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She leaned in to kiss me on the cheek and then hurried up the stairway.

Miles and I looked at each other, both fighting off an urge to break into laughter at her anemic attempt to be sincere and concerned.

"I'll be in Daddy's office. Miles."

"Very good. Willow. I'll bring you in a cup of tea and some biscuits. You know, the ones your father is so fond of." he said, and then realized instantly that we would both have to change our verb tenses forever in relation to Daddy. "The ones he was fond of."

"Thank you. Miles," I said. I walked on, past the entrance to the kitchen where I could hear Aunt Agnes opening and closing cabinets, taking her instant inventory. Some people invite the opportunity to take charge of other people's lives, I thought. They are like firemen who can't help but welcome the challenge, the battle, the surge of adrenaline, forgetting for the moment that the theater in which they are performing their necessary roles is a theater featuring pure misery for someone else.

"My goodness," I heard Aunt Agnes declare to Miles when he went into the kitchen, "You would think my brother was living off his Social Security, I haven't seen pantries as bare as this since I worked with Meals on Wheels for the house-bound elderly."

"Dr. De Beers had all he required," Miles remarked firmly. "He lacked nothing he wanted."

She grunted her displeasure. but I was positive Miles wasn't going to kowtow.

I smiled to myself and walked on toward the office, well in the rear of the house.

Our house was a large Gothic revival and too grim for my adoptive mother, who was fond of saying, "It always looks like it's scowling at me when I drive up, no matter how I dress the windows."

If she could have, she would have ripped it down and started over, but the house had been in my father's family for nearly one hundred fifty years. It at least gave my adoptive mother reason to feel some superiority over her acquaintances who lived in more modern structures or whose homes didn't have the history ours did.

We had two stories with a large attic that ran nearly the entire length of the home. The house had one prominent gable and one on each side. Most of the windows had drip-mold crowns and were arched to protect them from water running down the face of the building. We had a one-story porch with flattened arch supports.

My ad

optive mother was always frying to find a way to replace the pointed-arch front door because she thought it looked too devilish-- the entrance to hell, she called it But it was too much a part of the architecture, and despite her desire to change the feel of the house, she was afraid of looking foolish or losing its historical uniqueness.

We had five bedrooms, maid's quarters Amou had used and which Miles now used, a separate living room and den, a very large dining room with a table that could seat twelve comfortably, and, of course. Daddy's office.

I paused in the doorway. Although it was never set in stone or voiced with regal authority, it was understood that I was not to go playing or exploring in Daddy's office when he wasn't there. Even my A.M. rarely went in there when he wasn't occupying his desk. She never put it in so many words, but she gave the distinct impression that she felt the mental illnesses Daddy treated, the patients he occasionally saw in that office, could be infectious, as if paranoia or compulsive obsessions were spread through germs. I knew for a fact that she had never sat in any chair a patient had sat in and had never sat on the couch in that office.

If Daddy sensed her feelings, he didn't do anything to change them. I think he enjoyed having a place to go in his home where he could feel insulated. As I stood in the doorway and looked in at his large, dark cherry wood desk and his high-backed leather chair. I smiled, recalling my adoptive mother standing in this doorway and making some demand or another on him without crossing her imaginary line. I knew he deliberately spoke more softly than usual because she would keep asking him to repeat something and she would raise her voice. Frustrated, she would stomp away. Once. I was there quickly enough to see a tiny smile on his lips. He winked at me. and I felt as though he had passed a secret note for me to bury at the bottom of one of my dresser drawers.

About ten years ago. Daddy had a cabinetmaker construct new shelving over the left wall. Besides shelves, it had a row of small cabinets at the very top. He kept his books, papers, and reports on the shelves, in the middle of which stood a miniature grandfather clock, which was a gift from a very appreciative Englishman whose daughter Daddy had treated successfully at his clinic. On it the man had inscribed "To be ill is human, to heal divine." a play on Alexander Pope's famous line "To err is human, to forgive divine." The clock was gilded with precious jewels at each of the Roman numerals, Daddy used to say it had a distinctly English accent to its tick-tock and went tick-talk instead. Listening to it now brought a smile to my lips and helped me feel his presence in the room.

There was so much that would do that. however. The closet door was slightly open. and I could see one of his tweed sports jackets with the leather elbow patches. Daddy liked this very manly scented cologne, which, although he never smoked, had the aroma of some fine tobacco. When I walked in. I realized it still hung vividly in the air.

I moved slowly around the office, gazing as if for the first time at his plaques, his awards, and the pictures he had chosen to hang prominently. There were a number of framed photographs of him with important political people, even the governor of the state and a senator, but in a central location were two pictures of me. one when I was about five, all dressed up for a party my adoptive mother had arranged to celebrate their anniversary, and another of me at my middle-school graduation with both him and my A.M. at my side. She looked as if she were trying to get someone's attention. Her gaze was off left. distracted. Daddy was looking at me, his face caught in one of the most affectionate gazes I had ever seen. I had forgotten this picture.

I paused at his desk chair. The very thought of sitting in it was inhibiting. I never had. Glancing over his desk. I saw a yellow pad with most of the first page completed. A quick perusal told me he was putting down thoughts for a new paper on bipolar disorder. It appeared he was going to discuss the benefits of being in nature. The meditative power of his famous walks was to find a place in his therapy again and again. How disappointing that he would never finish this_. I thought. He had so much yet to give.

The ringing of the phone jolted me out of my reverie. For a moment. I just stared at the receiver. I never answered the phone in here, of course, but it rang on. Finally. I picked it up and said hello. It was my family attorney. Mr. Bassinger.

"Willow, my deepest regrets and condolences," he began.

I had met him only a few times, usually at social occasions. He was a man pushing seventy, nearly ten years older than Daddy, but he and Daddy had been friends for as long as I could remember.

"Thank you, Mr. Bassinger. It's still all too fresh and raw to be real to me." I added.

"I understand. I'm calling because your aunt just phoned my office with the news and asked that I get right on the legal matters that become necessary."

"No grass grows under Aunt Agnes's feet." I said.

"Yes." he said in a noncommittal tone. She had obviously forced him to put on his lawyer's face first and then his family friend face. "I just want you to be reassured that I'll be right on it and will review it all with you at the proper time. I can tell you quickly, however, that except for what your father left to his clinic, you are the sole beneficiary, which, of course, includes the house and the property."

"Thank you, Mr. Bassinger."

"One more thing," he continued. "I have an envelope with papers in it in my vault that I was instructed not to give to you until your father's passing. I will bring them by later today, if that's all right with you."