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I started to cross the room.

"All right," he said, his fingers pressed together into a cathedral. "I'll bite, Your father was Grace Montgomery's doctor, and she was in his clinic. Why would that bring you here to involve yourself with Linden?"

I stopped and looked at him. There was still anger and cynicism in his face, but there was pain, too. His eyes saw only betrayal.

"I didn't come here to get involved with Linden, at least not the way you are suggesting."

"What other way. then?"

"I came here. Thatcher, to meet and get to know my real mother,

His eyebrows lifted. "I don't understand. Your real mother?"

"After my father died. I was given a diary he had written and had kept with his close personal friend and attorney with the instructions to give it to me only after his passing. I read the pages and learned that he and Grace Montgomery had become lovers at his clinic."

"What are you saying? Your father had an affair with his patient, and she became pregnant with you? Grace Montgomery?"

"Yes," I said "But if you read the diary, and if you speak with Grace, you understand it wasn't what it sounds like. It wasn't a doctor taking advantage of a vulnerable patient. She remained in the clinic long after she could have gone home because she was truly in love with him, and he with her."

"You're telling me, then, that Linden

Montgomery is your... your half-brother?"

"Exactly. Tonight, our mother told him the truth, and when he heard it, he was so depressed about his life that he thought about drowning himself. I saw him out there. and I went in to save him, only it turned out he had to save me."

"Why would it depress him so to have you as a half-sister?" Thatcher asked, and quickly thought of the answer to his own question. I just stood there looking at him. "Oh," he said. "I get it. You're the prettiest. nicest young woman who has given him the time of day in years." He looked down at the floor.

"I've just hurt everyone by coming here," I said. "Wiser people told me to leave it be. but I couldn't. Anyway, that is what I was trying to tell you out there when you saw us returning from the beach. I'm sorry I hurt you. Goodbye," I said, and started out.

"Wait a minute. Does Grace know you're leaving?"

"No. I thought I would write to her in a day or so."

That doesn't sound fair. You come in here like something blown in from the sea and then fly away?"

I felt my face crumpling, my lips trembling so hard they were knocking against my teeth. "I can't stand any more... sadness, any more... dor no coracao, peso na alma."

"What?" he said, squinting and scrunching his nose.

A laugh and a smile broke through my veil of misery. "Pain in the heart, weight on my soul. Something my nanny Amou used to say."

"Portuguese?"

"Yes,"

He stood and walked toward me slowly. "I went up to my room very angry, as you know. I paced about, raging at myself, at you, at my parents, anyone, anything, and then I stopped and reviewed it and reviewed it and told myself there has to be some other explanation for all this. I just won't accept what it all looks like on the surface. So I came down here to speak to you."

He smiled. "I'm glad I did. You're not going anywhere, Willow, especially now that I know your interest in Linden Montgomery is purely sisterly."'

I started to shake my head.

"You came here for a purpose, and you shouldn't leave until you've completed that purpose. You can't just come into your mother's life for a day, say hello and then goodbye, have a good life, nice to have met you. Whatever trauma your arrival has caused will be gone, wiped out by the love you've brought as well. I'm sure once he settles down. Linden will realize how lucky he is to have someone like you as a sister."

"You really think so?"

"Yes, but I'm also really being selfish. I'm not ready to say goodbye to you I don't think I will ever be."

He stepped up to me and wiped the tears off my cheeks with his handkerchief, and then he kissed each cheek and held me for a long moment.