I haven't done that before." She searched Paige's face. "Say something."

"I can't. You've always known what was best for you."

"No. I thought I did. I thought that what was best for me was automatically best for Ben and Doug, but I was wrong. What's best for me is intricately tied up with what's best for them.

They're individuals with individual needs. If I can't help satisfy their needs, then satisfying my own becomes meaningless. My happiness is contingent on theirs, which isn't to say," she added wryly, "that I've become subservient. I won't go anywhere unless I find something that will give me professional pleasure, and Ben agrees with that. But I can't be calling the shots all the time anymore. Some of the time.

Not all."

Paige wrapped her arms around Angie.

"Mara missed it," Angie mused. "She wanted happiness, and it eluded her. We couldn't understand that, because we saw so much success in her life only she saw what we didn't. She saw how easy it was to confuse success for happiness. She saw the potential for more. I want to realize it.

Paige held on tight.

After a minute Angie asked, "Are you all right?"

Paige let out a shaky breath. "They found a family for Sami."

"Oh, Lord." Angie drew back. "Are they taking her now?"

"Not yet. But soon." Paige started to tremble. "I have to leave now."

"Where are you going? Let me come."

"No. I need time. I have to think."

"Can I talk with you later?"

Paige nodded. At least she thought she did, but she wasn't sure if the directions she was giving to her body were being carried out. She felt uncoordinated, her steps uneven as she returned to her office. She dropped her purse twice before finally getting a grip on it, couldn't seem to fit her keys into the ignition of her car, and when she got on the road, she drove for five minutes before looking through the dwindling daylight and wondering where she was headed.

It was with a determined effort that she finally got her bearings. Ten minutes later she drove under Mount Court's curved wrought-iron arch.

One minute after that, she pulled up in front of the Administration Building. Noah's secretary wasn't at her desk, so she went right to his door. He was inside, engrossed in a set of spreadsheets. The cuffs of his white shirt had been turned back, the neck button undone, and his tie loosened. He looked like a man who didn't need an interruption.

She stood at the door, feeling guilty that she had come. Noah had his share of problems with Mount Court. He didn't deserve her problems, too.

But he had said that he loved her.

And, given the devastation she was feeling, no one else would do.

He looked up in surprise and came out of his chair. "Paige. I didn't know you were coming." He approached her, frowning.

"You look pale." He drew her into the room and closed the door.

"I'm sorry to bother you. I know you're busy" "Don't apologize.

Never apologize."

"It's been a god-awful afternoon, like everything's unraveling. Angie is talking about moving away, and the adoption agency found a family for Sami." She looked up at him, letting her eyes say all she couldn't put into words.

He rubbed her arms lightly.

"It probably won't happen until after the holidays, but then they'll take her away from me. She'll have two real parents and four siblings.

And a nice house, I guess. Joan said they seem like good people."

She was suddenly appalled. "But four kids? She won't get much attention in a family of seven.

She'll just be another kid to wear the hand-me-downs of the ones that came before her. And the family is just moving to Vermont, which means that they don't know people here.

They don't have an established support network. And if he's taking a new job, who's to say the job won't fall through? Or that he won't decide he hates it and move somewhere else? Sami can't be moving around all the time. She needs to be able to settle in one place and stay there."

"Did you tell Joan that?" Noah asked.

"No. She took me off guard. I couldn't say much of anything."

"Certainly not that you want to keep Sami yourself."

Paige saw the dare in his eyes. She broke away and went to the window.

Beyond it, the campus was covered with snow. The occasional student passed by wearing the wool overcoat that was the covering de rigueur for the winter semester, but otherwise the scene was as bleak as her view of the future.

"It isn't fair," she said, burying her hands in the pockets of her own wool topcoat. "I didn't ask for Sami, but suddenly there she was, and I owed it to Mara to take her. So now, just when I've gotten used to having her, they find a family. Why didn't they find one right away?

Why did it have to take three months? I mean, it's not fair to Sami, either.

If she were an infant, three months might not be crucial, as long as there was someone to hold her and hug her. But she's no infant, and it isn't just any old someone who's been holding her and hugging her.

It's me. It's Nonny. It's you." Of course, he would be leaving, too.

And Angie. And even Nonny, if Sami left. It wasn t fair.

"I hate change," she cried. "I've always hated change. Most of all, I hate change that happens after you've adapted to the change that you didn't want in the first place."

Noah came to lean against the wall where the window ended. In a low voice he said, ill don't think change is the real issue here."

"It's definitely one of them," Paige insisted. "For the first three years of my life my parents dragged me around wherever they went. I never had my own room, never had my own friends, never had much more by way of constancy than a teddy bear, and even that got lost in one of the moves. Finally Nonny put her foot down and took me in. It was another three years before I was willing to spend even a single night away from her house. Stability happens to be very important to me."

Noah crossed his arms over his chest. "The real issue here," he went on as though she hadn't spoken, "is what you want in life. I don't believenot for one minutethat you took Sami in only because you felt you owed it to Mara. To do something as momentous as thatand to continue doing it, even when it meant that you had to go through all the red tape of being approved as a foster parentdemanded something else.

Somewhere deep inside, you liked the thought of having Sami with you.

Maybe it was to fill the void that Mara's death left, maybe it was to satisfy your own maternal instincts" ill don't have maternal instincts."

"You sure as hell do," he argued. "You may hide behind your profession and call it doctoring, but make no mistake, you mother your patients.

You mother Jill. You mother Sara. And you damn well mother Sami.