“Tell me about the tower,” Jamie said. “Did you build it to make the house look like a castle?”

“Nope. I built it so I could have a private place. Sometimes I would invite one of the gentlemen visitors to meet me up there. Now the only excitement I have is watching people out the windows. That and making the witch mad,” she added with a chuckle. “I watch you from up there. You and the pooch walk all the time with that boy following you in the truck.”

“Why do they keep you up there?” Jamie asked, not sure if she believed the woman.

“Because I’m a secret,” Mary Millicent said. “They don’t want a crazy old woman going around saying things she shouldn’t say and embarrassing Amanda. She’s on television now just like I used to be. Everyone would notice me when I walked into a restaurant or through an airport. People would come up to me and tell me they’d seen me preach on television, and they wanted me to bless them and to touch my hand. You want to touch my hand?”

“Sure,” Jamie said, taking one of Mary Millicent’s clawlike hands in her own. Her nails were carefully trimmed, as were her toenails. Her hair was combed. She had smelled before, but not now. Obviously someone was trying to look after her needs.

“Do you like me?” Mary Millicent asked, tilting her head to one side.

Jamie started to say that she didn’t know her very well, but the look on the old woman’s face was so beseeching, like a small child in search of a friend. “Of course, I like you,” she said.

Mary Millicent put her head on Jamie’s shoulder, and Jamie put her arms around her. Her skin felt like parchment. Jamie could see down the front of the lacy nightgown. Mary Millicent’s bony chest was flat with no flesh at all. Just baggy skin and two shriveled-up nipples.

Mary Millicent became so still that Jamie wondered if she was falling asleep. “Maybe you should go back to your room now?” she asked. “You don’t want the witch to find you here.”

“Will you sing with me first?”

“What would you like to sing?”

Mary Millicent began rocking back in forth in Jamie’s arms singing a familiar hymn. Jamie closed her eyes. She remembered standing next to her grandmother in church singing the very same hymn. In their simple little frame church.

“What a friend we have in Jesus,” Jamie sang along with her elderly visitor, “all our sins and grief to bear/ What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.”

At the end of the hymn, Mary Millicent kissed Jamie on the mouth, then, clutching her red purse and with Jamie’s help, she shakily rose to a standing position.

Jamie watched the barefoot, frail figure in a lacy black nightgown slowly make her away across the room.

“Good night,” Jamie called after her.

Without turning around, the woman waved a hand, then opened the door just an inch or two and peeked out into the hallway. Apparently assured that the hall was empty, she left, closing the door behind her.

“Seems we have a friend,” she told her dog. “How about you and me going back to bed?”

Before turning off the light, she opened the door and looked up and down the hall. There was no one in sight.

She locked the door, an act she distinctly remembered performing when she and Ralph came in from their evening foray into the backyard. It was a defiant act she performed nightly with Miss Montgomery in mind. Even though she realized the housekeeper had a passkey, Jamie wanted her to know that uninvited visitors were not welcome.

Mary Millicent also had a passkey, it seemed.

She assumed that Mary Millicent’s “witch” was Ann Montgomery. The designation made Jamie smile.

The next morning when she set out on her walk, Jamie wanted to turn and wave to Mary Millicent. She didn’t, of course. Someone might see her. When she reached the road, however, she looked toward the house-at the tower with its many narrow windows. Was Mary Millicent watching her?

After her walk, Jamie took Ralph to the apartment then headed back downstairs to the library. After her conversation with Mary Millicent, she wanted to study the pictures on the wall.

Yes, the pictures were definitely of a much younger Mary Millicent. Such a striking woman she had been-more stately and commanding than her daughter. She and her husband had been a handsome couple-like a duke and duchess.

She stopped in front of the picture of Mary Millicent in a pony cart with her two young children. Amanda was sitting on her mother’s lap with Gus beside them.

Not your usual family, Jamie thought as she studied picture after picture. Not with an oil baron, a politician who almost became president, and three generations of evangelists.

After viewing the pictures for several minutes, she realized she was not alone. She turned around, and there was Amanda Hartmann herself watching her from across the large room. She was sitting on a cushioned window seat, a stack of file folders in her lap. “Good morning, Jamie,” she said. “You’re looking well.”

“I didn’t realize you were here at the ranch,” Jamie said as she tentatively crossed the room.

“I have some things to take care of here, including a baptism and a wedding,” Amanda said with a welcoming smile. “And three of the Alliance board members are coming in tomorrow for a couple of days of hunting. Freda tells me that you’re progressing nicely with the pregnancy.”

Jamie nodded. “Apparently all is well.”

Amanda was simply dressed in jeans and a white cotton shirt. Her shining blond hair was pulled back into a smooth ponytail. She wondered if Amanda would see her mother while she was here. And if she and her brother really had banished Mary Millicent to the tower.

Amanda put aside the stack of files and reached for Jamie’s hand. “Come sit by me, Jamie dear.”

Once she was settled beside Amanda, Jamie asked, “Is your husband here with you?”

“Oh, yes,” Amanda said with a brilliant smile. “Toby and I are seldom apart. He’s out swimming laps now. He wanted me to join him-he’s not only my husband, he’s my personal trainer-but the sun is bad for my skin, and I prefer to swim after the sun goes down. It’s more romantic then, anyway,” she said and actually blushed. “Oh, my,” she said, putting her hands on her red cheeks. “You’d think I was a schoolgirl. Tell me, Jamie, have you ever been in love?”

“Not really,” Jamie said, but then to her surprise she began telling Amanda about Joe Brammer, who came to Mesquite to visit his grandparents and had never been her boyfriend but had been very nice to her. She paused, thinking she would explain that she was a lot younger than he was and that he had fallen in love with someone else. But she changed her mind and said instead, “I probably need to let you get back to your work.”

“Oh, I am always behind with my correspondence, it seems,” Amanda said with a wave of her hand. “Each of our donors deserves some sort of personalized response, but a few more minutes won’t matter,” she said.

“I guess it’s too early for you to show,” Amanda continued, patting Jamie’s tummy. “You look very trim. You’re not dieting or anything like that, are you?”

Jamie shook her head. “I lost weight while I was so nauseated, but I’ve gained all that back and more. I can’t button my jeans. I guess I’ll need to get some stretchy clothes.”

“I’ll see to that,” Amanda said. “I was very worried about you while you were so sick and so very grateful that you had Montgomery and Freda to look after you.”

“Yes, they were diligent.”

“You walk a lot, I understand,” Amanda said. “And swim laps.”

“I was swimming daily before I got sick, but now I mostly take my dog on long walks twice a day. We both enjoy it. And I’ve taken up bird watching.”

“That’s nice,” Amanda said, stroking Jamie’s cheek. “I had forgotten what a pretty girl you are. You remind me of a young Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.”