I also saw the bar was set. I’d contacted the furniture company and the dining room table was coming, but it wasn’t going to arrive until later that week, so we were eating at the bar. Pippa had done as I’d asked and even filled my pretty new pitcher with ice water.

The candles were lit. The lighting was a shade up from romantic.

All was perfect.

Except I should have bought flowers.

“I should have bought flowers,” I mumbled.

“Not sure, but since your dude is a dude, he probably doesn’t give a crap if you bought flowers,” Auden, sliding on the stool opposite me, told me.

He was right.

I smiled at him, lifting a hand to tuck my hair behind my ear.

It was then I realized I’d forgotten to put earrings in.

“Shit! I forgot earrings!” I cried, this exclamation being far more dramatic than the situation warranted.

“According to the microwave you have two minutes to accomplish that mission, Mom,” Pippa teased. “Since your jewelry isn’t in Calcutta, thinking you can pull that off.”

I gave her a look that was half smile, half glare as she grinned at me then I moved, saying, “I’ll be right back.”

Auden got in on the act, calling to my back, “We’ll try to survive without you.”

I hoped they’d have to wait years before they had to do that.

I hurried down the hall but I’d nabbed my phone before I left the kitchen in the unlikely event Mickey called me, told me he had 24-hour pneumonia, but not to worry, Florence Nightingale had resurrected to care for him personally, though, alas, he could not come to dinner with me and my children.

This didn’t happen.

But after the third pair of earrings I put on (the first, diamond studs, they were big thus too flashy and too expensive; the second, long hoops that nearly reached my shoulders that Alyssa had talked me into buying, they were too disco; the last, a fall of beads and tiny gold leaves, just right), my phone rang.

I looked down at it on my bathroom counter and my neck muscles got tight when I saw it was Conrad.

Considering he might know what tonight was for Pippa, Auden, Mickey and me, and if he did the odds that he was calling was to ruin it for me were high, I didn’t answer.

However when I’d decided on earrings number three and did a mini-spritz of perfume (that day, I decided on the one Olympia had chosen for me) and I heard my phone chime it had a voicemail, curiosity got the cat.

I picked it up, went to voicemail and listened to Conrad’s message.

“Amelia,” he said tightly. “I’m hoping this call came in prior to your evening’s…festivities.”

He knew what tonight was for the kids and me.