“What else would you call it? I’m serious, Hannah. Enough is enough and it’s time for you to stop dithering. You should choose which man you want to marry, tell him so, and let the other down gently. That’s what a lady would do under the same circumstances. Drawing it out the way you’ve done is unkind to everyone concerned.”

Hannah was silent for a long moment, considering what her mother had said. Delores did have a point. “You’re right, Mother.”

There was a crash as Delores dropped the phone. And then a scrabbling noise as she picked it up again. “I’m sorry. Did you say I was right?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Well

” Hannah’s mother sounded slightly breathless and extremely shocked. “Does that mean that you agree to settle this once and for all?”

“Yes, I’ll settle it.”

“And you’ll do it today?”

“I’ll do it right now. Talk to you later, Mother.”

Hannah hung up the phone to cut off any further questions, filled Moishe’s food bowl one last time, grabbed her coat and car keys, ignored the phone that was frantically ringing again, and headed out the door to keep her date with destiny at Hal & Rose’s Cafe.

Chapter

Chapter

Two

Twenty minutes later, Hannah skidded around the corner of Third and Main in the candy-apple red vehicle the Lake Eden kids called the “cookie truck,” and nosed up to the snowbank that Hal had left when he shoveled the sidewalk in front of the café. The plate glass window was steamed up and she couldn’t see inside, but Mike’s Hummer was parked on one side of her and Norman’s sedan was on the other. Since there was a layer of ice on both windshields, Hannah surmised that they must have arrived the moment Rose unlocked the door for the DelRay employees who stopped for breakfast before their early morning shift.

Hannah got out of her truck and headed for the door. She pulled it open with a clean jerk and marched right in. The first thing she saw was a blackboard hanging on the back wall by the curtained poker room. It said, NORMAN vs. MIKE—BETS CLOSE AT NOON TODAY.

Hannah hadn’t thought she could get any angrier, but she’d been wrong. One glance at that blackboard made her blood boil. She gave a most unladylike snort as she spotted Norman and Mike sitting in the back booth and she imagined she could hear the strains of theme music from Jaws as she headed across the floor.