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discreet about it. but I'll be working on this as much as I can, and we'll get to the bottom of it and to the solution as quickly as possible," he promised. "And without hurting anyone, if we can. Is that all right?"
    "Yes," I said, not fully realizing what it was that I was agreeing to.
    "When I saw you from the loggia before, it was as if the clouds had been blown away, as if sunshine had returned. and I knew why they call this Jaya del Mar. the Jewel of the Sea. You're the jewel as far as I'm concerned. Willow."
    I smiled at him through my own glassy eyes now. He started back toward the path, then turned.
    "You're still going ahead with all the legal motions to enable Grace to keep the property?"
    "Yes. I'm seeing the accountant today and signing whatever has to be signed."
    "Just be sure it's the right thing for them.
    Willow." "It is," I said firmly.
    He nodded. "I’ll speak to you later."
    "In the darkness. You'll see me only in the darkness," I whispered to myself, and watched him hum; along until he was gone.
    Then I turned and, with my head down, walked back along the beach. The sound of a tern swooping down on an unsuspecting fish drew my attention back to the sea. I watched and then I took a deep breath. As I started to walk again, something caused me to look off to my left.
    At first, there was nothing to see— small dunes, bushes, a cloud of sand flies circling madly over something- on the sand— but then, as if he materialized out of the air itself. Linden's body took form behind a bush where he sat like Buddha staring out at the sea.
    He made no effort to attract my attention, nor did he call out to me.
    How long had he been there? What had he
    heard?
    My first thought was to call to him, to go to him, but I hesitated, Maybe it was better to pretend I didn't see him just now. Maybe it was better to pretend he was as invisible to me as I apparently was to him.
    At least for now, I thought.
    I turned and started back toward the beach house. There was no one on the loggia of the main house anymore, except for some servants cleaning up after the Eatons and their guests. They looked my way, but just as they were supposed to behave, they seemed to see no evil, hear no evil. Servants were taught to be invisible here.
    Maybe we were all invisible here.
    Daddy, I thought. how 1 need you now. If you're inside me, I’ve got to find a -way to touch you and hear your wisdom.
    There was nothing more fearful than the

    thought that he was drifting away with every passing hour, every passing minute. Maybe the truth was that the dead lose interest in the living and not, as everyone thought, the other way around. We stop visiting graveyards and looking at tombstones after a while, don't we? We put away our family albums. We forget the sounds of voices we once loved.
    And then what?
    If we don't find love, we find we're alone.
    That's where Linden was.
    And my mother.
    And maybe me.

    2
    A Lien Against the Property
    .
    Later that morning I drove into Palm Beach proper to meet with Leo Ross, my mother's accountant. He had an office an Via Encantada in a pearl-white stucco building that looked mare like a Spanish hacienda than a business structure. It glistened in the sunlight as if it were really covered in pearls.
    The accounting offices themselves were plush with a rather large lobby that had a marble floor, cream marble tables, expensive-looking settees and chairs, and prints of some of the portrait paintings of famous Palm Beach residents done by Ralph Cowan.
    Whether the implication was that these people used Leo Ross's firm or merely that people of this stature used it. I didn't know, but it had an impressive effect.
    From what I could see, there were nearly a half dozen CPAs working in the office, any one of whom could have been assigned to us. I imagine. However, perhaps because my attorney back in South Carolina, Mr. Bassinger, had set all this up. Leo Ross himself came out to greet me. He was a man about five feet