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clients for a few hours a week, and then from space within the university. She certainly couldn’t see herself giving up therapy entirely. She loved doing clinical work.
    But moving to Providence raised another issue. She didn’t know if she wanted to be that far from her mother— which was an irony of the greatest order. Casey had grown up in Providence; Caroline had lived there right up until the accident. During all the time in between, Casey had been desperate for the distance. Caroline was the epitome of home and hearth, everything Casey was not. The closer they lived to each other, the more obvious this became. Casey’s career notwithstanding, Caroline was a hard act to follow.
    Giving proof to that now, Casey returned home and rather than cleaning out her refrigerator, sorting through the pile of mail growing like mold on the kitchen counter, or even reading a book, she watched reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer until she fell asleep on the sofa. She got up at midnight and went to bed, but didn’t sleep well. If she wasn’t fixating on that ugly word “concern,” used by the doctor again that day, she was thinking about the teaching position, which was past the point of needing an answer, or the office situation, which was starting to stink, or the fact that she was thirty-four and without roots. Then she thought of the Beacon Hill townhouse that she had so unexpectedly inherited, and a silent nagging began.
    She was avoiding the place. She didn’t need an esteemed colleague to tell her that. She was making a statement to this dead father of hers that she resented being acknowledged only when he died and that she didn’t need his three-million-dollar townhouse. She was keeping him waiting. It was as simple— and as childish— as that.

    *
    Saturday morning, she awoke feeling brave. She wanted to think she was also in grown-up mode, though she feared that was asking too much. Defying the conventional wisdom that said she was going to an upper-crust part of Boston and ought to dress the part out of respect for her father if nothing else, she left her face utterly naked, put on skimpy running shorts and a cropped singlet, and pulled the length of her strawberry-blond hair through the hole in the back of her rattiest baseball cap. After lacing on well-worn running shoes and grabbing her darkest, trendiest wraparound sunglasses, she set off for Beacon Hill. She had barely gone two blocks when, chagrined, she jogged into a U-turn and ran back home for the forgotten key. Tucking it, her cell phone, and a water bottle into a slim fanny pack, she set off again.
    It was a gorgeous morning. At barely nine o’clock, there were nearly as many runners as cars. She ran at a comfortable pace down Commonwealth Avenue under the shade of aged maples and oaks that dominated the center mall. After jogging in place at a red light on Arlington Street, she entered the Public Garden. Indulging herself, she circled the pond, passing swan boats that were just coming to life, parents pushing babies in prams, other children running ahead to toss pebbles into the water. Each plunk brought a crowd of ducks that dispersed as soon as the ducks realized the pebbles weren’t peanuts.
    When the circle was complete, she continued on to the intersection of Beacon and Charles. On a whim— a final defiant one, a last-ditch effort to thumb her nose at the spirit of Connie— she took the time to run down the whole of Charles Street. Making a right at the end, she ran up Cambridge Street, huffed up Joy Street, and turned onto Pinckney for the downhill trot.
    She had always liked Pinckney Street. It had the same brick and brownstone row houses as the rest of the Hill, with the occasional wood frame house tossed in for added charm. It had the same long, narrow alleyways that were brick-paved and walled, the same window boxes filled with flowers, the same shapely grillwork at windows and doors.
    By the time she was a good way down the hill, though,