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gotten her through medical school and the grueling years of residency saved her. She swallowed it all down and promised herself a good cry later when she was alone.
    “I—I have a silly favor to ask,” she said when she was able to face him again.
    “Sure, anything,” Neil told her.
    “Could—just for tonight—could you go without the music? I—I can’t explain it....”
    Neil didn’t hesitate. He walked over to a weatherproof box she hadn’t seen before and killed the music. He turned around, palms ups, and said, “That better?”
    Charli had been prepared to argue and debate and prove her point—something she had many years of experience doing first with her dad and then with every single one of the professors and doctors who’d trained her. To have a guy not question her, but just give her the thing she asked for, was almost too much. She felt her composure begin to falter.
    Neil must have seen something on her face, because he closed the gap between them and steered her to the front porch steps. She sat there, staring at his awful decorations, unsure what she might say that would end the silence but not reveal what was on her mind.
    Before she could figure that out, her phone buzzed.
    She fished it out of her pocket and glanced at the screen. “My mom,” she said apologetically, and answered it.
    “Charli!” her mom exclaimed in greeting. “Honey, where did you go?”
    “I—I had to have some air, Mom. I just needed to be alone. I’m sorry. I’ll come back.” The thought of being in that hive of activity nearly undid Charli.
    “No, no, don’t come back for me...but, honey, you don’t need to be alone. You need people, people who care about you. Right now, the thing that will do you the most good is— Oh, thank you, Ellen, thank you for the tea. Charli, the thing that will help is to be around people.”
    Charli knew her mom meant well, but this was a meeting of the minds that would never happen. It was the same vast chasm of difference that had made her mom think ruffles and lace would suit Charli, when in reality, all Charli had wanted to do was pull on a T-shirt and jeans and tag along with her dad. How could Charli explain to her mother that being among people was the thing she could stand least right now?
    It wouldn’t happen. Charli knew that. “I am around people, Mom,” Charli told her. She glanced at the man who sat quietly beside her, looking off into the distance and pretending not to listen. He actually made a move to get up and give her privacy—score more points for him—but she laid a hand on his arm. “I’m with my neighbor, Neil Bailey.”
    “Oh!” Her mother’s tone slid from its prior worry straight to relief and delight. “Oh, Charli! That’s good. That’s very good. I should have known you’d need some companionship your own age. And Neil is so nice and so handsome, too.”
    Charli couldn’t help but blush at her mother’s words. She knew where this was heading. She tried to cut her off, afraid Neil might overhear her mother’s effusiveness.
    “Mom, it’s not like that—”
    “He was just too kind! And did you see that beautiful write-up in the paper about your father? Neil did a fine job. Will you tell him that? And tell him to come by and visit me, so I can thank him properly. Oh, Charli! You couldn’t have found a finer gentleman.”
    “Mom, I don’t need that sort of—”
    “Oh, nonsense! Every woman needs a good man. That’s what we are made for. I had your father.” Here, her mother’s voice sounded choked. “For all these years, he stood by me, when I was so— He could have left me. And he didn’t. All the misery I caused him.”
    “Mom...” Charli didn’t need to hear her mother’s regret play out again. She didn’t need to be reminded of her mother’s battles with her shopping addictions.
    Her mother, though, pulled out of her sharp dive into moroseness. “You stay. Charli, stay right there. And get to know that young man. Your