“Would you help me even if I continued to oppose you?” Ashley asked.

Miles looked sad. “This isn’t a bribe, Ashley. I’m trying to get you to realize that Casey is not coming back. I want what’s best for both of you, and you should be making up for the time you’ve lost.”

“Thank you, Miles. Let me think about what you’ve said. I’ll visit Casey tomorrow. Maybe seeing her will help me decide what to do.”

Miles saw the waiter arriving with their meals. “Fair enough,” he said. “I promise not to mention the guardianship again.”

Over dinner, Miles told her a series of fascinating stories about his book tour. Ashley drank a little too much wine and found herself laughing hysterically when Miles recounted a bizarre negotiation with a pair of unscrupulous movie producers who claimed to have Tom Cruise and Jennifer Lopez lined up to play Joshua Maxfield and Casey.

Miles asked her about her years abroad. Ashley told him about her travels but was sober enough to keep any important details from him. By the end of the meal, she’d forgotten the serious way the evening started.

Miles waited outside with Ashley while the valet got their cars. When she was about to leave, he gave her a hug and a brotherly kiss on her cheek. A light rain was falling, with more and heavier rain forecast for the next day. Ashley switched on her wipers and concentrated on the road. Occasionally, she glanced in her rearview mirror. A pair of headlights shone in it. She paid no attention to them, because the things that Miles had said about Casey over dinner distracted her.

Was Casey Van Meter really as cold, calculating, and insensitive as Miles claimed? Had Norman meant so little to her? Had getting rid of her own child meant so little to her? If she was this uncaring, how would she react to Ashley if she did survive her coma?

Ashley knew that Terri had loved her unconditionally. There had never been a moment when she doubted that love. So who was really her mother? Did giving birth make you a mother in any but the technical sense? Was Terri, who raised her, loved her, and cared for her any less her mother simply because she had not borne Ashley?

Ashley turned onto a side street and noticed that the headlights in her mirror were still behind her. Alarm chased away her thoughts about Casey. She decided to make a few random turns to see if the car stayed with her. It did. She tried to convince herself that no one was following her, but it was too much of a coincidence that the other car was driving a random route that mirrored hers. She made a sudden U-turn. Her tires squealed on the wet pavement. As she drove past the other car, she stared at the driver’s window, but the rain streaks and the darkness obscured the driver’s face.

Ashley drove fast until she was certain that she’d lost her tail. Then she headed to her apartment as quickly as she could. Her heart was racing, and it didn’t slow down until she was inside, behind locked doors. She rushed to her window before turning on the lights and studied the street below for any sign that someone was watching her apartment. There was no one standing in the rain, and there were no suspicious cars.

As Ashley got ready for bed, she tried to remember everything she could about the ride home. By the time she fell asleep, she half-believed that the tail had been a figment of her imagination.

It was raining when Ashley woke up. She dressed in sweats, dark glasses, and a hooded windbreaker, and walked two blocks to a local coffee shop for breakfast. After breakfast, she planned to go to Sunny Rest and visit Casey Van Meter.

The coffee shop sold The Oregonian. She picked up a copy and slid into a booth. The waitress took her order, and she opened the paper. Her face stared back at her from the front page. It was an old photo, taken when she was in high school. She glanced around to see if anyone was staring at her, but no one in the restaurant seemed to have made the connection between the blond athlete in the newspaper and the dark-haired woman in the rear booth.

MISSING WITNESS RETURNS TO BATTLE FOR SLEEPING BEAUTY’S $40,000,000 FORTUNE, the headline screamed. Ashley blinked and reread the figure. The byline of the article belonged to the woman who had tried to interview her at the courthouse. According to the story, which summarized the hearing, rehashed the murder case, and recapped Miles’s rise to literary fame, the person who was appointed Casey’s guardian would control a fortune estimated at forty million dollars. Jerry Philips had never mentioned that little bit of trivia. Forty million! Ashley couldn’t imagine that much money. She’d been living in low-rent apartments and getting by on baguettes, cheese, and cheap wine. Forty million dollars was caviar, penthouses, and yachts.

Ashley gulped down her breakfast and went back to her apartment. As she showered and changed, she wondered what she would be allowed to do with Casey’s money if the court appointed her as the dean’s conservator and guardian. Jerry had told her that she could use Casey’s money to pay for her care at the nursing home, but he hadn’t told her anything else about a guardian’s powers. Would she have to decide how to invest Casey’s money? Would she be able to use the money for her own needs? Ashley decided that she needed to know the answers to these questions. And she needed to know one other answer. If she was Casey’s daughter, and Casey died, would she inherit some of Casey’s fortune? If she was an heir to millions, how could she put herself in a position to decide whether Casey lived or died?

Ashley drove through suburban Portland in the pouring rain to the Sunny Rest retirement community. The complex was surrounded by housing developments and shopping centers. It was large, and a road ran through it. On one side of the road were independent-living apartments for retirees who could still take care of themselves. The sprawling one-story complex across from the apartments was for assisted living.

Ashley found a spot in the last row of Sunny Rest’s large parking lot. She dashed through the rain and was drenched by the time she made it through the front door. Water ran off her windbreaker onto the tile floor, and her pants were spotted and stained by the rain. When she finally paid attention to her surroundings, she felt queasy. The hospital smell had something to do with it, but most of her discomfort was caused by the stares of the elderly people in the lobby. Some of them pushed walkers in front of them, others sat in wheelchairs. They were all frail; their veins were blue streaks under waxy, parchment-thin skin, their hair was white and sparse. Some of the residents stared at her with great intensity. Ashley had the eerie impression that their lives were so uneventful that her visit was seen as a major event. Several of the residents seemed lost in their own worlds, heads bobbing to a voice only they heard, or talking incoherently to someone only they could see.

Ashley was halfway to the reception desk when a woman wheeled over and smiled radiantly.

“Hello,” the woman said excitedly. “Are you Carmen? Have you come to visit me?”

A nurse hurried over and took hold of the wheelchair. She smiled apologetically at Ashley.

“Betty, this young lady isn’t Carmen. Carmen visits on Saturday.”

The nurse turned the wheelchair so Betty could not see Ashley. She kept up a steady patter as she wheeled her charge away. The receptionist gave Ashley directions to the wing where Casey was staying. To get there, Ashley had to walk by Betty again. The old woman looked up and smiled.

“Are you Carmen? Have you come to visit me?”

Ashley suppressed a shudder as she walked down a corridor lined with other chairs occupied by more elderly residents. The smell of disinfectant was strong, and the odd behavior of some of the residents unsettling. Ashley knew that she would be old someday, and she hoped that she would not end up in a place like this.