The laughter stops, and a rush of feet heralds the appearance of my dead wife’s avatar in the hallway. I probably shouldn’t think of Annie that way, but anyone who knew her mother shares this perception. My tall, willowy daughter is almost the reincarnation of Sarah. Sometimes I wonder if this impression is a trick my mind plays on me, but then I’ll see an old photograph and realize the resemblance is growing stronger with each passing year.

“What’s the matter, Daddy?” she asks, stopping in mid-stride and staring at me with the preternatural perception that also descended from her mother. “You look scared.”

“No, I just missed you today.”

She comes forward and wraps her arms around me, in a single gesture draining away half the anxiety that Lincoln Turner caused in me. “Come in the kitchen,” she says. “Caitlin and I are cooking pasta primavera.”

“You mean you’re cooking it.” I know from experience that my fiancée never cooks anything more complicated than a Lean Cuisine.

“Caitlin’s helping,” Annie says with a wink.

She pulls me down the hall and into the kitchen, where Caitlin is standing over a pot with a frown knotting her brow.

“This is why I don’t cook,” Caitlin snaps. “I can’t even boil effing water.”

Annie snickers and checks the pasta pot. “Those noodles have definitely been in there too long. Let’s get them out.”

Caitlin wisely stands aside for Annie to rescue the noodles, and I’m glad to see the twinkle of a smile in Caitlin’s eyes, though her lips are tight with frustration. Caitlin still has two or three inches on Annie, but it won’t be long before my daughter catches up to her. Despite both being tall beauties, they could not be more different in type. Caitlin has pale skin and jet-black hair, with startling green eyes that shy away from nothing. Her build is angular and almost masculine from some perspectives, but she’s curved where it counts. Annie is dark blond with light blue eyes that radiate kindness, not calculation, and her skin glows with the bloom of youth.

“See?” Annie says, carefully dumping the noodles into a colander in the sink, while boiling water steams around her head.

“I’d already have third-degree burns,” Caitlin says. She once tried to make her mother’s lasagna, but that effort is best forgotten. That’s the level of domestic bliss you get with a newspaper publisher.

“You know what Ruby used to say.” I laugh, hugging Caitlin to my waist. “If you ain’t burnt yourself, you ain’t cookin’.”

Ruby was the black maid who raised me, and very much a second mother to me. Annie laughs at my remark, and Caitlin pinches my behind while Annie deals with the noodles.