"Yes. And I'd love others just as well." She had the confidence to know that others would love her, too. "If I could find a comfortable setting and a group of doctors I respect, I could move."

"What about Paige? And Peter?" ill'd miss them. Like you've missed the guys from the Times. But you've kept in touch. So I'd keep in touch with Paige and Peter. They could visit us. We could keep the house in Tucker and use it as a ski place. Or a weekend retreat."

"What about Doug?"

The plane started forward.

Angie's first impulse was to say that he would simply enroll in the school system wherever they were. Then she thought of all that had happened that fall. "He's doing well at Mount Court. If he wanted to stay, I'd let him."

"Even if we were a distance?"

"We didn't see him this weekend, and we've survived."

The plane picked up speed. She sat back in her seat.

"Do you want to move?" Ben asked.

She turned her head on the headrest. "No. But I do want you, and if moving is what it'll take to keep you, so be it."

The plane went faster. The front wheels left the ground, then the rear ones, and as it climbed steadily into the air, Angie wondered at her calmness.

She guessed it had something to do with the way Ben had laced his fingers through hers.

twenty FOLLO'WING THE ANNUAL GRIEF OF HER BIRTHDAY Paige always liked Thanksgiving. Over the years she had taken to spending the day with friends in Tucker, a group of twenty, give or take, all transplants like her. They were an eclectic surrogate family diverse in age and background. Each brought unique talents to Tucker and a unique contribution to Thanksgiving dinner.

The festivities, which were held at a different house each year, began with hors d'oeuvres at one In the afternoon and ended with dessert at ten at night. In between, while a fire roared in the hearth they came as close to capturing the feeling of going over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house as most families ever came Nonny was a bona fide member of the group, having attended enough of its Thanksgivings to know to bring along doubles of her pecan pie and leave her potato stuffing at home.

Sami, who was just starting to walk along furniture was the center of attention this year. Paige had bought her a sweet denim jumper with a soft print blouse and matching tivhts. Between that. and th.o bow in her dark hair, and her sober face that lit brightly when she smiled, she was precious. The other children fought over who would play with her.

Paige had been half hoping Noah would join them, but he had gone to Santa Fe to see his folks while Sara visited her mother in San Francisco. And it was for the best, Paige knew. She had seen him nearly every day since her birthday. Either he caught up with her at the hospital after dropping the Mount Court group there to work or he came by at night.

Several times he had slept with hercrept in after Nonny had gone upstairs and crept out at dawnand as guilty as Paige felt, she couldn't turn him away. Being in his arms felt too good.

That was why this Thanksgiving breather was important. So much had changed in Paige's life that fall. She needed a reminder that some things, like Thanksgiving with the aliens of Tucker, as they called themselves, would be there long after Noah Perrine left.

Snow started to fall on Thanksgiving night and continued into the morning. Paige forged her way through it to get to the office. She and Peter were the only ones around, what with Angie and Ben in New York and Cynthia home in Boulder, and though the schools were out for the holiday, colds, allergies, and flus took no vacation at all.

She worked a long day, stopped at the hospital to visit with Jill, and went home feeling bushed. She decided that it had to do with the festivities the day before and the letdown the morning after.

She wondered if Noah had had a festive day, wondered if he had felt any of the same letdown. She doubted it. He hadn't callednot that he had said he would, but she had thought that if he was thinking of her at all, he would have picked up the phone. Clearlv he was home with his family and in his element.

No matter how much he claimed to be a man of all seasons, she knew him well enough to know that he adored New Mexico. The letdown for him would be returning to Tucker.

Sami was feeling something or other, too, because she pushed away far more of the supper that Paige put on her high chair tray than she ate.

She even pushed her bottle away. She didn't want to bounce in the swing that hung from the ceiling in a corner of the kitchen.

She didn't want to roll a ball to Paige. All she wanted to do was to be held, which Paige did gladly. When the phone rang at eight-thirty not Noah, though Paige's pulse had been skipping with an emergency call, she rushed to the hospital to treat a four-year-old whose leg had been spattered with boiling water, then rushed home.

Sami remained fretful. By the time Paige put her in her crib, her nose was starting to run.

Paige wasn't surprised when she awoke in the middle of the night warm and sweaty. Children caught colds from other children. It was inevitable, and important in terms of building up immunities. It was also heartbreaking. Sami was small and helpless. She didn't understand why she felt lousy, and no amount of explaining on Paige's part made sense.

Paige bathed her and gave her baby Tylenol, then sat with her on the rocker humming the lullabies Nonny used to sing. Sami dozed and woke up crying. Paige wiped her face with a damp cloth. She gave her a bottle of apple juice, of which Sami drank barely half. She changed her sleeper and combed her hair. Then she sat with her in the rocker again thinking that for all its wonders, modern medicine had yet to do much for the common cold.

It was a long night. For the first time, Paige understood the frustration her patient-parents had been talking of all these years when their children were sick and there was no way to help. "They'll sound worse than they are," Paige always told them, just as she told herself now. "Keep them as comfortable as you can. Encourage liquids.

Definitely do not panic." And last, "Make sure that you get enough sleep yourself. A run-down parent is no good at all."

Paige barely slept. When Sami was awake, she rocked her to lull her to sleep, and once she was sleeping, she didn't want to risk waking her by transferring her to her crib. Shortly before dawn, exhausted, she carried Sami down to her own bed, but she had barely dropped off to sleep when Nonny ran in, alarmed when she hadn't found Sami in her crib.

"Paige Pfeiffer," she cried, taking Sami in her arms, "this child might easily have crawled to the edge of the bed and tumbled right off!"

"She wasn't moving far," Paige murmured groggily. "She doesn't feel well. Be an angel and give her more Tylenol. And wake me in an hour?

Please? It's my Saturday in the office."

A shower revived her somewhat an hour later, but by the time she had finished up at the office and was heading home, she was beat. She napped with Sami in the afternoon, while Nonny took a walk in the snow, then went out for a run while Nonny stayed inside with Sami.

Inevitably she thought of her birthday and having run through the snow to Mount Court.

There was no point in that now. There probably hadn't been a point in it then, except that she had needed a boost. Noah had certainly given her that.

Okay. So she could use a boost nowjust a little onethe kind that came with a call from a friend to say that he was thinking of her.

There was such a message when she got home, but it was from Daniel Miller. One of the newer aliens of Tucker, a computer whiz somewhere around her age, he wanted to say how much he had enjoyed Thanksgiving and that he would be going to an art exhibit at Bennington the following weekend and would like to take her if she was free.

The fact that he had left the entire message with [ Nonny made a statement about the prospect of their ever being anything more than friends.

[ Paige spent the rest of the afternoon and evening as she had the one before, holding Sami.

Fortunately, her temperature was down. The initial rawness of her cold had settled into a steady drip and while Paige was relieved, and grateful when Sami fell into a sound sleep in her crib, she couldn't deny the special feeling that came when a child was sick and clung. A sick child was the ultimate in dependency. The parent with multiple children, all making demands on her, might dread that.

Paige did not.

Neither had Mara. "I'm a way station in their lives," she had written about being a foster mother, which is perhaps what gives added meaning to those needy times they have. I can spend my day running from examining room to examining room, or from the hospital to the Town Hall to the court house, but when I come home and sit out on the back porch swing holding a hand or talking out an upset, there's a com pletion that I feel. I'm not thinking beyond, to the future. I'm enjoying now for now's sake, and when now passes, I miss it.

Once Sami was asleep, Paige felt oddly lost.

There was plenty to do that she didn't feel like doing. She played Scrabble with Nonny, but it didn't satisfy her the way holding Sami had, and it didn't keep her mind from wandering to the phone.

She turned in early and fell asleep quickly, though not deeply. Each sound Sami madea cough, a tiny crycame through the monitor and brought her awake. She checked upstairs from time to time, but the child was cool and sleeping.

She had just returned to her room after one such check when she heard a rapping on her bedroom window. Her eyes flew there and found Noah's face. Not bothering with a light, she opened the window and helped him climb inside.

"What are you doing here?" she cried, delighted in spite the start he had given her.

"You're not supposed to be back until tomorrow night!"