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relaxing. She tried to watch a little TV and couldn’t find a thing that she wanted to bother with. She’d decided to grab a magazine and take it to bed with her when her cell phone rang again. It was Eric. Oh no.
    She hadn’t been hiding from him. Not exactly.
    â€œHey, babe,” he said. “How are you? I haven’t heard from you in a while.” His voice comforted her.
    â€œI’ve been busy with Elizabeth and we took DeeAnn to Charlottesville for lunch for her birthday,” Vera said.
    â€œI miss you. It makes being on call even worse,” he said.
    â€œI miss you, too. Thursday will be here before you know it.”
    â€œEarly day tomorrow?”
    â€œYes, I need to get the studio’s taxes done and I have a full afternoon and evening of classes,” she said. “But listen to this.”
    She then explained how people had been saying they’d seen her mother—at the Pie Palace, walking around town, and at the drugstore.
    â€œWhat do you make of it?” she asked him when she was done.
    â€œAre they certain it’s Beatrice?”
    â€œThey seem to be.”
    He was silent.
    â€œEric?”
    â€œI’m confused,” he said. “I don’t know what to say.”
    â€œI’m not sure what to do.”
    â€œNothing you can do, I suppose. She’ll come home eventually. In the meantime, my beeper is going off. I have to run. Love you.”
    â€œLove you, too,” Vera said, her heart spinning. It was true that she loved him. But did she want to marry him? After being married for over twenty years, and being extremely disappointed, she wasn’t sure she could do it again. But Eric was a different man from her ex-husband.
    She climbed up the stairs to her room, looked in on Elizabeth first, with Junie Bee cuddled up next to her. She then padded to her room and lay down in her bed. This had always been her room, even as a child. She liked it here. But maybe it was time to move out and try it again on her own—just she, Elizabeth, and Junie Bee. She grimaced—the last time she had tried to strike out on her own, it had not ended well.
    Vera sunk into her bed and pulled the covers around her and closed her eyes. As she slipped into the place between sleep and awake, a strange beeping noise awakened her. Maybe she was dreaming? There it was again. Hmmm. She opened her eyes. What was that noise?
    Was it one of Elizabeth’s battery-operated toys? That had happened one night a few weeks back. The weirdest noise had woken up everybody in the house. Vera rolled over—the noise had stopped.
    Beep. Beep. Beep.
    Vera arose out of the warm bed. Damn.
    Beeeeep.
    She opened her bedroom door and the noise became louder.
    Beep. Beep. Beep.
    It was coming from her mother’s room.
    Nightlights now lit the long hallways of the house, so Vera easily found her way, feeling a little like she was invading her mother’s privacy as she opened the door and turned on the bedroom light. Vera hadn’t been in her mother’s room since she’d left for France.
    There, on her mother’s bed, sat her luggage. On top of it sat Beatrice’s cell phone, the beeping indicating that the battery was about to die.
    Beatrice’s suitcase? Her cell phone? Where on earth was Beatrice?
    Vera opened the suitcase and saw her mother’s usual traveling clothes, plus a few wrapped gifts. One was for Lizzie, one for her, and one for Eric. As if gifts were going to soften the blow of this!
    A tear stung Vera’s eye. Her mother was home and she hadn’t even bothered to call or tell her she was home. Talk about rejection!
    Vera left the room in a huff and stomped back into her own room. She fell into her bed in a fit of tears.
    When she woke up the next morning, Elizabeth was curled up next to her and Junie Bee was sitting on her chest, kneading her claws in the blanket, purring, and looking straight into Vera’s face. How long