Why did she feel a knot in her stomach, a shadow in her soul? Was he in trouble? Was he dead?
She shivered, caught in the grip of something that felt weirdly like premonition.
Ben Prince did not exist, she reminded herself bitterly. How could he be dead when he had never been alive?
Except he was alive, amazingly so, in the sapphire-blue eyes of their daughter. Her daughter. The child he knew nothing about.
Jordan had tried to tell him. It seemed the only thing, the decent thing. That was when she’d found out, through the registrar’s office at the Smedley Institute where they had met during a summer program, there was no Ben Prince.
Short of yelling at them that a figment of her imagination could not have produced a pregnancy, there was nothing more she could do. He was gone.
Except in that place where her dreams took her.
Restless, she got out of bed, went over and slammed the window shut. She paused and looked out at Maple Street, Wintergreen, Connecticut. This was not the best area of town, but it was old, so the maple trees were enormous, just beginning to hint at their fall splendor. The houses that lined the street were tiny, asphalt-shingled boxes, but the yards were generous, which is what she had wanted for Whitney.
When she was growing up, Jordan had always assumed she would end up in a neighborhood like her parents, spacious Dutch colonial and Cape Cod homes set well back from the road, sporting wraparound verandas and porch swings and lawn chairs where people whiled away hot summer nights.
A perfect all-American street in a perfect all-American neighborhood. The scent of apple pies baking wafted out the windows at this time of year, and red, white and blue flags flew from porch pillars.
Of course, she had spoiled her parents’ all-American dreams for her by showing up pregnant, no marriage, no man.
Forgiveness had been some time coming though Whitney’s entrance into the universe seemed to have greased the wheels of progress considerably.
Her parents had objected to Jordan buying her own little house six months ago. Of course, it made more sense for her to continue living with them. She was a single mom with a limited income. Her options, which had once seemed endless, now seemed limited.
Even so, she liked her life. Was contented with it. Ninety percent of the time.
Still, looking at that quiet street, washed in silver moonlight, Jordan felt restless. What had happened to the girl who beamed out of her senior high yearbook, the banner Most Likely To Succeed draped across the picture?
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, she had been politically ambitious, certain she would be the first female mayor of Wintergreen.
It was that ambition that had made her sign up for an intense political science summer program at Laguna Beach the summer after her graduation from high school.
It had turned out to be her date with destiny—and she was not sure yet that she had recovered from the surprise that her destiny was not even close to what she had planned for herself.
Now, she was a chef’s assistant working for her aunt. It was a job Jordan had fallen into, rather than planned for. Given that, it was surprisingly satisfactory.
She no longer had any desire to be mayor. She just wanted to be a good mom to her small firebrand of a daughter. She wanted to help other girls, who like herself, found themselves thrown up on love’s rocks, battered and bruised. Priorities changed that quickly.
Reminding herself sternly she had to work tomorrow, she climbed back into bed, and tossed restlessly until the phone jangled shrilly. Startled, Jordan looked at her bedside clock—6:00 a.m. No one in their right mind called that early in the morning. It must be Marcella. She was due the third week of September.
“Hello?” she answered, already pulling on her jeans. She could drop off Whitney at her parents, call Meg, be in the labor room in fifteen minutes.
“Jordan, you are not going to believe this!”
She sat down on the edge of her bed, and eased the jeans back off. “I’m already having trouble with belief. Aunt Meg, when have you ever been up at this time of the morning?”
“Never,” her aunt admitted. “But it was worth it! Did I wake you? Never mind. You’ll think it’s worth it, too.”
“We’ve been hired to cater the presidential ball?” Jordan asked, tongue-in-cheek.
“Better. It’s because of the time zone difference that they called so early.”
Better than the presidential ball? Jordan was intrigued despite herself. “Aunt Meg, who called so early?”
“Lady Gwendolyn Corbin, lady-in-waiting to Queen Marissa Penwyck of the island kingdom of Penwyck.”
Jordan, confused, checked her calendar. As she thought, it was still September, not anywhere near April Fool’s day. She sighed. Her lovely aunt, a chef extraordinaire, always walked the fine line between genius and eccentricity. Sadly, she had obviously finally crossed the line.
“Jordan, listen! She wants me—us—to cater the party. At the palace! Right there on the island of Penwyck! We get to go there, all expenses paid. Oh my, Jordan, it is the break I’ve been waiting for. I told you that little piece in Up and Coming People was going to do it. I told you!”
The article in the national magazine Up and Coming had been dreadful. It had made her aunt seem considerably more eccentric than she was, which must have been a stretch for the writer. It had featured Meg’s experiments combining edible flowers with pastry. “Flaky Flowers” had been the title of the piece and it had gone downhill from there.
“Aunt Meg, slow down,” she suggested gently, suspecting the article had generated a prank. “Where have you been asked to go? And what have you been asked to do?”
Her aunt took a deep breath. “You read about it in the papers, didn’t you? Or saw it on television?”
“Flaky Flowers was on television?” Jordan asked, appalled that her aunt might have been held up for ridicule at a new and dizzying level.
“Not Flaky Flowers. Jordan, the whole world has been talking about nothing else. You missed it, didn’t you?” This was said with undisguised accusation.
“I suppose I might have,” Jordan admitted uncertainly.
Her aunt sighed. “You are taking this heartbroken recluse thing to radical limits.”
“I prefer to think of myself as a strong, independent woman,” Jordan said, miffed. She could feel a headache coming on. She did not feel prepared to defend her lifestyle choices at six in the morning.
“Same thing,” her aunt said.
“What world event did I miss?” she asked, trying to get her aunt back to the point and away from her personal life.
“The kidnapping of that prince! And now he’s been safely returned to his home and his mother, the queen, is having a party to celebrate, and I’m catering and you’re coming with me!”
I hope this isn’t real, Jordan thought. “Is this real?”
“Of course. A celebration for those closest to the family. Which is a mere one hundred and seventy-five. Dinner, of course before the ball. Did you hear me, Jordan? A ball, like in Cinderella.”
The fairy tale Jordan most alluded to when she told frightened young expectant mothers not to believe in fairy tales. The prince was not coming to rescue them. Sometimes, Jordan even found herself wishing the story could have a different ending, but it rarely did.
“A midnight snack will be necessary,” her aunt went on, not intercepting the chilly response to Cinderella. “What do you think? My Moose Ta-Ta for the main course?”
Despite the name, Meg’s Moose Ta-Ta was to