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to start life all over again. Most people at that age were looking forward toward the future, toward a second home or a yearly vacation or newer, bigger investments. Courtney McAllister had no choice but to go back to square one and start from the beginning. Again.
    I’d be furious , Rachel thought, inexplicably angry for this woman she barely knew. Life could be so unfair. I’d be mad at the entire world and I’d let everybody know it .
    “Just like Mom,” she said aloud, shaking her head with a knowing grimace of realization. If you looked up the word “bitter” in the dictionary, there would be a picture of Alice Sullivan, Rachel’s mother. She’d taken the definition and made it her own after Rachel’s father left her. The sweet, gentle, loving woman Rachel remembered from her childhood had vanished, leaving in her place a sour woman full of anger and hostility. Now that Rachel was an adult, she was able to step back and see things a bit more clearly. She was able to understand what her mother had gone through and how she’d felt. But that had been many, many years ago, and not much had changed. Even remarried, nobody did embittered and resentful better than Alice. How Courtney had managed to avoid any semblance of cynicism, Rachel had no idea.
    A bead of sweat trickled down the center of her back as the morning sun beat down on her. Rex began to pant as they walked, but he never once pulled on the leash; there was always slack.
    “You’re a good boy, Rex. We’re going to find you a new home. Don’t you worry.” She scratched the top of his head and turned them back the way they’d come.
    As she led him back inside, her thoughts still fleetingly on Courtney, she remembered that she had the For Sale sign in the trunk of her car. She was planning on swinging by Courtney’s place to pound it into the front lawn on her way back from Happy Acres this morning. She absently wondered how Courtney would handle seeing it.
     
    *
     
    “Hey there, good looking.” Danny was dressed snappily in black chinos and a subtly patterned short-sleeve shirt of black and turquoise. He flopped into his chair and popped open his briefcase, then pulled some files out and set the case on the floor next to his desk. “How’s things?”
    “Not bad, Dan,” Rachel replied, her attention turning back to her monitor. “How ’bout you? Business good?”
    “It’s slowing down. We’re heading into the quieter season.” The sounds of tapping keys filled the air as he logged into his computer. “And frankly, I could use the break. This summer has been crazy.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    The housing market had a fluctuation that was largely unpredictable, and Rachel had learned that it was almost always feast or famine. Either everybody was buying and selling or nobody was. She’d been a realtor for over a decade and she still had trouble getting a handle on the changeability.
    She scribbled some notes on the paper in front of her. She was looking at recent listings, trying to match up possibilities with her clients who were in the market for new homes. Taking them from house to house was her least favorite part of the job. Most people tended to have a hard time seeing potential. Their first inclination was to pick apart all the negative aspects of a house rather than to see the possibilities. Trying to shift their perspective without sounding like a stereotypical salesperson could be very exhausting.
    “So here’s a weird coincidence,” Danny said from across the office. “I’ve got a client who’s looking to buy, right? He gives me his price range and I pick some possibilities out for him. I give him the list and one of the houses on it—which just happens to be two blocks from me and James—is the house he lived in with his first wife more than fifteen years ago. Can you believe that?”
    Rachel made a sound of disbelief along with him and then went back to her monitor for several minutes before registering what he’d