Chapter 4

      Six months later

      Bella Nolan looked around her tiny apartment and the minuscule paths she’d created among her packed belongings, which consisted of trash bags and boxes and piles of stuff that she was undecided about and were stacked and waiting for a box or bag or the trash heap.

      She was finally, finally, going to do something constructive now that the six months of mourning she had allowed herself were over. She rather thought now that she’d been overgenerous in allowing six whole months to wallow and wail, along with hosting a pity party every day of the week. She had quit her job, packed up the apartment, and was ready to move to North Carolina, where she had a distant cousin who was around her age.

      Feeling desperate, she had reached out to her for help, and her cousin had agreed to lend her a hand. Adeline Beaumont said she would be delighted to help Bella out and invited Bella to stay with her while she sought out an apartment and a new job.

      Addie, as she liked everyone to call her, said she could help with that, too. She knew of a spacious two-bedroom apartment that was newly renovated, and the rent was only $450 a month. She went on to say that until Bella found exactly what she was looking for in a job, she could hire on at the company she worked for as an assistant. She’d added that Bella had gotten in touch in the nick of time because her company was sending her abroad to open and oversee a satellite office for a year. She’d just sublet her own apartment or she would have let Bella rent it.

      Done and done! The only downside (if there was a downside) was that she would be starting over somewhere not knowing a single person. For the most part, she thought that might be a good thing because she would then be open to anything new and challenging.

      A new life. A new beginning. Starting over. Slow and easy. One day at a time.

      Bella eyed the packing boxes, bags, and the piles of junk she’d accumulated over time. Most of the boxes belonged to her, but three of the huge cartons were Andy’s, which he had stored in a closet in her old apartment. To this day, she had not looked at the contents. She’d just moved the boxes from one place to the other. She knew she needed to make a decision regarding the boxes, but it did not have to be right this minute. Maybe if she could find out where the sister lived, she could send them on to her. Damn, now she was thinking about her again. She never did figure out what it was that bothered her about Andy and his sister. By now, you’d think that it would have come to her. She told herself that if she would stop thinking about it, practically obsessing over it, it would eventually come to her.

      What she needed to do and do right this minute was to make an appointment at the fertility clinic where she had stored her eggs. If she was moving to North Carolina, never to return to this unhappy city, she needed to transfer the eggs to a clinic close to where she was going to live. Leave nothing behind was her motto so she would never have to come back to Washington. Never, ever!

      But she had doubts. Should she just leave the eggs? Stop paying the monthly fee to store them. Maybe she needed to rethink this whole thing. She wished now, the way she’d wished a hundred other times, that she’d never allowed Andy to talk her into harvesting her eggs.

      She could, if she wanted to, just walk away and pretend that it had never happened. If she didn’t leave a forwarding address, the clinic people couldn’t track her down. Had she given them her social security number? She couldn’t remember. If she had, they could track her that way. Damn it, why did everything have to be so complicated?

      Bella leaned back on the sofa and closed her eyes. She needed to think. But her only thoughts were about Andy’s sister. Why? “Because I hate her, that’s why!” Bella screeched to the empty room. Damn! Damn! What was it I couldn’t remember about Sara Nolan?

      Bella jumped up. “That’s it! That’s it! I am so done with this mess, and I am never going to think about it again. Never!” To drive home her point, she scrolled down on her phone until she found the number of the clinic and dialed the number. She was given an appointment for the following day at noon with a one-hour window of time.

      Bella wondered why she didn’t feel something—angst, relief, anything—now that she’d done something concrete and made a decision she was going to follow through on.

      Now that the last thread binding her to this place was set to be unknotted, Bella changed the channel on the television and watched the soap opera she swore she was never going to watch again. It was either that or some silly game show. Other than that, her only other choice was one of the twenty-four-hour news shows, and all they did was talk about Afghanistan and Syria and all things war and more war. She knew in her gut that if she lived to be a hundred, they would still be fighting over there. Andy had said that at least once a day and believed it implicitly. She was done with that, too. Hopefully forever.

      Bella blinked when a thought raced through her weary brain. Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. “Yeah, right,” she muttered to herself, as she forced herself to concentrate on the drama playing out in front of her on the television screen.

      * * *

      At twenty minutes to twelve, anxious and antsy, Bella was walking to the boulevard, where she was more likely to be able to hail a cab to take her to the fertility clinic, which was thirty or so blocks from her apartment. It was clear and cold, with a blustery wind that bit right through her jacket. She shoved her hands in her pockets and walked with her head down so the stinging wind wouldn’t make her eyes water. Three more blocks to go. Maybe she’d stop at the Taco Bell that was directly across the street from the clinic and have some lunch. She’d take a seat near the window so she could watch who went in and out of the clinic, which would be directly in her line of vision if she was lucky enough to get a window seat. She did have an hour window, so it was doable if that is how she wanted to play it. Then she remembered how much she detested that particular Taco Bell and decided just to go right into the clinic when the cab dropped her off. She finally reached the boulevard and hailed a passing cab. What would normally be a ten-minute ride turned out to take twenty minutes given the heavier-than-usual midday traffic. She wondered what was going on to account for such traffic.

      The Samaritan Clinic looked just like all the office buildings on Michigan Avenue. There was nothing about it that was special in any way. A lot of plate glass, shiny gray bricks with charcoal mortar between the bricks, no fancy doors, just your regular turnstile entrance. No doorman, but there was a courtesy desk in the lobby, and one had to check in before heading for the bank of elevators.

      The building had twenty-one floors. The clinic was located on the top five floors. A very, very busy place. For some reason, she had no recollection of any of this. Probably, she had blocked it out because she had hated what she was doing. And now, here she was, still hating being at the clinic.

      She did stop to wonder if she would come back to the District to visit Andy’s grave at Arlington Cemetery. Veterans Day, Memorial Day, laying the grave blanket at Christmas. Lordy, lordy, that was three times a year. She could never do that, torture herself like that. Obviously, she needed to do some serious thinking. In years to come, visiting might be easier, but right now she was almost certain that