THE THREE OF THEM.

Samantha came down to the lobby of the medical center as soon as the receptionist called and told her R.J. and Gwen had arrived. Success had given her quiet a.s.surance. Her black hair was worn short against her beautifully shaped head, with a thick white streak over her right ear; once Gwen and R.J. had accused her of helping nature along with chemicals for dramatic effect, but they knew it wasn't so. It was Samantha's way to accept what nature had given her and to make the very best of it.

She hugged each of them twice in turn, exuberantly.

Her announced schedule called for lunch in the hospital, followed by a guided tour of the medical center, dinner in a wonderful restaurant, and late talk in her apartment. Gwen and R.J. would stay overnight and go back to the western hills first thing in the morning.

They had scarcely started to eat their lunch before R.J. gave Samantha her lawyer's stare. "All right, woman-give us the news we've driven two hours to hear."

"News," Samantha said sedately. "Well, this is news. I've been offered the job of chief pathologist at this place."

Gwen sighed. "Oh, boy."

They beamed and offered their congratulations. "I knew it," R.J. said.

"It's not going to happen for another eighteen months, until Carroll Hemingway, the present chief, leaves for the University of California. However, they've offered the job early, and I've accepted, because it's what I've always wanted."

She smiled. "But ... that is not the news."

She turned around the plain gold ring she wore on the third finger of her left hand, to reveal the stone. The blue diamond in the setting wasn't large but it was beautifully cut, and R.J. and Gwen were out of their seats and hugging her again.

Samantha had had a number of men in her life, but she had stayed unmarried. While she had made an enviable life for herself as a single woman, they were happy she had found someone to share it.

"Let me guess," Gwen said. "I'll bet he's in medicine, a full professor of something-or-other."

R.J. shook her head. "I won't guess. I have no idea. Tell us about him, Sam."

Samantha shook her head. "He'll tell you himself. He's meeting us for dessert."

Dana Carter proved to be tall and white-haired, a compulsive forty-mile-per-week runner who was slender almost to the point of underweight, with coffee-colored skin and young eyes.

"I am nervous as a cat," he told them. "Sam told me meeting her family in Arkansas was going to be easy but that satisfying you two would be the true test." He was the human resources manager of a life insurance company, a widower with a grown daughter who was a freshman at Brandeis University, and he was sufficiently in love to satisfy even Samantha's closest friends.

By the time he left them, it was mid-afternoon, and they spent another hour learning details of his history-he had been born in the Bahamas but raised in Cleveland-and telling Samantha how fortunate she was, and how "d.a.m.ned all-out lucky" Dana was.

Sam looked very happy as she took them through the medical center, showing off her department and then the trauma center and the heliport that serviced it, the up-to-date library, and the labs and lecture rooms of the medical school.

R.J. found herself wondering if she envied Samantha her success and her authority. It was easy to observe that the promise everyone had predicted for her when they were students had been fulfilled. R.J. saw the deference with which people at the medical center addressed her, the way they listened when she spoke and moved to carry out her suggestions.

"I think you guys should come to work here. This place is the only large medical center in the state to have a department of family medicine," Sam said to R.J. "Wouldn't it be nice," she said wistfully, "if the three of us could work in the same building, see each other all the time? I know both of you could find good slots here."

"I already have a good slot," R.J. said, a trifle crisply, sensitive that perhaps she was being patronized, annoyed that well-meaning people kept trying to change her life.

"Listen," Samantha said, "what do you have up there in the hills that you couldn't have here? And don't give me that bull about fresh air and a sense of community. We breathe very well here, and I'm as active in my community as you are in yours. You two are superb physicians, and you ought to be partic.i.p.ating in tomorrow's medicine. We're working on the absolute forward edge of medical science in this hospital. What can you do in a rural backwater, as a doctor, that you couldn't do here?"

They smiled at her, waiting for her to run down. R.J. wasn't inclined to argue. "I love practicing where I am," she said calmly.

"I can already tell I'm going to feel the same way about the hilltowns," Gwen said.

"I'll tell you what, you take all the time you need to answer that question," Samantha said loftily. "If you can think of any answer at all, you drop me a line, okay, Dr. Cole?"

R.J. smiled at her. "I'll be glad to accommodate you, Professor Potter," she said.

The first thing R.J. saw when she turned into her own driveway the next morning was a Ma.s.sachusetts State Police prowl car parked by her garage.

"Are you Dr. Cole?"

"Yes."

"Good morning, ma'am. I'm Trooper Burrows. Nothing to be alarmed about. There was a little trouble here last night. Chief McCourtney asked us to keep an eye out for your return and give him a holler on the radio."

He leaned into his own car and did just that, telling Mack McCourtney that Dr. Cole had arrived home.

"What kind of trouble?"

Shortly after six P.M. Mack McCourtney, driving by the deserted house, had noticed an unfamiliar blue van, an old Dodge, on the lawn between the house and the barn. When he investigated, he had found three men behind her house, the trooper said.

"Had they broken in?"

"No, ma'am. They hadn't had a chance to do anything; it looks like Chief McCourtney drove up at just the right moment. But the van contained a dozen cans full of kerosene and materials that would have allowed them to construct a delayed-action fuse."

"Dear G.o.d."

She had nothing but questions, and the state trooper had few answers. "McCourtney knows a lot more about this than I do. He'll be here in another minute or two, and then I'm leaving."

In fact, Mack arrived before R.J. had taken her overnight bag from the car. They sat in the kitchen, and he told her he had arrested the men and kept them overnight in the cramped, dungeonlike old cell in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Town Hall.

"Are they there now?"

"No, they're not, Doc. I couldn't charge them with arson. The incendiary materials hadn't been removed from their van, and the men claimed they were on their way to burn brush and had stopped at your house to seek directions to the Shelburne Falls Road."

"Might that have been true?"

McCourtney sighed. "I'm afraid not. Why would they pull the van up onto the lawn, off the driveway, just to ask for directions? And they had a burning permit, to provide cover for a possible alibi, but it was a permit to burn gra.s.s in Dalton, all the way over in Berkshire County, and they were a long way from that town. Besides, their names turned out to be on the attorney general's list of known anti-abortion activists."

"Oh."

He nodded. "Yeah. The van's plates were stolen, and the owner was arraigned on that charge in Greenfield. Somebody showed up right away with bail money."

Mack had their ident.i.ties and addresses, and he showed R.J. Polaroid pictures he had taken of them in his office. "These guys look familiar to you?"

Perhaps one of them, overweight and bearded, was one of the men who had followed her from Springfield.

Perhaps not.

"I can't be certain."

McCourtney, ordinarily a gentle officer completely protective of the civil rights of citizens, had allowed himself to step beyond his position, he admitted, "in a manner that could cost me my job if you discuss it with anyone else." While he had had the men in his jail he had told them, calmly and clearly, that if they or any of their friends bothered Dr. Roberta Cole again, he personally guaranteed them broken bones and permanent disabilities.

"At least we kept them in the lockup overnight. That cell is really miserable," he said with satisfaction. McCourtney stood and patted her shoulder clumsily, then he left.

David came back the following day. They were constrained as they greeted one another, but when she told him what had happened, he came and put his arms around her.

He wanted to speak to McCourtney, so they went together to meet Mack at his little bas.e.m.e.nt office.

"What shall we do to protect ourselves?" David asked him.

"You own a gun?"

"No."

"You might buy one. I'd help you get it licensed. You were in Vietnam, right?"

"I was a chaplain."

"Right." McCourtney sighed. "I'll try to keep a close watch on your place, R.J."

"Thank you, Mack."

"But I'm responsible for a lot of territory when I cruise," he said.

The following day an electrician placed spotlights on all sides of the house, with heat sensors that turned on the lights as soon as a person or a car got within forty feet. R.J. called a company that installed security systems, and a crew worked all day installing alarms that would go off whenever an exterior door was opened by an intruder, and heat and motion sensors that would trigger the alarm if anyone should succeed in gaining entry. The system was designed to summon police or firefighters within seconds.

Little more than a week after the installation of all the electronics, Barbara Eustis hired two full-time doctors at the clinic in Springfield, and R.J. wasn't needed there any longer.

She was able to regain her Thursdays.

Within a few days, she and David largely ignored the security system. She knew the protesters wouldn't be interested in her anymore; they would learn about the two new doctors and concentrate on them. But even though she was free again, there were times she didn't believe it. She had a recurring nightmare in which David hadn't come back, or perhaps he was gone again, and the three men had come for her. Whenever she was pulled from sleep by the dream or by the old house creaking in the wind or groaning the way arthritic houses do, she reached to the panel by the bed and pressed the b.u.t.ton that filled the electronic moat and sent the dragons out on patrol. And then she moved her hand stealthily under the covers to see if it really hadn't been a dream.

To see if David was still there.

51.

A QUESTION IS ANSWERED.

When R.J. had written to hospital medical chiefs, informing them of the opportunity for a new practice in the Berkshire hills, she had emphasized the beautiful countryside and the opportunities for fishing and hunting. She hadn't antic.i.p.ated a deluge of replies, but neither had she expected that her letter would go unanswered.

So she was pleased when finally she received a telephone call from Peter Gerome, who said he had completed a residency in medicine at the New England Medical Center and had followed it with a postresidency fellowship in family medicine at the University of Ma.s.sachusetts Medical Center. "Right now, I'm working in an emergency room while I look around for a country practice. I wonder if my wife and I could visit you?"

"Come as soon as you can," R.J. told him.

Together they worked out a date for the visit, and that afternoon she sent Dr. Gerome directions to her office, transmitting them on her latest concession to technology, a fax machine that would allow her to receive messages and records from the hospitals and other doctors.

She was bemused by the upcoming visit. "It's too much to expect that the one respondent we've had will be any good at all," she told Gwen, anxious to make the visit an attractive one. "At least the scenery will be at its very best for him. The leaves already have begun to turn."

But as sometimes happens in the autumn, a drenching rain began to fall on New England the day before Peter Gerome and his wife were to arrive. The downpour drummed on the roof of the house all through the night, and in the drizzly morning R.J. wasn't surprised to see that most of the colorful foliage had been stripped from the trees.

The Geromes were a likable couple. Peter Gerome was a large teddy bear of a young man, with a round face, gentle brown eyes behind thick gla.s.ses, and almost ashen hair that he kept brushing away as it fell over his right eye. His wife, Estelle, whom he introduced as Estie, was an attractive brunette, slightly overweight, who was a registered nurse-anesthetist. She was very much like her husband in temperament, with a calm, pleasant demeanor that R.J. warmed to at once.

The Geromes came on a Thursday. She took them to meet Gwen, and then she drove them throughout the western county and into Greenfield and Northampton to visit the hospitals.

"How did it go?" Gwen asked her that night on the phone.

"I couldn't tell. They weren't exactly bubbling over with enthusiasm."

"I don't think they're the kind to bubble over. They're thinkers," Gwen said.

They had liked what they saw well enough to come back, this time for a four-day visit. R.J. would have wanted them to stay with her, but the guest room had been turned into David's office. Portions of his ma.n.u.script were all over the room, and he was working feverishly to finish his book. Gwen wasn't sufficiently established yet to have houseguests, but the Geromes found a room at a bed and breakfast on Main Street, two blocks from R.J.'s office, and she and Gwen settled for having them to dinner every evening.

R.J. found herself hoping they would move to the area. Each of them had had exemplary training and experience, and they asked sensible, practical questions when she discussed with them the loose, HMO-like medical group she and Gwen wanted to establish in the hills.

The Geromes spent the four days driving around the county, stopping to talk with people in town halls and general stores and firehouses. The afternoon of the fourth day was chill and overcast, but R.J. took them walking on the wood trail, and Peter was appreciative of the Catamount. "It looks like a good little trout river."

R.J. smiled. "It is, very good."

"Well, may we fish it when we come out here to live?"

R.J. was very pleased. "Of course you will."

"I suppose that settles it, then," Estie Gerome said.

Change-more than the change of seasons-was in the chill, leaden air. Toby was less than two-thirds through her pregnancy but she was leaving R.J.'s office. She planned to spend a month preparing for the baby and helping Peter Gerome to find and set up an office. After that, she would serve as business manager of the Hilltowns Medical Cooperative, splitting her time among R.J.'s office and Peter's and Gwen's, doing all the billing and purchasing and keeping the three sets of books.

Toby recommended her own successor as R.J.'s receptionist, and R.J. hired her, knowing that Toby's instincts about people were very good. Mary Wilson had been a member of the town planning board when R.J. had appeared before that group to get permits for her office renovations. Mary would probably be a fine receptionist, but R.J. knew she would miss seeing Toby every day. To celebrate Toby's new job, R.J. and Gwen took her to dinner at the inn in Deerfield.

They met at the restaurant after work. Toby couldn't drink because of her pregnancy, but the three of them were quickly in good humor without wine, and they toasted the new baby and the new job with cranberry juice. R.J. felt deep affection for both of her friends, and she had a very good time.

It began to rain during the drive home, when she and Toby were halfway up Woodfield Mountain. By the time she dropped Toby off it was pelting, and R.J. drove slowly, peering through the windshield wipers.

Intent on her driving, she was almost past Gregory Hinton's farmhouse when she became aware that the light was on in the barn, and she glimpsed, through the open barn door, a figure seated inside.

The road was slick, and she didn't try to brake, but she slowed the car, and when she came to the rough lane leading into the Hintons' pasture, she turned the car around and went back. Gregory was in the midst of a combined course of radiation and chemotherapy, and he had lost his hair and was suffering from the side effects of the treatment. It wouldn't hurt to say h.e.l.lo to him, she thought.

She drove right up to the barn door, and he turned as she slammed the car door and ran in through the rain. He was seated in a folding chair by one of the stalls, wearing overalls and a barn coat, his new baldness covered by a cap that advertised a fertilizer company.

"Whew, what a night. Hi, Greg, how are you doing?"

"R.J.... Well, you know." He shook his head. "Nausea, diarrhea. Weakness like a baby."

"This is the worst part of the treatment. You'll feel much better when it's done. The thing is, we've got no choice. We have to stop that brain tumor from growing. Shrink it if we can."