One My mother used to say that when she read me bedtime stories, my favorite time of the evening because I finally had her all to myself, I would stop her midway through and tell her what was going to happen to the characters whose lives she was spinning for me. The stories I guessed correctly I had her read to me over and over. The few that I couldn''t I put in the back of the bookshelf, never to come off it again. Of course, the biggest ending I never saw coming came just over a year ago, the day my husband and business partner-and the love of my life for as long as I could remember-sat me down and told me that although he loved me and always would, he kept thinking there must be something more, for both of us. I deserved better, Brian told me, tears I''d never seen before streaming down his face. I deserved someone who was crazy about me. Making it heart-twistingly clear, as if he already hadn''t, that he wasn''t. So I moved back into my childhood home three doors down from ours to take care of my mother in the final days of her illness, my life coming full circle as Brian and I wound up right back where we''d started-best friends and neighbors, now sharing a family law practice.

I''ve always been good at endings. Maybe it was in my blood. My great-grandparents had partnered with Brian''s decades ago in founding our estate planning law firm, and for generations my family had concerned itself with the end of things-the only certain, predictable part of life. The one you couldn''t prevent, but you could plan for. There was something comforting in helping people do that. Death-the ultimate ending-was a constant presence in our family''s life, as much a daily part of our household as my mother and I were. Maybe more, after my dad was gone. Which might have been why I wasn''t frightened or horrified or even particularly surprised when I waded through the unshoveled snow on Dorothy Fielding''s walkway, grasped the icy wrought-iron knob on her solid-wood front door, and let myself in to find her sitting upright in a faded floral silk armchair, her eyes wide-open and staring at nothing-or perhaps, finally, at everything.

Ignoring the thickly sweet rotten smell that seemed to smother me in the stuffy heat of her house after the chill outside, I walked to Mrs. Fielding and crouched in front of her still form, looked into her glassy eyes, and placed a hand over her cool one clutching the arm of the chair as if she meant to push herself out of it as soon as she caught the breath she''d never draw again. We''d talked about this chair she was in-a Hepplewhite antique that had been in her family for generations, which she wanted to bequeath to a cousin in Springfield. The silk upholstery was faded and frayed at the edges-she knew it needed to be redone, but hadn''t had the chance to save up for the pricey job. "Besides, I like the flowers," she''d told me in my office-one of the few positive comments she''d ever made. "It reminds me of Flevoland." Mrs. Fielding, who had terrorized children in our small Missouri town over since I was one of them by turning her watering hose on any who dared to dip a foot onto her manicured yard, even if we''d only lost our balance on the sidewalk and tripped a little (as I could attest after one thorough shin soaking), confided to me during our estate planning in an unguarded moment that she had dreamed of seeing the bright cups of tulips blanketing five thousand rolling acres in Noordoostpolder at the spring tulip festival but never saved enough to go.

She''d had to pay for the care of her brother, who suffered from schizophrenia, after her parents had passed away penniless from the costs of his lifelong treatment and therapy. "Besides, who would have made sure those lazy nurses at Franklin''s home wouldn''t leave him to starve to death while I was off gallivanting through the tulip fields in the Netherlands?" she''d griped to me. Dorothy Fielding was as charitable as she was cheerful. I knew all of these details about her-as well as others: that her house had been completely paid for until she had had to take out a second mortgage on it, and then a third, for Franklin''s continuing care; that she had still somehow managed to save a few dollars here and there-sometimes literally-that sat glacially growing in a certificate of deposit at Sugarberry First National Bank because she didn''t trust Wall Street or national chains. Our only local financial institution was run by the Faraday family, who lived in town and so "they know they''d better take good care of my money because Sarabeth Faraday has to look me in the eye every Sunday at church," Mrs. Fielding told me. I knew she''d never touched that account except to salt in her irregular deposits, and that despite its having been started in 1989, the balance was only $3,410.97.

In my line of work in our small town I learned some of the most intimate details of many of the people I''d grown up knowing all my life, but it was a patchwork quilt, as with Mrs. Fielding. Some things people told me I suspected even their dearest friends didn''t know-Mrs. Fielding, for instance, had left her house and everything in it (except the chair) to a seeming stranger she had never met who lived in Arizona, and I may have been the only person in Sugarberry who knew that the woman was the daughter Mrs. Fielding had been forced by her parents to give up for adoption when she found herself pregnant at seventeen. Yet I did not know her favorite color, the best day of her life, or the name of her first love, who had fathered the child and then left for college and never returned. Such things rarely came up in my work. I reached up and gently pressed the woman''s crepey eyes closed.

But the one thing I knew most clearly of all was this: Despite the finality of one person''s ending, life went on for everyone else. So I would call Ben Ferguson to come and do the official pronouncement of death and take her to the county morgue. I would call her cousin Mandy Yeager, a woman Mrs. Fielding had spoken of often, with a hard glint to her pale green eyes and a smug smile on her creased face that I didn''t understand until she gleefully specified the sole bequeathal of the Hepplewhite chair: "Because I told Mandy she could have Grandmother''s chair over my dead body, and I''m nothing if not a woman of my word." Mrs. Fielding had taken that vow to the extreme, I reflected, breathing through my mouth as I looked at where her body sat slumped in that same chair, thinking that new upholstery might not be enough to get the smell of her decomposing body out of the antique for Ms. Yeager. I would also call the group home in St.

Louis. Although Franklin Fielding had passed away the previous year, I hoped there might still be people on the staff used to seeing his sister several times a week for so long who might want to take a moment to honor her passing. Not that I was counting on that. I''d turn down the thermostat to dissipate the stifling heat that was baking poor Mrs. Fielding like a pie, and then knock on Marbelle Mason''s door two houses over and let her know that she had been right about Mrs. Fielding perhaps needing someone to check on her. Mrs. Mason had cornered my cart in the soup aisle at Dierbergs the night before and told me her neighbor''s porch light hadn''t been turned off for two days running-"And some may say what they like about Dorothy-never me, of course-but one thing she is not is wasteful.

" Mrs. Mason liked to think she had her finger on the pulse of Sugarberry, and she generally arrowed straight toward me in the eternal hope that I might offer some juicy insights about our clients that she hadn''t managed to dig up any other way. She always left with a hurt look of disapproval on her face when I redirected the conversation. After all that, I would stop at Sweet Stuff Bakery before heading into the office; it was my day to pick up Friday doughnuts. And then after work I''d rush home and wait for my husband. Late last night, as I lay in bed waiting for sleep, my phone rang and I lit up as bright as the screen when I saw Brian''s name. "I hope it isn''t too late to call." His voice slid over me, soft and warm and comforting as the childhood blanket I still slept under.

"Of course not," I said, cradling the phone to my cheek. "So, listen, I ." Brian cleared his throat, and I could tell he was nervous. "I was hoping we might get together tomorrow evening and . talk." I sat up, feeling a pulse leap in my neck. We hadn''t ". talked" about anything deeper than the day-to-day running of the practice for quite some time, defaulting to a hale cheeriness with each other that felt like skating on plastic.

"I''m free tomorrow night." As if there were anything on earth I wouldn''t cancel. "What time?" "How about I knock on your door?" "Okay," I said, trying to control the tremor in my voice. "I''ll be around." It was too late for Dorothy Fielding to get what she''d always dreamed of. But maybe not for me. Two I knew what I''d done a.