“I know, which is why I called your office first. They put me through to Reggie, who told me you were home. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Then why are you home? Did you decide to heed my advice, take a few days off and focus on you?”

“In a way. It’s been hectic both at the office and at home. I’m going in this afternoon but decided to take the morning off.”

“What’s going on at the house? Justin seemed fine when he came over yesterday, although now that I think of it, he was quieter than usual.”

“It’s nothing for you to worry about.” The last thing Dominique wanted to do was upset her mother, which is why she hadn’t told her about Jake. Anita was always trying to get Dominique married. If she heard there was a potential mate in the vicinity, Dominique knew she’d get no rest.

She hadn’t told her about the recent disagreements with Justin either. “Your grandson is growing up,” she finally said into the silence. “I’m dealing with some of what I’m sure you experienced as I entered my teens.”

“You weren’t so bad,” Anita answered, with a chuckle in her voice. “In fact, I was glad when you came out of your shell a little bit and proved that you weren’t just another big girl with an attitude.”

“But at times,” Dominique said, her voice sounding like the young, vulnerable woman she once was, “that’s exactly who I was.”

Dominique didn’t remember a time when she wasn’t a big girl. Her earliest memories were from the age of four, when she’d help her grandmother make lemon icebox pies in the brightly colored Alabama kitchen where she spent a good deal of her childhood. Grandma Ella always encouraged her to eat her fill and complimented her when she cleaned her plate and asked for seconds. It was the world as Dominique knew it and, except for Anita and Faith, most of the people around her were big. It wasn’t until the family relocated to California that she found out that being thick wasn’t considered cute and she started having a hard time because of her size. She was ten years old.