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and easy chair covered in Haitian cotton, and a four-poster pine bedframe for the discount warehouse mattress and box spring she had bought new. From the sad array at the cottage she had kept a dresser and a nightstand with so many layers of paint she had no idea if there was actual wood beneath them. But the last layer was white and fairly new. They would do.
    Cleaning and clearing hadn’t wrought any miracles, but she thought once the tile was down, and the rooms and cabinets were painted, the house might be liveable. She’dbought a jute-and-seagrass rug, and six brass vases of odd sizes, from an import store that was “going out of business”—at least until the next “going out of business” sale. Now after pillaging her savings account, she only had to pay somebody to install the tile, then take care of the painting herself. Maybe afterwards she could walk through the door and not be flooded by memories of a different life.
    She’d been surprised to find the physical labor—cutting flooring into manageable sizes, then wrestling it into rolls to haul outside—had been fun. As she scrubbed away mildew, cobwebs and just plain dirt, she’d imagined she was scrubbing away the past two years, getting back to something cleaner and more basic. For the first time since CJ sat her down to tell her that life as she knew it was over, she had looked forward to getting up in the morning to see what she could accomplish.
    Now she had a chore she was not looking forward to. One more household item had to be wrestled to the curb for trash pickup. She didn’t want to leave Herb’s mattress in his cottage. And if she waited, it would have to remain there another week, a reminder she didn’t want to face every time she went inside.
    She foraged for dinner—not difficult, since she rarely ate much at one sitting. She ate a few strawberries, three whole wheat crackers spread with goat cheese and half a dozen smoked almonds. She was ready to roll.
    As she was halfway out the door, the telephone rang. This was so unusual she felt compelled to answer. The voice at the other end was familiar.
    “Sherrie.” Tracy looked for a place to sit, tossing a couple of home improvement magazines on the floor so she could park herself in the easy chair. “It’s nice of you to call.” She was surprised at the edge in her own voice.
    “I’m sorry, Trace. We’ve been out in Colorado. Wade had a conference, and I tagged along. I came back to an epidemic of strep throat.”
    Sherrie Falmouth had been Tracy’s roommate at Cal State Long Beach. Her husband was a successful plastic surgeon in Scottsdale, Arizona, and was often on the road presenting papers or donating his skills to selected charities. Although the two women had been almost inseparable at “the Beach,” their friendship had waned after graduation. Distance and different lifestyles had been major contributors. Sherrie had married right out of college and started a family almost immediately. She and Wade had two adorable little girls, and when she and Tracy talked on the phone, Sherrie was usually obsessed with preschools, toilet training, or the exhaustion of trying to cope and still have something left over for Wade at day’s end. Tracy’s suggestion to hire a full-time nanny, so Sherrie could start having fun again, had never taken root.
    Still, despite growing apart, Sherrie was the friend who had hung in with her when CJ’s exploits became public. It was Sherrie who helped pack what was left after the Feds vanished with their spoils, Sherrie who made arrangements for a van to carry everything to storage. And now, not surprisingly, it was Sherrie at the other end of a line that hadn’t exactly twittered with activity since Tracy’s arrival in Florida.
    “Are the girls all right now?” Tracy asked.
    “Just fine. But I’m a wreck. How are you?”
    This was a question Tracy had never had trouble answering in the past. Now it presented all kinds of challenges. She knew