Settling on the sofa near the window, he sipped the cocktail, appreciating its smooth, soothing taste, and wondered about the young woman he was meeting for dinner at eight o’clock. Her response to his ad had been downright amusing. His publisher was ecstatic about the first half of the book he was writing, the book analyzing the people who placed or answered personal ads, their psychological needs, their flights into fantasy in the way they described themselves.
His working title was The Personal Ads: Quest for Companionship or Departure from Reality?
IV THURSDAY February 21
Darcy sat at the dinette table, sipping coffee and staring unseeingly out the window at the gardens below. Barren now, scattered with unmelted snow, in the summer they were exquisitely planted and manicured to perfection. The prestigious owners of the private brownstones they backed included the Aga Khan and Katharine Hepburn.
Erin loved to come over when the gardens were in bloom. “From the street you’d never guess they exist,” she’d sigh. “I swear, Darce, you sure lucked out when you found this place.”
Erin. Where was she? The minute she woke up and realized that Erin had not phoned, Darcy had called the nursing home in Massachusetts. Mr. Kelley’s condition was unchanged. The semi-comatose state could go on indefinitely, although he was certainly getting weaker. No, there had been no emergency call to his daughter. The day nurse really couldn’t say if Erin had made her usual phone call last evening.