“You’re in for a fun surprise—just wait and see who walks down the aisle. Don’t miss this zany wedding.”

—Catherine Coulter

All the stuff she thought she had handled began to come back one at a time. The Samuelsons, Stephanie, Dennis and Dr. Malone, Peaches—and Jake, his timing as bad as ever.

“Charlie!” Jake yelled. “Hold up, will you? I need to ask you something. I need a favor.”

“In your dreams,” she muttered to herself. If I am afraid of commitment, she thought, Jake Dugan would be a good enough reason.

A flashing red light throbbed over her head and she turned to see that her ex-husband had attached his portable police beacon to the top of his car. He followed her at a safe distance, slowly, so that if a car approached from behind, she wouldn’t be mowed down. But then again, she wouldn’t need this service if he hadn’t shown up in the first place, which was the cause of her walking home in the mud and rain.

She made the right turn into her neighborhood. The flashing red light disappeared and Jake’s headlights strafed the houses as he made a U-turn and departed.

She stepped into her house and stepped into sanity. The lights were dimmed, the table set, candles lit, fire in the hearth and two cups of something steaming sat on the coffee table in front of the fireplace. Dennis, having heard her come in, appeared in the kitchen doorway, wiping his hands on a dish towel. The sight of all this peaceful domesticity warmed the heart of the drowned rat, and without stopping to consider the ramifications, Charlene heard herself say, “Dennis, do you still want to get married?”

The Wedding Party

Robyn Carr

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Sharon Buchholtz Lampert,

for all the years.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Prologue

Charlene Dugan started her day as usual—single. Not just unmarried, but autonomous, independent, free. She was forty-five, in excellent health and shape, attractive, successful in the practice of family law, the single mother of a grown daughter, the single daughter of a widowed mother, the significant other of a handsome, charming man and devotedly nonmarried.

Though she had been with Dennis for five years, they did not live together. They each had their own homes and liked things as they were. Well, perhaps Charlene was a tad more committed to remaining uncommitted; Dennis had proposed a couple of times. But she had been married once, only long enough to produce one daughter, Stephanie, who was now twenty-five, and she had not been even slightly tempted to marry again in the twenty-four years since. She was content. Satisfied. Fulfilled, even.

On this ordinary unmarried day there were events that, taken singularly—no pun intended—were quite manageable. But when combined, they so rocked Charlene’s world that by day’s end she was not only ready to consider marriage, she was inclined to do the proposing.

One

Charlene entered the law offices of Phelps, Dugan & Dodge innocent of the trouble the day would bring. She smiled at the young receptionist and nodded as she passed cubicles where clerks and junior associates labored. She stopped in the break room to grab her customary morning cup of coffee and a bagel. Then, as she proceeded toward her office, she heard the muffled roar of her first clients. There was no mistaking the hostile tones of Mr. and Mrs. Samuelson, two of the most objectionable people Charlene had had the displeasure of knowing. She had been selected by family court to arbitrate the Samuelsons’ divorce settlement. This was to be their third meeting. The first two had been complete and dismal failures.

Charlene loved her legal specialty. There were very few people who could make the traumas of divorce and custody bearable, and Charlene prided herself in taking families who walked into her office wounded and terrified, and sending them out as people who could cope, people with options.

The arguing achieved fever pitch as she neared her office. Briefcase under her arm, bagel in one hand and coffee in the other, she closed in on the noise. Her assistant and close friend, Pam London, was standing behind her desk, arms crossed and toe tapping impatiently as she glared at the conference-room doors. A disgusted frown twisted her otherwise handsome features.

Charlene was a little confused. “What’s going on?” she asked. The Samuelsons were not supposed to be in the same room until the arbitrator arrived, for obvious reasons. Plus, they weren’t due for another hour.

“They both had an idea they could get to you first, before the other arrived,” Pam explained. “I put Mrs. Samuelson in the conference room and asked Mr. Samuelson to have a seat in the foyer waiting room. But they found each other out and have been in there fighting ever since. I’ve tried to separate them, to no avail.” She smiled evilly. “Let’s bolt the door from the outside and let them kill each other.”

Charlene handed her briefcase to Pam. “Was he threatening?”

“Someone would have to take him seriously to be threatened. He’s just a pip-squeak. An obnoxious little horse’s ass. And she’s no better.”

“Hmm. If anyone was threatening, we could call the police. Well, call building security to begin with, but give me three minutes before you send anyone in.”

Charlene and the other senior partner, Brad Phelps, had the two expansive offices in the back, separated by their large conference room, while Mike Dodge was on another floor of the building. Charlene and Brad had private bathrooms with showers and two doors apiece; one to outer offices and their respective executive assistants and the other to the conference room. Charlene placed her coffee and bagel on her desk and retrieved something from the top drawer. She stood in the frame of the conference door to watch. And listen.

The Samuelsons faced each other, fists clenched at their sides, their faces red to their scalps. If only they knew how ridiculous they looked. Mr. Samuelson, the shorter of the two, appeared to shout into his wife’s heavy, pendulous breasts, and she sputtered obscenities onto the top of her husband’s shiny little scalp. How could they not know they sounded so revolting, cursing each other in voices loud enough to carry through these professional offices? Forty years of marriage and five children, come to this.

“I bought that goddamn boat after you walked out!”

“You bought the goddamn boat after I walked out, using the money left in our mutual fund…and you paid for jewelry for your floozies with our IRAs!”

“Since I was the only one who ever put anything in the goddamn IRAs or mutual funds, I figured they were mine to do with as I damn well pleased!”

“And that’s why I left! Because you put no value on anything anyone else ever does! I stayed home and raised five kids! I moved fifteen times! I hostessed twenty-five company Christmas parties. I—”

“Played tennis, bridge and golf, got manicures and pedicures and facials, had to build a room onto the house just for your clothes…And you had the goddamn Christmas parties catered!”

The loud report, like that of a gun, caused the Samuelsons to shut up abruptly and bolt apart, turn and…. And it was only Charlene, in the doorway with a party popper. Confetti drifted lazily to the floor, a curling piece of lavender streamer hanging off Mrs. Samuelson’s large bosom, while Mr. Samuelson’s bald head had collected a few glitters.

They both recovered from the sudden fright and looked with some relief toward the arbitrator. This was a couple dissolving after four decades; there were bound to be issues. A certain amount of rage was expected in this field. But as Charlene knew only too well, they must not be allowed to run amok. A little chaos could lead to a lot of tragedy. Domestic discord was the most volatile and dangerous of all.

“You may leave now,” Charlene said. “I will ask Pam to get Judge Kemp on the line for me. I’ll tell him that arbitration is not possible in your case, and suggest you be bound over for a full divorce trial. You will each have to secure private counsel. I wouldn’t consider taking on either of you as a client even if I could. And don’t be too surprised if you find the judge considering a hefty fine.” Mr. Samuelson, “the only one who put any money in the goddamn mutual funds,” became especially ashen. “As an officer of the court,” she told them, “I’m obligated to tell him that you were nothing but discourteous and uncooperative, wouldn’t consider the simplest of requests—like taking a seat in the waiting room—were a continual disruption to the entire office building and have made no progress at all in two meetings. There is very little question, this divorce will cost you more than a boat. Probably more than a boat, a car and a house.”

“Now just you wait a minute—”

“And,” Charlene barked with heat. She was small of stature but should never be mistaken for slight in any other way. “If you speak to me in a tone that carries even the slightest disrespect…” she began. The door to the conference room slowly opened and Ray Vogel stepped inside. Charlene had convinced the whole office building to agree to her choice of security service for this very reason. Ray, like his fellow security officers, was big, young, muscled and armed. When he frowned, he looked positively lethal. “Give me a moment, Ray.” She turned back to the angry-faced couple. “The slightest tone of disrespect will be accompanied by a contempt and perhaps assault charge. And naturally another hefty fine.” This wasn’t true, but one look at Mr. and Mrs. Samuelsons’ faces said they believed her thoroughly.

“Now wait a minute,” Mr. Samuelson tried again, but in an entirely different tone. “There’s a lot of emotion here, and I admit we got a little carried away, but we can still work this out—”

“No, you’re entirely too late,” Charlene said. “We’re all done listening to you curse each other, demean each other and make a mockery of a system designed to protect and respect the family.” Mrs. Samuelson smirked and crossed her fleshy arms over her chest. “And before you get all smug, Mrs. Samuelson, let me remind you that when push comes to shove, he will probably still have the financial advantage in a trial. You might succeed in hurting him, but not without doing substantial economic damage to yourself.”

Her mouth dropped open even as her arms un-crossed and fell to her sides. Charlene lifted one corner of her mouth. “Perhaps one of the children will take you in.”

Mrs. Samuelson looked stricken.

“Okay, let’s go,” Ray said, holding the door open.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute—”

“Go!” Charlene commanded. Then she turned around, went back into her office and closed the door. She leaned against it and listened to the murmurings that came from the conference room. She could hear Ray’s occasional deep voice urging them to leave. The voices carried a decidedly different timbre than what she had greeted this morning. She looked at her watch—8:07. She went to her desk, took a sip of her coffee and a bite of her bagel. A person shouldn’t have to endure this kind of reprehensible behavior first thing in the morning, she thought. She often wished she could just get a glimpse of what these two were like in marriage, because it was difficult not to assume that the divorce was long overdue.

There was a tapping at the door. She checked her watch—8:11. Another fact that never failed to fascinate her—the worse the couple, the quicker they could modify their behavior if money was involved.

Pam stuck her head in the door. “They’d like to know if you’d consider giving them another chance,” she said.

“Ask them if they understand this will be the last time.”

Mr. Samuelson’s glittering head and halo of thin, frizzy yellow hair popped into the door opening. He came to Pam’s shoulder. He grinned triumphantly while Pam looked down at him with obvious distaste. “We understand,” he said.

“Good,” Charlene said. “We’ll start with the boat.”

Three hours later, the Samuelsons departed quietly. Not happily, not even politely, but at least quietly. They had worked through part of their settlement, and had kept their rancor under wraps. The pressure for them to behave had been so intense that Mrs. Samuelson was messaging her temples with her fingertips as she walked out and Mr. Samuelson was holding his oversize gut with both hands, lest it explode.

Charlene went into her private bathroom and splashed cool water on her cheeks. It was a professional coup to be chosen by the court to arbitrate any kind of settlement. Having made a name for herself in the practice of family law meant that usually Charlene was going to be dealing with divorce property or custody—two areas rife with explosive emotions. But this was hard. It took its toll of a morning.

She heard the intercom on her desk buzz, but she ignored it, remaining in the bathroom. She sat on the closed toilet lid, leaned back, kicked off her shoes and held a cool cloth over her eyes, dampening her short brown bangs in the process.

After twenty years in the business, there were very few surprises. It was always about the boat and the savings account, about who brought home the bacon and who didn’t. Even in the new century, when most marriages were made up of dual working partners, it always boiled down to who did the dishes and who earned the highest salary.

She unhooked her bra and let her rib cage expand briefly. She wiggled her toes into the thick carpet beneath her feet. She could not have borne more than three hours with those two. They gave divorce a bad name.

But she had pulled it off, gotten them to sit down and begin dividing things. A few more meetings and it would be done. The judge who had assigned her would be impressed. So what if it took her a while to recover. It was worth it to win the further admiration of the courts. The city was overrun with sleazy divorce lawyers, but there were only a pocketful of respectable unsharky family lawyers, of which Charlene was one. That is not to say her clients wouldn’t get what they deserved; she took very good care of them. More important, they would leave the proceedings with their self-respect.

The intercom on her desk buzzed again. “Okay, okay,” she said to herself, tossing the washcloth into the sink, slipping her feet back into her shoes and hooking up her bra. She applied some makeup to her cheeks, a little lip gloss to her lips, and squinted critically into the mirror. She looked tired even though she’d slept quite well the night before. She knew what that meant. It was time to seriously consider having her eyes done. A little nip, a little tuck, not a new face, but one that just didn’t seem to age at the speed of light.

Charlene didn’t give herself much slack; she was a perfectionist from nose to toes, professionally and personally. You don’t become successful by relaxing your standards. It was taxing, but nothing worth having came easy.

She flushed the toilet even though she hadn’t used it. She just didn’t want anyone to think she had locked herself into her bathroom to recover from the Samuelsons. No one should think she needed recovery. Not even Pam.

That was Charlene. Always in control. And perfect in every way—without breaking a sweat.

The intercom was buzzing wildly as she headed for her desk. “What?”

“Thank goodness, I thought you’d fallen in. It’s Stephanie.”

“Put her through.” Click, click. “Steph, honey, I’m really—”

“Mom, I hate him!”

Charlene sank into her chair. Sacramento could be crumbling around them in the throes of a six-point-eight shaker and still Stephanie would assume that the current state of her love life was of paramount concern to everyone. Stephanie didn’t even bother to say hello or ask Charlene if she had a few minutes. “Hmm,” Charlene hummed, noncommittal.

“I have tickets for Grease. Do you know how hard they were to get? How much they cost? And he promised me, promised me he’d get the night off. How often do I ask him to do that?”

Probably very, very often, Charlene thought, but she held her tongue.

“Is there absolutely no one in the state of California, in the city of Sacramento, who can stand behind the bar and sling a few drinks so he can go to a musical with me?”

“Stephanie, I doubt it’s as simple as that.”

“Mom, I’ve had it with spending every night alone. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life like this.”

“Honey, I sympathize with you, but you’re going to have to work this out with Grant,” she said.

“You could hate him too,” she whined.

“It’s hard to hate Grant. He’s such a doll.”

“Mom.”

“He is. He’s good to you. And patient. And smart. And he makes a nice living while putting himself through school. There’s a lot to admire about his hard work.”

“At the bar. Every night. With drunk women coming on to him all night long. Begging him to take them home.”

“My gosh,” Charlene mocked. “That must be nearly irresistible for him.”

“That’s not the point,” Stephanie said. “You can imagine where this leaves me. With two fifty-dollar tickets.”

“Is there no one else who would like to go see Grease with you?” she asked.

“That’s not the point either!”

“Then, Stephanie, what is the point?” Charlene asked tiredly.

“The point is, I don’t want to be alone all the time. I want my partner, the man of my heart, to spend time with me. To come home to me before I’m asleep!”

Charlene took a deep breath and did not say all the things that came to her mind. Like, You cannot expect the man of your heart to entertain you all the time. And, Didn’t you know he was a bartender when you suggested you move in together? Or even, Oh my darling, my dearest child, you are so rotten spoiled.

Stephanie was bright, adorable, funny and sensitive, but she had an overblown sense of entitlement not entirely rare in a twenty-five-year-old. Especially a twenty-five-year-old only child.

“Mom? Are you there?”

“Yes, Stephanie. Look, you knew all about Grant’s hours and commitments before you—”

“I might want to move back home, Mom,” she said.

Charlene bolted upright. “What?”

“I’ve been giving some thought to moving in with you, Mom.”

“Stephanie, think about what you’re saying. You’d be getting a roommate who would nag you to keep things tidy all the time. You would live with someone who is driven almost homicidal by dust bunnies! And you’re…how can I put this kindly? Simply not up to the job.”

“You don’t have to be mean,” she said.

“And you don’t have to be sloppy, but you are. We’ve been over this before, Steph. I love you more than my life, but I won’t take you on as a roommate again until I can be sure you can hold up your end of the deal. If you’re serious about wanting to live with me, you’d better go home and clean that apartment from top to bottom and prove you can keep it that way.” She sighed. “Honey, I suspect you’d be better off trying to work things out with Grant. I know you love him very much.”

“I don’t want to waste my life waiting around for a man who’s…who’s…”

“Who’s working?” Charlene asked sharply. “You’d better think about this, Stephanie. You made a major commitment to him. The two of you have been together a long time. This bartending, this was part of his plan. It’s an excellent income for a student. Isn’t he almost finished with school?”

“Ha! That’ll be the day. He’s already talking about getting a master’s. And that’s only the beginning of my nightmares. He says he’s going to test for the police academy.”

“Really? Well, I’m not surprised he’s taking that direction. He’s been real interested in forensics and constitutional law and—Are you so completely surprised?”

“I’m horrified! Straight from spending every night at the bar to spending every night on the streets getting shot at.”

“Well Jesus, Stephanie,” Charlene said, out of patience, “what the hell do you want him to do? Win the lottery?”

“I just don’t want to…you know…”

“No I don’t know. What?”

“I don’t want to end up like you!”

Charlene couldn’t get a breath. She didn’t want to hear any more.

“Mom, you know what I mean. Don’t you? I mean, it figures, with what you do for a living, you’d be pretty suspicious of marriage. Bitter about it.”

Oh boy, this was only getting worse. Bitter? Like a dagger. “Stephanie, I have a call on another line. Can we talk about this later?”

“Oh, God, now you’re mad. Mom, look, I can understand why you’d want your kind of life, and it’s right for you and everything, but that doesn’t mean that I—”

“Steph, I’m sorry, honey. I have to go! I’ll talk to you later.”

As she clicked off the line, she felt the rare prickle of tears sting her eyes.

Charlene needed something to shift her emotions back to the stable side, and Dennis came to mind. She decided to surprise him by showing up at his E.R. for lunch, something she made time for only rarely. It was not the nastiness of the Samuelsons that had jolted her—she was used to that sorry business. But Stephanie’s remark about her life—or the lack thereof—threatened to ruin her day. What could she have meant? That Charlene didn’t need anyone? That was entirely untrue. She needed a lot of people, mostly Stephanie, even when she was the worst brat. And her mother, Lois, who had named herself Peaches for her only grandchild. And of course, Dennis, the most dependable man in the world. In thinking about it, the only thing she didn’t have in her life was a marriage. And in the presence of all that she did have, she didn’t need that.

It was true that Charlene was secure as a single woman, had taken to living alone quite easily and felt no desire to have a man’s rowing machine stored under her bed. But did that make her bitter about marriage? No! Certainly not!

The best way to drive out any plaguing doubt was to see her man, her Dennis, to feel his arm around her shoulders, to look into his warm, reassuring brown eyes and have him tell her for the millionth time that she was an incredible woman.

It was really Dennis who was incredible. Almost too incredible to be believed.

When Charlene had reached forty, after twenty years of backbreaking labor as a studying and then working single mother, she had met Dennis—the perfect man. While hiking along the American River she had twisted her ankle and was rescued by the tall, handsome physician’s assistant. His hands on her sprain were gentle, his smile comforting. He helped her to his car and took her to the emergency room in which he worked, where he had her ankle X-rayed. Then he wrapped it himself. Then he took her to dinner. The whole thing had brought about a belief in fate once more, for who could have predicted that she would meet a man so in tune to her every whim. They shared similar tastes in music, in food, in leisure activities. They had both been married once when much younger, though Dennis had no children.

Even though Charlene had declined Dennis’s proposals of marriage, she had not done so because of any doubt about their ability to remain perfect partners, but rather out of the common sense of a family law practitioner. “I don’t want to screw up a really good thing by overindulgence,” she had told him. “Let’s not mess with it, especially since it works absolutely perfectly.”

And Dennis always said, “You must be right, because I have nothing to complain about. I just thought we could check and see if it could get more perfect.”

During their five years together, Charlene and Dennis had set a kind of schedule for their relationship, something that appealed to a woman as strictly organized as Charlene. One night a week they had dinner at her house and Dennis would usually stay over. One night a week they dined at his house, but she rarely stayed the night because she loved her little house in the suburbs. Saturday nights they went out, Sunday mornings they had brunch, and the rest of the time they checked in by phone. They had both togetherness and plenty of time to catch up on work, family, or fulfill other social obligations—he for the hospital, she for the legal community and professional women’s groups. Or, they simply spent time alone, something middle-aged professionals who lived demanding, hectic lives needed.

Dennis was, above all, a treasured friend…and when life threw a few curves at Charlene, he was the one for whom she reached.

Charlene was already feeling more secure just thinking about Dennis and their flawless relationship as she pulled into the St. Rose’s E.R. parking lot. She was soon distracted by evidence of a recent commotion. A Sacramento Fire Department engine was just departing and a paramedic van was still parked outside. A couple of firefighters in full turnout gear stood talking outside the E.R. doors, and the ambulance was backed up to the dock, doors open, a serious cleaning-up going on.

On a couple of occasions she had gone to the E.R. when Dennis was in the throes of triage, and she had been mesmerized by his commanding nature, his confidence and skill. He was impressive to watch.

But today it appeared the chaos was past. There were a few people in the lobby waiting to be seen, all the curtains were drawn around treatment cubicles and there was a grim hush that lay over the room. It seemed things were under control. She saw Dennis standing outside one of the exam rooms, chart in hand, listening raptly and scribbling quickly as a young doctor spoke to him. A young woman.

She seemed awfully young to be a doctor, Charlene observed, but she had to be if Dennis was writing orders; if she wasn’t an M.D., he’d be giving them. She looked about twenty-one and she was very tall. She could look Dennis right in the eye. Charlene, at five foot four, fought down the temptation to feel dumpy. She straightened her spine. She was petite…almost a foot shy of meeting Dennis’s gaze. But this one, with her long legs and long auburn hair…

Dennis stopped writing suddenly to make eye contact with the young woman. She looked down as if shaken by something. He put aside the chart and pen and reached out to touch her upper arm. He gave her a gentle squeeze. Charlene saw that Dennis spoke to her softly but intensely. The doctor leaned forward, rested her head on his shoulder. His arm encircled her, stroking her back, and he murmured to her all the while. Charlene could read his lips: “It’s okay, okay.” The young woman was draped against him, soaking up what Charlene had come for. She wasn’t sobbing or crying, but still obviously upset…and Charlene’s fiancé held her close and secure. For a long time. Charlene made a U-turn and migrated back to the front of the E.R. before Dennis let the young woman go.

Hmm, she thought. She had never before referred to him as her fiancé. Even mentally.

“Hi, Charlene,” Barbara Benn, the E.R. clerk, greeted. “Does Denny know you’re here?”

No, she thought, he didn’t see me because he was busy caressing a beautiful and obviously brilliant fifteen-year-old doctor. “Ah…I don’t think so. You have an exciting morning?”

Barbara leaned over the counter. “Bad accident,” she whispered. “We had a couple of fatalities. Very yucko ones.” Barbara, early twenties with a slight purple tinge to her overly black hair, cracked her gum and rolled her eyes for emphasis. “Denny worked on one for about forty-five minutes. Awful. Just a kid. I bet he’s completely bummed. He’ll be glad to see you. Maybe you can get him out of here for a while.”

At that precise moment, Dennis, who she never called Denny, was there, beside her. He dropped his arm casually around her shoulders, but his gaze drifted down the hall toward the departing frame of the young woman he’d just been holding. “Hi, honey,” he said absently. “I can’t get away. I’m sorry. It’s a zoo.” His lips fell to the top of her head in a perfunctory kiss before he let her go and followed the young doctor. Charlene was filled with a sense of emptiness that was underscored by her earlier conversation with Stephanie.

There will be an explanation later, she told herself. But as hard as she tried, she could not seem to get past the fact that he hadn’t asked her why she had come. Didn’t he wonder if something might be wrong? He was probably still very distracted by the fatality…or by the young doctor….

“Whew, it obviously sucks to be Denny right now,” Barbara said.

“Who’s the doctor? The young, beautiful one?”

She turned to look. “Oh, that’s Dr. Malone. She’s new. Pediatrician. She’s awesome. Everyone loves her. I guess you haven’t met her yet.”

“No, not yet,” Charlene said.

“You’ll like her,” she said. “She’s very cool for a doctor.”

No, I hate her, Charlene thought, then retracted the thought with shame. She had never had thoughts so jealous and immature where Dennis was concerned! Not even when she had witnessed goo-goo eyes directed at him while they were out together. From young nurses to legal colleagues, women took quick notice of Dennis’s classic good looks. Dennis was an absolute gem. And, she reminded herself, completely loyal.

Charlene got herself to the parking lot, into the car, and out of the vicinity before she succumbed to the needy impulse to rush to the hospital cafeteria, where she might catch them in the act of holding hands over the tuna surprise, gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes.

She drove to her favorite mediterranean café and parked. She sat in the car feeling alone and bereft, feelings that were completely alien to her. Suddenly she knew her life would be awful if she didn’t have Dennis in it. And she knew how much more awful it would be if some doctor young enough to be her daughter had him. “Okay, it’s an age thing,” she said aloud in self-analysis. “A little premenopausal panic. Well, I’ll be damned if I let myself turn into some wimpy dependent old woman who can’t even have lunch because—”

Her cell phone twittered inside her purse. She plucked it out and studied the caller ID—it was her office. She didn’t admit to herself that she felt enormous relief.

“Yes, Pam?”

“Char, you’ve had a disturbing and confusing call from Ron Fulbright, the manager at the Food Star Market in Fair Oaks. Something about your mother. I think you’d better go over there.”

“My mother?”

“Yes, something about her not being able to find her way home…”

“What? That’s ridiculous.”

“Well, that’s what I said. To which Mr. Fulbright said this wasn’t the first time. They’ve started having a bag boy keep an eye on her when she leaves the store, watching to see if it looks like she knows where she’s going.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. She drives to the market, right?”

“Apparently she walked.”

“But it’s drizzling. She wouldn’t walk there in the rain.”

“Mr. Fulbright has her in his office. You’d better go get her. I could hear Lois in the background. She’s…ah…unhappy.”

“Well, I imagine so,” Charlene said, indignant. “Call him back. Tell him I’m on my way.” She clicked off without saying goodbye, put the car in reverse and headed toward her mother’s neighborhood.

Lois must have been somehow misunderstood, Charlene thought, and the grocer interpreted this as her being lost and in need of her daughter’s rescue. But it was absurd! Lois had only just returned from a rather taxing trip to Bangkok. At seventy-eight, she was anything but lost. She was an independent traveler of the world. Widowed for over twenty years, she was a modern, youthful, brilliant woman who refused to be called Grandma.

Charlene beat down a powerful sense of foreboding, terrified by the prospect of her mother—her rock—falling apart.

Two

Charlene racked her brain for any incident in which her mother had seemed confused or disoriented, but could think of none. She lost her keys, but who didn’t? She forgot the occasional name, as did Charlene. Although there was that time, not so long ago, when she put the yogurt and cottage cheese away in the rolltop desk and then couldn’t locate the source of the foul odor…. But they had laughed about it later.

When she arrived at the grocery store, she was directed to Mr. Fulbright’s office in the back of the store. She heard her mother before she saw her. “May I have a drink of something, please?” Lois asked in a small voice. Charlene was brought up short. She hadn’t heard that kind of meekness from her mother since Lois’s gallbladder surgery sixteen years ago.

Charlene peeked into the partitioned room. Lois sat hunched on the hard chair beside Mr. Fulbright’s desk. Though Lois Pomeroy was petite, she was such a formidable personality, Charlene tended to think of her as larger than she was. And Lois always sat or stood straight, her head up. She was prideful and pigheaded. In fact, she was a bossy pain in the ass, who at the moment looked stooped and cowed and…frightened. It was very disturbing.

“Anything you like, Mrs. Pomeroy.”

“Just water, thank you.”

“Be right back,” Fulbright said. He nearly ran into Charlene as he exited his cubicle. “Oh, my heavens!” he said, laughing nervously. He grinned at Charlene in a big, perfect Cheshire smile. “Go ahead in,” he said.

Lois raised her bowed head and saw Charlene. “Oh. He said he called you. I told him not to.”

“Mom, what happened?”

“I just got a little turned around, that’s all. It happens to people my age from time to time.”

“And has it happened before?”

“Well, no, not really….”

“But Mr. Fulbright said they’ve been having bag boys keep an eye on you until it appears that you know where you’re going. What does that mean?”

Mr. Fulbright brought the water. Lois sipped before speaking. “Well, there was one time last year—”

“Last month,” Mr. Fulbright corrected.

“It wasn’t last month!” Lois shot back. “Sheesh,” she added impatiently.

“Yes, it was, Lois. Remember?” he asked too patiently, as though speaking to a child. “You were all turned around in the parking lot. Driving in circles. You went around and around, then back and forth past the store. One of the boys flagged you down and asked if you needed something. Remember?”

“Oh, that was last year!” A little strength was seeping into her voice under the mantle of anger.

Mr. Fulbright rolled his eyes in frustration. He then connected with Charlene’s eyes, smirked and shook his head. “Well, if you say so,” he relented, but he shook his head. “You have some groceries, Lois. Let me carry them to your daughter’s car, okay?”

“Don’t bother yourself, I can do it.”

“Yes, I know you can, but it’s my pleasure. I’m afraid if I don’t take good care of you, you’ll shop at another store.”

“I’m thinking about doing that anyway,” she said. “Been thinking about it, actually.”

Charlene got her mother settled in the front seat of the car, the groceries in the trunk, and stood behind the car with Mr. Fulbright.

“This is an old neighborhood, Ms. Dugan. It’s an unfortunate part of the job that we see some of our best customers go through aging crises. Lois got lost about a month ago and couldn’t get herself out of the parking lot, much less find her house. She kept coming back to the store, driving around and around the parking lot, until someone helped her. She knows it happened—she started walking instead of driving, and don’t let her tell you it was for the exercise.” He rolled his eyes skyward, where heavy, dark clouds loomed, just waiting to let go. “Who would take that kind of chance in unpredictable weather like this? A person could drown! It’s so she doesn’t get too far away from home before she realizes she doesn’t know where she is.”

Charlene was absolutely horrified. “This is impossible! She just returned from the Far East!” But in thinking about it, Charlene realized that that trip, a tour, had taken place over two years ago.

“Nevertheless…”

“What happened this morning?” Charlene asked. “Exactly.”

“I had one of the boys watch her walk down Rio Vista to make sure she turned toward her house, but she walked right by. She could have been going to visit someone, so Doug stayed with her just in case. She went another block, doubled back past her street again and finally sat on a retainer wall, in the rain, looking dazed. He asked her if he could help her and she started to cry.”

“Cry? My mother doesn’t cry! For God’s sake, this is crazy!”

Mr. Fulbright touched her arm and Charlene snatched it back as though burned. “She should see her doctor. It might be just a fluke, a medication screwup or—”

“She doesn’t take medication!”

“Well, maybe it’s something more serious. But Ms. Dugan, it’s something.”

The passenger door opened. “Are we going?” Lois wanted to know, that impatient edge back in her voice. “I could have been home by now!”

Mr. Fulbright crossed his arms. “Or in Seattle,” he muttered under his breath.

“Yes, Mom. Coming.” Then, feeling protective of Lois, she glared at the grocer for his cheek.

“Goodbye, Lois,” Mr. Fulbright said. “See you soon.”

“I doubt it,” she said, slamming the door.

“Well, thank you,” Charlene said. “Though I really think—”

“When you run a neighborhood market in an area with a large retired population,” he said, “there are some things you learn to watch for. They’re my charges. It won’t be that many years before I’ll benefit from having people watch after me now and again. Just as the postman keeps track if the mail stacks up, merchants keep an eye out for their regulars.”

“Thanks, but—”

“Get your mom to the doctor now. We don’t need a senseless tragedy just because it’s hard to think about Lois getting older.”

As Charlene fastened her seat belt, she muttered, “God, he’s annoying.”

“Tell me about it,” Lois said.

“I guess he knows what’s right for everyone, huh?”

“I never could stand that guy. He’s a hoverer, you know? Always looking over your shoulder when you pinch the grapes. Probably a pervert. I’m not shopping there anymore.”

“I can’t say I blame you, Mom. Especially if you’re going to find yourself held hostage in the back room.” Charlene shuddered, but not for thinking about Mr. Fulbright’s back-room office.

“The rhubarb stinks. Smells like fish and tastes like rubber.”

“Rhubarb?” Charlene couldn’t remember ever having rhubarb at her mother’s house.

“Let’s get moving. I think I have a hair appointment.”

“When did you start caring about rhubarb?”

“My mother always had a rhubarb cobbler on the Fourth of July. I wish I could remember if I made that hair appointment for today or next Tuesday. Damn!”

Charlene drove in silence for a moment. Then, with a sigh, she asked, “Why did you decide to walk to the market today of all days? It’s cold, and it’s drizzled on and off since morning.”

“I needed the exercise.”

“Really?”

“Why else would I walk?”

“Well…I don’t suppose a checkup would hurt,” Charlene suggested.

“I just had a checkup.”

“Well, another one won’t hurt.”

“I’m not going to the doctor and that’s the end of it.”

“Mom…”

“I said no.”

“Mom, I’m not going to argue with you—”

“Good! That will be a refreshing change.”

“I’m worried, that’s all.”

“Waste of energy. Worry about something you have some control over. This is out of your hands.”

She pulled up in front of Lois’s house, parked, killed the engine and turned to regard her mother. “Why are you acting like this?” she asked in a gentle voice.

“I’ve had a rough day,” Lois said, looking away from her daughter, out the window.

Haven’t we all, Charlene thought.

“I have things to do, Aida, so let me get my groceries and get busy.”

“Aida? Mom, you called me Aida. I think I’d better get you in the house and—”

Lois groaned as if in outraged frustration and threw open her car door. She pulled herself out with youthful agility and, once extracted, stomped her foot. “You’re starting to get on my last nerve! Get me my things and get out of my business!”

That’s when she knew. She wasn’t sure exactly what she knew, but she knew. The only Aida Charlene had ever known was an old cousin of Lois’s who’d been dead over thirty years. And while Lois was admittedly a frisky character, Charlene was unaccustomed to such anger and temper in her mother. Lois was going through some mental/medical crisis.

Trying to remain calm, she went to the trunk, pulled out two bags and handed one to Lois. She followed her mother up the walk to the front door. Lois got the door unlocked easily enough, and they went inside and put the groceries away without speaking. When the bags were folded and stowed on a pantry shelf, they stood and looked at each other across the butcher block.

“I’m very sorry,” Lois said. “I’m sorry you were bothered, sorry I was rude to you and sorry about what’s happening.”

“What is happening?” Charlene asked.

“Well, isn’t it perfectly clear? I’m losing it.”

Charlene went back to the office in something of a trance. Was it possible that even though she spent a great deal of time with Lois, she’d been too preoccupied to notice these changes?

She threw herself into the accumulated work on her desk, plowing through briefs, returning calls, writing memos and dictating letters. She also spent some time on the Internet, researching dementia in the elderly and Alzheimer’s disease.

It was getting late and she should have gone home long ago, but she wanted no spare time between work and evening—she wouldn’t know how to handle it. She could research Alzheimer’s, but she couldn’t think about her mother suffering from it. Tonight was dinner at her place with Dennis. And until she could talk to him, until she could take advantage of his cool-headed appraisal of her problem—not to mention his medical expertise—she couldn’t allow herself to focus on it. But when the intercom buzzed and she looked at her watch, she realized she wouldn’t even make it to her house ahead of Dennis, much less have time to cook him dinner. “It’s Dennis,” Pam intoned from the outer office.

If he cancels, Charlene thought, I will kill him and hide the body. She picked up. “Dennis, I lost all track of time. I can leave here in just a—”

“Listen, if you have to work late—”

“What? You aren’t going to cancel, are you?”

“No,” he said calmly. “I was just wondering if you’d like me to pick anything up.”

“Oh.” The perfect man. The most stable and reliable thing in her life. With Lois falling apart and Stephanie making her crazy, maybe the only stable and reliable thing in her life. “Did I just bark at you?” she asked him.

“Pretty much. Bad day?”

“Well, I would reply ‘the worst’ except that I stopped by the hospital and I know you had a terrible day yourself, one that included fatalities. So…”

“Yes, you were gone by the time I realized you had just made a rare unannounced appearance. I was so distracted at the time. So, what is this? Professional or personal?” he asked.

She thought about dodging the question, but then, after a pause, she slowly let it out. “Personal.” It might as well have been a dirty word.

“I should have guessed. I can hear the tension in your voice, and you’re working till the last possible minute. I know what that means.”

She leaned back in her leather chair. “You do? What does it mean?”

“That you’re upset, and you don’t want any time on your hands during which you might think too hard, because you’re afraid you might become distraught. You never have, but you’re still always afraid of that. Of losing control.”

Embarrassingly, unbelievably, she began to cry. The tears had been there all day, just below the surface, but this was the last straw. They suddenly welled up in her eyes, her nose began to tingle and her face reddened and flooded. She pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger, but it did no good. She accidentally let out a wet, jagged breath. She couldn’t remember when she had last cried. Probably years ago; certainly pre-Dennis, but he seemed to know what was happening anyway because he said, “Hey, hey, hey. Charlene, honey, what’s the matter?”

Of course she couldn’t speak. She put the phone down on the desktop, grabbed a fistful of tissues and tried to mop her face quickly and efficiently. She did not want Pam to come upon her sobbing. She blew her nose and picked up the phone. “I can’t talk about this yet,” she whispered into the phone. “Will you…will you pick up something for me?”

“Yes, of course. What shall I pick up?”

“Dinner,” she said. And hung up.

Thank God she had her own private bathroom. She flushed her hot, red face with cold water, but it was a while before her tears subsided. The strange thing was that she wasn’t sure what brought on the flood. She couldn’t tell if it was the picture she had in her mind of Lois sitting hunched and frightened in the warehouse-like office, or if it was Dennis giving voice to her fear of losing control. Or could it be a mental image that she couldn’t let come into clear focus of Stephanie fetching her from the grocer’s back-room office?

When she was finally leaving, Pam was standing behind her desk, putting some things away and other things in the tote she carried to and from work.

“See you tomorrow,” Charlene said, ducking.

“Char?” Pam queried, leaning over her desk to get a closer look at Charlene. “Have you been crying?”

She stopped short but didn’t turn. “What makes you think I’ve been crying?”

“Your eyes are red, your nose is red, your eye makeup is making tracks down your cheeks, I heard a tugboat horn come from your office and—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. And she left quickly.

Charlene lived in a new home in a small, gated neighborhood just east of the city. It was under thirty minutes to her office or the courthouse if traffic was reasonable, and only a half mile from the freeway. This gave her quick access for convenience and no traffic noise for peaceful living. The length of drive was perfect for making cell-phone calls, thinking through a work problem or giving herself a stern talking-to.

Tonight’s self-talk was about keeping perspective. About staying cool. She was accustomed to giving herself pep talks—she was a hardworking single mother, after all. She took her issues one at a time, sorting them out calmly, logically.

First of all, the Samuelsons were a perfect example of the bad-divorcing couple. She decided to write them off as the cruel, ignorant people they were and place them in the chilled mental compartment in her mind that she had labeled icebox. She’d freeze out their influence over her mood.

Second, Stephanie was a wonderful girl, a jewel of a daughter, but she was a tad spoiled. It wasn’t her fault, exactly. Between Charlene, who always worried about doing a good enough job as a mom, her ex-husband, Jake, who was a very doting father, and Peaches, who was destined to have only the one granddaughter, Stephie was doomed to play the royal chick. So, she was spoiled. She liked having her way and having people cater to her. She wanted to graduate from princess to queen, and in order to do that she had to find a prince, marry him and turn him into her king. It looked as if she was going to succeed, too. Unless she drove the prince away with all her imperial demands.

Grant Chamberlain was a remarkably good choice for her daughter; Charlene wished she’d been that lucky twenty-five years ago. He was twenty-seven, a disciplined ex-army noncommissioned officer from the Special Forces, getting his degree on the GI Bill and supporting himself by tending bar. He was handsome and genuinely kind. Charlene admired him and approved of the way he treated her daughter, which was with respect and more patience than she usually deserved. Charlene was not totally unsympathetic. She could understand some of Stephanie’s problem, what with their conflicting work schedules. Stephanie got up early to teach English to surly eighth-graders while Grant slept in. When she got home, he had already gone to work, where he stayed until the wee hours. Grant took his days off during the week, which he filled with classes and study groups while Stephanie worked. When Stephanie was off on the weekends, Grant worked his longest hours…and made his best tip money. So this was hard. Work in the adult world was hard. There you have it. Who among us, she thought, isn’t working hard? Long hours?

She let go a huff of laughter. She doesn’t want to end up like me, huh? I’ll bet she doesn’t. I work like a farm hand! But she not only loved her work, she loved her life. She’d much rather be tired at the end of the day than whining that she wasn’t having enough fun or getting enough attention. And that was that.

Next, she thought about Dennis and Dr. Malone, but by now she was in command of her senses again. It had clearly not been passion with which Dennis had touched the young woman. It was comfort. Paternal. There had been a fatality. A child. Barbara Benn had said Dr. Malone was a pediatrician. That explained everything. She settled her mind on that matter as well, and let it go.

But on the matter of Lois, she was at sea. She could feel the sting of tears come to her eyes at the smallest thought of her mother stooped and confused and lost. It was more than she could bear. Had she taken her completely for granted? She was in her late seventies, after all. Charlene knew she was lucky to have had her for so long, and in such excellent health of body and spirit. This time of life, she reminded herself, eventually comes to everyone. As some wise old sage had said, old age is not for wimps.

She pulled off the interstate onto the access road that led to her neighborhood. Within a quarter mile of her house, her car seemed to lurch oddly to the left and drag as if being tugged from behind. It was an ominous sensation. She slowed and pulled onto the soft, muddy shoulder. As she did so, she could feel the left rear tire go flat.

What little sun there was behind heavy clouds was almost gone, so she grabbed the flashlight from the glove box, got out of the car and shone it on the flattened rubber. “I can’t believe this,” she said aloud. At that very moment, she felt the first drop quickly followed by the second. Then the heavens opened up in earnest and a deluge poured down on her, drenching her to the bone. As she stood beside the disabled car, practically drowning, she saw the glare of approaching headlights. The car slowed, pulled to a stop behind her. There was not so much as a single house on this half-mile stretch of road that led from the interstate to her subdivision, so the odds were excellent that this was one of her neighbors, on his way home. Then she considered how her day had been going and thought her chances of being murdered were better.

A man got out of his car. She shone the flashlight on his face—and groaned. She was only slightly happier to see her ex-husband and not a serial killer.

“Charlie?” he said. “What the hell you doin’ out here?”

She almost laughed, but it was more a sputter, given the heavy rain. “Oh, gee. Thinking,” she replied.

“Well, Jesus, think in my car!” he said, grabbing for her arm.

“I can’t,” she resisted. “I’m soaked.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Come on.”

“I’ll ruin your upholstery.”

“Oh, that’s funny. My upholstery? I’m way ahead of you. Come on!”

For lack of a better option, she went to the passenger side of his car and got in. She had to kick aside what appeared to be dirty clothes and a pair of running shoes, while he lifted a stack of file folders spewing loose papers off the seat so she could sit down. He pitched some fast-food bags into the back seat, pulled a blanket from same and drew it around her shoulders. The car was only a couple of years old at worst, but the interior was a wreck. Like his little house. His life.

“Why would you have a blanket in the back seat? Dates?”

“You’re a riot, you know that?” he replied irritably. “This is a stakeout car—I practically live in it. There’s also a first-aid kit, water, pick and shovel, fire extinguisher and other emergency items. You never know what’s going to develop. Or what you might have to dig up.” He pulled the blanket tighter around her. “So, what were you thinking about, Charlie? That flat tire?” he asked. “Wishing you could say ‘April Fools’?”

God, she thought, it was. April first! How sad that none of her stuff could be joked away.

He was the only person who called her Charlie. Well, he and his cop friends. “What are you doing out here?” it finally occurred to her to ask, but she knew the answer. He had to be coming to see her. The question she couldn’t answer yet was whether he was going to make her laugh or piss her off. There was a fifty-fifty possibility.

“I stopped by your office, but you were already gone….”

“I know I gave you my cell-phone number,” she said.

“I had to see you in person for this,” he said.

“Is it about Stephanie?” she asked.

“No, it’s a favor. I need your help on something. But what about Stephanie?”

“You didn’t hear from her today?”

“Not a peep. Why?”

“Well, wait a minute. I don’t want to breach a trust. Does she usually talk to you about her relationship with Grant?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that. She complains about Grant. She whines about Grant. She snivels, gripes, moans and groans, but no, I can’t say she has ever talked to me about Grant.”

A chuckle escaped Charlene. Jake also had a way with the unvarnished truth.

“There are times, Charlie, when I think I almost like the boyfriend better than my own daughter.”

She shrugged and chuckled again. Guiltily. “She’s been a little high-maintenance lately,” Charlene commiserated.

“Y’know, I forbade her to move in with him. I absolutely forbade her,” he went on. “She totally blew me off, called me old-fashioned, overprotective, the whole bit. Told me she knew what she was doing. And now what? All she does is bitch. Things just aren’t going too well for the little couple. I guess Mr. Grant isn’t courting her enough, huh?”

“Well, what do you say to her when she lays all the whining on you?” Charlene seriously wanted to know.

“I tell her to grow the fuck up.”

God, he was a clod. “Oh, that’s sensitive. You don’t really say that, do you?”

“No, I think that, but I don’t say it. If I said it she would cry. And you know what happens to me when she cries. It takes the bones out of my legs and I crumble. But I’d like to say it. I gotta tell you…I’ve been thinking it a lot lately.”

“I’ve even thought that about you,” Charlene taunted.

“You look good, Charlie,” he said. “You put on a little weight?”

She ground her teeth. She wanted to kill him for that. “About Stephanie—”

“You’re right, I shouldn’t be too hard on the kid. She going to learn about successful relationships with us as role models?”

She let out a huff of indignant laughter. “You weren’t so hot, maybe. I think I was a fine role model.”

“Hey, hey, hey, I didn’t mean to say you were a bad parent. Jesus, Charlie, you were the best parent in the world. There is no better mother than you. Hell, I wish you were my mother! I just mean about relationships. We weren’t, either one of us, able to make one stick.”

“Yeah, well, I only tried once, remember. You tried, what? Five times?” She shivered. She was cold, miserable, wet and a quarter mile from a warm fire, a glass of wine and stable, consistent Dennis. For some reason it didn’t occur to her to ask Jake to just drive her home.

“Four. I don’t think you can say five since I married the same woman twice. You remember Godzilla? What a disaster that was. But I was married to Stella for seven years, you know. That would almost be considered a success.”

“I still can’t imagine why you left Stella. You must be crazy.”

“Me, crazy? Gimme a break. It’s Stella who doesn’t have too many arrows in the old quiver, if you get my drift.”

“Stella? She’s mother earth!”

“Yeah, she’s a good kid at heart. It’s just all the yoga, natural food, crystals, wood-nymph music, beads, bangles and fucking affirmations. People can be too positive, you know. It’s wearing. But never mind, she was always great with Stephie.”

“Maybe Stephanie can move in with Stella,” Charlene said.

“What’s’ a matter, Mom?” he said, jostling her with an elbow. “The little chick threatening to move home?”

“She suggested she might….”

“And if I know you, you talked to her about her commitment to Grant because there’s no way you want Stephie, who is an even bigger slob than me, back in your tidy little nest.” He slapped his knee and giggled. His laugh was contagious but his giggle was positively repellent.

“No,” she lied. “I told her she should consider moving in with you.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Y’know, I admit I regret the way I played it.”

“Played what?” she wanted to know.

“I wish I’d done what you did. Stayed out of the game altogether. Refused to hook up at all, with anyone. Just flat-ass refused to get together with anyone who wasn’t absolutely perfect. Period.”

“That isn’t what I did! There wasn’t anyone…starting with you!”

“We don’t have to sing the ‘Jake was a lousy husband’ song again. We’re all getting a little tired of that one. I was young, you were young, we were stupid.”

“You were stupid,” she said.

“Yeah, yeah. So what we have here is me, getting married all the time and never able to make it stick, and you, with an obvious fear of marriage—”

“I’m not afraid of marriage!”

“Oh, really?” he asked, eyebrows arched sharply.

“Not at all!”

“Afraid of commitment, then?”

“Don’t be ridiculous! Dennis and I are totally committed.”

“Just afraid to take the next step and make it legal? I mean, I can understand, it’s only been, what, five years or so….”

“For your information, we’re planning to get married, we just haven’t—”

She stopped suddenly. She had no idea she was going to say that. Or what she was going to say next.

“Just haven’t what, Charlie? Picked the century yet?”

She stared at him blankly for a moment. Her life flashed before her eyes. Well, maybe not her life, but certainly her day, and the way it had seemed to happen to her through a series of random disasters. April Fools’? Maybe she was the only fool.

“And that’s why Stephie is all fucked up about marriage,” he said. “Because between the two of us we can’t come up with one decent relationship. Know what I mean, Charlie? Admit it, you’re as reluctant as I am impetuous. Huh?”

“You know what?” she said to him. “I had to coparent with you, but the baby has grown up. She’s an adult, whether she likes it or not, and while she might need her parents, she has had plenty of time to adjust to the divorce. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to talk about this whole thing with you for another quarter century! Leave me alone for a while, will you?”

She opened the door and got out of his car, the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders and dragging through muddy puddles behind her. His ability to insult and enrage her had not lessened in twenty-five years. She went to her car and retrieved her purse and briefcase, locked the door and started walking. Stomping.

“Charlie, what the hell are you doing?” he called out of his opened window. She stomped on, muttering incoherently to herself. He could still, with such ease, provoke her into irrational behavior. Here she was, walking down the soft, muddy shoulder of an isolated two-lane road in the dark, in the rain. It was worse than irrational, it was suicidal. But right that moment it made more sense than sitting in the car with him.

“Charlie, this is stupid!” he yelled.

God, he was following her. In the car.

A car going in the opposite direction whizzed by. The splash off the tires provided a fine spray of mud to add to the rain, which had lessened to a heavy drizzle, but was not quite enough to wash the streaks of mud off her face and coat.

All the stuff she thought she had handled began to come back one at a time. The Samuelsons, Stephanie, Dennis and Dr. Malone, Peaches—and Jake, his timing as bad as ever.

“Charlie!” he yelled. “Hold up, will you? I need to ask you something. I need a favor.”

“In your dreams,” she muttered to herself. If I am afraid of commitment, she thought, Jake Dugan would be a good enough reason.

A flashing red light throbbed over her head and she turned to see that her ex-husband had attached his portable police beacon to the top of his car. He followed her at a safe distance, slowly, so that if a car approached from behind, she wouldn’t be mowed down. But then again, she wouldn’t need this service if he hadn’t shown up in the first place, which was the cause of her walking home in the mud and rain when she had a perfectly good cell phone in her purse.

She made the right turn into her neighborhood in ten minutes. She could have been faster if the weather had been decent. The flashing red light disappeared and Jake’s headlights strafed the houses as he made a U-turn and departed. It was then that she realized she wore his blanket around her shoulders. She shrugged it off on the front walk and hung it over the wrought-iron entry gate.

She stepped into her house and stepped into sanity. The lights were dimmed, the table set, candles lit, fire in the hearth and two cups of something steaming sat on the coffee table in front of the fireplace. Dennis, having heard her come in, appeared in the kitchen doorway, wiping his hands on a dish towel. The sight of all this peaceful domesticity warmed the heart of the drowned rat and without stopping to consider the ramifications Charlene heard herself say, “Dennis, do you still want to get married?”

Stephanie moved a cherry around in her Coke with the straw, staring into the mix, daydreaming. She sat at the far end of the bar near the cash register, and when Grant was between customers, he spent a few minutes leaning across the bar talking to her.

This was how they’d met. She’d been at the bar with a couple of girlfriends and had flirted with the cute bartender. That was two and a half, almost three years ago. It was a lot more romantic then than it was now.

A guy, carrying his drink, sauntered over and sat down beside her. “Tell me you’re not waiting for someone,” he said to her.

“Okay. I’m not waiting for someone.”

He smiled. He wasn’t bad-looking, with a nice shape to his face, curly hair and friendly brown eyes. A sharp dresser. He rolled his eyes heavenward. “Thank you, God.” He refocused on her face. “So, tell me your heart’s desire and I’ll bring it to your feet.”

I must be getting old, Stephanie thought. Bar talk used to be fun…and now it only sounds stupid.

“Hey, Freddy,” Grant said, slapping a cocktail napkin down in front of him. “You meet my girl?”

“Your girl? Shit.”

“Freddy, meet Stephanie. Stephanie, meet Fast Freddy.”

“Fred,” he corrected with a casual sneer directed at Grant. “Darlin’, if you’re mixed up with this guy, you’re making a huge mistake. Let me take care of you.”

“What can I get for you, Freddy?” Grant asked. Grant had that look—narrowed eyes, forced smile, sunken cheeks. He was working on being polite. This was not a good sign for Stephanie. If Grant had appeared to actually like Fred, Stephanie might have shunned the man. But Grant’s dislike provoked her into overt friendliness. It was all about the way things had been going lately. The squabbling. The complete failure of compromise. The need to do something to perk things up, to get Grant’s attention.

“I’m good,” Fred said, lifting his half-full glass. “Fix up the lady, here. My treat.”

“You think she buys drinks at my bar?” Grant asked with a mean laugh.

“You mean she’s really your girl?” he asked, incredulous.

“Really. As in, we live together. Another Diet Coke, Steph?”

“No, thanks. So,” she said, turning her full attention and sweetest smile on Freddy. “How long have you two known each other?”

“From the Stone Age, man.” He sipped. “Like, high school.”

“Jeez, I thought I’d met all Grant’s high-school pals,” she said.

“That should tell you something,” Grant said, turning away to serve other patrons.

“He’s always been the jealous type. I get all the girls. But until this moment it meant nothing.”

She laughed at his absurdity. “These come-ons, Freddy. Stale. Old. Completely transparent.”

“I know. I’m thinking of getting a writer.”

“Ah, the Cyrano de Bergerac syndrome.”

“Spoken like a movie buff….”

“English teacher.”

“No kidding?” He seemed to relax into himself. “I’m a history major. I taught for two years. I really liked the kids, but the pay sucked.”

“So I’ve noticed.” She glanced at Grant and saw him glowering. Her eyes went back to Fred. “What do you do now?”

“I’m a day trader. Stocks. Commodities.”

Her eyes actually lit up at the word day, but Freddy might have thought she was responding to trader. “Really? Sounds interesting. Tell me all about it.”

On the night Charlene and Dennis decided to get married, they changed a flat tire in the rain, traded their wet clothes for warm terry robes and then spent a quiet evening talking about the day’s events over a light dinner of hot soup and cold salad. “You go first,” she said to him. He, somewhat reluctantly, told her about an auto accident that had taken two lives—a grandfather who might’ve had a coronary at the wheel and a nine-year-old boy who wasn’t buckled in and upon whom the emergency team had exercised every gift modern medicine had to offer before they let him go. It was Dr. Malone’s first fatality as a pediatric resident.

“Now you,” he said, and she skipped the Samuelsons and Stephanie’s remarks and went straight to her mother’s crisis. Tears threatened again. Charlene honestly didn’t know if she was going to get through this without endless crying.

When she was finished, Dennis said, “You know, it could be a number of things—from the predictable old-age dementia to Alzheimer’s. It could even be small strokes…or maybe she was just very tired or had other worries on her mind. Then again, maybe it only appeared she was confused and lost when she was daydreaming.”

“Do you think it’s possible?” she asked hopefully.

“I think she’d better see a doctor, a specialist. There’s a good geriatrics doctor at St. Rose’s. People like him. If you can get Lois to go, I can get her a quick appointment. He owes me.”

Dennis always made everything all right. No matter what the crisis, he could be counted on. “I would be so lost without you,” she said.

“So that was what had you crying? Worrying about your mother?”

“Yes. Silly, isn’t it? I usually check things out before I overreact.”

“And were you so overwrought that you walked home from your car in the rain?”

She grimaced. Ah yes, there was something else she hadn’t mentioned. “Jake was on his way here to ask me a favor,” she said. “He pulled up right behind me, moments after the tire went flat. It started to pour so I got in his car to sit it out. Then he asked me if I’d put on a little weight.”

Dennis couldn’t help himself. He started to laugh.

“I wasn’t amused,” she said.

“I don’t imagine you were.” He had no trouble envisioning her as she jumped out of his car and, furious, walked the rest of the way in the rain. “Just tell me one thing. You didn’t suggest we get married because Jake made you feel fat, did you?”

“No,” she said. “But by the time I got here, soaked and mad, I realized that the one thing in my life that I have always been able to count on is you. And I’m stupid not to tie you down and get you off the market.”

“Charlene, I’ve been off the market for five years.”

“And I’ve been crazy to let you run around loose. Dennis? Do you think it’s a bad idea? Because—”

He covered her hand with his. “I think it’s probably about time.”

She sighed in relief. For some reason, all she wanted was to have this one part of her life settled. Mapped out, covered, secured. Done.

“Why don’t you take a soak while I clean the dishes,” he said. “Then I’ll start the bedroom fireplace and meet you in there.”

She had a moment’s hesitation. “Dennis—”

“It’s all right, Charlene,” he said, reading her mind. “We’ve both had rough days. I’m thinking along the lines of a little CNN before sleeping.”

By the time she got out of the bath, he had already nodded off on top of the comforter. At 5:00 a.m. she felt his lips touch her forehead as he prepared to leave for his early start in the emergency room. She could smell the coffee he’d made, and although he was clean shaven, there would be no evidence that he’d used the bathroom sink; Dennis was as immaculate as she. She couldn’t have asked for a better night’s sleep, all her worries and anxieties put to rest by the best companion of her life.

Yes, it was probably about time.

Three

When Charlene entered her office, Pam London was taken aback. “Wow,” she said, her mouth dropping open in surprise. “Look at you.”

“What?” Charlene asked, but she smiled because she knew what Pam saw. She’d seen it herself in the mirror that very morning.

“You look ravishing. You haven’t looked this good since you got back from Mazatlan.”

“Ravishing?”

“My, my, yes.” Pam squinted a bit, studying Charlene’s face. “What is it? New makeup?”

“Not exactly. Come into my office, will you?” Pam followed, notepad in hand, and shut the door behind her. “Dennis and I have decided to get married,” Charlene said, skipping any preamble.

Pam didn’t make it very far into the spacious office before she sank into a deep and comfy leather chair. Speechless.

“This can’t possibly be a surprise,” Charlene said.

“Can’t it be…?”

Charlene, businesslike, began taking papers out of her briefcase and placing them in separate stacks on the desktop. “To the contrary. Some would even say this is way overdue, that we should have done it years ago. After five years, it seems almost like a mere formality.” Indeed, on the very night they had made the decision, nothing special set it apart from any other night they spent together. Except maybe the changing of a tire in the rain, which Dennis accomplished while Charlene held the flashlight.

“I guess I thought—” Pam didn’t finish.

“You thought we didn’t need marriage?”

“Well…that’s what you always said.”

“And it’s still true. We don’t need marriage, but wanting it is a different story. To make our commitment complete.”

“That’s lovely.”

“You are the absolute first to know. I haven’t even told Stephanie yet, or my mother. Lois thinks I’m completely hopeless, so she’s going to flip, and Stephanie…Well, I haven’t talked to her since yesterday.” And in thinking about that conversation some of the glow threatened to fade from Charlene’s features. She would have to call Stephanie and tell her about her grandmother; they were very close. But as for the marriage plans, she could wait. In fact, Charlene was still smarting a little from Stephanie’s words and didn’t look forward to calling her at all. “But I wanted to tell you immediately,” Charlene said to Pam. “Because I’d like you to stand up for me, if you will.”

“If? Of course I will! But what about Stephanie and Lois? Won’t they get their noses out of joint if I—”

“No, no, no,” Charlene insisted. “This is all going to work out fine. And I want you with me on this. Like you’ve been with me on everything. I couldn’t have built this practice without you, Pam.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you will.”

“Of course,” she said, flattered. “When is this going to happen?”

“I don’t know. In a few weeks. I have about four major crises to work out before I can think about the actual event, but once I get things under control, I’ll make some arrangements. Something very small, very quiet, very quick.”

Pam smiled lazily. “Quick? Are you pregnant?”

“Ha-ha.”

“And you are doing this quickly because…?”

Charlene stopped shuffling papers, put her briefcase under her desk and took a seat. “Now that we’ve decided, we’re anxious to have the formalities out of the way. But there is another matter that concerns me. My mother is experiencing some memory problems. Some confusion. I’d hate to call it dementia, but until she sees a doctor, I have no other terminology.”

“So the call from the grocer was the real McCoy,” Pam observed.

“I didn’t want to admit it. I was hoping he was just overreacting, but she was confused. It’s possible she really couldn’t find her way home from the store and had to be rescued by a bag boy. I have no better explanation because she can’t remember much about the incident.”

“My goodness, how scary,” Pam replied, as surprised now as Charlene had been yesterday.

She nodded. “I owe Mr. Fulbright an apology. And a debt of gratitude. I hope these aren’t the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s.”

“And that’s why you’re going to hurry and—”

“That’s a factor, not a reason. My mom has a problem, and I don’t know how serious it is, but before things get any worse, if they’re destined to get worse, and while everyone in my family and in Dennis’s family are all relatively healthy and alert, we’re going to have a small, pleasant ceremony.”

“Well, this must be the right decision, it sure has worked wonders on you. You look positively radiant. How do you feel?”

Charlene folded her hands together on top of her desk. “I can’t explain it, but if I’d known I was going to feel this great, I’d have accepted Dennis’s proposal years ago. I’ve never felt so comfortable…so serene. I have total peace of mind.”

Pam leaned back into the folds of the chair, stretched her long legs out in front of her and admired Charlene’s shimmer. “You’re glowing. It’s amazing.”

“I can feel it.”

“You and Dennis must have had some romantic night last night—the sparkles are still floating all around your aura.” Pam’s eyes became moist. “I’m so happy for you, Char. No one deserves this more than you. I’d be honored to witness for you.”

Pam stood, dropped her notebook on the ottoman and moved toward Charlene. She opened her arms to embrace her, tears glittering in her eyes.

But Charlene didn’t cry. She was a little embarrassed by what Pam had said…and its contrast with the truth. There were no sparkles of romance glittering around her, but rather the warm glow of complete contentment. There had been no sex, no breathless passion in the wake of a profession of the truest love, but rather the intimate dialogue of close friends as they comforted each other after their terrible day.

But wasn’t that what true love really was? Friendship and trust? Knowing the person you counted on was there? And being there for him?

So, Charlene asked herself, what exactly was she glowing about? She frowned over Pam’s shoulder as she admitted to herself that it felt vaguely like relief.

Charlene patted Pam’s back and said, “There, there.” Then she handed Pam a tissue and said, “High on my list of priorities, after a nice little wedding, is a week off. Not a honeymoon, but rather a vacation. Sometime later this spring possibly, after we’ve tied the knot, had Peaches to the doctor, cleared some time from our schedules and have things under control. We’re talking about a cruise. Dennis and I have both been under so much pressure lately, I’m surprised we even have the energy to get married. To that end, I’d like to make a dent in the ‘pending’ list and clear some time.”

“When are you going to tell Stephanie and your mom?”

“Well…”

“That’s not much of an answer,” Pam said. “What’s going on?”

“To tell the truth, I’m a little miffed at them both. Peaches knows she has a problem that could be serious, and she told me to butt out. Said she was sorry to be losing it. Her exact words were, ‘I’m sorry that obviously I’m losing it.’ Jesus. As for Stephanie, she doesn’t stop talking about herself long enough to check and see if anyone else has a life. She’s so self-absorbed….”

“She’s twenty-five.”

“And spoiled and selfish. But I will have to speak to her about Peaches. You know how close those two are. And hopefully we will tell them both this weekend.”

“How do you suppose they’ll react?” Pam said, a devilish flicker sparkling her eyes.

“Hmm. Peaches will probably be astonished and Stephanie will…Stephanie will probably be relieved that I’m not going to die an old-maid divorce lawyer.” She shook her head while Pam laughed. “So,” she went on, “I have a full calendar today, culminating with a meeting this evening here with Bradley himself of Bradley & Howe regarding the Omagi custody. I doubt I’ll get home before ten. I’m due in court in an hour. Child Protective Services continue to harangue Leslie and Tom Batten, and I’ve filed an injunction to hold them off until we can have a hearing. Then I have a lunch and a meeting with Carl Dena regarding the transfer of one of his companies into his son’s name, since his son’s been managing it for about ten years anyway. Can you see to these items, please?” She passed a neatly printed list to Pam. “And will you please add one item?”

“Sure.”

“I ran into Jake last night. He wanted a favor, but we got sidetracked talking about Stephanie and he forgot to ask me. Will you give him a call? Ask him what he needs?”

“Sure.”

“And if it sounds like too much trouble, tell him you can’t fit it on my calendar. I’ve already done plenty for him and I don’t—”

“He probably just wants some simple legal thing for free, like a paper filed for a friend,” Pam said as she scribbled, not even looking up from her notebook. “If so, I can probably get it done without even bothering you.”

“Your discretion,” Charlene said dismissively. “I’ve got less than an hour to go over my notes for court, so let’s get to work.”

“Gotcha. Coffee?”

“Hey, that would be great. I forgot to grab some as I passed the pot.”

“You have a lot on your mind. By the way, will you be living in your house or Dennis’s?”

Charlene responded with a blank stare, her mouth slightly open. How could that have not even come up in the conversation that followed “Do you still want to get married?” “Um, my house, of course,” she said to Pam unconvincingly.

“You didn’t even talk about it, did you?”

“You know, we talked about so many things….”

“Oh brother,” Pam said, heading for the coffeepot.

One of the things Pam London appreciated about working for Charlene Dugan was the quality of the work environment and the high measure of independence and responsibility Pam was afforded. She was an experienced paralegal, an executive assistant, and passed off secretarial work to office clericals and legal research to law clerks. Pam had helped build Phelps, Dugan & Dodge; she’d been with Charlene for sixteen years, beginning in the early, lean years.

Pam remembered with nostalgic fondness the old brick walk-up they started in, when they both were young and energetic, when Stephanie was just a bitty little thing with freckles. They couldn’t afford a secretary so Lois, who was about to retire, helped out with typing and filing in the evenings and on the weekends.

They’d been through a lot since then, both professionally and personally. Pam had lost her mother to cancer and eventually moved back in with her father. She told herself she did it for him, but it was as much for herself. Meanwhile, Charlene finally moved out of her mother’s house. Together they built a strong reputation in the legal community. The work was challenging, the pay excellent, the people were of the highest caliber and her days flew by.

Pam and Charlene were too busy to worry that they didn’t have dates. And now, against all odds, Charlene was actually getting married.

It was 7:00 p.m. when the door to Charlene’s office opened and she came marching out, briefcase in one hand, sheaf of papers to drop on Pam’s desk in the other, coat over her shoulders. And a scowl on her face. “Last-minute change of venue,” she said. “I’m going to Bradley & Howe.”

“When did this happen?” Pam asked.

“About ten minutes ago, when I called to confirm our meeting here. It’s a sleazy trick. This guy is creating diversions, pretending the meeting was always scheduled for his office. What bullshit. I left a message for Sherry Omagi on her voice mail, but if she shows up here, tell her she can drive over to Bradley & Howe if she wants to, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll meet with the attorney whether she’s there or not, and I’m not backing down.”

“Go get ’em, tiger.”

“You ever get through to Jake?”

“Oh, yeah. There’s some woman he met…I think he said he met her in a bar…?”

“No,” Charlene said facetiously. “Jake? In a bar?”

“She’s divorced, has a couple of kids by two exes, neither of whom share custody or pay child support. Now ex number one wants custody of child number one. And of course she’s broke.”

“Does the ex have money?”

“Don’t know that yet.”

“Well, I can’t see a judge handing over a child with a lot of back support owed. Abuse?”

Pam shrugged. She didn’t know the answer to that either. “He abandoned them…as did ex number two. I put her on your calendar for next week.”

“Why’d you do that?” Charlene asked.

“Because you just can’t say no to Jake,” Pam returned, smiling gently.

“That’s what you’re for! You can!”

“Char, it’s easier this way. Believe me. It’ll take hours of pestering off the clock.” She glanced down at the papers Charlene had given her. “Where are you with CPS versus Batten?”

“We’ll revisit this issue in one month with a hearing in family court. We’ve got a TRO. The CPS has been temporarily restrained. They’ve been told to leave the Battens alone unless they have a police matter to investigate.”

“In the hot file it goes. You’d better hurry.”

“Don’t work too late,” Charlene said.

“Since there’s no meeting here, I’ll close up in ten minutes.”

“Have a nice evening,” Charlene said, pulling the door closed.

“You bet,” Pam said to the closing door. “You bet,” she said more quietly to the empty room.

She cleaned off her desk at a leisurely pace, giving that last client who might show up at the wrong place for the right meeting a few more minutes to appear. She cleared her computer screen, locked her desk drawer and placed her calendar open on top of her desk, scanning tomorrow’s schedule. Yes, yes, I love working here, she said to herself. I’d be lost without this place.

Lost.

Pam pulled her gym bag from the cupboard behind her desk and went into Charlene’s executive bathroom; she only used this private facility when Charlene was out of the office. There she affected a transformation—from sophisticated career woman in light wool suit, silk blouse and pumps, to weight trainer in spandex, sports bra and cross-trainers.

She pulled her shoulder-length auburn hair into a clip and couldn’t resist the urge to preen a little in front of Charlene’s mirror. She was cut; nicely muscled, her percentage of body fat low. Looking fine. Weight lifting was more than just a hobby, more than a means of staying in shape. It was something she did to keep her spirits from sinking.

It wasn’t as though she had a bad life. In fact, by almost anyone’s standards she had a great life. She loved her job, was in outstanding health and had a terrific home life with her Great Dane, Beau, and an elderly but extremely fit father who traveled quite a bit, leaving her to enjoy the luxury of free rent in three thousand square feet with hot tub. And she had friends, from work, from the neighborhood and from the club where she exercised.

But there was no man in her life and there hadn’t been in years. Years! And she was no longer too busy to notice.

She also remembered the ones that hadn’t worked out, the ones who did come around but were completely wrong for her and the ones who caught her eye and already had the stamp of another woman on them. She was luckless in this department. What was worse, she had absolutely no idea why. If her father asked her one more time, “Any new prospects, honey?” she might strangle him. As objectively as she could judge, she thought herself to be of at least average attractiveness. Oh hell, above average! She was intelligent, industrious and clean. She had a sense of humor, she read good books and, unless she was missing some vital signal, she was actually popular. She got along with everyone, on both personal and professional levels. In fact, she was one of those women who, after writing of her dilemma to Ann Landers, was likely to get the response, “If what you say about yourself is true, you’d have been snapped up years ago. There must be some little thing you’re overlooking.”

It wasn’t like Pam to sulk. In fact, it was rare for her to give in to this sense of disappointment, this feeling that she had somehow failed. She’d stopped trying to figure out what terrible flaw she had long ago. Was this because Charlene was getting married? But that was silly. Charlene and Dennis had been together for years and, as she’d said, this was really only a formality.

Pam had accepted that not everyone gets a partner and she knew a lot of single people who were not looking, were not trying to find a mate. She was thirty-nine and had stopped allowing herself to be set up at about thirty-five. She wasn’t interested in making man-hunting a life’s work.

The paperwork she would take home was already packed into her briefcase. As she pulled her raincoat out of the closet, there were two short taps at the outer office door before it swung open. “Locking up, Ms. London?” Ray Vogel asked her.

“As we speak,” she said, taking her coat off its hanger.

“Whoa, Ms. London,” he said, grinning. “Look at you! I always figured you for a gym rat.”

“A what?” she said, laughing in spite of herself.

“Wow, look at that six-pack,” he said, referring to her muscled abs. “Where do you work out?”

“Just a neighborhood tennis and fitness club.”

“You compete?” he asked.

“Me? Get serious!” But she had an unmistakable urge to flex.

She slipped into her coat, pulled the strap of her tote over one shoulder, gym bag over the other, followed that with her handbag strap, then grabbed up her briefcase and suit-on-a-hanger. Keys in hand, she joined him at the office door. He took the keys from her hand, eased her out the door, flicked off the lights and locked up for her. “You could compete,” he said, handing her back the keys. Then he took some of her burdens. “Come on, I’ll make sure you get to your car.”

“You don’t have to do that, Ray. I get myself there every night.”

“Tonight’s my treat,” he said. “You know, I could tell. That you work out. I thought about just asking, but I didn’t want to, you know, be…um…” He was clearly searching for a word.

“Nosy?” she supplied, humor in her voice.

“That’s not what I mean. I was working on a way to ask you if you were, you know, married. Or involved.”

She almost dropped her suit. She stopped walking and turned toward him with a look that verged on alarm. “What?”

He shrugged. “Married? Involved?”

“Why?” she said, confused—and very shocked.

“I thought we could grab a drink some night. Maybe something to eat.” He took her elbow in hand and led her the rest of the way to the elevator. He pressed the down button. “You know, a date.”

It was almost scary, the way he proposed this only minutes after she’d been flexing her thirty-nine-year-old muscles in front of the bathroom mirror, bemoaning her absolutely solitary life. She was going to be a long time in recovering from the sheer blow. “Are you serious? You have a thing for older women?”

“Why wouldn’t I be serious? How much older can you be?” he countered.

The elevator arrived and they stepped inside.

“I could be a lot older, Ray. I could be your mother!”

“Come on,” he said, brushing her off.

“How old are you?” she demanded, feeling a blush rise up her neck.

“Now, if I’d asked you that question, I bet you’d get all piss—All bent out of shape,” he said, correcting himself. “I’m almost twenty-eight.”

“I could be your much older sister,” she said. “I’m almost forty.”

“Oh yeah?” he said, looking pleased with himself. “How almost?”

“Thirty-nine and three quarters.”

“No shit. I mean, no kidding!”

“How ‘almost twenty-eight’ are you?”

“Twenty-five,” he said. He grinned devilishly. Handsomely. “I took you for about thirty.”

“Ray.” She laughed at him. “You’re a terrible liar.”

“Okay, thirty-one. No more than thirty-three, tops. So, about that drink—”

The elevator deposited them on the main floor and they stepped out onto the marble floor of the foyer. “You really have made my day,” she said with laughter in her voice. She couldn’t wait for her father to next ask about prospects. “But I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly have a drink with you.”

“You’re involved,” he said. It was not a question, and it reeked of disappointment.

“Ray, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be right for each other.” She stopped at the glass revolving door.

“I’m mature for my age.”

“Me too,” she said.

“I get done here at about ten. You should be finished working out by then.”

“Good night, Ray,” she said. She took her bag and briefcase from him and went through the revolving doors.

He followed her. “I’m going to change clothes, drive over to the Plum Tree—they have good Chinese and a nice, quiet little bar. Very cozy neighborhood place. Not too loud.”

“I’m going to work out, then I’m going home,” she said, heading for the parking lot. “To tuck in my dog and walk my father.”

“Oh man, you’re making it very tough, Ms. London,” he said from the glass doors. “I don’t know how to compete with a dog and a father. Play fair.”

She threw her head back and laughed again. “You are very flattering. Have a nice evening.”

“You’re breaking my heart!”

She shook her head. Nice joke, she thought. The kid doesn’t know from broken hearts. She unlocked her car, threw all her stuff in ahead of her and got in. She turned on the engine and the lights, then looked one more time toward the office building. He stood there, watching her go. Tall, handsome, young. Young. As she pulled out of the lot, the face in the rearview mirror grinned stupidly back at her. “Oh, for God’s sake!” she snapped at herself. “Don’t even think about it!”

Dennis could hear the commotion of happy family life as he stood at the front door of his sister Gwen’s house. He didn’t hurry to ring the bell, just listened for a moment. Gwen was forty now and had had her children in her thirties—Richie, when she was thirty-one and Jessica, when she was thirty-three. They were at a great age right now—lots of fun and not much work. They didn’t have to be bathed anymore, and they were too young to drive. But this was not a quiet or calm age. He could hear the choppy piano practice in which Jessica was engaged and a steady thumping coming from somewhere inside the house.

“Richie! That basketball is for outside!”

The steady thumping would be his nephew, bouncing the ball against a wall.

“I’m keeping time for Jessica,” he yelled.

A living-room wall.

He rang the bell. The door was opened by the kids, who immediately shrieked in happy surprise and threw themselves on him. He lifted them both, looping an arm around each skinny waist and balancing their wiry bodies against his hips, then carried them through the foyer, past the living room, to find his sister in the kitchen.

“Well, look at this. Your uncle Dennis is psychic. He knew I needed a break from you ungrateful monsters.”

“I eat monstrous children for breakfast,” he said in his growling voice and gave them a powerful shake that sent their limbs flailing.

“Take them away for a while and I’ll make it worth your efforts,” she said.

He growled again and carried them upstairs, knowing he wouldn’t get a single peaceful word of conversation with Gwen until he’d given them some quality time. An hour later, the kids clean and tucked in their beds, Dennis migrated back to Gwen’s kitchen, lured by the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. She brushed a strand of hair out of her tired eyes and slapped a box of Girl Scout cookies onto the kitchen table between two cups.

“Where’s Dick?” Dennis asked.

“In New York, on business,” she said. “The dick,” she whispered, making her brother laugh.

“Had enough mommying for one day?” he asked, sitting down behind one of the cups while she poured.

“You’re the guardian for those two, right? Because I might not live to see the end of this job. God, they should bottle that energy.” She filled the second cup. “Charlene working?”

He sipped. “Mmm, good. Yeah, she has a meeting.” Gwen yawned. “Am I keeping you up?” he asked.

“God, I’m sorry, Denny. I had to work at the school today, plus I took Dick’s turn at Jessica’s soccer practice, and then there was this Brownie meeting about the cookies. You know, THE cookies,” she said, smacking the box till it fell over. “The effing cookies,” she added, again whispering.

“Won’t you be glad when they get a little older and you can swear again?”

“Jesus, you don’t know the half. How’s your life?”

“I’m getting married.”

Her mouth fell open and she was momentarily speechless. “You’re getting what?” she asked when she recovered from the shock.

“Married,” he said again.

He sipped again from his cup while she studied his passive face.

She had wondered if this day would ever come again for her brother. She didn’t want him to be alone. Even though he had her, Dick and the kids, it was not the same as a spouse, a partner. When he’d started dating Charlene, she’d grown excited. Hopeful. But five years had passed in relative sameness, and while they were obviously very close, nothing like marriage—or even living together—ever materialized.

Gwen put her elbow on the table and held up her head with her hand, staring at him while he sipped his coffee. Is this what happened when you were almost fifty and getting married? Matter-of-fact? Is it just another chore? Like deciding to update the will or go see the tax attorney?

She lifted one skeptical eyebrow. “You look ecstatic,” she said doubtfully.

“It seems like the thing to do, don’t you think?” he asked.

“It’s not a colonoscopy, Denny. You’re getting married!”

“I really am happy about it. It’s just that…there’s something I hadn’t accounted for.”

“Lay it on me,” she said, slowly testing her own cup of hot coffee.

“I was completely unprepared for how this would bring back memories of Sarah.” Gwen stopped sipping and gave Dennis her full and, for once, unsarcastic attention. She slowly lowered her cup to the saucer. “Even though I asked Charlene if she wanted to get married two, probably three years ago, it never occurred to me that in saying yes she would unleash so many memories for me.”

“Good ones?” Gwen asked. “Bad ones?”

“All of them, from the time I met Sarah and first held her close, to the time three years later that I held her cancer-ravaged body as we said goodbye.”

“Oh, Denny…”

“I have no idea why this is happening now. Really.”

“Maybe it’s the idea of remarrying,” she offered.

“Sarah died eighteen years ago. And we were only together for three years. It doesn’t feel like remarrying. It feels like that was another life.”

“Well, then, what could it be? Are we close to any anniversaries? Of your engagement to Sarah? Your wedding, her illness, her death?”

“No, thank God.”

She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “Maybe it’s just time for you to revisit this thing. You know, like post-traumatic stress. Maybe this is how you complete the cycle, bring closure. I mean, is it even possible to marry Charlene without your last marriage crossing your mind?”

“I never thought I’d love like that again,” he said, looking anywhere but at his sister.

A moment of silence passed between them…and stretched out. In a way, Denny and Charlene had been acting like an old married couple since the week they met, but was that a good thing? “And have you?” she asked very quietly, drawing his eyes back to her face.

“Of course!” he insisted. “My God, Charlene is extraordinary. I know you agree.”

“I do,” she said. In truth, Gwen was one of Charlene’s biggest fans, but that wasn’t really the issue here. The issue was her brother, who was morose on the day he announced his formal engagement. Despite his insistence to the contrary, the bold and passionate way he had loved when he loved Sarah had been buried with her. While Gwen was mostly concerned with her brother right now, it did cross her mind that Charlene might be getting shortchanged.

Gwen had been eighteen when her twenty-eight-year-old brother met and fell helplessly in love with Sarah Brown, a slender beauty with dark hair and vivid eyes. Dennis had described his first true love to his sister as kind, patient, good-natured and possessing a dry humor.

They met while Dennis was teaching high-school chemistry. Sarah was the photography and audiovisual teacher at the school and there was such chemistry between them—an intended pun they overused—that the principal asked them to stop looking at each other during school hours. They got married the second school was out—a sweet little ceremony in the park—and spent the summer in Europe.

What they had together was so obvious, so intense, so devoted and delicious, it became the benchmark for what Gwen wanted for herself. Perfect love.

And then Sarah died, a slow and miserable death from ovarian cancer.

“I don’t know if I ever told you this, Denny, but one of the things that I have always most admired about you was…is…your ability to take the pain and disappointment in life and turn it into something positive and beautiful. Like letting the experience of Sarah’s illness and death turn the chemistry teacher into a physician’s assistant who can help people daily. I love that about you.”

He looked wistful, his eyes cloudy. “She was so amazing,” he said.

“Dennis, look at me,” she said.

He obliged. “You’ve told me that a number of times, Gwen. I appreciate it.”

“Denny, is this some kind of red flag? Maybe you and Charlene shouldn’t be getting married….”

“I was so lonely by the time I met Charlene,” he said. “Dating never did do it for me, you know? I was so grateful to finally find someone who liked the same things. Someone I could talk to. I suggested we get married or at least move in together six months after we met.”

“I didn’t know that,” she said.

“She told me she’d never been happier, more in tune with a person…and she didn’t want to screw it up by changing everything so soon after we’d fallen into such a lovely little routine.”

Routine, Gwen thought. Yes, that would describe it.

“The day I met Charlene was one of the best days of my life. The past five years have been some of my most contented.”

Gwen couldn’t bear the flat expression on his face, the murky look in his eyes. Sarah’s death had been a painful loss for Gwen, too, and for everyone even remotely related to them. They had been a beautiful, joyful young couple, without so much as an argument between them, and were now scarred by the utter tragedy of a life cut short. And almost overnight Dennis became a young widower locked in a powerful grief that lasted years. It was almost too much to bear remembering. She was afraid she might cry just thinking about it.

Now he was getting married…. and he sounded perfectly miserable.

In utter frustration she tore open the box of cookies and stuffed one into her mouth. She went for a second, then a third, chewing slowly and with much difficulty. Her cheeks puffed out and her teeth were smeared with chocolate. It took a long time to make room for two more, which she had to break into chunks to push into her mouth. Dennis watched this display in frowning confusion, but she didn’t see him. She had closed her eyes as she struggled with the clump of chocolate. When she was finally done, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, looked at her brother and said, “Just don’t bubble over with happiness, okay?”

“That was disgusting,” he observed.

“Thank you.”

When Charlene arrived at the law offices of Bradley & Howe, Sherry Omagi was waiting in the foyer, looking as nervous as a cat. Charlene pasted that smile of confidence on her face. She hadn’t spent as much time as she should have preparing for tonight, for she’d had only one meeting with Sherry, but it should be cutand-dried. Sherry was willing to discuss visitation, as long as she maintained custody, and would not ask for support payments. She was a self-supporting accountant who worked mostly at home and the child was young, circumstances that all heavily favored the mother.

“He’s already here,” Sherry said, wringing her hands. “I saw him go in.”

“Sherry, I want you to calm down and let me do the talking.”

“I’m so afraid,” she said. “Frankie means everything to me.”

Charlene pulled her client along with her to the elevators. She pushed the button for the third floor. “Now, we’ve talked about this, Sherry. Your ex-husband is entitled to some quality time with Frankie, and the same is good for Frankie, but that’s no reason you can’t retain primary custodial care. You should rethink the issue of compensatory support as well.”

“I don’t need support,” she said. “Kim isn’t as attached to Frankie as I am. He only wants him because I want him. He’s even said that having him is stupid.”

“People say things in the heat of the moment.”

“He said he’s sick of Frankie shitting all over the place. Really, Charlene, I worry about Frankie in Kim’s care. I don’t know that he’d be…safe.”

“Well, there are definite messes involved when you have little ones running around. This is the first time you’ve indicated Kim could be abusive. Are you serious about this?”

“I just don’t know. I suppose that’s just my temper talking, but still. Charlene, I just want custody. That’s all.”

“Compromise will get you a lot further, Sherry. Especially since it’s the best thing for the entire family.”

“But it hardly costs anything to keep Frankie. Really.”

“But it will, believe me. Wait till he wants to drive. Wait till college. We have to settle these things now, make it part of the divorce settlement.”

The elevator arrived on the third floor and Charlene got off. When she realized that Sherry wasn’t beside her, she turned around. Her client stood in the elevator, paralyzed. “You’re kidding, right?” Sherry asked.

“About what?”

“About driving. About college.”

Charlene laughed. “I have a twenty-five-year-old daughter—it’s nothing to kid about.”

“Charlene, Frankie is a goose.”

Charlene’s expression was frozen, her mouth hanging open slightly. She did a memory check of all the times Sherry had said things like, “Frankie is such a precious goose,” and “I don’t know what I’d do without my little goose.” She couldn’t remember one time she’d actually been informed that this was not a minor child.

“A goose…with tail feathers?”

“Beautiful tail feathers.”

“The kind of animal down comforters are made of?”

Sherry gasped. “God forbid!”

“Oh my Lord,” Charlene prayed.

That night Jake entered Coppers. The bar, once named Toppers, had been rechristened when the owner realized a large percentage of the clientele was from the police department. Jake stopped first at the bar, procured a beer, said hello to a couple of guys he knew, and finally migrated to a booth near the back. A woman waited there, nursing a cola.

“Hiya, Merrie, honey.” He slid in across from her. “You’re all set. You have an appointment with Charlene next Tuesday—10:00 a.m. Can you do that?”

“I reckon so…. But does she know I ain’t got nomoney?”

“She understands about that. Charlene is good, Merrie. You’re going to need someone good to get ahead of this guy.”

“Jake, I just don’t get it,” she said, shaking her head. “He didn’t want nothing to do with us. Only saw Josie one time, that’s all. Never gave me any money, let the apartment lease run out with me sitting there with no place to go. And now? He wants his daughter so she can have a good life? What does he think she’s been having the last eleven years up till now?”

Meredith was a thin, washed-out blonde, all of twenty-seven years old. She was just a little bitty thing, about five foot two, a hundred and ten pounds maybe, soaking wet. If it hadn’t been for her little tiny breasts, she’d look like a kid. A tired and worn-out kid. She had hardly any fat on her, and her eyes were big and blue and innocent…but she was not. She’d had a hard life. Even before this. She’d been only fifteen when she’d gotten pregnant with the child in the custody dispute. Her ex, Rick, had been thirty, and quite possibly agreed to marriage as a means of escaping any charge of statutory rape.

Meredith was broke, not terribly bright and didn’t live the most wholesome of lifestyles. She also had a daughter at home, aged eight, fathered by another man who was not her husband. Rick, on the other hand, was forty-one, stable and married with a second child. He made a good living, lived in a decent house and went to church on Sunday.

Jake saw a dark shadow on her cheek. “Merrie?” he asked, leaning across the booth and squinting. “Merrie, you got a bruise?”

Self-conscious, she touched the exact place. Then she reached into her purse to retrieve her compact and studied her reflection. She powdered the spot. “It ain’t no big deal. Not really.”

Jake took a long pull at his beer, pursed his lips and looked away, trying to mentally gather restraint. “He’s really starting to piss me off, Merrie.”

“You?” She laughed.

“When did this happen?”

“He came over this morning when I was getting ready for work. He found out where’d I moved to and that you were helping me out, helping me get a better job. He wanted to talk to Josie and I wouldn’t let him past the door. He found out about the whatchamacallit…order of protection.” She laughed hollowly. “It made him mad.”

“Jesus Christ. You call the police?”

She looked into her cola, defeated. “I just took the kids over to the neighbor’s, told her to be sure he didn’t bother them and then came on t’work.” She looked up. “I know I should’ve called the police like you said, but I’m just so tired of him. Of everything. And I didn’t want to be late for work again.”

“You gotta do this by the book, Merrie. Follow through. Or you’re gonna be real late for work, you know what I mean?”

“Oh, I don’t think he’d actually kill me,” she said quietly. “So, how’d you talk your ex-wife into helping me out? You don’t have to pay her for this, do you?”

“No, nothing like that. She likes having me owe her. It makes her feel powerful.” He grinned.

“You must have a pretty good relationship with her, even after the divorce.”

“We were married one twenty-sixth of the total time we’ve known each other, and we’ve gotten along better in the last twenty-five years than we got along in that one. Most of the time I irritate the shit outta her.” He grinned, as if it was an achievement. “But, like I said, she relishes opportunities to remind me that I am a lowly cop and she is a big fucking attorney.” Merrie lit a cigarette. “Hey, I thought you quit.”

She exhaled away from him, trying to spare him the secondhand smoke. She touched her purplish cheekbone. “I’m under a lot of stress.”

“Soon as this is over, you gotta try to quit again. That stuff isn’t good for the kids. Y’know?”

She shook her head. “How’d you end up single? Good-looking guy like you, with such a big heart? Seems like some woman’d have you locked up tight.”

“They do that regular, Merrie, honey. Regular.”

“Well, listen, I gotta git,” she said, stubbing out the barely smoked cigarette. “Get the kids home and in their own beds before my neighbor has a fit. Jake, I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t such a good guy.”

“Hey, no problem. C’mon, let’s go.”

“You think I’m going to get through this, keep my Josie?”

“I’m telling you, Charlene is the absolute best lawyer in family law in this city. Judges pick her to arbitrate all the time. She’s so good she even took a case to the Supreme Court. And she’s a nice person. You’ll like her. She’s got a lot of…What’s the word I’m looking for? She’s got a lot of spunk, that’s for sure, but that’s not it. She’s got class, but that’s not it either…. Dignity. She’s got dignity. You spend a little time with her, you feel all cleaned up.”

They exited the bar and stood outside in the wet, early-spring night. “You never should’ a divorced her,” Merrie said.

“Ha. That was not one of my options.”

Four

The sun came out on Saturday morning and Charlene took it as an omen. She was preparing the brunch for her mother and daughter over which she would give them the good news.

“Let’s not overcook that quiche,” Dennis said.

They were making brunch. They would convey the news. She mentally lectured herself to start thinking and acting as a couple. This should not be a challenge; they’d been together for years.

Dennis put a sprig of mint in the festive-looking bowl of multicolored melon balls and poured four mimosas. He snapped open and refolded the linen napkins, peeked in the chafing dish at the ham and bacon and turned on the coffeepot. Charlene brought the warm croissants to the table, unfolded the napkins and put them in decorative rings, checked the meat in the chafing dish and turned down the temperature, then drank one mimosa. Rather quickly.

Dennis noticed. “There isn’t any reason to be tense,” he said. “I’m sure they approve of me.”

“It’s silly, isn’t it? But I am tense. Why is that?”

“Are you afraid to get married?”

“No. In fact, since we made the decision, I’ve never felt more relaxed. Secure. Pam says I glow.”

“You didn’t like the way I folded the napkins?” he asked. And if she wasn’t mistaken, asked rather testily.

“I wanted to use the napkin rings—I just bought them. If you don’t like them, take them off.” She took a breath. “Dennis, there are a couple of things we haven’t talked about yet.”

“Like?” He left the napkin rings alone.

“Insurance? Joint accounts? Prenup?”

“Those things don’t matter to me,” he said. He’d already told her that he had set aside some money for his niece and nephew, for college, and he naturally assumed Stephanie would remain her beneficiary. “Anything you want is fine with me.”

“Well, here’s something we haven’t discussed. Where are we going to live? I assumed we’d be living here.”

He stared at her for a moment as she fussed with the napkins, then he picked up a mimosa and drained the glass. “You did?”

“It seems like we spend more time here,” she said.

“That’s because of your schedule. You don’t exactly keep regular hours.”

“I don’t punch a clock, no.”

“Exactly! And when we have plans and you can’t get away until the last possible minute, I come for you here. Then I bring you back here.”

“I thought you liked it here,” she said.

“I like being with you,” he countered. “And coming here rather than asking you to drive back into the city is the gentlemanly thing to do.”

“Oh. You’re being a gentleman? You don’t like it here?”

“I like if fine,” he said snappishly. “But it’s for your convenience that we spend more time here. My house is actually closer to your office and the courthouse. If your clothes were in my closet, it would work out even better for us to meet there.”

“Your place would make a nice rental,” she said.

“You don’t like my house?”

“I love your house, but this house has a larger master bedroom and bath. Plus, I just bought it.”

“It would make a nice rental,” he said, a little edge in his voice.

“I don’t want it to be a rental!”

“Really?” he asked. “Why not?”

“It’s my house! I don’t want to rent it out!”

“And you think I’d like to rent mine out because…?”

“It’s older, larger and there are more rentals in your neighborhood.”

“It’s an historic district!”

“You don’t seem as attached to your house as I am to mine.”

“It’s a restored home! I restored it!”

The doorbell rang. They stared each other down.

“We’re going to have to put this discussion on the back burner,” she said.

“Where it will stay good and hot,” he added testily.

They went to the door together, plastered smiles on their faces and swung the portal open to greet Stephanie and Lois. They welcomed with hugs and cheek presses, pulling the guests inside. Dennis quickly replenished the mimosas that had been guzzled while the brunch guests shed their wraps. He presented full, fresh glasses to Lois, Stephanie and Charlene, then he put an arm around his fiancée’s shoulders and said, completely sweet-natured, “Let’s not make them wait. Let’s have a toast.”

Dennis and Charlene were both professionally trained in the ability to act contrary to emotions when necessary. Dennis couldn’t let his stress or fear or even anger show in the emergency room, especially around the patients and their families. As for Charlene, she was a gifted litigator; no one knew by her expression what she was thinking…and at that moment she was thinking she had just met a side of Dennis she had never before known.

“What are we toasting? New car? Vacation? Raise? Bonus?” Stephanie asked, taking a preliminary sip.

“At long last, Dennis and I have decided to make it official. We’re getting married.”

Stephanie stopped in mid gulp. She and Lois exchanged shocked looks and then said in unison, “Why?”

As toasts go, it wasn’t all Charlene had dreamed of. She much preferred the reaction she had gotten from Pam. Happy tears seemed more apropos.

“We felt it was time,” she said somewhat wearily.

They relented. “Oh. Well then, congratulations!”

“Yes, of course. How wonderful.”

Dennis raised a glass. “To new family ties,” he proposed.

“Hear, hear,” they intoned.

“Now, what have you made for brunch?” Lois wanted to know.

“Well, don’t fall over in excitement,” Charlene said.

Stephanie whispered to her grandmother, “I think she’s in need of a little more bride-to-be attention, Peaches.”

“But they always serve such lovely meals,” Lois protested.

“Come ahead, then,” Dennis said. “Come and sit—you’ll love this.”

It was true—Dennis and Charlene had gotten quite good at this sort of thing. It was not entirely insensitive of Lois to concern herself first with brunch and second with the upcoming nuptials. In their five years together, Charlene and Dennis had established a reputation for giving the best parties, with the most exquisite ambience and the most delectable food. They had a keen eye for putting the right guest list together, and whether the affair was large or small, elegant or casual, it was always polished. Perfect.

They sat Lois and Stephanie down and served them a wonderful brunch. Once their appetites were sated, they turned their attention to the prospect of a wedding. Charlene gave them the standard line, that it would be small, simple and soon, possibly in a few weeks.

“What do you mean, small wedding? What do you mean by small?” Stephanie wanted to know.

“Well, we’ve talked about a quick trip to Lake Tahoe,” Charlene said.

“Or, we could throw caution to the wind and go all the way to Las Vegas,” Dennis threw out.

Charlene looked askance at him. She thought his tone was a little edgy and suspected he was still miffed about the house issue.

“Most likely, we’ll go down to the courthouse, get it done and spend our time and money on a vacation later,” Charlene clarified.

“And deprive yourselves of guests?” Lois asked. “How completely unlike either one of you.”

“I have to admit, I’m pretty surprised,” Stephanie agreed. “I would have expected a rather lavish affair.”

“As in big, white wedding?” Charlene asked, frankly shocked.

“Oh, not as in big, white, virginal wedding,” she clarified. “Something that would fit your personal style more—which is almost never simple, small and soon. I’ve seen you plan a Christmas party for months, a Fourth of July barbecue for weeks. It’s so unlike you to just throw something together.”

“Well, that’s just the point!” Charlene said in frustration. “We want to get married and don’t have time for a big deal. It’s a little more complicated than a dinner party, you know.”

“Hardly. You can take as much or as little control as you like,” Lois declared.

“Peaches is right, Mom. These days you get a wedding planner.”

Charlene was a little slow to respond because she was watching her mother. It didn’t escape her notice that Lois seemed positively sharp as a tack today…and this pleased Charlene greatly. This was the mother she knew and, as it happened, took for granted.

“I can’t believe a planner eliminates all the work. Surely there’s still copious shopping, ordering, listing, planning…”

“As much as you want.” Stephanie shrugged. “Remember Jennifer Johnson, my sorority sister? She’s in med school and said all the time she could spare was a two-hour meeting every couple of weeks. Her mom and dad live in another state, so they couldn’t help. The solution? She had a meeting with the planner to talk about what she liked, made final selections that were brought to her and showed up to say ‘I do.”’ Stephanie popped a melon ball into her mouth.

“That couldn’t be done in a month.”

“Maybe not, but if all you want is a nice party, something you wouldn’t have to have a hall reserved for months in advance, you could have a very nice wedding with good food, music, flowers and lots of fun planned in two or three months. You could be a June bride.” She leaned over the small round table. “You’re not, you know, in the family way?” she whispered. Then giggled.

“She’s afraid I won’t make it,” Lois said.

“Mother! What an awful thing to say!”

“Aren’t you?”

“Peaches, that’s a little melodramatic, isn’t it?” Stephanie wanted to know.

“It’s true. She’s completely freaked out because I got a little turned around at the grocery store.”

Annoying though the direction of conversation was to Charlene, it was also endearing. That was her mom; she rarely spoke as you’d expect an eighty-year-old woman would. Freaked out, indeed!

“I heard it was very turned around,” Stephanie said, giving her grandmother a sidelong glance.

“It could have been very. Whatever. She’s afraid if she doesn’t get married quickly, I won’t even know I went to the wedding.”

“You are so irritating,” Charlene said to them both, but she managed a smile. At least Peaches had a sense of humor.

“I wouldn’t mind having guests,” Dennis said.

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