by Mary Daheim
It was nearing midnight when I decided I had to get off the sofa and go to bed. I staggered around, putting the mugs Vida had used for tea in the dishwasher and turning off the kitchen light. I went back into the living room to make sure the fire Buck had started was almost out. Looking between the drapes to check on the weather, I realized that the rain seemed to have stopped, but the wind was up, making the trees and shrubs dance in the moonless night.
I was about to close the drapes when I saw headlights turning in to my driveway. Mitch, probably, stopping by to tell me what he’d put on our website. Going to the front door, I cursed myself for not checking my computer earlier. I’d flunked my vocation as badly as Ruth Sharp had flunked hers.
I opened the door before the bell rang. Milo swept me up in his arms as he crossed the threshold.
“Emma.” He carried me inside, kicked the door closed behind him, and stood still, holding me tight and not saying anything at all. I was the one to break the silence.
“Tanya?” I asked hoarsely.
“She’ll be okay.”
“And you?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. I already knew.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARY RICHARDSON DAHEIM started spinning stories before she could spell. Daheim has been a journalist, an editor, a public relations consultant, and a freelance writer, but fiction was always her medium of choice. In 1982 she launched a career that is now distinguished by more than fifty novels. In 2000, she won the Literary Achievement Award from the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. In October 2008 she was inducted into the University of Washington’s Communications Hall of Fame. Daheim lives in her hometown of Seattle and is a direct descendant of former residents of the real Alpine when it existed in the early part of the twentieth century.