The Daddy Makeover. RaeAnne Thayne

Will murmured from behind her.

      Having a witness to her sneakiness made her feel petty and small. She wasn’t fit company for anyone tonight. She let out a breath and resolved to try harder to be kind.

      “I think we’re done up here,” Will said. “Should I take a look at the first floor now?”

      Anna nodded and led the way down the stairs. Sage thought about escaping to her apartment and indulging in that warm bath that had been calling her name all evening, but she knew it would be cowardly, especially after Will had witnessed her subversive bribery of Conan.

      She followed them down the stairs to Abigail’s apartment. With some trepidation, Sage stood in the doorway. She hadn’t been here since Anna moved her things in two weeks ago. She couldn’t help expecting to see Abigail bustle out of the kitchen with her tea tray and a plateful of Pepperidge Farm Raspberry Milanos.

      All three of them—four, counting Conan—paused inside the living room. Shared grief for the woman they had all loved twisted around them like thorny vines.

      Anna was the first to break the charged moment as she briskly moved into the room. “Sorry about the mess. If I’d had warning, I might have had time to straighten up a little.”

      Sage couldn’t see much mess, just a newspaper spread out on the coffee table and a blanket jumbled in a heap on the couch, but she figured those few items slightly out of place probably affected Anna as much as if a hurricane had blown through.

      “What I would like to do is knock down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room to make the kitchen bigger. And then I was wondering about the feasibility of taking out the wall between the two smaller bedrooms to make that a big master.”

      Abigail’s presence was so strong here. While Will and Anna were busy in the kitchen, Sage stood in the middle of the living room and closed her eyes, her throat tight. She could still smell her here, that soft scent of freesia.

      Abigail wouldn’t have wanted her to wallow in this wrenching grief, she knew, but she couldn’t seem to fight it back.

      For one odd second, the scent of freesia seemed stronger and she could swear she felt a soft, papery hand on her cheek.

      To distract herself from the weird sensation, she glanced around the rooms and through the open doorway to one of the bedrooms and suddenly caught sight of Abigail’s vast doll collection.

      Collecting dolls had always seemed too ordinary a hobby for Abigail, given her friend’s other eccentricities, but Abigail had loved each piece in the room.

      She moved to the doorway and flipped on the light switch, enjoying as always that first burst of amazement at the floor-to-ceiling display cases crammed full of thousands of dolls. There was her favorite, a mischievous-looking senior citizen wearing a tie-dyed shirt and a peace medallion. Golden Flower Child. She was certain the artist had handcrafted it specifically for Abigail.

      “You should take some of them up to your apartment.”

      Sage quickly dropped her hand from the doll’s familiar smile to find Anna watching her.

      “They’re part of the contents of the house, which she left jointly to both of us,” Anna went on. “Half of them are yours.”

      She glanced at the aging hippie doll with longing, then shook her head. “They belong together. I’m not sure we should split up the collection.”

      After a long pause, Anna’s expression turned serious. “Why don’t you take them all upstairs with you, then?”

      She had a feeling the offer had not been an easy one for Anna to make. It touched her somewhere deep inside. The lump in her throat swelled and she felt even more guilty for the dog-treat trick.

      “We don’t have to decide anything like that today. For now, we can leave them where they are, as long as you don’t mind.”

      Before Anna could voice the arguments Sage could see brewing in her dark eyes, Will joined them. “You want the good news or the bad?”

      “Good news,” Anna said instantly. Sage would have saved the best for last. Good news after bad always made the worst seem a little more palatable.

      “None of the walls you want to take out are weight-bearing, so we should be okay that way.”

      “What’s the bad?” Anna asked.

      “We’re going to have to reroute some plumbing. It’s going to cost you.”

      He gave a figure that staggered Sage, though Anna didn’t seem at all surprised.

      “Well, there’s no rush on this floor. What about the work upstairs?”

      Those figures were no less stunning. “That’s more than reasonable,” Anna said. “Are you positive that will cover your entire overhead? I don’t want you skimping your profit.”

      “It’s fair.”

      Anna gave him a careful look, then smiled. “It will be fair when we tack back on the twenty percent you cut off the labor costs.”

      “I give my friends a deal.”

      “Not these friends. We’ll pay your going rate or we’ll find somebody else to do the work.”

      Anna’s insistence surprised Sage as much as the numbers. She would have expected the other woman to pinch pennies wherever she could and she had to admit she was impressed that she refused to take advantage of Will’s generosity.

      “You’ll take a discount and that’s final,” he said firmly. “You’ll never find another contractor who will treat Brambleberry House with the same loving care.”

      “You guys can hash this out better without me,” Sage announced. She wasn’t sure she could spend any more time in Abigail’s apartment without breaking into tears. “I’m tired and I’m hungry. Right now all I want to do is fix some dinner and take a long, hot soak in the tub with a glass of wine. You can give me the details tomorrow.”

      “I’ll walk Conan tonight. It’s my turn,” Anna said.

      She nodded her agreement and headed up the stairs to her veggie burger and silence.