She wasn’t an idiot, but she had learned a lesson. This was the last time she was letting a mother set her up with a son. Even if she was one of the best local artisans Mary stocked at Fresh.

She turned on her heel and sailed out of the restaurant.

Mary was just unlocking the door to her apartment when the worst part of what had just happened really hit her. It wasn’t the cruel and unnecessary commentary on her—apparently geriatric—age. It wasn’t the sneer of the mean-faced man as he’d eyed her across the table or the way he’d looked at the waitress.

No. The worst part of it was right now. This very moment, standing in her own doorway, when she couldn’t call Cora. Her best friend of all time. Whom Mary had only had ten short years with before Cora had been killed in a car accident. And that had been five years ago.

For the most part, Mary had found her peace. She’d done the requisite universe cursing, the wondering why something so useless and pointless and painful could possibly have happened. She’d had the drunken, teary nights with the other people who’d loved Cora. She’d cried the tears.

And most of the time, she was okay. But not tonight. Not tonight when she wanted to call her best friend so freaking badly. When she wanted nothing more than to hear Cora’s rude, snarky, biting tone over the phone. Cora would have hidden in the bathroom so her son couldn’t overhear her say something like “Give me that loser’s phone number. I’m going to tell him to sit on it sideways. I’m going to tell him that he just screwed up the best opportunity that he ever had. He had a date with Mary Freaking Trace and he screwed it up in the first sentence! What a moron. Don’t give him another thought, Mare, unless it’s to pity the fool.”

But was it even the mean-faced blind date that Mary wanted Cora to tell off? No. Because, really, Mary had done a good enough job of that on her own. She’d left the restaurant, hadn’t she? Wasn’t it this voice in her own head Mary needed help dispelling? This voice that sounded suspiciously like her own mother. Too old... Running out of time... You don’t want to die alone, do you? Thirty-seven and single and what a shame that is.

Her mother would view tonight’s debacle as comeuppance for Mary. Comeuppance for years of having the audacity to think that she had plenty of time to live her life before she looked for love. If she ever told her mother this story, she’d purse her lips and give Mary a look very close to an I-told-you-so.