Free Tightrope Walker by Dorothy Gilman

be more explicit. “I’m going with you to Maine,” he said, pointing to a dufflebag at his feet that I hadn’t noticed in my shock. “Unless you mind?”
    “Mind!” I gasped. “But your parents!”
    He said with a shrug, “No problem. I drove down Wednesday to wish them another thirty-five years of connubial bliss and got back last night. Told them I just couldn’t make it over the weekend for the big event.”
    I must have looked as dazed as I felt—after all, I’d lost him, attended the funeral services, mourned him and buried him by now—because he added patiently, “Look, Amelia, if Hannah’s top priority for you right now I’ll make her mine, too, but only for a little while, you understand? For that matter I may have to be back here Wednesday for a court case but I’m yours until then. I think this is what’s called compromise.”
    I could have told him that it was also generosity but I only grinned from ear to ear and said, “I’m so awfully glad to see you, Joe. Would you like to drive first, or shall I?”

PART II
    “Beware all greedy men, Colin, for who knows where they will stop? If they envy you your fine pendant of jade and feathers, who’s to know if they will bargain for it, snatch it, or kill you?”
    The Magistrate, in
The Maze in the Heart of the Castle

6
    There was no Greenwood Hospital in Portland but there was a private psychiatric hospital five miles out of town called Greenacres. It was a gently aging building of rosy brick surrounded by improbably green lawns, like Astroturf, except that they had to be real because a man was mowing to the south of the building. I swung the van into the parking space labeled VISITORS ONLY and turned off the ignition. “So,” I said brightly, “we’re here.”
    “We’re here, and it’s all yours,” Joe reminded me, pointedly bringing out his paperback copy of
Astronomy for the Layman.
“Good luck, bon voyage and all that.”
    He said the last very dryly because we’d talked andargued for several hours about how I was going to get inside to see Leonora Harrington if she was here; we’d phoned to learn the Sunday visiting hours but we’d not dared ask if she was a patient. It was Joe’s theory that in any private hospital, considering its astonomical costs, no one was going to allow a presumptuous and impertinent young stranger to bother a patient without a darn good reason. Unfortunately neither of us had been able to think of one.
    And so it was up to me. Naturally.
    I walked up the wide, shallow cement steps to the huge door, half wood, half glass. Looking in before I entered I could see that it looked just like any hospital: there was a brightly lighted reception counter on the left, with clipboards and a switchboard, and a waiting room on the right. The only difference was that the reception counter was Italian marble and mahogany, and the waiting room was done in shades of mauve, purple and pink. Sunday visiting hours began at two o’clock, and since it was now two-ten the waiting room was empty, the only person in sight a nurse in very starched white behind the counter. She looked young, earnest, and new.
    I said politely, “Good afternoon, I’ve come to see Miss Leonora Harrington if she’s receiving visitors today.”
    The girl’s friendly smile turned startled.
“Miss Harrington?”
    “Yes. Unless of course she’s—”
    “Oh no, it’s just she never has—” The girl stopped, flushed, and began again. “That is, usually no one except—I’ll have to check it out, would you mind waiting a minute?”
    She was even more inarticulate than I at my worst.
    A very severe-looking middle-aged nurse was produced next, who proved to be more articulate. “I’m Mrs.Dawes,” she announced. “Are you a member of Miss Harrington’s family?”
    Hers was the cold voice of authority, and her gaze was sharp enough to strip a person of pretensions, illusions, and confidence. I am very familiar with the type: they like helpless