Zero at the Bone by Mary Willis Walker

I’m not really a hunter.”
    “That’s a twenty-inch buck,” he said proudly, his face relaxing for a moment, the mouth losing its arc of tragedy. “Got it last season when I went with your uncle, Coop, and that ol’ boy fancies himself quite a hunter, but he didn’t even get a shot off. Best trophy I’ve gotten in sixty-three years of deer hunting.” He lowered himself into an elegant wing chair, crossed one thin knee over the other, and ran a trembling hand along the prefect crease in his pant leg.
    “Miss Driscoll—” He stopped speaking when his eyes settled on her face, as if caught mid-thought by a recollection that dammed up the normal flow of words. The eye began to twitch furiously again.
    Then he shook his head very slightly as if to dislodge an idea he didn’t want to take root. Katherine wanted him to say it—what her face had made him think of. But he switched back to his smooth, courtly mode.
    “Katherine,” he said, “how difficult for you to lose both your parents in such a short time, less than two years.”
    Katherine hadn’t thought of it that way. “I never really had a father,” she said, “so it doesn’t feel as if I’ve lost anything.”
    He flinched as if she had slapped him. Then he studied her face again and said, “I would have recognized you anywhere. I can see both your mother and grandmother in you. Have you been in touch with the Driscolls yet?”
    “No. I haven’t. I don’t know if they’d want to hear from me,” Katherine said, watching his face closely for a reaction.
    He paused, gliding a shaky hand back over his fringe of silver hair. “Oh, I think it’s time to let bygones be bygones. I believe Coop and Lucy, and especially Sophie, will want to see you. Your grandmother, I don’t know about. I hear she’s in a bad way. I usually go to see her, talk a little business, once a week, but Coop told me last week she wasn’t up to my visit. She had a small stroke back in March, you know, and has been confined to bed. Coop says she’s taken a sudden turn for the worse, another stroke, I believe, and she doesn’t want anyone to see her like that. Such a proud woman.”
    “Does she still live in the house on Woodlawn?” Katherine asked.
    “Yes. She’d been living alone there with just a daily housekeeper to do for her, but Coop says he had to step in and insist on a live-in nurse, given the deterioration of her condition.” He gave one small chuckle. “She must be in bad shape if she’s letting Coop have his way. Anne Driscoll is not a woman you insist to.”
    Katherine was surprised by the profound rush of disappointment she felt sweep over her. Too late. The saddest words in the language, and they seemed to be the story of her life. She was six hours too late for her father, and perhaps a week too late for her grandmother.
    When she looked up, she realized the lawyer had been speaking to her. “… and needless accident,” he was saying. “Terribly painful for you, dear, but dreadful publicity for the zoo, too. I’m on the board, you know. Have been for thirty-nine years. I hate to see anything that might set the zoo back. Actually, you know, that tiger, Brum, was one of my personal favorites. Of course it couldn’t have been your father’s fault, either. Such a reliable, meticulous man.”
    “He was?” Katherine asked.
    Travis Hammond leaned back and sighed. “Oh, my dear. That’s right. You didn’t know him at all. Hadn’t seen him for … how long?”
    “Thirty-one years,” Katherine answered, feeling the full weight of each of those years.
    He closed his eyes. “Yes. Since 1958. Such a long time. I first met your father when he married your mother. What a ruckus that caused! There were some stormy times there.”
    He opened his eyes to look hard at her for several seconds. “You may remember some of that bad business before you and your mother left Austin.” He stared so long and directly at her that it occurred to Katherine he had