One moment the blond-haired, attractive woman with the kind blue eyes wasn’t there; the next moment, she was. Her very presence seemed to dominate the real estate office, an office devoted to a business that Maizie Sommers had taken such pride in building up over the years.
The only business that Maizie took even more pride in was the one that she and her two lifelong best friends, Theresa Manetti and Cecilia Parnell, conducted unofficially. A business that yielded no monetary rewards. However, the rewards that it did yield were far richer than any dollar amount.
And it was as if the woman standing before her now sensed that fact despite that they had never really talked about it.
“Maizie,” the woman said in a soft voice, “you need to help Kayley find someone. I don’t want her spending the rest of her life alone. It’s not right. She has so much love to give and no one to give it to. I’d find her someone myself, but I can’t do that now. And she is your goddaughter,” Karen Quartermain added pointedly. “Help her, Maizie. Please.”
The woman’s quietly worded request seemed to fill up every single space within the room.
Gasping, Maizie bolted upright. She wasn’t in her office—she was in her bed.
Her bedroom was dark, except for the ray of moonlight intruding like a laser through the window. It was shining on something on the rug. Something small and round.
Blowing out a long breath, Maizie ran her hand along her forehead.
A dream. It was only a dream.
Her brain should have realized that even though every detail had seemed so incredibly vivid and real. Her office had looked just like her office. And her friend had looked just like her friend. Except that Karen had looked the way she had a year ago, before she became ill.
Why in heaven’s name was she dreaming about Karen Quartermain, Maizie silently asked herself. She’d never dreamed about Karen, even when she was alive. Why now, two months after her friend had died?
With a sigh, Maizie lay back down. It was still very early. Turning on her side, she faced the window. She inhaled deeply and willed herself to get back to sleep.
Vivid or not, it was just a dream, nothing more. Nothing—
What was that on her rug?
The moonlight made her light gray rug appear pale even as it highlighted something on it.
Whatever it was looked as if it were winking at her.
Maizie sighed again. She was going to drive herself crazy guessing.
She wouldn’t have any peace until she found out what was on the rug. Throwing off her covers, Maizie got up and went to see exactly what the moonlight was shining on.
It was a penny.
What was a penny doing on her rug? The only explanation she could think of was that it must have fallen out of her pocket when she had gotten undressed for bed last night. But why had it been in her pocket in the first place? She never kept change in her pocket.
After picking it up, she sat down on the edge of her bed, staring at the coin. She was certain she hadn’t put it into her pocket. Any pennies she acquired went into a glass jar in her office and she hadn’t acquired any in a while.
“Karen?” she finally said uneasily, glancing around her bedroom. “Is this from you? Is this your way of giving me a sign?”
She knew it would have seemed silly to a great many people, thinking that the penny had just mysteriously appeared, a sign from a world that had no physical boundaries. But she and Karen Quartermain went back a long way. Karen had once jokingly said that if she died before Maizie and ever wanted to communicate, she’d drop a penny in her path so that she would know that she was trying to send a message, that Karen wanted something from her.
Karen had said the same thing to her daughter. Then she’d laughed, saying that was all pennies were good for these days—communication—since it took too many to buy anything.
Maizie closed her fingers around the penny, holding it as tightly as she had once held her friend’s hand as Karen was slipping away.
“That was you, wasn’t it?” Maizie whispered into the darkness. “That was you, asking me to find someone for Kayley.”
It was no longer a question. It was, Maizie thought, an assignment. One she felt honor bound to take on.
“Okay, Karen,” she said, completely awake now. “I’ll see what the girls and I can do.”
“If you don’t mind my saying so, Dr. Dolan, you look a little lost. Is there anything I can do for you?” Cecilia Parnell asked kindly.
As was her habit since she’d begun her housecleaning service—long before she had the large staff of excellent workers that she had now—Cilia would come by and personally check in with her clients once a month to make sure everything was more than satisfactory as far as the service went. Ordinarily, her clients had nothing but praise for the women in Cilia’s employ.
But this admittedly was not an ordinary situation.
Cilia had taken a special interest in Dr. Lucas Dolan ever since he had abruptly returned from serving his country overseas. A highly respected orthopedic surgeon who was also a reservist, he had selflessly done two tours of duty in the Middle East, seeing to the needs of not only wounded US soldiers but the native population, as well, many of whom had never even been to a doctor.
And then a call had come nine months ago that changed everything.
His wife, Jill, was driving their four-year-old daughter, Lily, home from preschool when she was broadsided by a driver texting to her boyfriend. Jill and Lily were rushed to the hospital. Luke flew home immediately, praying all the way. But Jill died before he could reach her bedside.
Lily had sustained cuts and bruises and was shaken up by the accident, but apart from being very confused and frightened, she was all right.
“Lost?” Luke repeated, glancing at the woman whose services Jill had engaged the week that they had moved into their house as a husband and wife.
Sitting in his living room, Luke struggled not to allow the sadness that had become his constant companion to overwhelm him.
Yes, he was lost, Luke thought. Lost because his high school sweetheart, the woman he had come to rely on for absolutely everything, was gone. Jill had generously freed him up so that he could concentrate on being the best surgeon he could be.
And now she’d been ripped out of his life without warning, leaving him not just to cope with all those details she had been so good at attending to, not just to cope with the emptiness that her absence had created, but also to cope with the prospect of being a single father to a little girl he hardly knew.
Sometimes it was almost too much for him to bear.
Lily was two when his reserve platoon had been called up and sent overseas. She was four when he came back into her life.
Now she was five, and things were somewhat better between them. But, like a blind man, Luke was still trying to find his way around in a world that was totally unknown to him.
He forced himself to smile at Cilia, knowing that the older woman was only trying to be kind. But as far as her question went, he couldn’t open up to her any more than he could open up to his mother-in-law. Barbara Baxter had moved in to help bridge the gap for Lily after her only daughter had died. Barbara