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"What?"

"The shape of the wedding cake is very significant. Just think of the picture of it with Ashley and me."

I shook my head. "Who said it was funny?"

"You were smiling like you thought it was," she accused with a pout, drawing up her puckered little prune mouth like a drawstring purse.

"I was thinking of something else, Margaret. I didn't hear anything about your cake."

"What? Why were you thinking of something else?"

"I was doing just what you advised me to do, Margaret. I was occupying my mind," I said as we pulled up to the front of the hospital.

I paid the driver quickly and practically jogged into the lobby. Margaret moaning and groaning about having to keep up with my pace.

"Where?" I said, spinning on her and nearly knocking her over with my carry-on bag. For a moment, she looked absolutely confused. "Where do they have my father?"

"Oh. Something called CCU. I think." "Well, lead the way. Margaret."

She sauntered to the elevator, smiled at a young intern emerging, and then got in and pushed the button for the second floor.

"I've always been afraid of your father," she confessed. He always looks so disapproving."

"It might be because he disapproves," I muttered, and stepped out to follow the signs indicating the direction of the CCU.

I pulled up short at the doorway of the waiting room. Aunt Agnes was sitting on the sofa and looking up at a nurse. She was nodding gently and dabbing her eyes with the end of her silk handkerchief. I had rarely seen her cry, but on the few occasions I had, she seemed capable of controlling the flow of her tears, permitting- them to emerge only one at a time, alternately from eve to eye, and only after each had fully appeared. She pressed the corner of the handkerchief with her right forefinger and touched each tear cautiously, absorbing it and then moving over in anticipation of the next.

She had my father's eves and mouth, but her chin was nearly nonexistent, sweeping up sharply under her lower lip and into the flow of her jawbone, and very tight, pale skin, a shade lighter than the sepia tones in old photographs. Her forehead looked infected with age spots she tried to keep as hidden as possible under long bangs of gray hair the color of a wet mop.

Unlike my adoptive mother. Aunt Agnes refused to wear a wig. She thought it was vain and undignified to battle too hard against aging. Aside from a little lipstick and some rouge, her store of cosmetics was anemic compared to the arsenal of skin creams, eye shadow, brushes, pencils, and makeup kits my adoptive mother had kept ready for her wars against wicked time.

Aunt Agnes had been a thin woman for as long as I could remember. Amou used to refer to her as Sonora da Passaro, "Bird Lady," because of her fragile bone structure and the way her nose had turned downward with age and become beaklike. I also thought she fluttered when she entered a room, always doing a little shiver as if she were throwing off some chill she had anticipated in coming to our home to speak with my father.

When she saw me, she reached up and put her hand on the nurse's wrist, and the nurse turned.

"Oh, it's my niece, his daughter," I heard her say. "Finally."

The look on the nurse's face was as good as a sword through my heart. I barely felt myself walk up to them. Aunt Agnes shook her head.

"We lost him," she said. "Just twenty minutes ago."

I stared down at her and smiled with incredulity as if she had said the most ridiculous thing. Lost him? How can ire lose Daddy? Because of my silence and my expression, the nurse felt obligated to add to it.

"There was just too much heart damage. I'm sorry," she said.

Margaret, who finally caught up with me, just went right into a tirade about greeting me at the airport and our trip back to the hospital.

"You've got to speak to whoever got you that car service, Mother. The driver wasn't around, and we had to take an ordinary taxicab. Willow wanted to get right over here. I told him to wait at the curb, but he was an unpleasant man. and..."

"Shut up!" I screamed at her.

She looked as if I had slapped her. She brought her hand to her cheek and stepped back.

"Willow's father has passed away, Margaret Selby," my aunt explained.

"Oh," she said, her eyes widening with the realization. "Oh. dear."

I turned to the nurse. "I want to see my father," I said sharply. I don't know how I managed that many words. My throat had already begun to close and felt as dry as soil in a drought.