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have been worse?
    “Are you there?”
    “Yeah, I’m here,” she whispered.
    “Let me buy you a cup of coffee. If you’re up to it, I’ll say what I have to say, and then I’ll leave you alone. You just tell me where and when.”
    If curiosity was an illness, Christine’s would have been diagnosed as terminal. Here he was, ready to give her the explanation she’d so long deserved and—she had to admit—wanted. But she didn’t trust herself to be alone with him. This would need to be a calm, professional meeting.
    Yeah, right!
    She wanted to tell him to meet her right now, before he changed his mind. But she was tired. It had been a long seven days. She wanted to be at her best when she sat across from Jason Rodgers and looked him square in the eye. It would be show and tell. The “tell” belonged to him. If groveling was involved, so be it. The “show” wason her. She would show him she was a strong, independent woman. What happened had been ancient history—until he’d reappeared last night at the funeral home. She had survived. It had waited all these years, she told herself. It could wait one more day.
    “I have to go to the Colonial tomorrow to pick up Daddy’s belongings from Lily. Meet me there at nine.”

C HAPTER 4
Wednesday, September 20
    Jason waited impatiently on the sidewalk for Christine to appear from inside the pharmacy. She was probably in there right now. His memories were thick and miserable. He trudged to the double doors, holding his breath. He checked his watch. Fifteen minutes had passed.
    The Colonial Pharmacy anchored a strip of businesses, including two restaurants, a sports bar, a video store, and a hobby shop. It sat at the intersection of Jefferson Avenue and Denbigh Boulevard. The huge neon sign hummed like a high-voltage transformer.
Colonial Pharmacy
was scrawled in a handsome cursive. The
h
blinked on and off intermittently. For years, it been referred to as merely “the Colonial.” Jason tried to peer through the tinted windows. He saw only his haggard, worried expression reflected in the glass.
    Jason tugged the door open with a clammy hand.
    The twenty-thousand-square-foot space had the appeal of an old-time pharmacy. The faces were different. But the walls, fixtures, and aisles all looked as they had thirty years ago. Its antique charm made people feel as if they had stepped back into the fifties and Ike was stillin the White House. The aisles were tight, crammed full of candies, health and beauty aids, school supplies, and nonprescription medications. A phalanx of slow-winding ceiling fans silently churned air.
    Jason’s mind reverted back to his first day on the job as a newly licensed pharmacist. An angry seventy-something woman had cussed him up and down because he wouldn’t refill her prescription for Premarin. He spied the exact spot where she’d stood, looking up at him over the counter. An electric jolt ran through his body.
    The rear of the building, the centerpiece of the business, was the two-tier prescription department.
Prescriptions
was also spelled in a handsome, gold cursive against a sky-blue façade. The first level, one step up behind the counter, was roamed by a blue-smocked, gum-chomping teenager whose blond hair was streaked with purple. Behind her, shelves were chock-full of condoms, diabetic testing supplies, meters, blood-pressure machines, and various over-the-counter drugs.
    Up two more steps was the pharmacy department itself. Its shoulder-high counter was bisected by an opening to the land of medicated plenty. On a high, thin ledge in front of frosted glass, an assortment of antique pharmacy paraphernalia was displayed. There were mortars and pestles of polished ceramic, marble, and brass. Short, stout porcelain apothecary jars were labeled with Latin words like
Lactucarium, Paeonia Albiflora,
and
Pro Dolore.
Thick copies of yellow-paged tomes silently attested to bygone days of tinctures, elixirs, and compounds.
The United States