She avoided him like the plague all day Wednesday, barely waving as she rushed in and out of her house. He was a nice person, but he simply wasn’t for her, she told herself. Yessir, nip this romance in the bud, she decided, before it gets impossibly painful. She’d lived with a man who wasn’t precisely right, and she knew what happened. Loneliness, frustration, and anger. It was a dead-end street.

“What happened to David Dodd?” Elsie asked while she rooted in the refrigerator, looking for supper. “Haven’t seen him around today.”

Kate poked in her cup of yogurt and wished it were a hot fudge sundae. “He probably had some pressing business to attend to. Maybe the supermarket got in a new shipment of comic books.”

“You sound like someone’s standing on your toes. He dump on you?”

Kate wrinkled her nose. “No, he didn’t dump on me. There was nothing to dump. It was all in the preliminary stages.”

Elsie looked disgusted. “The man is a prize, and you let him get away?”

Kate had to admit, he was pretty terrific. She heard herself sigh and gave herself a mental shake. Pull yourself together, Kate. Go practice some Haydn. That was always a sobering experience.

Elsie took a TV dinner from the freezer and slid it into the microwave. “You know what you need? You need a change of pace. You need to do something different. Take your mind off your problems.”

“I don’t have any problems.”

“Oh, yeah? What was that sigh all about?” She squinted at Kate. “You’re mooning over that Dodd guy.”

“I’m not!”

“Then you’re stupid. Anyone with an ounce of sense would moon over him.”

“Well, maybe I’m mooning a little.”

Elsie took her meal out of the microwave and sat at the table. She ate a forkful of macaroni and cheese and sliced a piece of ham.

“I don’t usually make offers like this, but I can see you need some perking up.” She chewed her ham and prodded her green beans trying to decide if they were edible. “Besides, I need a ride,” she added. “So how about if I let you go to a bingo game with me tonight.”

“Uh—”

“This is your night off, isn’t it?”

“Well, yeah—”

“Okay, then it’s settled.” She finished her dinner and pushed the tray aside. “We better get a move on. I like to get there early so I get a good seat.”

Bingo? The Formidable Finn playing bingo? For an entire evening? She rushed after Elsie. “Listen, I’d really like to do this, but I have to—”

Elsie stopped with her coat halfway around her shoulders. “You have to what?”

Kate couldn’t think of anything she had to do. She looked at Elsie blank-faced and opened her mouth, but no words came out.

“What? What do you have to do?” Elsie asked.