LITMIR.BIZ

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wished she could find a better one.

      But it was plausible, if you were prepared to stretch. The attic apartment directly above this one was in the process of renovation. The construction team had really torn into the place, pulling up floorboards and ripping ancient plaster off the walls. The hat pin must have gotten lost a hundred years ago, fallen through a crack in the floorboards and—

      Well, here it was on the windowsill, so something like that had obviously happened, even if Celie couldn’t quite picture the physics of it, right now.

      And the baby—Nick’s baby, protected in his strong arms—had been purely a dream.

      For some reason, Celie didn’t want to risk losing the wandering hat pin again, so she put it in the little zippered compartment on the side of her purse. After her usual light breakfast, she went to the mall.

      “Sorry I’m late,” Celie said breathlessly, as she entered Nick’s office.

      He looked at his watch.

      She was right.

      She was late.

      By a whole two minutes.

      And she looked a little different. Fresh, energetic, happy and well-rested, for a start, although he felt there was more to it than that. Her hair looked extra silky, and the clips had to be new. He didn’t think she usually wore clips decorated with little flowers. They went some way toward undercutting the severe styling of her skirt, he thought, as did the pastel top she wore.

      She definitely looked different.

      This fact niggled at him a little, although he didn’t have time to work out why. They had a lot to get through this afternoon. He allocated only a few seconds to the topic, and told her sincerely, “You look very nice.”

      She nodded, and said, “Thanks,” and he knew she wouldn’t expect him to pursue the question any further than that.

      “Let’s get right to those regional figures,” he told her.

      With various interruptions, the regional figures took most of the afternoon, and didn’t leave Celie much time to contemplate her slightly disturbing morning at the mall. In the few moments she did have in which to think about it, she felt churned up inside. On the one hand, fluttery in the stomach, like a child going to a birthday party, but on the other, ill at ease.

      At the mall, she’d kept thinking about her dream last night and about the hat pin. She’d even gotten it out of her purse a couple of times, to prove to herself that it was real…although she might have felt more reassured if it hadn’t been. She’d been twirling it in her hand when the hairstylist had asked her, “Just a trim?”

      And she’d felt the strongest temptation to answer, “No, I’d like to try something completely new.”

      She’d resisted it in the end. There was a good reason she always kept her hair up and out of the way. With the hairstylist waiting, and the hat pin still twirling in her fingers, Celie had needed several seconds to remember what the reason was—that it wasn’t very efficient to have hair in her face when she was focused on work—but it did come to her in the end, and she opted for the usual trim.

      She and Nick got through the regional figures by the anticipated time, and her boss was happy. When Celie got home that night and opened the closet to hang up two of the new, more softly styled tops she’d bought this morning to pair with her skirts—she’d worn the third top to work—the closet seemed to approve.

      Several hours later, the bed wasn’t so friendly. Tonight’s dreams clattered into her mind with more violence, and the images were harder to put together. A figure lay on the floor of the kitchen. Her kitchen? The room looked familiar, and so did the figure itself, but then her dream lurched off into a different direction, she heard the sound of tearing fabric, and lost the image of the figure in the kitchen before she could decide exactly who it was, and what was going on.

      The baby started crying, and she sat up in bed, alert at once, but the woman by the mirror told her again, “It’s all right. Nick will go to him. Nick will care for him.”

      “I hope so,” Celie answered. “But what about the woman on the floor?”

      “Call her in the morning.”

      “Okay. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. Of course.” The suggestion made so much sense that it soothed her back into sleep…or out of her dream…and it didn’t occur to her that she didn’t know who she was supposed to call.

      In the morning, she woke late. Hurrying to prepare for work, she knew her sleep had been cut through by another dream, but didn’t have time to try and bring it back to mind.

      That happened later.

      Sam’s personal assistant, Kyla, told her, as they sat waiting for a meeting, “I love your hair like that. Any reason?”

      “Oh, I just didn’t get a chance to put it up this morning, that’s all.” She’d tried a couple of times, but for some reason her fingers wouldn’t go through the familiar maneuver, and the fold of hair kept slipping sideways. In the end, she’d let it drop around her shoulders, still sheened and slippery from yesterday’s salon conditioning treatment.

      “You should wear it that way more often,” Kyla said.

      White-blond Kyla wore lots of jewelry, and lots of black. She was a single mother with a five-year-old daughter, Nettie, and although she came across as a ditz sometimes, she got things done. Sam depended on her more than Kyla herself ever let the man guess.

      “I would, only it’s not very practical,” Celie answered.

      She had that churned up, self-conscious sensation again. Somehow, she didn’t feel quite safe. She suddenly remembered last night’s dreams, and the reassuring advice of the woman who stood by the mirror.

      “I’m supposed to call someone,” she said aloud. “Check on someone.”

      She stood up in a panic, and it came to her in a rush. That figure, lying on a kitchen floor, wearing a nightdress and with one leg stuck out strangely…

      Mom.

      Eleven years ago, Celie’s older sister, Veronica, had already been away at college when their father died, and her mom hadn’t coped with Veronica’s absence or with widowhood and grief too well. Celie herself had gone to college at Ohio State, so that she could remain at home. She’d moved into an apartment of her own several years ago, but still she never wanted to let her mother down. She spent a lot of time at Mom’s, helping her out, and this morning’s call to her seemed urgent, now.

      A cluster of senior Delaney’s executives and regional managers entered the room at this moment, carrying briefcases and sheafs of papers. Nick and Sam wouldn’t be far behind.

      “If they’re ready to start, Kyla,” she gabbled. “Tell them…uh…that I won’t be long. Or—could you take notes for my Mr. D, if he needs it?”

      “Sure. What’s up? You look—”

      “Nothing. I’m sure everything’s fine.”

      Celie hurried to her private office, adjacent to Nick’s, and keyed in her mother’s phone number, but her mom didn’t pick up, and neither did the machine.

      Celie’s mother had had a bone-density scan a few months ago, and the result had come back low. She took risks, too—vague, thoughtless ones that she didn’t even realize were risks until Celie pointed it out. She went down the basement stairs of her little house without turning on the light. She put a step stool on the grass in the yard to reach up and prune a branch.

      Celie had the phone number of her mom’s neighbor Mrs. Pascoe in her address book, and she’d called a couple of times in the past to ask Mrs. Pascoe to check next door.

      “Sure I’ll go across, honey,” Mrs. Pascoe told her today. “Just don’t you worry, okay?”

      But when Mrs. Pascoe

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