"Hello?"

"Is this Mrs. Susan Grey?"

"She's not here at the moment. May I ask who's calling?"

"Is this Mrs. Jennifer Riker?"

"Yes, it is."

"Good morning, Mrs. Riker. This is Terence Lebrock."

"Oh, you're the executor of Bruce's will."

"That's correct. I just wanted to let you know that I sent a post office box key via overnight mail yesterday. You should be receiving it today."

"A post office box key? I'm not sure I understand."

"Dr. Grey kept a post office box in the main branch of the Los Angeles post office. I think it would be best if somebody clears out that box right away. There might be important papers in there." Jennifer thought for a moment. Odd that Bruce had a post office box in Los Angeles. Of course it could be the same one he had used during his two-year stint in the research department at UCLA, but why would he have saved it? She shrugged. It was probably another example of Bruce's compulsive personality.

"Don't worry, Mr. Lebrock. I'll clear it out today."

The silence was staggering. It filled the room, expanding, growing larger and larger until Sara was sure the walls around them were about to give way. First, there had been denial. How could it be? Michael had never experimented with homosexuality.

He had never been an intravenous drug abuser. He was not a hemophiliac who needed constant blood transfusions. He had slept with no one but Sara for six years. Any way you looked at it, Michael should have been a very healthy, thirty-two-year-old man.

Except he was not healthy. He was lying in a hospital bed with hepatitis B and a positive reading on an HIV test. His T cell count was dangerously low and the most obvious conclusion the doctors could draw was that Michael had received contaminated blood in the Bahamas after his boating accident.

He had AIDS.

She looked at him now. His handsome face showed no emotion, so strange for a man as filled with passion as Michael, a man who rarely hid thoughts and feeling behind a black expression. She thought about the first time she had seen that face, the first time she had ever spoken to him in person.

The door swung open and Beethoven's Sonata No. 32 in C minor escaped from the room and moved outside.

"Yes?" Michael said. He was surprisingly handsome, tall, of course, with broad shoulders. There was a towel draped around his neck, a glass of what looked like orange juice in his hand. Perspiration matted the ends of his hair together. He wiped his brow with the corner of the towel.

Sara nervously gripped her cane. She was about to stick out her right -hand for him to shake, but she suddenly realized that her palm was slick. Her honey-blond hair was tied back away from her face, accentuating her already prominent cheekbones.

"Good afternoon. My name is Sara Lowell."

He looked at her, startled.

"You're Sara Lowell?"

"You sound surprised." "I am," he said.

"You're not what I pictured."

"What did you picture?"

He shrugged.

"Something a little gruffer-looking, I guess."

"Gruffer- looking?"

"Yeah. Dark, curly hair. Cigarette dangling from lip with an ash about to fall off. Manual typewriter. Black sweater. A little on the meaty side."

"Sorry if I disappointed you."

"Hardly," he said.

"What are you doing here, Miss. Lowell?"

"Sara."

"Sara."

She sneezed.

"God bless you," he said.

"Thank you."

"Have a cold?"

She nodded.

"So what can I do for you, Sara?"

"Well," she began, "I'd like to come in and ask you a few questions."

"Hmmm. This whole scenario seems a tad familiar to me. Do you have a sense of deja vu too, Sara, or is it just me?"

"Depends."

"On?"

"On if you slam the door in my face like you slammed the phone in my ear." He smiled. "louche."

"Can I come in?"

"First, let me ask you a question," he said. He feigned taking a pencil out of his pocket and writing in a small notebook.

"Why the cane?"

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me," he continued in his serious, reporter-like voice.

"You're using a cane and you have a brace on your leg. What happened to you?"

"Playing role-reversal, Mr. Silverman?"

"Michael. Just answer the question, please."

"I was born prematurely, with permanent nerve damage in my foot."

"Was it bad when you were young?"

Her voice was soft.

"Not good."

She lifted her head and saw the gentle, almost soothing expression on his face. He'd have made a great interviewer, she thought, except there was an undeniable tension between them, a tension that was not all together unpleasant.

"You say you were born premature," he continued.

"Were there other complications?"

"Not so fast," she replied.

"My turn. When did you start playing basketball?"

"I don't know. When I was six or seven, I guess."

"Were you one of those kids who played all the time, who lived on the playground?"

"It was the best place to be," he replied.

"What do you mean?"

Michael did not answer.

"What were your other complications, Sara?"

"Lung infections," she said quickly. "So when did you start playing the piano?"

"When I was eight."

"Your parents hired a music teacher?"

A humorless smile came to his lips.

"No."

148 Haiian Coben

"Then who-"

"I think you'd better leave," he said.

"Let's change the subject."

"No."

"But I was just going to ask "

"I know what you were going to ask," Michael interrupted.

"How hard is this for you to understand? I don't want my personal life splashed all over the papers. Period."

"I just wanted to know the name of your piano teacher," she said.

"I thought you would want to give your teacher credit."

"Bullshit, Sara.

"Let's change the subject' is just another way of saying you want to try to attack from another angle. You figure if you keep probing, eventually you'll get what you want no matter what the cost."

"And what are the costs, Michael? Your story could give hope to thousands of children who are being abused "

"Jesus, how low will you stoop to get this story?"

"Don't flatter yourself," she replied.

"I want every story I'm assigned."

"Have you no ethics?"

Sara's fists clenched.

"Spare me the morality play. We reporters are great as long as we're telling the world what a wonderful guy you are. We're your best pals when we pat you on the back and help you get more endorsement money.

But oh, if we dare to criticize, if we dare to dig deeper "

"My personal life is none of anyone's goddamn business."

"Afraid I'll shatter your precious image? Afraid I'll make you look like something other than Superman?"

She could see him wrestling with his temper.

"Good- bye, Sara," he said with too much control.

"I really didn't want to do this."

"Go ahead. Slam the door in my face. I'll be back." "No," he said, "you won't."

"We'll see."

And then he closed the door in her face just as Sam let loose with another sneeze. Her breathing was shallow from the effects of her cold.

Sara wheezed, each drawn breath a painful struggle. She turned away from the door and huffed off.

"The man is a major league pain in the ass."

Back home, she began to re-read his file. As the words passed in front of her, her anger softened and then evaporated. Could she really blame him for being so defensive? His childhood read like something out of Oliver Twist. She sat back, laced her fingers behind her head, and sneezed again. Her breathing was still labored, even worse than before.

She had tried to dismiss it, but the truth was becoming more and more apparent. With something near terror, Sara knew what she had to do.

She reached for the phone and called her father.