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mistakenly thought a one-night, or weeklong, fling between consenting adults didn’t leave any lasting marks. Before she’d made the biggest mistake of her life.
    She’d thought, briefly, that any guy who, like her, lived without ties might’ve been the one who could tie her down. And the tarot’s Wheel of Fortune card had heralded momentous change and confirmed her assumption.
    No one came to the tarot without a whole host of assumptions.
    The magnetic feeling of being watched raised Katherine’s gaze.
    â€œThanks for giving me a chance,” Zach said, as though she’d already hired him for general help, a salesman assuming the sale. Above the table, his body jostled, a side effect of below-the-table leg jiggling.
    Twenty-five years ago, a man named Adam had sat in the same seat, unmoving, looked into her eyes, and then, lightning-quick, worked his way into her bed.
    Truth be told, it hadn’t taken much work. And the bed had been his.
    Actually, the bed had been owned by Holiday Inn.
    â€œLike I said,” Zach continued, “what I lack in experience, I more than make up for in enthusiasm.”
    â€œI’d need you for busing, restocking the bakery cases, dishwashing. . .” With each task Katherine rattled off, Zach nodded, the smile never wavering from his lips. “Cleaning toilets,” Katherine added, and Zach laughed.
    Katherine kept a straight face.
    â€œOh, you’re serious.” Zach leaned across the table. Because he was at ease with himself or eager to compare features? If Zach was her son looking for her, wouldn’t he pipe up and say so? “Sorry, yeah, that’s not a problem, Katherine.” Same as the stranger who’d breezed through Hidden Harbor years ago, Zach pronounced her name in three distinct syllables— Kath-ther-ine —the sounds lingering in his mouth.
    Later that same man had told her he liked having her lingering in his mouth.
    Next booth over and behind Zach’s head, one-year-old Christopher bounced on his mother’s lap and gave Katherine a wide grin, his eyes gleaming with recognition. A single dimple punctuated his left cheek. Katherine smiled back, and Christopher tried to shove his entire fist into his mouth, drooling around his chapped knuckles onto his mother’s shoulder.
    Zach glanced over his shoulder. “Hey, big guy,” he said to Christopher, and then turned back around. “What a cutie.”
    â€œThat he is.”
    Sometimes Katherine wondered whether she’d daydreamed her pregnancy, the birth, and the man who had set the story in motion. Other times, her whole life sat on the tip of her tongue, dangerously close to release. On those rare days, she worked extra hard to keep her hands busy and her mouth shut. Over the years, she’d kept track of her son’s age, imagining him a shaggy-haired boy in elementary school who favored finger paints and art class, a long-limbed runner in high school, the first in her family to earn a college degree. She had a relationship with that artistic, athletic, scholarly boy. She loved him to distraction. She would’ve laid down her life to save his.
    Celeste came out of the kitchen, and Zach’s gaze wandered across the room, his expression reminiscent of a hungry boy browsing Katherine’s bakery cases and zoning in on his favorite treat. Eyes big, mouth slack, hands opening and closing. This one. This one now.
    This young man? Katherine didn’t know him from Adam.
    Celeste, on the other hand, Katherine could read like a memorized recipe. She didn’t need ESP to intuit whatever had happened in New York; Celeste didn’t need any romantic complications. One look at Celeste’s face told Katherine she was one stressor away from a full relapse.
    Over at the counter, Celeste dropped muffins into a waxed bag and rang up Mrs. Jenkins. Although the woman was barely sixty, Mrs. Jenkins wore a full-length trench coat, rain