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but also looked a touch wistful. “I never did like photographs of myself. The problem is they look like me.”
    Terrence spoke to her gently, put her at ease as much as he could.
    “I just hope I don’t crack your camera,” Alice told him. She said this with the wry delivery I came to know well. The real life “Atticus in a Skirt,” as Nelle called her, had that in common with the novel’s quiet attorney. Just as a neighbor in the novel observes of Atticus, Alice could be “right dry.”
    Alice had one request for me. Could I stay on long enough to interview the Methodist minister who was a good friend to both Lees? I said I’d like to and I’d ask my editors if I could extend my visit.
    I inquired if I might ask her some more questions the following day, either here or at her law office. I expected she might decline,reasonably enough. Already she had been generous with her time. To my delight, she invited me to stop by her office.
    Terrence and I bid her good night and slid into the rental car. We drove back to the motel, excited by this unexpected development.
    The next morning, I called my editors. We agreed it made sense to stay on. Alice speaking on the record, particularly about their parents and her sister’s experience with fame, was unusual.
    We had another long interview that day, in the suite of offices above the Monroe County Bank. Barnett, Bugg & Lee was a two-lawyer firm consisting of Alice and a young male attorney she had taken under her wing. Another attorney was of counsel. A receptionist sat at a desk near the front door and relayed callers’ messages to Alice. She could no longer hear well enough to use the telephone. As with Atticus Finch and many other small-town lawyers, real estate transactions, tax returns, and wills were at the heart of Alice’s practice.
    At one point I asked her about her sister’s long public silence. “I don’t think any first-time author could be prepared for what happened. It all fell in on her,” Alice said, “and her way of handling it was not to let it get too close to her.”
    And what about the first question everyone had about her sister: Why didn’t she write another book?
    Alice leaned forward in her office chair. “I’ll put it this way . . . When you have hit the pinnacle, how would you feel about writing more? Would you feel like you’re competing with yourself?”

Chapter Three

    T he following day, my phone rang at the Best Western.
    “Hello?”
    “Miss Mills?”
    “Yes, this is Marja.”
    “This is Harper Lee. You’ve made quite an impression on Miss Alice. I wonder if we might meet.”
    It was as if I had answered the phone and heard “Hello. This is the Wizard of Oz.” I felt my adrenaline spike. With effort, I kept my speaking voice from going up a couple of octaves.
    “That would be wonderful.”
    The voice on the other end was slightly husky and almost musical, her Alabama accent undiminished by the years in New York City. She didn’t sound the least bit shy.
    This was not to be an interview for my newspaper story, she said, but a chance to visit. “Would eleven A.M. be all right? At the Best Western?”
    “That would be great. Whatever works best for you.”
    “All right, then. I’ll see you at eleven.”
    I hung up the phone and collected myself.
    I called Terrence’s room, then Tim in Chicago. Who would have guessed? It was exciting and a little nerve-wracking.
    Tim reacted as Terrence had. “What? Really?”
    That night, in bed, I opened the novel again. I slipped under the covers and into the cadence of her prose and the pace of life in 1930s Maycomb.
    No matter what the parameters were, I was intrigued by the opportunity to meet with this mysterious literary legend, this woman whose book had meant the world to so many millions of people for so many years. And I never expected to actually be able to speak with her, anyway; so many reporters, year after year, had come to Monroeville before me and left with nothing