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“When will that be?” Zane bit a half circle into his toast. Jericho Silver—Johnny, as Rita called him—was a good man. Honest. Intelligent. Hardworking. He’d make an excellent judge.
“If he gets elected he can stay home nights, feeding those twins.”
Rita grinned. “Oh, he’ll get elected all right, Doc. I’m his campaign manager.”
Zane saluted her with his empty cup. Just as Rita lifted the pot to fill it, Zane froze. Good God, Winifred was entering the restaurant. The moment she spied him she frowned, wiped it off her face, then let it return and crossed the room to his table.
“Are those scrambled eggs?” she demanded.
He rose and invited her to sit down. “Rita, bring another plate, will you?”
“And some scrambled eggs, please,” Winifred added.
They stared across the table at each other for a long minute.
“Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?” he said at last. “Meeting here like this.”
“Maybe not so much. We’re probably both hungry after my disastrous attempt in the kitchen this morning.”
“Yes,” he said. “We are. Both hungry, I mean.” He wondered at himself the instant the suggestive word crossed his lips. Thank God she didn’t seem to hear.
Rita plopped a plate down in front of Winifred, and with an apologetic look at him, she lifted her fork. “This afternoon Sam is going to teach me how to scramble eggs.”
Zane stared at her. Celeste had never exchanged more than two sentences with Sam, and she’d certainly never asked him to teach her anything about cooking.
“But before my egg lesson,” Winifred continued, “there is something I’d like to discuss with you.”
Zane’s nerves went on alert. “Now?”
“No, not now. Later.”
“I’ll be at the hospital later.”
Very deliberately she laid her fork on the plate. “The truth is you don’t want to talk to me, do you? I can understand your not liking me, but—”
“I do like you.” Oh, God, had he really said that? He drew in a long breath. “I apologize. That came out wrong. What I mean is we have nothing to discuss.”
“It’s about Celeste.”
“Especially if it’s about Celeste. She wanted the piano and all her music books shipped back to you at the conservatory, and her clothes—”
“Her clothes are too small for me, Zane. And she loved the color pink. I detest pink.”
“I detest pink, too, but...” His voice thickened. “But I loved it on Celeste.”
Winifred nodded. “I don’t need the piano,” she said quietly. “It brings back painful memories.”
“Oh? What the hell do you think it does to me?” Instantly he regretted snapping at her. He waited, watching her coffee cup jiggle when she picked it up. Her fingers were trembling.
“Sorry. Guess I’m strung up a little tight these days.”
“Well, so am I.”
They stared at each other across the table for a long minute, and then Winifred dropped her eyes.
“Zane, when Cissy met you, she and I were about to go on tour. London, Paris, Vienna. Even Rome, which Cissy didn’t want to visit because she feared it would be too hot. Did you know about this?”
“No, I did not know. She never told me. All I know is that there was a piano recital one night at the medical college and Celeste was playing. She wore some kind of flowing pink gown, chiffon, I guess it’s called. And she was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. I fell in love with her during her first piece. Chopin, I remember. An étude.”
“In A-flat,” Winifred supplied.
“Is that what you want to discuss—the music tour you and Celeste were planning?”
“No, it isn’t. It’s, well, something else.”
Their eyes met and held. Hers were distant. Troubled. He didn’t know what his eyes betrayed, but all at once she blinked and bit her lip.
“Zane, I am trying to understand about Celeste. She was so smitten she left everything we had planned to run away with you. I...” She swallowed. “I am trying hard to forgive her for leaving it all behind. And for dying,” she added, her voice pinched.
“I am trying, as well,” he said quietly. “Part of me is hurt and angry that she—that she is gone.” Another part of him, the part he could scarcely acknowledge to himself, much less share with Winifred Von Dannen, was his weariness. He was tired of the constant grinding pain. And he was hungry. Yes, that was the word, hungry for something else. The trouble was, he didn’t have the slightest idea what that might be.
