans and the largest, most soulful eyes Paige had ever seen. She assumed the two were part of the adoption network with which Mara had become involved.

"Is Mara here?" the woman asked.

Paige swallowed. "No."

"Oh, dear. Do you know where she is or how soon she'll be back? This is dreadful. We had everything arranged. She was so excited."

The child was looking at Paige, who found she couldn't look away. It was a little girl. Her size said she wasn't yet a year old, but the look in her eyes said she was older.

Paige had seen that look before, in a photograph Mara had shown her.

Her heart skipped a beat, rendering the hand that touched the child's cheek unsteady "How do you know Mara?" she asked the woman.

"I'm with the adoption agency. Among other things, it's my job to be on hand at the airport when adoptive children arrive from other countries. This little one came from a tiny town a distance from Calcutta. She had an escort from the agency in Bombay. Poor thing has been at it for better than three days.

Mara must have mistaken the day or the time.

Is the office closed? The answering service is taking her calls."

"Sameera," Paige breathed. Mara's baby. "But I thought she wasn't coming for weeks!" She reached for the child.

"We often advise our parents not to speak of dates. Political unrest can delay things."

Paige thought of that upper right bedroom with its bright yellow walls and the large, lopsided navy stars that had just now been visible from the yard. Her eyes filled with tears as she cradled the child.

"Sami."

The child didn't make a sound. Paige was the one who cried softly, mourning for the mother Mara would have been and the happiness she would have known. The child's arrival made Mara's death that much more of a mystery. Mara wouldn't commit suicide with Sami three days away.

Still hugging the child, Paige wiped her eyes on her arm. It was a minute before she was composed enough to look at the woman and say, "Mara died Wednesday. We buried her this morning."

The woman gasped. "Died?"

A terrible accident."

"Died? Oh, my." She paused. "Poor Mara. She waited so long for this child. And Sameerashe's come so far."

"That's all right," Paige said with an odd calm. "I'll keep her." It made sense, the one thing she could do to make up for all she hadn't done before. "My name is Paige Pfeiffer. I was Mara's best friend, a pediatrician also. We practiced together. I was interviewed as a character reference during her home study. If you check your files, you'll see that my name is listed as the one to call in case of emergency, which is pretty much what you've done." She looked down at the child. The little girl's thin legs straddled her waist, tiny fingers clutched her sweater. Her head lay on Paige's chest, eyes wide and frightened. She felt light as a feather, but warm in a pleasant sort of way.

I'll take care of her for you, Mara. I can do that.

"I'm afraid it doesn't work that way," the woman said quickly.

"Why not?"

"Because there are rules, procedures, red tape." The words ran together. The woman was clearly flustered. "International adoptions are complicated. Mara worked her way through it, and even then she was going to have to wait another six months for the adoption to be final.

In the meantime, technically, Sameera is in the agency's care. I can't leave her here."

"But where else can she go?"

"I don't know. Nothing like this has ever happened before. I guess she'll have to come home with me until we decide what to do."

"You can't send her back to India."

"No. We'll have to look for another adoptive family."

"And in the meantime she'll be put into foster care. Why can't I be it?"

"Because you haven't been approved."

"But I'm a pediatrician. I love kids. I know how to handle them. I own a house and earn good money. [ I'm a totally reputable person, and if you don't want to take my word for it, ask anyone in town."

"Unfortunately, that takes time." She reached for Sami, but Paige wasn't giving her up so fast.

"I want her," she said, "which puts me up at the top of the list. I want to take her home with me now and keep her until a better home is found, but you won't find a better home than mine, I can promise you that." Mara would be so pleased. "There has to be a way I can keep her."

The woman looked pulled in every which direction. "There is, l suppose. Assuming the head of the agency agrees, we could do a quick foster care home study."

"Do it." The impulsiveness was pure Mara, and it felt good.

"Now?"

"If that's what's necessary for me to keep her tonight. She needs love. I can give her that.

I can give her an instant, stable environment. It makes perfect sense."

The woman from the adoption agency couldn't argue with that. After making several calls and getting a preliminary okay, she put Paige through an initial battery of questions. They were basic identity ones, just a start in the study the woman promised, and all the while Paige was answering, she was toting Sami up and down the stairs on her hip, transferring baby supplies from the nursery to her car.

She stopped only when the car was full.

The agency representative, who had followed her up and down, looked exhausted. After giving her a list of phone numbers and the promise that she would be in touch the next day, she drove off.

. R Paige shifted Sami so that she could see the child's face. Large brown eyes met hers. "Not a peep from you through all this? Not hungry or wet?" The child stared up at her silently.

"Wouldn't like supper?" The child didn't blink. "Maybe a bath?"

Paige knew that she couldn't understand English but was hoping that her tone would inspire some tiny sound.

"Yes?t She paused again. When no sound came, she sighed. rI could use both. Let's go home.t She rounded the car and was about to open the passenger's door when sight of Mara's house gave her pause. Mara hadn't owned it long, she had spent her first three years in Tucker paying back education loans and her next two saving for a down payment.