Once Upon a Matchmaker. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Very democratic of you,” Micah commented, the corners of his mouth curving. Aunt Sheila had always had a bit of an unorthodox streak. He learned to think outside the box because of her. He sincerely doubted that he would be where he was today if not for her. “Well, just for that, I’m taking all of you out for lunch.”

      “Aunt Sheila, too?” Greg asked, not wanting to exclude her.

      “Aunt Sheila most especially,” Micah told his younger son. There was deep affection in his voice. “After all, Aunt Sheila is the real mom around here,” he emphasized pointedly.

      Clearly confused, Greg turned to look at the woman who came by every morning to take him to preschool and his brother to kindergarten. Every afternoon she’d pick them both up and then stayed with them until their father came home. Some nights, Aunt Sheila stayed really, really late.

      “Aunt Sheila has kids?” Greg asked his father, surprised.

      Sheila smiled, answering for Micah. “I have your dad,” told the boy.

      They had a special bond, she and her sister’s son. When the world came crashing in on him when his parents were killed in a car accident while on vacation, Micah had been twelve years old. Injured in the accident, too, he’d been all alone at that San Jose hospital. She’d lost no time driving up the coast to get to him. She’d stayed by his side until he was well enough to leave and then she took him home with her. There was no looking back. She’d raised him as her own.

      Greg was staring at her, wide-eyed, his small face stamped with disbelief. “Dad was a kid?”

      “Your dad was a kid,” she assured him, biting her tongue so as not to laugh at the expression of wonder on the little boy’s face. “And a pretty wild one at that.”

      “She’s making that part up,” Micah told his sons. “I was a perfect angel.”

      “When you were asleep, you looked just like one,” Sheila agreed, then added, “Awake, not so much.”

      “Can you tell us stories about when Daddy was a kid?” Gary asked eagerly.

      Sheila’s smile was so wide, her eyes almost disappeared. “I sure can.”

      “But she won’t,” Micah interjected with a note of finality. “She’s going to save those for when you’re older.”

      Gary’s forehead crinkled beneath his blond bangs. “Why?”

      “I’ll tell you that when you’re older, too,” Micah promised him. Changing the subject, he asked, “Now, who’s hungry for pizza?”

      The words were no sooner out of his mouth than a chorus of “We are!” rose up. It was hard to believe that two little boys could project so much volume when they wanted to.

      Micah gazed at his aunt who’d made herself comfortable in the love seat opposite Micah and the boys. “I thought we’d go to that little Italian restaurant you like so much. Giuseppe’s.” The boys bounced up to their feet. His aunt rose to hers, as well. “Luckily for me, it’s kid-friendly.”

      “As it happens,” his aunt said, placing a hand on each boy’s shoulder in order to usher them out the front door, “so am I.”

      “You know there’s no one here to impress, right?” Kate Manetti Wainwright said to her friend, Tracy Ryan, as she stuck her head into the latter’s office.

      It was Sunday and the law firm was closed. Or should have been. The sound of typing must have drawn Kate to Tracy’s small office, which meant an interruption.

      Tracy looked up from the brief she was working on. “You’re here,” she pointed out.

      “But I’m not supposed to be.” And neither was anyone else, she added silently. “I just stopped by to grab the sweater I left here on Friday.” She held up the powder-blue article of clothing as exhibit A. “And besides, I don’t count.”

      “You do to me,” Tracy told her, flashing a quick, fleeting smile at her friend. “And for your information, I’m not trying to impress anyone, I’m just trying to catch up on my workload.”

      Kate rolled her eyes. “You already work twice as hard as anyone here,” she pointed out. “How much catching up do you possibly have to do?”

      Tracy’s slender shoulders rose and fell in an absentminded shrug. “Enough,” she said evasively, then, cocking her head, she leveled a piercing gaze at the woman who had been her friend all through law school. They’d been each other’s support group through the bad times, and each other’s cheering section through the good ones. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she asked. After all, today was Mother’s Day and, unlike her, Kate was lucky enough to still have one.

      Kate feigned innocence. “As a matter of fact, I do—and you’re coming with me,” she declared as if she’d just thought of it.

      Instead of automatically demurring, Tracy felt she needed to arm herself with information first so that she could come up with a good reason to say no. Kate didn’t take “no” easily. “And just where is it that I’m supposed to be going, too?”

      “Giuseppe’s. Lilli and I are taking my mother out for Mother’s Day,” she said, referring to her brother Kullen’s wife.

      Tracy shook her head. “That’s okay, I’ll just stay here and finish this brief.”

      “I’m not taking no for an answer, Trace,” she informed her friend.

      “It’s Mother’s Day,” Tracy said out loud, taking care not to lace her protest with emotion. “I’m sure your mother doesn’t want you dragging a stray along on her afternoon out.”

      “Then you definitely don’t know my mother—and you’re not a stray,” she tagged on as an afterthought. “You’re more like family.” She smiled at her. “Like the sister my mother never got around to giving me,” she told Tracy.

      Tracy suppressed a sigh. Mother’s Day was particularly difficult for her on two counts. The mother she adored was no longer part of her life. She hadn’t been for close to three years now. Moreover, added to that was the numbing fact that her blink-and-you’ve-missed-it marriage that came and went four years ago had left her pregnant and hopeful. Tracy had always loved children and the idea of being a mother herself was thrilling. But the thrill became tragedy when her baby came into the world prematurely—and stillborn.

      That, more than the painfully short marriage she’d endured, had left her with the feeling that she was one of those people who was meant to go through life alone. She faced that the same way she faced everything else she found overwhelming: she threw herself into her work. Buried herself in a hundred and one details. Anything so that she didn’t have any time to think, to dwell on her own situation—or lack of one.

      When the loneliness came at her full force, as it did sometimes, Tracy just worked a little harder until she was able to make herself numb again.

      The important thing was not to feel. Since she was a normally caring person, she channeled her emotional connections into the cases she took on—and the people whose hand she figuratively held while she worked on their cases.

      “I СКАЧАТЬ