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The tears that had fallen before now seemed like they burned her skin, and she pulled out her compact and a tissue and wiped them all away before staring at herself in the dressing room mirror for a long moment.
Somewhere in there was a young girl who had found joy and excitement in everything that she’d done. A girl whose mother had loved her unconditionally and told her every night how special and how loved she was just as she was. A girl who’d once looked forward to the future and the possibilities and wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone, even the mean girls who’d taken shots at her weight to try and bring her down.
Tomorrow wasn’t just a new day but an entirely new year, and it was certainly going to be different.
She was going to be different.
She was going to learn to accept and love herself even if no one else would.
And she was going to be freaking happy if it killed her.
Opening the door to the dressing room, she saw Janet coming her way with two positively ugly drapey dresses over her arm. “There you are, Waverley. I think I found a thing or two you might just—”
“I won’t be needing those anymore,” Waverley said, her voice stronger than it had been in a long time. “Like you said, maybe I’ll find something at the plus-sized store around the corner. At least a few thousand dollars’ worth, right?”
Janet blanched as she seemed to be realizing the loss of any potential commission from this sale. From the corner of her eye, Waverley saw Evelyn Summers pop her head out of the dressing room to see what was going on.
“And you were right, Evelyn,” she said, turning to face her. “No amount of drinking or golfing or swimming was going to make you or your cronies tolerable. Now. I hope you all have a great new year. I know that I will.”
Without a look back, she walked out, head held high, the tears gone, hopefully for good.
Chapter 2
April
The phone was ringing off the hook.
“I hear you, Mrs. Dolowitz,” Reynolds Cavanaugh said again, having spent the past ten minutes unsuccessfully trying to get off the phone even as two calls came in unanswered. “Like I said before, though, I’m pretty swamped right now, and I have to prioritize my incoming cases by urgency. You’re better off posting flyers and checking at the pound.”
Especially since finding lost cats wasn’t exactly what he wanted to be known for doing, private investigator or not.
“All right. I’ll let you know. Bye, Mrs. Dolowitz.”
Reynolds ended the call and pushed the button with the blinking light, but the call had already gone to his answering service.
He really needed to find a new receptionist and fast. He hadn’t realized how much his last receptionist did for him until she left last October for a teaching job at the high school.
He wrote a quick note on a Post-it note with the description of the cat in question and the location where it was last seen, because, as much as he didn’t want to look for the stupid cat, he knew that he would look for it anyway.
Anonymously, of course.
The last thing he needed was for it to get around that he was the rescuer of small, furry animals instead of the grittier, more pricey private investigative work that paid the bills. Little old ladies would be calling him nonstop anytime Rover or Socks climbed a tree or disappeared while out on a neighborhood prowl.
He sat back and stretched before looking at the time. Ten minutes past the hour.
Meaning ten minutes past the time he was supposed to be meeting his next appointment. Running a hand across his face, he tried to wipe away the fatigue that spending the last two nights doing surveillance had cost him before coming to his feet.
He opened the door and peered out.
Sure enough, his next potential client was seated on the new leather couch he’d bought that was dog-hair free, unlike the previous one that had been infested thanks to his last receptionist’s habit of bringing in her dog to work.
But Poppy was his sister. What could he do?
“Sorry about the wait,” he said, coming forward. He tried to remember the name that the answering service sent him for his Wednesday one o’clock appointment. “It’s Ms. Abbott, right?”
Abbott…it had a familiar ring to it.
The woman was flipping through one of the magazines he kept on the end table—which reminded him, he should probably renew that subscription since the magazine she was reading had a picture of a pumpkin on the cover. At hearing her name, she looked up to meet his gaze. A pair of wide doe-like eyes stared back at him, eyes that held a certain sadness hiding behind them, but also intelligence and strength.
