“Mountain Man Fudge.”

“Mountain…” Vanessa started to giggle, then couldn’t stop, and before long, she was in tears, sobbing.

“Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. I should have made up some other name when you asked. I shouldn’t have brought him up at all.”

“It’s okay,” Vanessa wept. “It’s just that I didn’t expect him to leave so abruptly. I’ll be fine. I’m just going to have this one cry, then it’ll be done.”

“I should have followed my first instincts and brought a couple of bottles of wine,” Steffie muttered.

“No, no, I’ll be fine. I just need to cry it out.” She picked up the bag and swung it to Steffie. “This may take a while, though…”

“Take as much time as you need.” Steffie helped herself and returned the bag to the coffee table. “But just so I know… is he, Grady, a bastard for leaving that fast, or what?”

“I knew he was going. I knew he had this trail thing he does. Camping trip he was taking some people on. That’s how he makes his living.” Vanessa got up and went into the kitchen and came back with a box of tissues. “So it’s not like he misled me or deceived me or anything like that.” She blew her nose and appeared to think for a minute. “I think what hurts is that it feels so… unfinished. You know? Like there should have been more, but there isn’t going to be.”

“You liked him that much, huh?”

“I never knew anyone like him,” Vanessa said. “I guess if I were looking for someone for the long run… and we both know I’m not…”

“Right.”

“But if I were, I’d be looking for someone like him.”

“Ness?”

“What?” Vanessa sniffed and grabbed another tissue.

“He’ll be back.”

“Oh, sure, someday. Like when Mia and Beck have kids.” She rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, could you see it if we were both godparents for the-”

“Stop it. He’ll be back. It won’t take that long.”

“What makes you think that?” Vanessa stopped sniffing.

“Because of the way, I don’t know, the way he looked at you when you were dancing the other night at the wedding. Like there was no one else in the room, no one else on the dance floor.”

“He was counting on getting lucky, Stef.”

“Maybe so, but I think it was more than that. I’m not always right when it comes to guys, but trust me on this one.” Steffie polished off the last bite of Mountain Man Fudge. “He’ll be back.”

Steffie’s words came back to Vanessa the next day when she was at the shop and taking delivery of an order of walking shorts, and later that same day when the glass cutter came to measure for replacing the window and the glass counter and shelf. And later still when she walked home that night to her quiet house and took a few frozen lemon cookies from the freezer. He’d called around midnight, apologized for the late hour, and said something about the different time zones, but the connection hadn’t been good, and eventually the line went dead.

Didn’t that just sum it all up?

She tried to read, and she tried to watch TV. She put her favorite movie into the DVD player and tried to find the humor, but even Ghostbusters couldn’t keep her focused. Her mind wandered, replaying the moments of the past ten days that she’d spent with Grady. It had all seemed surreal. She’d dated now and then over the past few years, but she hadn’t gotten involved with anyone since she moved to St. Dennis. Alternately, she berated herself for having fallen into a relationship with him so easily, and regretting that it had ended before she was ready to let him go.

The rest of the week brought more of the same. She met with her insurance agent, met with Hal and Sue and went over the very short list of items stolen by Edmund Dent. The only difference was that she was now sleeping in the spare bedroom. She’d tried sleeping in her own bed, but even after washing the bed linens, she swore she could still smell traces of his aftershave on the pillows, and that had made for one too many sleepless nights. She needed to be able to function if she were to get her shop organized to reopen as soon as the window was repaired. They were into June already and the foot traffic on Charles Street was picking up with every passing day. Her agent showed her how to calculate the amount of business loss she’d sustained-how much she was losing every day the shop was unable to open-so while she could expect some compensation for the interruption of her business, it wasn’t the same as having her shop open and dealing with the public. She loved Bling, her customers loved Bling, and she couldn’t wait till she could reopen. She missed the interaction, the fun of helping a customer find that exactly right something that made their face light up. Then, she figured, life would return to normal. All she really wanted was for things to feel normal again.

It was hard not to think that fate had been incredibly and deliberately unkind to her. The simple fact was that she’d met the best guy last. Everything about him had been right, except the timing.

Right guy, wrong time.

Hal sat on the chair in the corner of Maggie’s room at the Inn at Sinclair’s Point and watched her finish packing.

“… want to get things settled back there, close that book, so to speak,” she was saying. “I don’t know why Carl left that ranch to me instead of to his boys. No wonder they resent me.” She shook her head. “I have to make that right for them. I don’t deserve it and I don’t want it.”

“Have you told them that?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. I called them on Tuesday morning and told them I’d be back before the weekend. I asked them to set up an appointment for Friday afternoon or Saturday morning with Carl’s lawyer so that I could make the arrangements to put it all in their names as soon as possible. They sounded shocked-I think they were afraid I’d sell it out from under them-but by the time we finished our conversation, I think they understood.” She closed her suitcase and turned to face him. “I’ll be very relieved once that is done. It’s been hanging over me like a dust cloud since Carl died.”

“And then what?”

“Then…” She shrugged. “I’m not sure what I’ll do then. I have a couple of options.”

“Would one of them be coming back here?”

“I would like that. I’m not going to pretend that I wouldn’t. I think over time, Vanessa and I can smooth things out between us. We may never be as close as some mothers and their daughters, but I think we can do better in the future than we’ve done in the past. But Beck… I don’t know that he’d ever be any happier to see my face than he was at the wedding.” Maggie shook her head. “I don’t know what I was thinking, putting myself in a position that would only alienate him even more. I think he hates me, Hal.”

“Hate’s a strong word,” he told her. “It may not be all that bad.”

“Even you don’t sound as if you really believe that, but I thank you for trying to make me feel better.” She grabbed the handle of the suitcase and started to slide it off the bed, but Hal got up and took it from her hands. “And that is the very least I have to thank you for. You are the most amazing man I have ever known, and I’ve been waiting for a long time to tell you-”

“Now, Maggie, you don’t need to feel that you have to apologize.”

“It’s taken me forever to get up the nerve to say this, so let me have my say.” She cleared her throat and fought back tears, but she might never have this chance again, and he had to hear what she had to say. “I don’t understand all of what I’ve done in my life but that’s a topic for a different time. But what I do know, what I do understand, is that I’ve spent my entire life trying to find you again. In every relationship I had, every man I met, I was looking for you. I don’t expect you to forgive me-I can’t ask that of you after almost forty years-but I want you to know that I have never loved anyone but you. I know how that must sound to you after all this time, but it’s the truth. I can’t make up for all those years between then and now, but if you’d be my friend, Hal, I’d be grateful until the day I die.”