He asked her some questions about the interior design business in Virginia. It turned out his mother had been a decorator.

“Where?” she asked.

“ Boston.”

“No kidding! That’s where the McCalls are from.” She pointed to some pictures of her family in front of Old Ironsides and in their front yard, the Prudential building towering over the skyline in the background.

“Sure,” he said. “I thought I detected a bit of accent. I’m driving the car to the party…

She laughed.

“You miss it?” he asked.

“No. We moved here when I was ten. The South definitely appeals to me more than New England.”

“To the extent this is the South,” he offered.

“That’s true.”

He took her glass and refilled it. He handed it back and leaned against the island, glanced at the expensive stainless-steel utensils. “I love to cook,” he said. “It’s a hobby of mine.”

“Me too. It’s relaxing to open some wine, come out to the kitchen and start slicing and dicing.”

He lifted the heavy Sabatier butcher knife and tested the edge carefully with his thumb. Nodded. “Sharp knives are-”

“-safer than dull ones,” she said. “My mother taught me that.”

“Mine too,” he said, weighing the knife in his hand for a moment, studying the blade carefully. Then he set it on the table. “Should we go back in the other room?”

“Sure.”

He nodded toward the door. She preceded him into the living room. Bett sat on the couch and he walked over to the bookshelves, looked at her collection of crystals and several boxes of tarot cards.

He chided, “Didn’t you know you’re supposed to keep your tarot cards wrapped in silk?”

“You know about that?” She laughed.

“Sure do.”

“I was really into the occult a long time ago.” She smiled and realized that she was relaxing for the first time all day. “I was kind of crazy when I was young.”

“You look embarrassed. You shouldn’t be. I think our spiritual side’s as important as our physical and our psychic sides. I use a holistic approach in my treatment. A lot of times I’ll prescribe herbs-they have both organic and psychosomatic effects.”

“I try to use them whenever I can,” Bett said.

“If my patients need something I’d rather it was Saint-John’s-wort instead of Prozac.”

He was a doctor who felt this way? How often had she explained these things to doctors, or to friends, or to Tate, only to be met with a politely wary gaze-at best.

Dr. Peters continued. “It makes a lot of sense to me. Take tarot cards… do they predict the future? Well, in a way they do. They make us look at who we are, where we fit in with the godhead or the Oversoul-”

“Oh, you know Emerson?” she asked, pointing to a book of his writings.

Dr. Peters walked to it and pulled the volume off the shelf He flipped through it, held up the book and showed her the title of an essay “The Oversoul.” “I’ve been reading him since college… I think fortune-telling makes us look at where we fit in with the life force, what our relationships are like, makes us question where we’re going. That has to affect our future.”

“That’s true,” she said, feeling warm and comfortable. She sipped more wine. “That’s what I’ve always felt. Most people don’t get it. They just make fun of the Madame Zostra’s fortune-telling stuff It’s not fair. My ex…”

But she decided to let the thought die. And Dr. Peters didn’t push her to finish.

The doctor was looking at her bookshelf, head cocked sideways. Pointing out volumes. “Ah, Joseph Campbell. That’s very good. Sure, sure…You know Jung?”

“Sort of, not really.”

“About the archetypes? There are certain persistent myths we see surfacing in people’s lives. The Arthurian legend-you know it?”

Know it? she thought, laughing to herself I lived it.

“T. H. White, Camelot, the whole thing.” She pointed out an old copy of The Once and Future King.

“What a book that is,” he said. “Oh, and The Mists of Avalon,” nodding at the book.

“The best,” she said enthusiastically. Remembering how Tate didn’t have time for any of this. She found the old angers and resentments churning up again and recalled how much comfort she’d found in the New Age world. Here was a man who truly understood her. It was so refreshing…

Dr. Peters tapped his glass to hers and they sipped. Her glass was nearly empty. Yet she didn’t feel drunk, she felt elated. He sat down close to her. “Um, Bert… I don’t know how much Megan told you about me.”

“Nothing, really. But she didn’t want to talk about her therapy sessions. That’s what we were going to do today, Tate and I. Meet her for lunch and find out how it was going.”

He nodded. He was really quite a handsome man, well built. Interior designer Bett McCall thought: Proportions are everything.

“Dr. Hanson saw her more frequently than I did. But I wanted to come over tonight and just talk to you about her a little. Try to reassure you.”

Oh, I’ll take that. Anything you want to give me in the reassurance department, I’ll take.

“Have you heard anything from her?” he asked.

“Not a word. But there are some funny things going on.”

“What sort of things?”

‘We think maybe somebody was following her. My husband… my ex-husband thinks it might have to do with a case he’s working on. He thinks the man he’s suing is trying to distract him or something. I don’t know.”

“Any… what would they say on NYPD Blue? Any concrete leads?”

“Not really. But Tate’s been in touch with a friend of his at the police.”

“Oh, is that the detective who called me? He asked me a few questions about Megan. Um, what’s his name again?”

“Konstantinatis.”

“Right. Well,” he continued, pouring more wine, “I think you should know what I told him.”

“What’s that?”

“That I don’t think she’s in any danger.”

“Oh, did she say something to you about running away?” Bett asked quickly. “You’d tell me if she did.”

“Ordinarily that’d be confidential. But… yes, I would tell you. And she didn’t say anything specific about it though she was always talking about going to a big city like San Francisco or New York.”

“They found an Amtrak timetable in her car. She’d marked trains to New York.”

He nodded, as if a mystery had been explained. “I’d guess that’s what happened. No, I’d say I’m positive that’s what happened. I really doubt there are stalkers or bogeymen out to get her.”

“Why’re you so sure?”

He didn’t answer her. Instead he said, “I think we need more wine. I’ll get it. Okay?”

“Sure.”

Dr. Peters vanished into the kitchen. He returned a moment later, sat down and poured. After a moment he asked, “How does your husband feel about his daughter?”

“Tate’s…“ She groped for words.

He supplied one. “Indifferent?”

“Yes. He’s never been very involved with Megan.”

“I understand that. But why?”

She now looked at the crystal ball. In it was captured the orange glow from a wall lamp. She stared at the distorted trapezoid of light and said, “Tate wanted to be his grandfather. He was a famous lawyer and judge in the area. He had a big family, a traditional lifestyle. Well, Tate wanted that-and a good, dependable farmwife.” She lifted her hands and slapped her thighs. “He got me instead. Big disappointment.”

“No, that’s not you.” The doctor smiled wryly. “I can see that. That was very unfair to you for him to expect that.”

“To me?” she asked. “Unfair?”

“Of course,” he offered as if it were obvious. “Your husband had a distorted level of expectations-based on a child’s view of the past- and he tried to project that onto you. I’ll bet he worked a lot, spent time away from home.”

“He did, yes. But I was busy too. My sister was sick-”

“Her heart condition.”

Oh, she could talk to this man for hours! She’d met him only thirty minutes ago and yet he knew her. Knew her better than Tate did-even after all those years of marriage.