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permission to contact you if I end up with another firm that might be a good fit for Pelham?”
    “Of course. And with your father gone, you have an open invitation to ask my advice about anything. Do you have my cell and direct phone numbers?”
    “No, sir.”
    The older man gave the numbers to Tom, who entered them into his phone.
    “Tom, I’m sorry about the job,” Arthur said. “I know it stings, but this isn’t a failure. It’s a stepping-stone to something better. I’ve seen it happen over and over.”
    “I believe that,” Tom replied with more confidence than he felt.
    “Don’t hesitate to call.”
    “I won’t.”
    “Good-bye, son.”
    Midmorning, Tom left for a couple of hours to run errands before leaving town. When he returned and walked through the living room on the way to his bedroom, Whiskers wasn’t in her usual place on top of the sofa. Tom stuck his head in the kitchen. The cat wasn’t in her second-favorite spot in the corner beside the oven.
    “Whiskers!”
    Going into the bedroom, Tom opened the door to his walk-in closet, the cat’s secret hideaway. What he saw stopped him in his tracks.
    All his shirts, suits, and pants were neatly lined up in a row. On the left were his casual clothes and the heavy winter coat he wore on the few days in Atlanta when the temperature dipped into the teens. But the section of the closet he’d vacated so Clarice could keep a few outfits available at his apartment was empty. Feeling like he did when his car was once towed from a downtown parking lot, he stared at the empty spot as if the clothes would magically reappear. They didn’t. He glanced over his shoulder at the bed and saw an envelope on the bedspread. He took out a heavily scented piece of paper.
    Tom,
    What’s happened the past twenty-four hours has made it clear to me that it’s time for both of us to move on. Your trip to Bethel makes the separation easier. If you find anything else that belongs to me at the apartment, let me know. Whiskers is with me. I promised to watch her while you’re out of town, but what I’d really like to do is keep her as a positive reminder of the fun times we’ve had together.
    Hugs,
Clarice
    Move on . It was the same phrase Tom had used when he told Arthur Pelham that he didn’t want help getting his job reinstated at the law firm. Apparently Clarice thought about Tom the same way he did about Reid McGraw. Opportunities to become more self-reliant were coming faster than he could process them. He lowered the note so Rover could sniff it.
    “She perfumes a note breaking up with me and wants the cat?” he said to the dog. “I can only hope she and Whiskers will be as happy together as I am with you.”
    Returning to the kitchen, Tom thought about the girl who’d taken him to the humane society the day he first met Rover. Her fate would be his. In a few years, Tom would be a barely remembered footnote in the book of Clarice’s life, Whiskers an entire chapter. He dropped the envelope and note in the trash can and closed the lid.
    Tom sat at the small table where he and Clarice had eaten many ethnic meals together. There was no use delaying a response. Tom’s fingers raced across the phone keypad.
    You’re right. Whiskers is yours. Best of luck. Tom.
    An hour later Tom’s car crawled through Friday afternoon traffic. Rover lay contentedly in the passenger seat of the car, a towel positioned to catch any stray saliva. It was a hundred miles north and a hundred years back in time from Atlanta to Bethel.
    Once clear of gridlock, they traveled another hour before leaving the interstate for a cross-country drive through a rolling rural landscape dotted with weathered farmhouses, an occasional cluster of mobile homes, and massive new estates that were surrounded by horses grazing behind long white fences and Angus cattle in herds near small ponds. The owners of the estate properties were akin to eighteenth-century English gentry who made their money in the