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plain,and the city reared against the skyline ahead when he broke off. “You shouldn’t have gotten me started. I’ve probably ruined your appetite.”
    “Nothing ruins my appetite,” she assured him. “I was interested.”
    She looked like she meant it. “Have you ever been married?” he asked abruptly.
    Her gaze flicked nervously to his and then away. “No. Not even engaged. Why?”
    “Just curious.”
    Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the expressions come and go on her face. She lost her internal struggle. “How long have you been divorced?”
    “Five-and-a-half years,” he answered willingly. “I just counted. My son called the other day. The…subject came up.” And he still hadn’t called Garth back.
    “How old is he?”
    “Twelve. He’s coming for the summer.”
    He felt her gaze, heard the tentativeness in her voice. “Are you looking forward to that?”
    “Sure I am,” he said. “I miss him.” Pride didn’t let him admit that Garth apparently didn’t miss him.
    “Where does he live?”
    They chatted about San Francisco. She owned to having spent most of her youth in Southern California and said that her mother still lived there.
    “I sometimes go down there for Christmas.”
    Her tone was particularly inexpressive, as it had been when she mentioned living in L.A., and Eric wondered why. Obviously her relationship with her mother wasn’t close, but more seemed to be goingon here. He made no comment, however; it was too soon to pry.
    Conversation over dinner stayed casual. They talked about the shelter, about the regular adoption days Madeline took the cats to, about the people who abandoned cats and the ones who took them in.
    “We have a lady who must have rounded up twenty-five strays over the past couple of years. They were all in apartment complexes. People move and just leave their cats.” Anger and sadness mixed in equal measure on her face. “We lend her a live trap sometimes. Mostly she spends hours feeding them and making friends until they let her catch them. She pays to have them neutered if they’re not already, and then we take them in. Nearly all of them have been adoptable. A couple had been declawed, which made them especially defenseless. Most were sweethearts. To think that somebody just climbed in the car and drove away, leaving them sitting in the parking lot.”
    Eric shared her feelings. He’d had to euthanize a stray only the day before who’d been hit by a car. He’d have liked to smash the nose of the bastard who’d dumped that poor animal.
    Eventually Eric worked the conversation back to the personal. “Had you ever had your own business before you opened Madeline’s?” he asked.
    “No, but I’d been a buyer and department manager in a big store.” She named a pricey Northwest clothing store that had expanded into a dozen or more malls in the more upscale suburbs of Seattle and Portland. “Finally I got frustrated with decisionsthat weren’t mine to make. I shared a house in the Greenlake area with a couple of other women, and that got old, too. I decided to strike out on my own, preferably not in the city. I wanted to live in a small town.” She spread her hands. “Voilà. Truthfully I’m lucky it worked. Most ventures like mine don’t.”
    As a small businessman of a different sort, he’d had many of the same problems and experiences she’d had. Probably they shared a few of the same clients. A couple of women who dressed elegantly were regulars at the animal hospital.
    Madeline seemed happy to talk about business taxes, parking problems—the handful of slots on the street in front of her store weren’t enough—and amusing or annoying clients. It wasn’t until he steered the subject back to her that her animation became evasiveness.
    “No, I didn’t start as a clerk. And, to tell you the truth, I don’t even have a college degree. I wish I had one in business or accounting. Actually—” she was no longer looking at him “—I