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met Fletcher’s gaze. “I would think, with your mother’s illness and the move fromTexas to California, that you might feel like a fish out of water.”
    Great. Just what I need today: shrink talk. If Fletcher hadn’t already decided that he liked this honest-to-his-core chaplain, he’d make an excuse to get out of here pronto. But the truth was, Seth Donovan was the calm in his storm right now.
    “I’m doing okay,” Fletcher told him. “Meaning I’m not your next project, Seth. Find someone else.”
    “Doing okay but living like a monk   —never mind the very nice women I’ve offered to introduce you to.” His brow lifted slightly. “From everything you’ve told me, your girl back home is moving on.”
    Jessica. He should never have mentioned anything about her.
    “Maybe you should too,” Seth said gently. “Move on; consider this time in California a new start. Put yourself out there.”
    “I’m good. Don’t worry about me.” Fletcher pasted on a smile that he hoped would pass for honesty. “I’m getting out.” He shook his head at the laughable irony. “And tonight that’s going to require a tuxedo.”
    “The Crisis Care fund-raiser. I’ll be there myself.” Seth dropped his napkin onto his plate with a sigh. “Mr. Rush will too, I expect.”
    “What?”
    Seth nodded. “Big donor.”

7
    T AYLOR PICKED A GOOEY, walnut-studded morsel from her hospital-baked chocolate chip cookie and regarded it for a moment. “Even if it goes straight to my thighs, I deserve this. Really. It’s payback for this whole day.”
    “Go for it.” Macy leaned back against the plastic visitors’ chair outside the doors to the ER, grateful for the filtered afternoon sun on her face. “You have my permission.”
    “I don’t need to pull the widow card?” The teeniest wince said Taylor Cabot’s humor and plucky bravado hadn’t conquered her grief.
    “No need. It’s been a lousy day,” Macy agreed, thinking of the ominous CT report on Darlene Harrell. Huge, inoperable bleed with brain stem herniation. Translation: no hope.
    “But at least the follow-up phone call to Annie Sims’sfoster mother sounded positive,” she added, remembering the child holding that hospital belongings bag. “Ronie said she even talked with Annie for a few minutes. Said she sounded upbeat, chatty. That was good to hear.”
    “And you have good news too.” Taylor brightened. “I can only imagine how great it feels to finally find your sister after all these years, have her call you out of the blue like that.”
    “Yes.” Macy felt the familiar mix of elation and pain. Leah was her foster sister, not a blood relative   —but maybe no one else could understand that it didn’t matter one bit. Didn’t matter either that the surprise call was not so much “out of the blue” as out of a Narcotics Anonymous twelve-step requirement. Leah was in rehab. Again.
    “It feels good,” Macy agreed, taking the piece of cookie Taylor offered and remembering that Fig Newtons were Leah’s favorite. She’d wrapped some in a napkin once, hid them in her pillowcase. Ants swarmed, but Leah brushed them off and ate the cookies anyway, saying, “Ant cooties are too small to count.” Macy smiled, grateful for a happy memory; they’d had too many bad ones together. “It’s the best thing that’s happened in a long time.”
    “She’s younger, right?”
    “Three years   —turned twenty-four last month,” Macy confirmed. “When I saw her in Tucson, I couldn’t get over how much she’d changed.” The last time she’d seen her sister, ten years earlier, Leah had been fourteen years old. Barely a month after her innocence had been stolen with such cruelty. The familiar guilt prodded. “She’s trying hard to get things together now, build a future.”
    Taylor nodded, empathy in her eyes. “I can understand that.”
    “I’ll do whatever it takes to help   —”
    “Macy!” Elliot waved from the parking lot, then pointed to