LITMIR.BIZ

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and serene, thanks to Melanie, with a place for everything and everything in its proper place. Always.

      “Life isn’t solely about order,” her father had told her more than once. But Melanie wasn’t so sure.

      Not back then. Not now, either.

      “Lighten up,” people told her.

      But the one time in her thirty-one years that she’d lightened up and let go of her beloved lists had been a disaster. Love or lust, or whatever it was she felt for Sonny Randle the minute she’d laid eyes on him two years ago, had rendered her temporarily insane. She must’ve been certifiably nuts to marry him after knowing him only a few weeks. But since the divorce a year ago she was sane again, and fiercely determined to stay that way.

      After Melanie left Sam Venneman whining and wringing his manicured hands in his office, she took one last look through the drawers of her desk and behind the sliding doors of her credenza in the unlikely chance that she’d overlooked something earlier in the week. The drawers were empty. Not even a lone paper clip remained. It was the same for the credenza. All the cupboards were bare.

      Stashed unobtrusively in a corner were the belongings of her replacement, Cleo Pierce. The former anchorwoman for the local NBC affiliate hadn’t had to be asked twice to shelve her consulting business to take on a job that would put her in constant contact with Sam Venneman, America’s Most Eligible Mayor. Not only had Cleo eagerly signed on as the interim executive assistant, but she’d insisted on a contract that clearly specified that the position would be hers for the entire eighteen months of Melanie’s planned leave of absence.

      There was no going back now, but then, Melanie had no intention of changing her mind. It was, after all, a perfect plan.

      Her other position at city hall, that of director of community relations, had been more difficult to fill on a temporary basis. In fact, Sam was still interviewing candidates. The pay wasn’t all that great, hardly enough to buy aspirin for all the headaches involved when trying to please nearly two hundred neighborhood associations, each with its own agenda. Some of them needed tax abatements to entice new residents; many needed grants to fix up deteriorating playgrounds and parks; all of them, including her own Channing Square Residents Association, were pleading for higher police visibility and more foot patrols.

      To that end, a little over a year ago Melanie had come up with the Cop on the Block program, which would guarantee low-cost loans to officers who agreed to live in selected high-crime areas of the city. The program was her pet project, her baby, and after she’d steamrolled it through the board of aldermen, she’d schmoozed and cajoled and nearly arm-wrestled half the bankers in town until a few of them agreed to provide the loans in return for the unbounded gratitude of city hall and unlimited luncheon invitations and photo opportunities with Sam Venneman and any national dignitaries who visited him.

      Although Melanie hadn’t seen the actual paperwork, the first Cop on the Block loan had been approved just this week, so that had been part of the celebration at her surprise party this afternoon in addition to her leave of absence and imminent motherhood.

      Speaking of which, she told herself, she should probably get out of here before one more person asked when the baby was due and then stood counting fingers and looking perplexed when she answered early next January, a full nine months away, or before Claude Davis of the parks department came up with another joke about sperm banks.

      Melanie took one last glance around her office. It looked so aimless without her planner open on the desk and so bleak without her collection of Pop’s watercolors on the walls. There were only rectangular outlines now to show where they had hung. She hoped Cleo wouldn’t paint the walls some horrible shade of green or make any permanent changes that would surely drive her crazy when she returned next September.

      Most of all, she hoped things didn’t go completely to hell in a handbasket the minute she left city hall.

      Well, maybe just a little.

      It was nice to be appreciated.

      On the way to her car, as always, Melanie slowed her pace to admire the flower beds that surrounded city hall. Since it was April, the grounds were awash in tulips—stately red ones, so perfect they almost looked fake, and smaller yellow ones with waxy leaves and frilly petals. In a few months they’d be replaced by a profusion of daisies and purple salvia. Come autumn, the old limestone building would look gorgeous as it rose from beds of bronze chrysanthemums. Claude Davis of the parks department might have told lousy jokes about sperm banks, but he was a hell of a planner when it came to gardens. Maybe she’d call him next week to give her some ideas for the little space she wanted to plant in her backyard now that she’d have ample time to tend it.

      She was pulling her little planner from her handbag to make a note to herself about Claude when she heard the clack of high heels on the sidewalk just behind her and turned to see Peg Harrel, the mayor’s longtime secretary, rushing to catch up.

      “Are you really sure this is what you want to do, Melanie?” Peg bent her platinum-colored, pixie-haircut head to light what was probably the first cigarette she’d had since her lunch break at noon. “Single parenthood isn’t any bed of roses, you know. It’s a bummer, actually. My kids would be the first to tell you.”

      “I’m really, really sure, Peg.” If she’d said it once, she’d said it a million times lately. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so honest and forthcoming about her plan to get pregnant, but she was so thrilled about this baby and had wanted to share the news with everyone at city hall if not the entire city.

      Melanie closed her planner with a little thump and continued in the direction of the parking lot with Peg smoking up a storm at her side. “The party was fun, Peg. Thanks for putting it together. I never suspected a thing.”

      “I’ll bet you did.”

      “No. Not for a second. Honest,” Melanie lied.

      “What did you think of the mime?” The woman nudged her arm. “Wasn’t he a riot?”

      Melanie nodded politely although she thought cloying would have been a better description. She wondered vaguely if the world was divided into people who enjoyed mimes and people who ran the other way—screaming—when they saw one coming.

      A few yards from her spiffy little yellow Miata, soon to be traded in on a sensible minivan, Melanie reached into her bag for her keys and then sighed. “Leaving isn’t going to be quite as easy at I thought it would be. I’ll really miss everybody. Plus, I’m not used to not working.”

      “Oh, you’ll be working, kiddo.” Peg laughed and rolled her eyes. “Trust me. You’ll be working. You just won’t be getting paid for it.”

      “Well, that’s true, I guess.”

      “You’ll be working twenty times harder than you ever did here. So, when’s the big day?”

      “Monday. My appointment is at eleven, so by noon I ought to be one slightly and happily pregnant lady.”

      “No kidding. Does it always work the first time?”

      “It will with me,” Melanie said, her voice infused with every bit of the confidence she felt. Even though her OB-GYN had cautioned her that three, sometimes four artificial inseminations were the norm before a pregnancy “took,” she was positive that Monday would be her day and that her baby’s birthday would be in the first week of January. It was just too perfectly planned to go wrong.

      Peg wrapped her cigarette-free arm around Melanie’s shoulders and gave her a hug. “Well, good luck, kiddo. We’ll try to hold it together while you’re gone. Keep us posted.”

      “I will. Thanks again, Peg.”

      The woman started to walk away, then stopped. “Oh, with all of the excitement of the party, I almost forgot to tell you. You know that cop who was shot last week? The one who got blown through the plate-glass window?”

      “What about him?” As she asked, she could feel that tiny fault line in her heart begin to

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