A Will and a Way

with both hands. He’d had just as much success the first way as the second.
    As he saw it, Pandora wouldn’t respond to patience and posies. She wouldn’t go for being swept off her feet, either. With Pandora, he might just have to toss his two usual approaches and come up with a whole new third.
    An interesting challenge, Michael decided with a slow smile. He liked nothing better than arranging and rearranging plot lines and shifting angles. And hadn’t he always thought Pandora would make a fascinating character? So, he’d work it like a screenplay.
    Hero and heroine living as housemates, he began. Attracted to each other but reluctant. Hero is intelligent, charming. Has tremendous willpower. Hadn’t he given up smoking—five weeks, three days and fourteen hours ago? Heroine is stubborn and opinionated, often mistakes arrogance for independence.Hero gradually cracks through her brittle shield to their mutual satisfaction.
    Michael leaned back in his chair and grinned. He might just make it a play. A great deal of the action would be ad-lib, of course, but he had the general theme. Satisfied, and looking forward to the opening scene, Michael went back to work with a vengeance.
    Two hours breezed by with Michael working steadily. He answered the knock at his door with a grunt.
    “I beg your pardon, Mr. Donahue.” Charles, slightly out of breath from the climb up the stairs, stood in the doorway.
    Michael gave another grunt and finished typing the paragraph. “Yes, Charles?”
    “Telegram for you, sir.”
    “Telegram?” Scowling, he swiveled around in the chair. If there was a problem in New York—as there was at least once a week—the phone was the quickest way to solve it. “Thanks.” He took the telegram, but only flapped it against his palm. “Pandora still out in her shop?”
    “Yes, sir.” Grateful for the chance to rest, Charles expanded a bit. “Sweeney is a bit upset that Miss McVie missed lunch. She intends to serve dinner in an hour. I hope that suits your schedule.”
    Michael knew better than to make waves where Sweeney was concerned. “I’ll be down.”
    “Thank you, sir, and if I may say, I enjoy your television show tremendously. This week’s episode was particularly exciting.”
    “I appreciate that, Charles.”
    “It was Mr. McVie’s habit to watch it every week in my company. He never missed an episode.”
    “There probably wouldn’t have been a Logan’s Run without Jolley,” Michael mused. “I miss him.”
    “We all do. The house seems so quiet. But I—” Charles reddened a bit at the thought of overstepping his bounds.
    “Go ahead, Charles.”
    “I’d like you to know that both Sweeney and I are pleased to remain in your service, yours and Miss McVie’s. We were glad when Mr. McVie left you the house. The others…” He straightened his back and plunged on. “They wouldn’t have been suitable, sir. Sweeney and I had both discussed resigning if Mr. McVie had chosen to leave the Folley to one of his other heirs.” Charles folded his bony hands. “Will there be anything else before dinner, sir?”
    “No, Charles. Thank you.”
    Telegram in hand, Michael leaned back as Charles went out. The old butler had known him since childhood. Michael could remember distinctly when Charles had stopped calling him Master Donahue. He’d been sixteen and visiting the Folley during the summer months. Charles had called him Mr. Donahue and Michael had felt as though he’d just stepped from childhood, over adolescence and into adulthood.
    Strange how much of his life had been involved with the Folley and the people who were a part of it. Charles had served him his first whisky—with dignity if not approval on his eighteenth birthday. Years before that, Sweeney had given him his first ear boxing. His parents had never bothered to swat him andhis tutors wouldn’t have dared. Michael still remembered that after the sting had eased, he’d felt like part of a family.
    Pandora had been both bane and fantasy during his adolescence. Apparently that hadn’t changed as much as Michael had thought. And Jolley. Jolley had been father, grandfather, friend, son and brother.
    Jolley had been Jolley, and Michael had spoken no less than the truth when he’d told Charles he missed the old man. In some part of himself, he always would. Thinking of other things, Michael tore open the telegram.
    Your mother gravely ill. Doctors not hopeful. Make arrangements to fly to Palm Springs