I have always had the desire to experience everything fully, so a kind of fascinated horror held me there. Tess and I talked about the uncertainties of life. After a while she calmed down and we strolled back into the recreation room. I looked at the cards still lying on Gerald's table and said, “I wonder what kind of a hand he was dealt.”

Tess looked at me strangely and said, “What does it matter now?”

“I don't know; I'm just curious.” I stepped over to his table. Nobody had touched anything since Gerald had collapsed. I gathered his cards, which were scattered; several were on the floor. As I put them together I saw only red suits on the cards that were face up.

When I had all 13 in a stack I fanned them out. Then I gasped. “Tess, look at this!”

Tess looked, then said, unbelievingly, “They're all diamonds!” She added, “Are you sure you have the right cards?”

“Yes. The other three hands are in neat piles.” I picked up each of the other hands and looked at it. They were fairly normally distributed, except that all had voids in diamonds. One hand held seven spades.

“Thirteen diamonds,” Tess said, shaking her head. “A dream hand. Maybe the shock of seeing it is what killed Gerald. Although I didn't know he had a weak heart. What are the odds against being dealt a hand like this?”

“I actually tried to figure that out once,” I said, “but my calculator couldn't take such a small decimal so I gave up. I can tell you that the average bridge player will not be dealt 13 of any suit in a lifetime.”

CHAPTER 2

Two days later, as Tess and I walked into the comfortable office of Carol Grant, I thought what I often thought about Carol-that she was one of those super-competent women who effortlessly run organizations and/or families.