When he saw who it was, he straightened as if he’d been poked, then peeled off his reading glasses, dropped them onto the newspaper and sat back in his chair, his fingers working the bowl of his pipe. The white tufts of his eyebrows lowered over his cold, pale eyes as he watched her close the door behind her, but he said nothing. She hadn’t expected that he would. To say anything at all-a greeting, a question, even a challenge-would have given her an opening, making it easier for her. She could hope for no such concessions from him.

“Hello, Father.” She said it in her best attorney’s voice-dry and cool. Good morning, Your Honor.

As she stepped onto the faded Oriental rug-which had no doubt lain in that same spot since the reign of Queen Victoria-it occurred to her that she was doing so for the first time as a full-grown adult. The thought made an odd little thrill go shooting up her spine-a sense of her own worth and power that wasn’t new to her exactly, but was certainly new to her here, in these surroundings. It was a heady feeling, a little like a straight shot of bourbon on an empty stomach. She accepted it gladly for the courage and confidence it gave her and didn’t stop to remember, then, that whiskey courage is almost always false.

“I’m glad I caught you in,” she continued in the same brisk, businesslike manner. “I assume Dobrina’s out shopping?”

The judge nodded, making no other concession to civility.

Charly gave him a lawyer’s smile, cold and dangerous. “Well. I will need to speak with her later, but right now it’s you I’d like to talk to.” She chose a chair, an upholstered Queen Anne wing-back, and shifted it slightly to suit her.

She’d thought about it-whether she would sit or stand. Standing would give her a height advantage, of course, but then she’d be too much like a supplicant, coming before the lord of the manor hat in hand, while a chair, on the other hand, especially a comfortable one placed at a slight angle, would put her more in the position of equal.

She sat, crossed her legs and leaned back, outwardly relaxed. “If you have a minute…?”

Her father had placed his pipe in its ashtray and was rubbing absently at a spot on his chest just below his left shoulder. “I b’lieve everything that needs to be said between us has already been said.” His voice was heavier than she remembered it-thick and Southern as blackstrap molasses.

Charly determinedly brightened her smile. “Yes, well, apparently Dobrina doesn’t share your belief.” She paused a beat, then continued in a conversational tone, “I suppose you heard about me getting arrested last night?”

The flash of surprise in his eyes gave her a brief moment’s satisfaction, before he closed them and said in quiet disgust, “Oh, my Lord.”

“No?” Her face felt rigid. How much longer could she maintain the smile? “Well, I guess the local news must be runnin’ a little slow this morning. Yeah, it seems that while you and I were having our little tête-à-tête yesterday, Dobrina took my purse out of my car-” she ignored his exclamation of disbelief “-and replaced it with an open bottle of Black Jack. And then, just to make sure that didn’t get overlooked by the proper authorities, after I left she called them up and reported my rental car stolen.”

The judge shook his head and muttered under his breath, something about lies, replete with distaste. “Now, why on earth would ’Brina do such a thing?”

“I don’t know,” Charly said lightly, “maybe you can ask her when she gets home. Personally I think she just underestimated my resources. See, I believe she thought, since I’d been away from this town for so long, that I wouldn’t know anybody else, and if I were arrested with no ID and no money, I’d have no choice but to call you for help.” She made an ironic clicking sound with her mouth: C’est la guerre.

“Failing that, well, there was always Plan B. Dobrina’s a smart lady. She knew that eventually I’d have to come back here to get my purse-by the way, you haven’t seen it around anywhere, have you? No? Well, I expect she’ll be back soon.

“In the meantime I’ve had time to do a little bit of thinking, and I’ve decided that, misguided though her actions were, Dobrina was right about one thing.”

She paused, and felt as if she’d scored a victory when he murmured on cue, “Which is?” It was a small but gratifying shift in the balance of power.

She replied quietly, “That you and I have some unfinished business to attend to.”

He made a sound somewhere between a hiss and a snort and rocked back in his chair, his hands gripping the arms almost spasmodically. His voice was harsh, his face contorted, drained of color.

Charly surged forward, pressing her advantage like a street fighter. “Look, you can hide your head in the sand all you want, but do you really think for one minute, now that I’ve seen those pictures on your mantelpiece, that you can just make me go away?” Her voice had begun to tremble and her heart was hammering painfully. Careful, Charly, careful. Whatever you do, keep it businesslike. Remember, you are your own attorney. With a valiant effort she reined in her emotions and sat back once more.

“I want to make you a proposition.”

Her father’s lips curled disdainfully. “You’re in no position to be making anything of the sort.”

“No,” said Charly quietly, “I don’t think you have that quite right. It’s you who are in no position to deny me.” She paused. Her father glared at her in frigid silence. His eyes, his face, even his skin color seemed to have frozen. She took a breath. “I believe you know what I want. I want to see him.”

She could hear his breathing-short, shallow gasps. It suddenly occurred to her that he looked awful-even ill. She felt a quiver of doubt, uncertainty. But then his lips curved and his eyelids dropped to half-mast, and he said in that viscous drawl, “What makes you think he’d want to see you?”

The calculated cruelty of it nipped any concerns she might have had for him in the bud. Killed them dead, like peach blossoms in a March blizzard. Once again, just as she had the last time she’d faced this man, she felt herself go cold and still. “What have you told him?” she whispered. “About me?”

He jerked back, pretending insult. “I told him the truth.”

“The truth?” And suddenly she was on her feet and leaning toward him across his desk, all resolve forgotten. “You don’t know the truth!”

His eyes flew wide. “Don’t I?” He coughed, then drew himself up, pressing down on the arms of his chair, his voice rising as he did. “Which truth am I in ignorance of? The fact that his mother was a spoiled, selfish girl whose wanton behavior destroyed her own reputation and one of the finest families in this town? Or the fact that she abandoned her child the day he was born and then ran away? Nevah once looked back?”

Charly was trembling so hard that, but for her hands braced on the desktop, she doubted she could have kept her feet. She was seething with rage, words sizzling like hot coals on her tongue. “I will…see…my…son.”

“Selfish, spiteful girl.” Her father all but spat the words at her. “Have you no shame?”

She was too angry to recoil. “Have you? I did not abandon my son, and you know it. I gave him up for adoption-on the advice of so many supposedly wise and compassionate people, not the least of which was my own father! And I did it-” she sucked in a desperate breath “-I did it so he could have the kind of warm, loving home I never had.”

“How…dare…you-”

“How dare you! What did you do, Your Honor? Did you use your judicial power and connections to gain custody of my son? Did you adopt him yourself? In God’s name, why? Why would you do such a thing?” He didn’t answer, just stared at her from a frozen half crouch, his face like stone. Sensing victory, she straightened and gave a high bark of laughter.

“Did you actually think you’d be a better father to him than I would have been a mother? How? How could you, when you were never a father to me, your only daughter? How could you possibly think you could give him more love than I could, when you never gave me any? Whatever love and affection I got, Dobrina gave me. You were never there for me-never.” The last word was a growl, harsh with pain. But there were no tears. There would be no more tears, not in front of him. Never again.

She turned away from him, her voice brittle now with self-control. “Did you know I used to sit in my room in the evenings, doing my homework, getting ready for bed, and I’d look out my window to see if I could see the light in your office window, just so I could feel near you? But you never had time for me. You never listened to me. You just judged. Hell, you aren’t even listening to me now. You know that? When I walked in here, I was ready to compromise. All I wanted was to see him-not even to let him know who I am, just…introduce me as a distant cousin, or something, I don’t care. Just…to see him. But as always, you didn’t give me a chance to tell you that. You wouldn’t even listen.”

She had run out of words, finally. Shaking violently, gasping like a marathoner, she caught her breath and held it, fighting to regain control and somehow slow her runaway heartbeat. And in that sudden stillness, she heard a faint choking sound.

She turned, jerky and off balance, like a malfunctioning windup toy, and felt herself go numb with shock. Her father was lying across his desk in a half crouch, his arms clutched to his chest. What she could see of his face was a dreadful, slaty blue.

Charly never did remember much about what she did then. The next thing she knew, she was on her knees beside her father, who was lying flat on his back on the floor, and she was blowing into his open mouth, and pumping away at his chest with all her might and saying furiously, in time to the beats, “Don’t… you… dare…die. Don’t… you… dare… die. Dammit, I’m… not… finished… yet.”