Pam entered the conference room at 7:00 p.m. to spread out and organize her work on the large conference table. Her arms were laden with current files, calendar, day planner, legal pad, pens, highlighting markers and her bottled water. The office phone was now turned to voice mail, a welcome relief from Charlene’s clients. Where to start with this mess? Charlene had twenty-two pending cases and Mike Dodge didn’t do divorce or custody. He was in San Francisco at the moment, and he specialized in trusts, wills, probate and taxes associated with inheritance. Since it was routine for Charlene to refer those clients to Mike anyway, there were none in her caseload now.

Twenty-two. That didn’t even touch the number of cases that were considered open without pending court dates. It was Pam’s job to figure out the routing of the caseload. Charlene was spending lots of time away from the office, taking care of her mother’s appointments with doctors. In addition, there was the reconstruction of a charbroiled house and all that went along with it, from refurbishing to redecorating. Charlene needed breathing room.

Pam’s days, on the other hand, were getting longer and she was suffering under a different kind of strain, that of trying to appear rested, well organized and stress free so that Charlene could handle her many personal issues with as little worry as possible.

Pam hadn’t heard a word about the wedding. She supposed it had been pushed back till a more manageable time, but she didn’t dare ask.

She shook her head in bemusement when she picked up a file. The one case Charlene was passionate about keeping up with was the pro bono for Meredith Jersynski…and this one was a dog. A loser. Not only that, but she paid Maxie out of personal funds, and Maxie was a high-priced investigator. The relationship Charlene had with Jake was some strange inseparable bond that exceeded their common parenthood to Stephanie. The only one who seemed not to know this was Charlene. Pam wondered how Dennis coped with that.

She reviewed folder after folder, making notes and lists and changes, stacking up the finished work as she went, checking off files as she completed each review.

Timmons? The name took her breath away for the moment. She flipped through the file and read the suspicious single page. It was only Janice Timmons’s intake information—address, phone, date of birth, date of marriage. Pam had not been aware of this. The appointment had obviously been set up by the appointment secretary before Charlene’s mother had been hospitalized. Janice was a twenty-something-year-old court reporter in the Superior Court. She had married her college sweetheart just three years ago in a storybook wedding they had all attended. When they toasted the bride and groom, there wasn’t a guest present who didn’t think this love affair would stretch into old age. They seemed made for each other; they were positively enraptured.

And here she was, divorcing. It was all so fragile.

Such was the life of family law. There were blissful moments, like successful adoptions, the reuniting of families, the lawful return of property. There were times that justice, however bittersweet, was finally reached, like winning a wrongful-death civil suit or getting a handicapped child into the right kind of educational facility. But there were terrible disappointments here as well, like Janice and Bill Timmons, so in love, and parting company after only three years. How did things like this happen? Pam had asked herself many times. And why, knowing how tenuous even the most solid relationships are, do we long for a mate?

Ray knocked at the conference door and stuck his head in. “Late night?”

She put down her pen and wished, for the millionth time, that her heart wouldn’t pick up speed when she saw him. But wish it or not, it hammered in her breast. “There’s a lot going on,” she said.

“It’s almost nine, Ms. London. Have you eaten?”

She looked at her watch in shock. A few lists, a couple of schedule changes, and almost two hours had gone by. “Ah…um…haven’t even thought about food.”

“Well,” he said, entering the room despite the fact that she hadn’t invited him. He had a take-out bag. “I brought you something anyway. Vegetables and rice. A little chicken. Tea. You have to keep your strength up.”

“I don’t have time to eat, Ray,” she said, tearing her eyes away from his face and picking up the pen again. She looked down and pointed the pen at the legal pad, but he lifted her hand off the paper.

“Don’t be so pigheaded. Have something to eat,” he said. “I’m on my break.”

She dropped the pen and leaned back in her chair, sighing in resignation. She was starving, and for more than mere food. “I’m never going to get done,” she complained.

He began to empty the bag of small cartons, cups and plates. “What’s up with Ms. Dugan? Jake said something about a fire?”

“You know Jake?”

“Just sort of. I know the boyfriend, Grant Chamberlain.”

“You do?” she asked, stunned. Sometimes the world was shockingly small.

“Yup. I took a couple of classes with him at Sac State. I met Jake at JT’s—the bar where Grant works. And then, of course, Jake was just here…when was that? A week or so ago? With a woman?”

“Wow. It’s always amazing how many connections there are in a town this size.” She would have to run for her life. Now it was settled. Even if she had momentarily toyed with the idea of toying with—She couldn’t let her mind wander in that direction. Whatever she’d been thinking, she’d stop it at once.

He pushed a plastic plate and fork at her and she moved aside her tablet, calendar and files. Despite all her good sense, things started to happen to her vision. When he lifted his fork to his lips and slowly drew the chicken and vegetables into his mouth, she saw the top button of his uniform shirt unbutton itself. Then two more buttons opened, then another. The ripples in his tanned, hairless chest sent a rush through her that made her catch her breath.

“You okay, Ms. London?” he asked.

No, I’m delusional from overwork. She looked down at her plate and muttered, “Uh-huh. Yeah.” She took a few bites with her eyes closed. In her mind she was seeing his handwritten notes, left at different times during the day when she might be away from her desk. It was odd that she never saw him hanging around, but she found plenty of messages just the same. You look beautiful today and Just tell me when. Boyish, silly messages.

She looked up as she realized he had left two such notes on her desk that very day, one before lunch and one after. And it was now 9:00 p.m. She also noticed his shirt was completely buttoned, and blinked in surprise. “Ray, what are you doing here this late? Didn’t you work a day shift today?”

“Yep.”

“Shouldn’t you be off now?”

“Yep. But you’re still here, just like you’ve been here late every night this week. No breaks for supper, and far as I can tell, you aren’t having anything brought in to eat.”

“So?”

“So? So I thought maybe you’d appreciate this.”

She laid down her fork. “It’s very nice of you, but…I’m concerned by all this attention, Ray. I think you’re making too much of—”

“Too much? Not enough, I think.” He smiled. “Some women like that sort of thing,” he said. “And so do you, though for some reason you try to hide it.”

“I’m too old for you!”

“Fine, then just eat and I’ll go.”

She became silent. Was that what she wanted? For him to go? And not come back? It was an awful thought, but she also had to think about what the partners would say if they found a middle-aged executive assistant fiddling around with a twenty-five-year-old security guard. It could cost her her job.

For now she would just eat the dinner, thank him and send him on his way with a calmly delivered explanation of the facts of life. She lifted her fork. “This is delicious. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. The Plum Tree. Best Chinese in town. Right down the street.”

“Listen, Ray, I’m a little tense,” she said.

“Seems like maybe you’ve been under a lot of pressure.”

“A lot, yes. And let me be honest, I don’t really know how to handle your…your…pursuit.”

“That so?” he asked. “I would’ve thought you’ve had a lot of practice.”

“At—?”

“Handling pursuits. Men must pester you all the time.”

“Me?” Pam asked. “No! I’m hardly ever asked out on a date.”

“Impossible,” he said. “As smart and pretty and healthy and positive as you are?”

“Wouldn’t you have a lot more in common with a younger woman?” she asked him.

“Well, Ms. London, I’ll let you know if our relationship ever gets beyond me leaving you notes and flowers, and walking you to your car. Okay?”

It’s never going to get beyond that, she thought, but for some reason she couldn’t say it. She watched him eat, his fork carrying small bites back and forth from his paper plate to his mouth, sensually chewing, slowly swallowing. She was growing hypnotized by the slow, sexy movement. He locked onto her eyes, held her, and delivered a mouthful to her on his fork. She opened her mouth for him and closed her lips around his fork.

It began to happen to her again; the delusion returned. His shirt unbuttoned itself, his chest was revealed, his slow breathing expanded his pecs and strained his shirt—and she was lost.

She didn’t know what was happening to her. She was tired, that was one thing. And although she had accepted her state of singleness, just having this sexy young man around was underscoring her aloneness, leaving her feeling hungry for attention, craving affection. And now, as they sat across from each other at the conference-room table, eating Chinese, she was hallucinating.

“I just want to get to know you,” she heard him say, but his voice was distant and faint. “We could just see what happens.”

His hand reached across the table, touched hers, and she thought she heard, “You know it would be good. We’d be so good.”

She was doomed. Her eyes drifted closed and she could feel his presence coming closer. His breath was hot on her neck and she felt his lips sear her flesh. “Let yourself, Pam. Let yourself go. You know we’d be so, so good….”

Pam had the feeling she was floating into his arms, that he pulled her to her feet, embraced her around the waist and gently lowered her to the boardroom table. He pulled apart her silk blouse so that her bare chest pressed against his. Never before had she known such longing. She sighed as she strained toward him and—

“Ms. London?”

Her eyes popped open and the fully clothed, politely patient and deadly handsome Ray tilted his head inquisitively as he studied her.

“I’m not the hottest ticket in town, but I’ve never had a girl nod off on me before.”

Her cheeks flamed a scarlet so hot she thought she might pass out, as embarrassed as if he had actually seen the fantasy that had overtaken her. She was no longer sure what he might have said, what she had dreamt. Had she moaned? Writhed? Said his name?

She put down her fork. “Ray, this little flirtation has been fun, but there’s something you’d better get straight. I’m not going to lose my job over you. Got that? I’ve…really…got to…get going.” She pushed her plate toward him, gathered up and stacked the client folders. She virtually flew into her office, tossed the folders into the file drawer without putting each one in its place and locked it up. Forgoing all the closing-up rituals she typically engaged in, she simply grabbed her purse and ran. Ran. With no time to wait for the elevator, she took the stairs. She raced past the ground-floor security desk and was out the door and behind the wheel of her car in a flash.

She looked back at the office building in time to see Ray appear in the doorway, looking toward her, unmistakable disappointment drawing down his features. Well, there, she thought. He got the message. She started the ignition and drove too fast out of the parking lot.

And she thought, I am so screwed up.

Charlene rarely took personal days. An admitted workaholic, she usually had to get out of town to keep herself from going into the office on her rare vacations. She was a little worse than driven—she was compulsive. She moved at a brisk and efficient pace and was capable of doing several things at once. The hardest part about being needed to help while Lois kept appointments with doctors and reconstruction companies was the time spent waiting. It was tempting to use that time working in one fashion or another—on the cell phone or laptop—but that made Lois feel like a burden. “I know you’re too busy for this, Charlene. Go to your office and I’ll get Mr. Conklin to take me on all these errands. Or I can always get a cab.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Besides, I want to hear what the doctors have to say. Having a cell phone and laptop computer just makes the whole process of being away from the office that much easier.” But she resisted as much as she could, forcing herself to leaf through a magazine or read a few pages from a book.

There had been lots of tests to determine the cause of Lois’s symptoms, everything from blood work to imaging to neurological and psychological tests. She did everything from laying still in a long, skinny, clanking MRI tube to repeating words from memory and getting scores. It was tedious and often discouraging. Lois knew she wasn’t scoring as well as she might have even two years ago. “I feel like I’m working with half a brain,” she complained. “It’s maddening.”

Wedged into the tight schedule of medical professionals was the matter of the burned house. Reconstruction companies sent out representatives, one after the other, to bid on the job of repairing the kitchen. Not only was it far more expensive than she had guessed it would be, it was going to take much longer. And, of course, the insurance company had a million excuses why they wouldn’t be responsible for the full amount. “I’m a lawyer,” she had said to the adjuster. “Are you sure you want to screw around with me?” To which he had answered, “It will be our absolute honor, ma’am.”

There was no possible way Lois could have done this alone. In fact, Charlene couldn’t do it alone. She called Dennis for every medical question, and Jake or Jasper for every building and reconstruction question.

Having Lois staying at Jasper’s house was perfect. As one doctor told Charlene, “Jasper might be more than willing to look after your mother and give her lodging, but he can’t take the place of a close family member. It’s very important to Lois that you’re nearby and involved. She needs to be close to the familiar.” Charlene agreed, but at the end of every day filled with appointments, phone calls and as much time at her office as she could squeeze in, there was still dinner at Jasper’s with her mother and often Stephanie, with Dennis or even Jake dropping by. After Lois was settled for the night, Charlene made the long ride home exhausted. Five a.m. with her usual exercises and low-fat breakfast came mighty early. She was so busy making sure everyone was getting what they needed, she hadn’t taken her own emotional temperature in weeks.

Together she and Lois chose the company that seemed best suited for the job, and by the questions Lois asked the young representative, one would never know she was showing the early symptoms of dementia. That’s what made this all so hard. She not only had lucid moments, she had lucid hours and even the occasional day without doing or saying anything entirely off the wall.

Then came the day Lois had to go to the library where she read books onto tape as a volunteer. “You could go to work for a few hours if you want to,” she invited Charlene. “You could just drop me off and come back later.”

It was very tempting, Charlene thought. Every day the work that accumulated on her desk grew taller. But she didn’t want Lois to be “left.” “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked her mother.

“I’m not going to give up my volunteer work until I absolutely have to.”

“Or you could ask Jasper. I’m sure he’d be delighted.”

“I could, but I’ve never liked asking.”

That was Lois in a nutshell, and one of the things that was going to make taking care of her so difficult. She didn’t like to ask for help. And, if the help was going to act put out about it, she would feel terrible. “Let me go with you, Mom,” Charlene said. And in thinking about it, she grew happier about the idea. The work would always be there. “It will be like revisiting my youth. It’s been years and years since I’ve gone to the library just to poke around, play with books, find something to read that’s completely entertaining.”

“I’m surprised you can stomach the idea, after being held hostage in a library all your childhood, then spending so many years in law libraries.”

“The library has always been a comfort, like a second home.”

In jeans, tennis shoes and a T-shirt, as opposed to her usual lawyerly suit, Charlene looked like a young girl. And like a girl, she sat on the floor in the adult fiction section, the D-F aisle strictly by happenstance, and paged through novel after novel, just visiting the books. The construction of the “to be read” stack had always been her favorite part about reading when she was a preteen. She liked to play with her books in much the same way a cat plays with a lizard before she bites off its head. The covers were the first to catch her eye, then the title. She’d then read the jacket blurb, but the most important factor was the first page or two.

While she consciously looked through books and Peaches sat in an enclosed room behind the periodicals reading into a tape recorder, Charlene’s subconscious was remembering her childhood by the sounds and smells of the library. We didn’t do too badly, Peaches and me, she thought. In the first apartment building they had lived in, Lois had been the only woman with a child whose husband was seldom around. But the neighbors were friendly and supportive. In fact, there were lots of them who would have kept Charlene after school, but that wasn’t what Lois had wanted to do. “She’ll get her homework done at the library, plus read a little extra. It’ll be good for her.” And now that Charlene remembered it, the neighbors also weren’t judgmental about this man who wandered through their lives every now and then.

Then there was the purchase of that new little house in Fair Oaks, surrounded by trees and rolling hills, in the shadow of the mountains. What an achievement that was. Now, having worked as she had, raising a daughter of her own, Charlene finally realized what it must have taken for her librarian mom to save enough money to get into that house.

When they’d moved, they’d only had enough furniture for one and a half rooms—the bedroom set they shared and a couch, small chair, coffee table, lamp and two TV trays. Again Lois saved, pinching those pennies. The very first purchase of furniture she indulged for the new house was white Provençal-style bedroom furniture for Charlene, so that she could have her own space, her own grown-up bed.

She had three books in a stack and was staring at the first page of the first, not really absorbing the words. Instead she was thinking, So, my father was a real screwup, but a fun guy. So he wasn’t real reliable, but then it turns out we never relied on him anyway. So, just how messed up am I because of my father? Probably about as much as I want to be.

“Mrs. Dugan?”

She looked up into the frowning face of Elizabeth Nelson, the children’s librarian. “We need you. Could you please come and do something about your mother.”

“Oh God,” she said, jumping to her feet. She ran, streaking through the library at breakneck speed, back through periodicals, where she’d left Lois. The door was ajar and a young man was looking inside. Charlene pushed him aside, maybe roughly, but then she was stopped by what she saw. Her mother stood in the corner of the small study cubicle, slowly and rhythmically banging her head into the wall. Charlene was momentarily paralyzed. Then she recovered, took three long steps into the room and grasped her mother’s shoulders. “Mom?” she said, stopping her and turning her around.

Long streaks of tears coursed down Lois’s cheeks. She bit her lip and shook her head, a deep and horrible sadness so penetrating Charlene felt it in the pit of her stomach. “Mom, what is it?”

“Oh, Charlene,” she said shakily, her voice a hoarse whisper. “I don’t know the words.”

“Oh, Mom,” she said, pulling her close and holding her. “Mom, it’s okay. You’ll know them later today. You’ll see.”

Lois sobbed into Charlene’s shoulder. “Do you know what it means if I can’t read? Do you know what that means?”

“Mom, you’re okay. It’s a hiccup. The words will come back later today. Or tonight. They’re not gone forever.”

“How do you know?” she asked.

Charlene brushed the tears from her mother’s cheeks, first the right side, then the left. “Because when they’re gone forever,” she whispered, “you won’t even know they’re missing.”

For a moment Lois just looked at her in confusion, and slowly she began to recover. First the terrible grief left her eyes, then her lips relaxed. Then, remarkably, a half smile played on her lips and she let go a little huff of laughter. “Oh, what a comfort you are.”

Charlene smiled back. “Let’s go home, okay?”

“Might as well. I’m done reading for the moment.”

“I’ll bring the book,” Charlene said. “I’ll mark the page and you can look at it later.”

“Eternal optimist.”

Lois walked out of the room ahead of Charlene. People had gathered outside, waiting to see who the kook was who had been banging her head. Lois lifted her chin and met their eyes with challenge, until one by one they turned away. It made Charlene feel, for the moment, so very proud of her mother’s courage.

Charlene doubled back a couple of steps, popped the tape out of the still-running recorder and slipped it into her pocket.

It was the situation at the library that cautioned Charlene enough to suggest to her mother that they have some legal documentation in place before some unfortunate incident made it necessary. “Leave it to a lawyer,” Lois said.

“A power of attorney isn’t really quite enough,” she explained. “That allows you and someone you appoint to take care of certain legal matters, like the sale of a house or the purchase of a vehicle. But if you appoint a conservator, you don’t have to worry about legal and financial responsibilities. And if, in a forgetful moment, you make some sort of mistake—like give your life savings to a charity—you’d be protected. Your conservator, your legal guardian, could get it back.”

“I’m not going downhill that fast, you know,” Lois pointed out.

“Of course not, and I can understand why a woman as independent as you wouldn’t want to give up control. But what if a workman needs to be paid and you’re a little…how should I put it—”

“In another mental zone?” Lois supplied.

“Okay,” Charlene agreed slowly.

“I’m not ready,” she said. “No legal papers yet. Workmen can wait. God knows they’ve kept me waiting often enough in my life.”

“Okay, there are two ways to do this. We can go to some family court judge together, fully understanding what’s happening and making legal preparations before it’s necessary. Or, I can go to court later and declare you incompetent. The latter is usually very uncomfortable for everyone.”

“Lois, as difficult as it is to think about, I think it’s very prudent. Caution is the watchword here,” Jasper said.

“Then I’ll make you my guardian,” she said to Jasper.

“Mother! Now that hurts!”

“Well, you and I don’t agree on anything, especially how and where I should spend my time or money!”

“I’m not going to be anyone’s guardian,” Jasper said. “How about another family member? What about Stephanie?”

“Well now,” they both said. Both women erroneously thought Stephanie would be easy to control. Neither of them had been acquainted with the new, improved Stephanie.

She called Stephanie to ask if she could sneak away from school to meet them at the courthouse.

“I know this is short notice, but we need to see a judge in family court about a legal guardian for Peaches, in case she becomes incompetent. You know, for medical and financial decisions. A judge I’m close to, Judge Kemp, is going to squeeze a little time out of his schedule to meet with us. Peaches won’t let me be the responsible party….”

Stephanie giggled. “Bet that really pissed you off,” she said.

“She’s willing to let it be you. And I trust that you’ll absolutely listen to my advice on any of these matters, especially with your grandmother’s health and income at stake.”

“Whoa,” she said almost reverently. “Me?”

“Yes, you. Did you hear what I said? About listening to me?”

“Listen? Of course. I always listen.”

“And pay attention,” Charlene stressed.

“This must be sheer hell for a control freak like you,” Stephanie suggested.

“You are the serpent’s tooth, for sure.”

So they were to meet outside of Judge Kemp’s office, where Stephanie would, with a bit too much glee, agree to be Peaches’s working brain. Charlene decided it was rather fitting as they’d always sided against her anyway, made her their common enemy on issues like bedtime, curfews, dating and chores. Grandmothers and granddaughters, bonded for life by the simple tension between mothers and daughters. I can’t wait until she has a child, Charlene found herself thinking. I’m going to quit work, take over its life, spoil it rotten and overturn all her decisions.

This was a big moment, and despite the attempt at levity surrounding Peaches’s choice of conservator, they all knew there was no going back from this. Not only would this remain in effect till the last breath Peaches took, but she was not going to get better. The best they could hope for was that she wouldn’t get worse quickly.

Here they were, the three women of this family, charging out of denial on bulls and into the truth. Together.