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I heard a muffled cackle coming from Mark, but we said nothing more about it.
“Thank you for telling me. I’ll let you go.”
“Thanks for calling, Laura. I won’t make any more stops to the medical center now.”
“Goodbye, Mark.”
I sat with the phone cradled in my hand, the relief I felt that baby Yasmine might be safe diminishing the anger toward her mother. Then I remembered Will Peterson.
I was standing in front of the mirror doing my makeup when my phone rang. It was Pam.
“If you don’t have plans for dinner, come up.”
“I should have told you! Will Peterson asked me for dinner and will be here in fifteen minutes.”
“The coroner? I really liked him.”
“I saw him today. We were going to get together about the baby bones, and we ended up talking for a while. I really like him, too.”
“He’s older than you,” she said hesitantly.
“I know, people will say I’m trying to replace my father.”
“Um, Randy was much older than Will. I bet almost twenty years older.”
“Well, not quite. He’s in his late forties.”
“It’s the gray hair,” Pam said, and I agreed.
“I like it, though. He’s completely unaffected. He also mentioned that he saw me in the bikini episode of Saving New York.”
We both laughed.
“I gave Randy a piece of my mind when I saw that,” Pam said. “But you looked good, and that’s all that matters now. I almost hate to ask, but did Will say anything about the bones?”
I hesitated, both for my own sake and for hers. “Just that they belong to a girl.”
“Oh, how sad. The pink blanket and all.”
“I know. It would be sad if they were a boy’s bones, but maybe because of the baby I took care of, the bones being from a girl had an impact. Anyway, I’d better say goodbye and get ready for dinner. Talk tomorrow?”
“Definitely. Goodnight, dear.”
I finished dressing in a knee-length beige knit dress and heels. It was more dinner date than office dressy. My gray wool winter coat was longer. It was that or a ski jacket.
At six sharp, there was a tap on the streetside door. I didn’t think it would open, so I ran around the house from the beach side. There was a dumpster at the curb, already filled with the busted-up remnants of my kitchen cabinets.
“I’m not sure that door even works,” I said, waving to Will.
“I wondered!” He walked toward me with a big smile. “You look lovely.”
“Thank you. Come with me. I have a few things to do before we leave.”
He followed me over the sand to the front door and into the house. “Wow, you’re making headway.”
“Well, sort of. I painted my bedroom today while they gutted the kitchen.”
“I can smell the paint. It’s one of my favorite smells.”
