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When you're with someone you love, he wrote, the most mundane things suddenly become wonderful.

I found myself falling in love with my father through his wonderful expressions of love, through his obvious joy and his renewal of youth and excitement.

Daddy explained how he kept Grace

Montgomery at his clinic far beyond what was necessary and how happy she was, because not only was she just as much in love with him as he was with her, but she had reasons to avoid hurrying home to Palm Beach, Florida. He never got into those reasons.

It surprised me at first that Daddy would have permitted her to become pregnant, that he wouldn't have taken the proper precautions, but the love affair he described and their times together rang with spontaneity, with the sort of impulsive action more often associated with much younger people. It was truly as if their love affair had rejuvenated them both, brought them both back to a time when they were hardly more than teenagers.

They discussed abortion. but Grace

Montgomery fervently wished to give birth to the child she believed embodied their great love. At first, he was opposed, but soon he gave in to the idea, and then he made plans to adopt the child-- who, of course, was me.

He elaborated on the deception and then revealed that he had made an agreement with my adoptive mother. In exchange for allowing him to take in this foundling, he gave her money and autonomy. She could go anywhere she wanted, do anything she wanted, and have anything she wanted. All those discussions they used to have over changes in the house or their lives were more show than substance because the outcome was determined at the start. She would get her way no matter what. He was permitted only to attempt to give her some reasons to change her mind, but she rarely did.

Her aloofness from me and her criticism of me made far more sense now. She did not know that my father was my real father, but that did not change her resentment of me and of his determination to keep me and make me a member of the family. In the beginning, she offered to try to mold me into what she considered an acceptable child and young woman. It was, according to my father, something of an interim peace agreement.

No matter how much he reassured her that there was no terrible madness gestating in me, she clung to the belief that I would someday prove to be

unbalanced. It was why he was so instrumental in acquiring Amou. He knew from the beginning that she would be more of a mother to me than my adoptive mother would want to be or could be.

He then went into a long explanation of how and why he married my adoptive mother in the first place. Despite what I saw of her in our home at times, I would have to agree with him that she could be a very charming woman. They apparently had some good years in the beginning.

Not long after my birth and subsequent adoption, my real mother left the clinic. His

description of their parting brought a flood of tears to my eyes. They both knew that his career, all his good work, all he had built up during his life, was in jeopardy, otherwise.

By the time I finished reading, I was truly physically and emotionally exhausted. I put all the pages back into the envelope and then hid it well under a pile of folders in one of my father's file cabinets. It terrified me just to imagine Aunt Ames getting her hands on it.

I went up to my room, my heart tossing and turning in a sea of emotions. When my head finally rested on my pillow, I felt as if I were sinking in that sea, all of the sadness, the joy, the fears. and the pleasures I'd read of and felt washing over me. I tossed and turned as if my bed were a small boat being rocked in a storm and actually woke up more exhausted than I was when I had gone to sleep.

Aunt Agnes didn't temper her voice in consideration of my still being asleep. I heard the house echoing with the orders she was shouting at the temporary hired help. It sounded as if she were rearranging the furniture below. Doors were slammed, and there were heavy footsteps up and down the stairway. The weight of what was to come kept me from rising, but I had to find the strength to face the day.

People began arriving soon after breakfast, and the steady flow never sto

pped until close to nine that night. The one visitor who interested me more than anyone at the moment was Dr. Renaldo Price, the chief administrator at my father's clinic. He was a man of about fifty but with a completely gray head of hair. He had been with my father from the beginning and surely knew the secrets that were buried in the envelope I had hidden under the files in Daddy's office.

I didn't see him very often. My adoptive mother was never fond of socializing with Daddy's

colleagues, especially the ants at the clinic.

"What could be worse than sitting at a dinner table with a Troup of psychiatrists?" she flippantly told him. "Everyone will be analyzing everyone else. I'd be afraid to utter a sound. and I'd be so selfconscious of every gesture. I'd be on pins and needles. I'd rather go to dinner with some of your patients," she said.

At first. he thought it was funny, but as time went by. I was sure he regretted the limitations she imposed. He was fond of his staff and enjoyed being with them. Slowly, piece by piece, she took apart the house of pleasure he had constructed, I thought. Maybe that was why he was so vulnerable to Cupid's arrow, even in his own clinic and with his own patient.

The few times I was able to meet and speak to Dr. Price, I found him to be a very kind, gentle man, with a fatherly demeanor about him. When he looked at me with his soft, hazel eyes. I felt he was really looking at me, listening to me, and wasn't like so many adults I knew, being polite, half distracted, not believing I, a child, was worth the investment of attention. One other thing made me feel comfortable with him: he never talked down to me. He spoke to me just the way he would speak to any adult and made me feel the things I told him were important and significant.

Now, here we were years later, neither of us feeling particularly talkative. Nevertheless, we spoke for a while in the living room. The chatter of the visitors had grown quite loud, overwhelming, in fact. Just like so many of these sad affairs I had attended with my father in the past, people were renewing old friendships, moving the conversation away from the tragedy to more comfortable zones. They were like horses with blinders, afraid to turn right or left for fear of catching someone wiping away a tear or speaking through trembling lips.

Margaret Selby was certainly helping the younger people feel at ease. She was rattling on and on about her impending wedding, reviewing the details as if she were embarking on a military campaign instead of a social event. She pounced on my cousin Lance the moment he entered the room, hardly giving him time to greet me or Aunt Agnes. I laughed to myself as I watched him searching for some avenue of escape, but she was relentless-- and whatever she was saying brought blush after blush to his face.

I had to admit. Aunt Agnes's arrangements were well suited to all this. Despite the darkness of the occasion, it soon took on a festive air. It disturbed me, but at the same time, I understood everyone's need to get their hands out of the coffin, so to speak, as quickly as they could, especially the relatives.

Most of my relatives were little more than strangers to me, names, voices, faces I passed quickly when I thumbed through family albums. They could have been faces in a mail-order catalogue, for all I cared or knew, and they were as insignificant to me now.

"You're holding up well, Willow." Dr. Price told me. "Your father would be very proud of you." He looked out the window so I wouldn't see the tears filling his eyes.

"Take a walk with me. Dr. Price?" I asked. He looked surprised but pleased by my request.