“Oh damn. What does it matter if I'm alone?” She stood up briskly and stared at herself in the mirror as she said the words, and then in irritation she picked up her camera and almost caressed it. That was all she needed. She was just tired from the trip. It was stupid to worry about being lonely, about her future, about Peter.… With a sharp sigh, she climbed into bed. She had better things to think about, like her work.

She woke up shortly after six the next morning and was dressed and out of the house by seven thirty. When she arrived at Peter's office at nine, she had already been to the produce market and then the flower market to take pictures. She had added another shot to her series on Chinatown. And she had picked up Fred at the vet.

“My, don't you look chipper this morning—and beautiful. That's a marvelous coat.” Peter looked admiringly at the full-length coyote she had bought at a bargain price on a reservation in New Mexico. She wore it over jeans with a black turtleneck sweater and boots. And she had worn the black stetson until she got to his office. Now she held it in her hand for a moment, smiled at him in a way he had never seen before, and then poised over the wastebasket for only a fraction of a second, before crushing the hat into the bottom.

“And that, Dr. Gregson, is the last time I will ever wear a hat.”

He nodded. He understood just how important the gesture was. “You won't ever have to again.”

“Thanks to you.” She wanted to kiss him, but her eyes told him what he needed to know, and as she looked at him she realized that she had missed him on her trip. He was someone different to her now. He would no longer be her doctor after that morning. He would be her friend, and whatever else she let him become. They had not yet resolved that, no matter how often he told her he loved her. She had not yet taken the last step, and he had never pushed her. “I missed you, Peter.” She touched his arm softly as she sat down in the all too familiar chair, closed her eyes, and waited.

He watched her for a moment as he stood there, and then he took his usual seat on the little swivel stool in front of her. “You're in a hurry this morning.”

“After twenty months, wouldn't you be too?”

“I know, darling, I know.” She heard the clink of the delicate instruments in the little metal pan, and she felt the tape being pulled slowly from her forehead and her hairline. With every millimeter of skin it freed, she felt that much freer, until at last she felt nothing more, and she heard the little stool whoosh softly away from her. “You can open your eyes now, Marie. And go look in the mirror.” She had made that trip a thousand times. At first only to see a tiny glimpse, a hint, a promise, and then bigger pieces of the puzzle. But she had never seen Marie Adamson's face free of tape, or stitches, or some reminder of what was being done. She had not seen her face completely bare since it had been the face of Nancy McAllister nearly two years before. “Go on. Take a look.”

It was crazy. She almost afraid to. But silently, she stood up and walked slowly to the mirror, and then she stood there with a broad smile, and a narrow river of tears gleaming on her face. He stood behind her, at a good distance. He wanted to leave her alone. This was her moment.

“Oh God, Peter, it's beautiful.”

He laughed softly. “Not ‘it's’ beautiful, silly girl. You're beautiful. It is you, you know.”

She could only nod and then turn to look at him. It wasn't so much that her face had changed without the few strips of tape on her forehead, but that it was over. She was entirely Marie now. “Oh Peter …” Without saying more, she walked into his arms and held him tight. They stood there that way in his office for a long time, and then he pulled away and gently wiped her tears. “Look, I can even get wet and I don't melt.”

“And you can take the sun, though not excessively. And you can do anything you want to for the rest of your life. What's first on the agenda?”

“Work.” She chuckled and sat down on the little swivel stool he had abandoned, and with her legs tucked up under her chin she spun herself around.

“God, she's going to break a leg in my office. That's all I need.”

“If I do, I'm walking out of here anyway, love. I have a life to celebrate this morning.”

“I'm glad to hear it.” And apparently Fred was, too. He jumped up, wagged his tail, and barked, as though he had understood what she had said. They both laughed and Peter stooped to pat his head. “Are we still having lunch?”

There was an anxious look in his eyes and she was touched. She understood what he was feeling, too. Abandonment Anxiety. Would she still want him in her life when she didn't need him anymore? He looked very vulnerable to her as he stood there, and she held out a hand to him. “Of course we're having lunch, silly. Peter …” Her eyes held fast to his. “There will always be time in my life for you. Always. I hope you know that You're the only reason I have a life.”

“No. Someone else is responsible for that.” Marion Hillyard. But he knew how much she hated to hear the older woman's name, so he didn't say it. He never understood why Marie reacted that way, but he humored her on that point. “I'm glad I was around to help. I always will be, if you need me… for… for other things.”

“Good. Then see that you feed me at twelve thirty.” The conversation had been serious enough. She stood up and shrugged her way into the new coyote coat. “Where shall we meet?”

He suggested a new restaurant down at the docks, where they could watch the tugboats and ferries and tankers cruising by on the bay, and the hills of Berkeley beyond. “Does that sound all right to you?”

“It sounds perfect. I may just hang around down there all morning and do some shooting.”

“I'd be disappointed if you did anything else.” He swept open the examining room door with a bow, and she winked as she left, but she did not go straight to the docks as she had said. Instead, went downtown to shop. Suddenly, she wanted to buy something fabulous to wear to lunch with Peter. It was the most special day of her life, and she wanted to enjoy every bit of it. In the cab, she glanced at her check-book and was grateful for the money she had made before Christmas on some of her work. It would allow her to be extravagant for herself, and to buy Peter something as well.

She found a pale fawn cashmere dress which molded her figure breathtakingly beneath the fur coat, and she stopped at the hairdresser and let him do her hair. It was the first time in years that she had worn it back, revealing her whole face. She bought big wonderful gold earrings at the costume jewelry bar, and a beige satin rope with a gold seashell on it. Beige suede shoes and a bag, and the perfume she had always loved best, and she definitely looked ready for lunch with Dr. Peter Gregson. Or just about anyone else. She was a woman who would have stopped any man's heart.

Her last stop was at Shreve's where, as though by prearranged plan, she found precisely what she had wanted but hadn't known she would ever find. It was a little gold face made up as a watch fob, and she knew that Peter had a pocket watch he was fond of and occasionally wore. She would have the date engraved in it for him later, but for the moment this would have to do. She had it gift wrapped, hailed a cab, and arrived at the restaurant just as he was sitting down. She thought she might explode with joy as watched his face while she approached. There were a number of others in the restaurant who watched her appreciatively too, but none with the tenderness of Peter Gregson.

“Is it really you?”

“Cinderella at your service. Do you approve?”

“Approve? I'm overwhelmed. What did you do all morning? Run around shopping?”

“But of course. This is a special day.”

She did things to his feelings that he had thought couldn't be done. He wanted to kiss her there, in the restaurant. Instead he held tightly to her hand, and smiled a long happy smile. “I'm so glad you're happy, darling.”

“I am. But not just because of the face. There's the show tomorrow, and … and my work, and my life … and … you.” She said the last word very softly.

The moment meant so much to him that he could only make light of it. “I come after all those things, eh? What about Fred?”

They both laughed and he ordered Bloody Marys for the two of them, and then he thought better of it and changed the order to champagne.

“Champagne? Good heavens!”

“Why not? And I closed the office for the afternoon. I'm as free as can be—unless, of course—” He hadn't even thought of it—“you have other plans.”

“Doing what for God's sake?”

“Working?” He felt sheepish for even asking.

“Don't be ridiculous. Let's go do something fun today.”

He laughed at her answer. “Like what? What would you like to do most?”

She tried to think and couldn't come up with anything, and then she looked at him with a broad smile.

“Go to the beach.”

“In January?”

“Sure. This is California after all, not Vermont. We could drive over to Stinson, and go for a walk.”

“All right. You're certainly easy to please.” But beach walks with him had become special to her and she wanted a special place to give him her gift. She wasn't sure if she could hold out till then. But she did. She waited until late that afternoon, when they were walking hand in hand along the windswept beach. The furcoat protected her from the stiff breeze that was coming in with the fog.

“I have something for you, Peter.” He looked at her in surprise as she stopped walking, as though he didn't quite understand, and then she pulled out the little gift-wrapped box. “I'll have it engraved, if you like it.”