BullSHIT! What he wanted was a glimpse of Cady Jordan.

It was after eleven o’clock when Mac headed for Tony’s Pizza Parlor. He’d called ahead to order a large pepperoni and sausage pie and a double meatball sub for Ozzie. He’d purposely waited till then, knowing the Sentinel filled the newspaper containers all along Main Street at eleven o’clock. He picked up his pie, depositing it on the front seat of the Rover, before he walked over to the corner of Pepperdam and Madison. He smiled to himself when he saw Pete Danson, a pizza box in his hand and a paper in the other, head toward his car. Farther down the street he saw a woman with an identical pizza box in one hand while she dropped two quarters into the blue-and-white newspaper box. Amy Hollister Chambers?

Two down and one to go. Where was Andy Hollister?

He laughed out loud when he turned the corner onto Old Trolley Road and saw Andy Hollister heading to his car, the newspaper under his arm.

All present and accounted for. Obviously they could no more wait until Sunday to get the paper than he could.

The smile stayed on his face all the way back to his new, empty apartment.

Inside, he ripped at the cardboard box to make a plate for Ozzie while he chomped down on the delectable pizza. He read through the article, not once, not twice, but three times before his closed fist shot into the air. Little Cady Jordan was just a hair away from getting her doctorate. “Good for you, Cady,” he exulted. “Good for you.”

6

Lola sat on a comfortable lounge chair on her second-floor terrace, admiring the clay pots full of tulips and daffodils Mandy had just watered. Even though it was a warm day, she was bundled into soft, fleece blankets, only her face exposed to the warm spring sunshine.

“For God’s sake, Mandy, I feel like a mummy,” she grumbled.

“It’s better for you to feel like a mummy than it is for you to catch a chill and pneumonia. My goodness, will you look at all those bolts of cloth. How is Cady going to choose one over the other?”

“We’re just here to nod approval, Mandy. Danielle has an eye, as you know, for fabrics, textures, and the person as a whole. She’ll make the right choices. I want our girl to look like a million dollars. Looking good and knowing you look good gives you confidence, something she is sorely lacking. I’m having a hard time with her being so shy and withdrawn. I should have done all this ten years ago. Why did I wait so long, Mandy?”

“You waited because Cady wasn’t ready. You had other more personal problems to deal with. Don’t start second-guessing yourself. When you set out to fix an old wrong it’s never too late. I think the new haircut is going to do wonders for Cady. I don’t know if you realize this or not, Lola, but she let her hair grow as long as it is for a reason. Remember how she told us that awful boy cut off her pigtail? I know in my heart that left some kind of lasting impression on her. She had to have been traumatized by that. I think she let her hair grow because she’s been trying to go back to that time to understand it all. Cutting it off now, I’m hoping, is the right thing. Her hair has a bit of a natural wave to it, so she won’t have to fuss too much with it. Mona will cut and shape it, and she will be beautiful. Trust me.”