Jeremy felt his throat tighten. “Is there anything I can do?”

Mac smiled sadly. “You can convince my wife her husband isn’t getting senile.”

“All right.” It was the least he could do, Jeremy thought. “I’ll head back in the morning.”

“Thanks, Jeremy. Stay out of this. Please.”

“Mac, you’re not in any danger, are you? I saw your face yesterday morning...”

This time the smile had a touch of the old humor, the wry wit for which MacGregor Stevens was known. “Good heavens, have you ever known me to step in front of traffic? I’m too old for that sort of thing, Jeremy. I’m merely settling an old score—getting answers to some questions that have been nagging me over the years. It’s intensely personal, but not dangerous. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with Elaine or you or the firm.”

“Do you know anything about this Liechtenstein trust, Mac?”

“No, nothing.” He pushed his glass to the center of the table and rose, for the first time ever looking older than his years. “Have another drink on me, Jeremy— and a good flight home. Trust me.”

“I always have.”

The old alarm clock in Ashley’s girlhood bedroom blared at five o’clock the next morning, and she sat bolt upright in the lumpy bed, banging her head on the slanted ceiling. The blue-flowered wallpaper had yellowed and was starting to peel, a tangible reminder of the passage of time. She had bought the paper when she was thirteen, with money she’d made selling sweet corn off the trailer, and hung it herself. The seams hadn’t matched very well.

Feeling old and grown up, she shut off the alarm. She remembered sitting in this room and wondering what she would be like at thirty. She was almost there now. She liked the kind of kid she’d been. Hardworking and smart-assed. Hell, she was like that now, too. But different. The money had changed her, she supposed. And time. But she liked her life now. She didn’t want to go back to the past. Back to this, as much as she loved it.

It was chilly and damp, and the wide pine-board floor was cold on her bare feet. She yawned and stretched, still feeling fuzzy. In Boston, she would be asleep under her hand-stitched throw, sprawled in silk pajamas on her queen-size bed. The chords of classical music on public radio would awaken her, not a cheap alarm clock and a rooster.

She pulled on some old clothes—patched corduroys and a red-and-white Boston University sweatshirt, heavy socks, beat-up sneakers—and tied her hair back. Yawned again and went to work.

Leaving David sleeping soundly in his old room, Ashley, rather virtuously she thought, did the morning chores alone. She started a fire in the cook stove in the kitchen. Then she moved outside and fed the chickens, the pigs, the sheep, the cats. She collected eggs. She hauled wood. She checked the vegetables on the trailer and emptied the change out of the coffee can. Pumpkins were selling like crazy. Finally, she looked up at all the ripe apples hanging in the two trees in the side yard. Barky would have her and David out picking them to make applesauce and apple butter, maybe some jam.