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and took a deep breath. Alice meant well. She'd been Carrie's assistant for eight years now, ever since she'd joined the Department of Health amp; Human Resources while still working toward her doctorate in public health policy. Carrie knew that Alice had been instrumental in her promotion to executive director of the Division of Rural Health. Alice certainly had provided a shoulder to cry on during last year's wedding fiasco, but deep down, she was a busybody. She was so interested in every single little detail that you'd think /she/ was the one getting married in less than three months!
    Actually, I'm on my way out.
    Carrie hit the off button on the speakerphone and grabbed her jacket and briefcase. She wouldn't even have time to change her clothes before she had to hit the road. If she made it out of Charleston before the evening rush, she could get to Persuasion in a little over two hours.
    She truly looked forward to the day that they could end all this commuter relationship nonsense. Riley's talents were being wasted in that town, and that stupid clinic would have done nothing but seal his low-class fate. With that in mind, Carrie had already found a dozen potential jobs for him here in the capital city and she was confident he'd eventually come to his senses. With a little luck, she could wrap up her rural diabetes management study right about the time Riley relocated hereand they could put that silly little town and all its history behind them, for good.
    Carrie gathered her briefcase and purse, a twinge of guilt tickling at her as it occasionally did. Some people might think it was unethical the way she'd used legislative sleight of hand to get Riley's clinic funding killed. But anyone making that judgment wouldn't understand that she had Riley's best interests at heart. She loved him. She knew what was good for him. She was good for him.
    The nurse at the triage desk pointed to a row of mint green fabric curtains, informing Kat and Nola that Virgil Cavanaugh could be found in evaluation room B-4. It took exactly eighteen steps to get there. Kat counted. She laughed at herself for being such a baby about this. Her parents were just like everyone else. Just people. Not monsters. They'd made some serious mistakes a long time ago, but maybe they'd just done the best they could. Kat was no longer a childshe was a grown woman. She could handle this.
    Kat gripped the edge of the curtain and pulled it aside. The first thing she noticed was a pale old man on a gurney, his eyes closed and his body still. The humming and beeping of monitors were the only indication he was alive. The next thing she noticed was that her mother was nowhere to be seen.
    Kat sat down in one of the small plastic chairs over by the sink. Nola sat next to her.
    That's Virgil, right? Nola whispered, reaching for Kat's hand.
    That's him.
    Kat couldn't take her eyes off the man who lay under the pale yellow blanket. His body looked… /reduced/ somehow. Virgil Cavanaugh had never been a huge man, but he'd been strong and he'd been mean, and Kat had always thought that his meanness took up space in the world. People seemed to keep their distance from him. The dean at Mountain Laurel had always humored him, because Virgil's name lent credibility to the college's small art department. His students respected his talent but never liked him as a person. It had always been that way.
    Kat leaned forward in the chair, trying to get a closer look. Her father's hands appeared knotted and limp, nothing like the powerful and graceful hands that had once made wet clay and hard marble submit to his every whim. His skin was decorated with a web of tiny broken capillaries and sagged from the bone of his cheeks, jaw, and elbows. For a moment, Kat imagined that his meanness had faded along with his youth, or had even disappeared altogether sometime in the last twenty years.
    A vision shot through her brain with such force that it knocked the wind from her. She was looking