No one was around so I went to his and leaned against him. After a moment he kissed me softly, his mouth tasting of toothpaste.

“Mmm, minty. What does the rest of you taste like?”

He laughed and pushed me away. “Not now, Mil. I’ve got to go to work.”

I took his coffee cup and took a sip. “So you’re a plastic surgeon. Why did you decide to do that?”

“You always had a problem with my career because of your mother’s plastic surgery. I always had a problem with your lack of a career.”

“I’m a writer and a gardener. That’s two careers. Back to my question.”

“Okay, I’m fascinated by the structure of the human body. Muscles, tissue, skin, bone, blood vessels. I’m not going to go into this when you could get your memory back and recall all of our previous discussions.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Maybe later tonight we can have an in-depth talk.” I smiled and tipped my head to make my ponytail swing.

“Morning!”

I turned to see Lily. She looked younger and sexier in a pair of jeans and a stretchy teal T-shirt.

I handed back Oswald’s coffee cup and we both said good morning to her. “Lily, if you’re all part of an extended non-Mafia family, how come you haven’t met Oswald before?”

They looked at each other quizzically. She said, “Good question. I was signed up on the dating registry, but they matched me with one of the Van Burens. I went out with him for six months and decided I’d rather die a spinster, so I pulled my name off.”

I tried to puzzle this through. “Your family has a dating service? I think I’m a little squicked out.”

“It’s the equivalent of dating someone from a neighboring town,” Lily said, “but we can meet people who share our condition and values.”

Oswald smiled. “Actually, Lily, I think we met at one of the Council’s career retreats when we were in sixth grade. I remember a very intense, pretty, curly-haired girl who spent a lot of time disputing Freudian theory.”

She laughed and said, “That was me! Who were you?”

“I was the skinny little kid trying to impress you by talking about the endocrine system. You told me that you thought I had narcissistic personality disorder.”

“You were that pest! I noticed you at that big millennium party in Quebec.”

Oswald’s nice brows knit together as he stared at Lily. “I would have remembered you.”

She shrugged. “I’d cut off all my hair because I wanted to be taken seriously. You were running with the fast crowd, that fashionista Cornelia … um, a different crowd.”

“I’ve settled down since then.”

“So I’ve noticed,” Lily said.

After Oswald left to go to his office, and Gabriel joined us for coffee.