“You can hang it on the fridge like Grammy used to.”

“I will.” She stands and crosses over to the refrigerator, looking for a magnet that isn’t already holding up a grandchild’s artwork.

“No, I meant your fridge at your house.”

“Oh. I will. I’ll do that.” Just as soon as I figure out where my house is going to be.

“Aunt Beck? Can I watch TV now? Please?”

Well aware that his parents limit his screen time, Beck is pretty sure she should say no. Instead she says “Absolutely,” her thoughts consumed by her mother’s e-mail account—and what she might find there.

Standing at the baggage claim with Kay and the other passengers from their flight, Elena looks at her watch. “Why is this taking so long?”

“You’re in the South now. Everything probably takes a little longer,” Kay tells her. “Just be patient.”

“Patience isn’t exactly my thing.”

“Really?” Kay asks dryly, watching Elena pace until at last there’s a buzzing noise and the conveyer jerks into motion.

Bags—none belonging to Kay—begin to topple down the chute.

“I think the connection was too tight,” Elena tells her as one passenger after another grabs luggage and rolls it away. “I bet your bag didn’t make it.”

“Don’t say that! I need it!”

“You should have carried on, like I told—”

“There it is!”

Looking triumphant, Kay hurries forward to grab a small black carry-on that could have easily been stowed above—or even beneath—an airplane seat.

Elena fights the urge to chide her again. The bag made it. That’s all that matters, right?

“Now all we need is Landry,” she mutters. Then, seeing the look on Kay’s face, she adds, “Patience. I know, I know. I need patience.”

That, and a nice big, strong drink to relax my nerves.

She paces again.

At last Landry hurries around the corner, phone in hand. “Oh, good! You got your bag, Kay! Are y’all set to go?”

“More than set,” Elena can’t help saying pointedly.

“Sorry my phone call took so long,” Landry tells her. “He’s at work, so it took a few minutes for them to track him down.”

“I thought he was in North Carolina.”

“No, my husband is in North Carolina.”

“Isn’t that who you went to call?”

“Is that what I said? I meant my son.” Landry gives a flustered little laugh.

“I bet it’s easy to get them mixed up, now that Tucker is growing up,” Kay tells her.

Elena says nothing at all, regarding Landry through narrowed eyes.

What if something strange is going on here?

What if I just walked into some kind of trap?

Landry is the one who, last weekend, had so much to say about the potential for Internet imposters. What if she, herself, is one of them?

Elena studies her now as they walk out to the parking lot. She’s fiddling with her car keys, checking her cell phone every couple of seconds.

“Are you waiting for a call back or something?” she asks.

“What? Oh, no . . . just checking the time.”

Right. She’s wearing a wristwatch.

An expensive one, Elena noticed earlier. She certainly looks like the wife of a fancy lawyer.

But what if she’s not?

“Do you want to try to reach Detective Burns again?” Landry asks Kay.

“We should probably just wait for her to get back to us.”

“I can’t believe it’s taking this long. Are you sure you called the right number? She said she always picks up.”

“I know, but she didn’t. I left a message for her to call as soon as she can. I’m sure she will.”

Landry nods, clearly on edge.

They exit the airport into the glare of heat so humid that Elena feels as though she’s trying to breathe through a sopping towel pressed against her mouth and nose.

“Wow. It’s hot here,” Kay observes, and the needless comment gets on Elena’s nerves. Everything is getting on her nerves right now. Her friends’ languid pace as they cross the blacktop, the trickling tickle of sweat on her hairline, the weight of the bag she’s pulling along, the fact that she’s here at all.

At last they reach a black BMW. Landry aims the key chain to unlock the doors, then opens all four of them and starts the engine with the air-conditioning blasting. She loads their bags into the trunk but tells them not to get into the car yet. “Let’s wait a minute for it to cool off. It’s an oven in there.”

It’s an oven out here, too. They wait in silence.

Then Elena asks, “Do you really think Jenna Coeur is planning to blindside us?”

She wants them both to say it’s ridiculous.

Neither does.

“Why else would she come down here?” Landry is grim.

“If it really was her . . . then maybe it’s a coincidence,” Kay says.

“You believe in coincidences?”

Kay hesitates. “No.”

“Me neither.” Landry bites her lip and shakes her head, looking down at her phone yet again.

“I do,” Elena tells them with a shrug. “I’m not saying this is one of them, but I believe in—”

She breaks off as Landry’s cell phone rings.

“There’s a coincidence now,” Kay says. “You were looking at your phone, and it rang.”

Not really a coincidence, Elena thinks, since Landry has done nothing but look at her phone, clearly expecting a call.

“I’ve got to take this.” She hurriedly motions them to get into the car. “Go ahead. Get in. It’s cooled off.”

It hasn’t.

But Elena and Kay climb in and Landry closes their doors after them, sealing them into the oven. Still outside, she answers her phone as she closes the driver’s side door.

Elena hears her say, “Addie? Listen, I need you to do something for me . . .”

In the front seat, Elena turns to look at Kay in the back.

“Addie,” Kay observes. “That’s her daughter. Addison.”

Yeah. No kidding.

Biting back the sarcasm, swallowing her craving for a calming drink, Elena says only, “She’s really freaked out that you saw Jenna Coeur in the airport.”

“Maybe I just thought it was her.”

“What, are you thinking you’re delusional or something?”

“No! I just—I didn’t get a close enough look to be sure. Maybe . . .” Kay shrugs and rubs her forehead, as though it’s hurting her. “I don’t know. I could have been wrong.”

“I hope you were.”

A minute later Landry is back, climbing into the driver’s seat with a strained smile. “Ready to go?”

They paste on their own smiles and tell her that they are.

The Day My Life Changed Forever

Back when I was an English major in college and planning to become a writer one day, I read a lot of poems. One of my favorites was Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” It begins:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both . . .

I went many years without remembering that poem—decades spent being a wife and mother and day care provider, but not a writer. Not yet. I figured there would be plenty of time to reclaim that childhood dream and make it a reality when I retired, when my children were grown and out of the house . . .

Then came the day I found myself sitting in a doctor’s office as he delivered the bombshell I never expected to hear.

I had breast cancer? Me?

Two roads diverged . . .

The old poem barged back into my brain and hasn’t left since. The road not taken has new meaning when you’re faced with a life-threatening illness and you realize you might never have time to do all the things you once wanted to accomplish.

Chances are, you wouldn’t have done them anyway. Chances are, you stopped wanting to do them years ago. But until you got sick, they were still out there, floating randomly in the realm of possibility. Now they’d been snatched out of reach, but somehow you knew your life had been purposeful and well-lived even if you never become a Pulitzer prize winning author or even a college poetry professor. Just living—that was meaningful enough.