Just Like Heaven

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Authors: Barbara Bretton
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and persuaded them to go home a little after five p.m.
    Gwynn got all teary when they were saying good-bye. “Be happy for me,” she whispered in Kate’s ear as they hugged. “I know what I’m doing is right.”
    Kate hugged her back, but the words Gwynn wanted to hear wouldn’t come. “Don’t forget to call Aidan O’Malley,” she said instead. “He’s not going to hold your job forever.”
    She regretted her comment as soon as it passed her lips. Gwynn’s slender body stiffened in her arms and Kate felt a wall rise between them.
    Maeve shook her head in obvious disbelief. Kate didn’t blame her. Of all the things she could have said to her daughter, all the words of wisdom or love or comfort she could have offered, she had opted for the practical with a side order of implied criticism. Better hold on to your waitress job, honey, because Fisherman Andy will never earn enough money to support you both.
    They had had their differences over the years. What mother and daughter hadn’t? But she had never felt the sense of isolation that she felt right now.
    For the first time since her heart attack, Kate was alone, and she settled back down against the pillows.
    Sleeping in the middle of the day was still an alien concept. She envied people who could shut out the world and nap while the sun was shining. She flipped through the stack of books and magazines on her nightstand, but nothing caught her interest. Judge Judy was dispensing rough justice on one of the local television stations, but she wasn’t in the mood for battling families and their operatic confrontations. She had had enough of that already today.
    She looked at the clock. The evening crush of visitors was still an hour away. Paul had been there every night, driving all the way down from Manhattan through rush-hour traffic. Her assistant, Sonia; her accountant, Liz; Max the refinisher; Haoyin from across the street; Lydia, the clockmaker; Cookie Moore, the fiber artist from Clinton; even Marilyn Perrone, who had tried to put her out of business last year and wasn’t the least bit apologetic about it: they all made it their business to turn room 405 into Party Central.
    She wasn’t a big fan of early evening. Everyone rushing around, heading home, heading out, hooking up with friends and lovers, planning the night ahead. It was the only time of day when she ever felt lonely, when the choices she had made didn’t fit quite as well as they did the other twenty-three hours of the day.
    It had been different when Gwynn was little and there had been all of the chaos and drama of after-school activities, making supper, supervising homework and bath time, signing permission slips, making costumes, sitting by the window trying to pretend she wasn’t waiting up for her daughter to come home from a date. She had been secretly glad when Gwynn decided against going away to school and opted for Rutgers instead. Not that she dreaded an empty nest, but there was something to be said for delaying the inevitable as long as you could.
    French Kiss was her top priority now, and the hard work and long hours were paying greater dividends than she had ever imagined. She couldn’t wait to get back to the shop and start unpacking all of those boxes and crates she’d brought back from England. It would be like Christmas all over again.
    There it was again, one of those flickering buzzes of memory just out of reach. An appointment? A meeting? Something important but she couldn’t pull it up from the darkness no matter how hard she tried. Lombardi had told her not to worry about the gaps in her memory, that most of the missing bits and pieces would fill themselves in, and even if they didn’t, she had suffered no permanent damage.
    Still, she had been down in the Princeton area for some reason, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember what that reason was.
    She was grateful for the interruption when Janine, her favorite nurse, breezed into the room with an armful of

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