In the night room Page 0,115

have done the first time.

Young woman, you appear to live on candy bars.

Anyhow, my darling girl came back, and we lived together in this house, and I adopted her, and we had tons of work to do, academically, personally, psychologically, but we got through it. I managed to scrape together enough money to get tutors for her, but she was so smart that she didn’t need them for long. Academic work came so naturally to her, and she turned out to be a whiz in science. The mental problems were a lot more difficult. At one time, both of us were seeing therapists. I see you nodding your heads, so you know how much a person can get out of therapy. Guy never understood, and I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been forced to do it, but I doubt that Lily would have gone as far as she has without it.

I think Lily is remarkable. She’s the best person I know, and in some ways, she’s really and truly the worst. I love her. She became so beautiful, I think Helen of Troy was based on her.

College? Oh yes, she got a wonderful scholarship to Northwestern. They paid for everything, textbooks, tuition, housing. Her grade point average was something like 3.98, because she got a B in something once, I forget what. Statistics, maybe. And when she got into Columbia medical school, a bunch of Northwestern alums, people who knew nothing about her background or her life story, pitched in and paid her tuition and all her other expenses. She got her M.D. in 1992, and specialized in pediatrics, and now she’s back in Millhaven, working as a pediatrician. That’s what she does. She takes care of other people’s children. She’s a great doctor, a brilliant doctor, and her patients adore her. So do their parents. You could have looked her up in the phone book, didn’t you realize that? Of course, you’d have to know her name. Lily Huntress, M.D.

That is by no means everything Diane Huntress told Timothy Underhill and his beloved creature Willy Patrick as they sat entranced upon her sturdy sofa, but it covers most of the high points. When time unlocked and resumed its flow, and the cars once again spiraled up and down Sundown Road and mailmen again jolted forward in their carts, Tim felt as though, unlike the journey that had brought him to Mercedes Romola, Diane Huntress’s had concluded in a completely unexpected place.

“Is she married?” he asked.

“Married? Good Lord, no. She’ll never marry. She’ll never write a book, either.”

“Is she happy?”

“I don’t think Lily understands the concept of happiness—it’s like a foreign language to her. She suffered greatly, and now she helps children, that’s her life. I think she thought of it as the most beautiful thing she could do. That’s the way her mind works.”

“Does she work with other doctors in a practice?”

“She works alone. Her practice is in two rooms of her house. She still has days when everything overwhelms her and she has to cancel all her appointments and reschedule her patients. She locks herself in her private rooms and deals with it. She knows I’d come in a second, but she doesn’t call me. She doesn’t call anybody.”

“What you did,” Tim said, “was like a miracle. It was a miracle. You rescued her.”

“She let me rescue her. I’ll tell you what I did, and I’m very clear on this. I hung in there. That’s what I did. I hung in there.”

From Timothy Underhill’s journal

“Well, you got some things right,” Willy said.

“I didn’t really get anything right,” I said. We were driving back toward the hotel, ringing with the emotions that had flowed through Mrs. Huntress’s living room. “Except you, I guess. I missed the boat with Lily, but with Willy I did just fine.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“How do you feel?”

“Light. Full of honeycomb spaces. It’s okay. I don’t mind. It doesn’t really hurt anymore.”

“It used to hurt?”

“Your whole body feels like one big funny bone, all over.”

“You never complained,” I said.

“I wish I were like her,” Willy said. “She sounds absolutely amazing.”

“No,” I said, “you don’t want to be like her. It’s much too complicated.”

“In contrast to the simple, sunny history you gave me.”

“You had the same childhood, with the same father,” I said.

“You should have made me a pediatrician. And you know what else you did? You made me pretty, but in a stupid way. You saw how she looked as a child. Imagine the way