it into a vacation rental? I shook my head. That didn’t make sense. He didn’t need the money and he valued his privacy too much. It was probably just someone parking in the driveway because they knew he was gone or they were visiting one of my neighbors or something.
I grabbed my purse, hefted myself out of my car and waddled up to my house, where I tried to ignore the urge to check out my front door every twenty minutes to see if the car was still there. Normally I would have distracted myself by pounding out my feelings on my piano, but the little peanut demanded that I lie down instead, with a bag of chocolate-covered almonds.
After fifteen minutes, the food and downtime had almost convinced me that I had the energy to go get some real food from the kitchen. Almost. But as I was procrastinating, a knock came at the door.
Paranoid thoughts of rumor-hungry reporters posing as vacationers and staying in Sean’s house crossed my mind before I convinced myself once again that Sean wasn’t dumb enough to let anyone stay in his house. Also, Nick was watching from his apartment across the street and received alerts anytime someone came to my door. He now texted me a thumbs-up, indicating that whoever was at the door wasn’t a threat, and I got up to see who it was. Sure, I could have looked through the peephole, but since he was watching anyway, I’d asked him to give me the thumbs-up or down so that I didn’t have to haul myself to the door for no reason.
I was gobsmacked when I opened the door. “Debbie?”
“Hey, sweet girl,” she greeted, opening her arms.
“What are you doing here?” I asked as she wrapped me in a hug.
“You and Sean think alike. Just like you asked me to take care of him, he’s asked me to take care of you.”
I squeezed her tight, tears burning my eyes, thrilled to see her again. “I haven’t seen you since Daddy’s funeral.” I blinked hard to try to get rid of the tears. “Come in.” I pulled back and invited her inside.
As soon as I closed the door, she took my hands and held them out to my sides. “Let me look at you.” She did a full body scan and then pressed both hands to her mouth.“You are a maternal goddess.”
“You’re sweet,” I said with a laugh. “Come in and sit down. How long are you here for?”
“Until Sean comes back, of course.”
“The whole four weeks?”
“Yes. I’m not letting you do this on your own.”
I gave a little shake of my head, confused. “But I need to be able to do it by myself,” I protested. Wasn’t that what sending Sean away had been all about?
“Hogwash,” she declared.
My eyes widened.“Hogwash?” Who says hogwash anymore?
“If your daddy was alive, would he be letting you do this on your own?”
She pinned me with a look, but I couldn’t answer.
“If you had any siblings,” she continued, “do you think that they would let you have a baby all on your own? Or would they be here, doing all they could to love and support you?” Again she gave me the look I couldn’t argue with. “Family helps each other, sweet girl. And like it or not, Sean and I are your family. Now, I know having him here would be different. I understand you two need to work out how to balance everything. But you can’t tell me that you’d be better off if I weren’t here. So you just be gracious, say thank you, and tell me what I can do to help.”
I gaped a bit. “Well,” I stuttered, “I am hungry.”
“Oh, good.” She jumped up. “It’s been ages since I had anyone to cook for but myself.”
I marveled as I watched Debbie take control of my kitchen, pulling a meal together as she kept the conversation going, asking me my thoughts, feelings and plans about every subject she could imagine.
A bit of melancholy slipped into my heart, realizing how much I had missed her, and wishing I could get that time back. But she was here now, and I was more than ready to soak it all up.
♪♫♪
Nick’s job became almost superfluous once people realized that Sean was making appearances all over the east coast. Proving that, just as I suspected, I became a lot less interesting when Sean wasn’t around.
Still, he was my faithful shadow and Debbie and I had a good