"I'll talk to you tomorrow." He gave her a brief kiss, and she watched him disappear down the hallway.

**********

The apartment was ablaze and the insistent sound of loud fire bells crashed abruptly through the silence. Tracy jerked upright in her bed, groggy with sleep, sniffing for smoke in the darkened room. The ringing continued, and she slowly became aware that it was the telephone. The bedside clock read 2:30 A.M. Her first panicky thought was that something had happened to Charles. She snatched up the phone. "Hello?"

A distant male voice asked, "Tracy Whitney?"

She hesitated. If this was an obscene phone call... "Who is this?"

"This is Lieutenant Miller of the New Orleans Police Department. Is this Tracy Whitney?"

"Yes." Her heart began to pound.

"I'm afraid I have bad news for you."

Her hand clenched around the phone.

"It's about your mother."

"Has--- has Mother been in some kind of accident?"

"She's dead, Miss Whitney."

"No!" It was a scream. This was an obscene phone call. Some crank trying to frighten her. There was nothing wrong with her mother. Her mother was alive. I love you very, very much, Tracy.

"I hate to break it to you this way," the voice said.

It was real. It was a nightmare, but it was happening. She could not speak. Her mind and her tongue were frozen.

The lieutenant's voice was saying, "Hello...? Miss Whitney? Hello...?"

"I'll be on the first plane."

**********

She sat in the tiny kitchen of her apartment thinking about her mother. It was impossible that she was dead. She had always been so vibrant, so alive. They had had such a close and loving relationship. From the time Tracy was a small girl, she had been able to go to her mother with her problems, to discuss school and boys and, later, men. When Tracy's father had died, many overtures had been made by people who wanted to buy the business. They had offered Doris Whitney enough money so that she could have lived well for the rest of her life, but she had stubbornly refused to sell. "Your father built up this business. I can't throw away all his hard work." And she had kept the business flourishing.