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about dirt. It was about trying to make Charlene’s coming home as painless and nontraumatic as possible.
    After a fast blow-dry, Merry shimmied into jeans, a fuzzy yellow mohair sweater, socks. In the kitchen, she stared bleary-eyed at the fancy coffeemaker. It looked pizzazz-y, like something created in 2075. Shinier than lip gloss. And she could turn it on, she’d discovered last night. She just couldn’t figure out how to make it produce coffee.
    It wasn’t fair to make a girl start the day without caffeine.
    It wasn’t fair to make a girl start such a critical day without sleep, either.
    She nabbed an apple—bought fresh last night—and reminded herself of the lawyer’s behavior the day before. Lee Oxford still grated on her mind. His mercenary thinking. His coldness. The fact that he’d never once even mentioned Charlene’s name.
    Her resolve ballooned all over again. No matter how crazy anyone thought she was, there was no way—none in this universe—that Merry would abandon a kid. Ever.
    She knew too well what abandonment felt like.
    When it came down to it, maybe it was a good thing the lawyer had been such a barracuda. His attitude had hard-wired her determination. She bit a chunk of apple, grabbed her jacket, the directions to the rest home she’d gotten from the lawyer and then sprinted outside. A fresh skid of snow had fallen in the wee hours. Brushed with dawn light, the whole neighborhood looked pearl-soft.
    Her neighbor was up, judging from the lights in his kitchen window, but she didn’t catch sight of him. More than once last night, she’d thought it’d be no hardship to have such a good-looking guy next door. So he was likely married. She could still look, couldn’t she? And he had a truck. He looked mechanical and handy. More things to love in a neighbor.
    It looked as if she had lots of neighbors. Other cars were steaming in their driveways, warming up, the lineup resembling the start-up of the Indy 500—although this particular lineup was notably chunky gas guzzlers, suburbia getting ready to join the exodus to the freeways and work. A few waved at her.
    She waved back, noting they all seemed to be in pinstriped suits—both the men and the women—and doing the wool-coat thing. Worry tried to rag her nerves again. She just felt like such an alien. She’d never owned a pinstriped suit, never wanted one. Still, she reminded herself that there wasn’t that big an age difference—she was joining the thirtysomething bracket as of her birthday next month.
    She loved new experiences besides, right?
    Her spirits zoomed higher as she turned on the freeway, the map crackled over the steering wheel in front of her. When push came to shove, it didn’t really matter whether she fit into the neighborhood or the house or not. Screw all that. This was about a little girl.
    And she’d waited as long as she possibly could to get her arms folded around Charlene.
    The directions to the place did seem a little tricky. She checked the map again, then eased to the right when another driver honked at her. Naturally she was concentrating on her driving. Mostly. But the appalling image of Charlene’s bedroom kept popping into her mind.
    Nothing about the inside or outside of that darn house matched anything she ever knew about Charlie Ross, but the worst room—the absolute worst—was Charlene’s bedroom.
    Another driver honked at her. She shook her apple at him. For Pete’s sake, was everybody cranky near D.C.?
    Last night, there wasn’t anything she could do but put a couple fresh bouquets of flowers in Charlene’s bedroom. She couldn’t find a vase in the house to save her life, but she’d found big glasses, and the grocery store had thankfully sold cut flowers.
    And once Charlene got home, Merry figured they could fix the room. In fact, it’d be a super bonding thing to do together. The