“I just wanted to let you know I’m running a little late.”

“I was starting to get worried,” Izzy told her, and Shannon covered the speaker on her phone as she handed several cash bills to the sales clerk. “Where are you?”

“I had to safety pin my pants up, and that broke the last straw. I was almost to your street when I noticed a sale sign on the marquis over that little boutique around the corner.”

“You went clothes shopping without me,” Izzy accused.

“Just making up for lost time! I only bought a few things. I didn’t want to come over looking like I did.”

“Bring everything in with you so I can see what you got.”

“I changed into the sweetest little dress. There were a lot of long ones on the rack, so I’m guessing really long dresses are popular?”

“You’re right on trend; they’re called maxis.”

“Good to know. Okay, I should see you in about ten minutes.”

She disconnected the call and looked down at the color burst of blue, pink, and lavender. It fit just right in the waist, and the strands of beaded spaghetti straps actually stayed on her shoulders without any amount of prodding necessary.

After paying the clerk, Shannon picked up her two shopping bags and resisted the urge to skip out the front door and to her car. Clothes that fit made her feel like a new woman.

What was she talking about? Ask anyone who knew her before the accident, she realized, and they would surely report that Shannon actually had become a new woman. But now she’d started to catch up to the feeling.

Daniel ran by the Greek café Opa! and had them make up a plate of hummus with pita and cucumber slices on his way out to Izzy’s place. His day had been a long one, but for some reason he hadn’t really been looking forward to going home, so her invitation to dinner came as a welcome surprise. He really liked her and Luca, and he relished the idea of getting to know them better. Josiah’s involvement with the youth center and his plans for a mission trip to Haiti in the fall had been overshadowing everything else, and it seemed like the only time they saw one another anymore was at church or in the cafeteria line at the hospital.

“Turn left in one-half mile,” his robotic GPS navigator instructed.

Shannon skittered across his thoughts, her long reddish curls dancing around his brain, and her creamy skin, dotted with cinnamon freckles. He’d been thinking about her like that more and more lately as she’d made the transition from patient to friend.

He’d never mentioned it to anyone, but he’d had the oddest experience at the end of Edmund’s life. So sure that his wife would one day awaken from her coma, he’d all but chosen Daniel to replace him when Shannon faced the news that he was gone, and it made Daniel uncomfortable. Living up to that kind of romance—the one where the man sat lovingly by the woman’s bed for endless hours, just waiting to look into her eyes one more time—well, that was as intimidating as it got. As a medical professional, he had given Shannon Ridgeway all the attention she deserved, but he didn’t really expect it to happen the way Edmund seemed to. Now that she was awake, however, and so lovely, inside and out …

He pulled into the driveway and parked. Shannon’s blue BMW carved a patriotic notch into the sprawling white Colonial with its border of blooming red flowers.

Luca answered the door wearing long swim shorts and an open Hawaiian shirt, his youngest perched on his arm. The boy’s chubby face brightened at the first sight of Daniel, and he extended both arms toward him. Luca chortled and shook his head as Daniel traded his hummus platter for the boy’s enthusiastic, spontaneous welcome.

“He’s never done that before!” Luca exclaimed as Daniel took Luis into his arms. “Look how he’s taken to you.”

Luis tapped Daniel’s stubbly cheeks several times with both hands and giggled when he opened his eyes extra wide.

“Good to see you, too, young man. How have you been? Anything new with the toddler set?”

Luis replied. “Uh-uh.”

“Look at this!” Luca proclaimed as they joined the others on the caged patio. “Baby, Luis went straight to him.”

Izzy grinned at him before slipping into a pair of sandals and adjusting her modest blue bathing suit. As she ambled toward him, she tightened the sarong knotted just above one hip.

“Do you have bacon in your pocket?” Izzy asked, and she gave Daniel a casual hug and smiled at him, taking Luis. “My children are like dogs. They can be bribed with food.”

“I did walk in the door with a platter in my hands.”

She laughed. “Welcome, Daniel.”

“Thanks for inviting me.”

He glanced over Izzy’s shoulder and nodded at Shannon where she sat at a large rectangular table playing a board game with Nicolas and Alberto. She scraped her chair away from the table and stood up.

“You look exquisite,” he said as she floated toward him.

She diverted her eyes to the ground, flustered as her face and neck took on pink blotches of embarrassment. He reached out for a hug, and he thought they must have resembled a couple of pecking hens as they made two awkward attempts.

She thanked him for the compliment and pulled away, fiddling with one of her large hoop earrings and brushing away curly wisps that had escaped the nest of hair piled at the top of her head.

“Daniel brought appetizers,” Luca announced, and he pulled the plastic dome from the platter and set it out on top of a bamboo bar angled into the corner of the patio. “What can I get you to drink, man? How do you feel about fruit punch? It’s a family favorite today.”

“Sounds good.”

Shannon wandered away just as Nicolas, the eldest of the boys, climbed up on the barstool next to him and thumped his fist on the bar. Luca wiped the bar with an imaginary towel and asked, “Welcome to our tiki bar, young man. What’ll ya have?”

“I’d like a large tiki, please,” his son replied in a deepened voice.

Daniel laughed, and Izzy shook her head. “It’s the family comedy routine, Daniel. If you encourage them, I might have to hear it over and over again for the next twenty years.”

Luca handed him a frosty mug of red liquid, and Daniel took a sip.

“I wanna tiki,” Alberto cried as he rushed toward them, and Daniel lifted his drink in the air and navigated out of his path before a collision resulted.

“Albie, watch where you’re going,” Izzy warned him. “Go get Luis’s water wings from the cabinet.”

Daniel made his way over to Shannon where she cleared the game pieces from the table. “Good to see you,” he said as he sat down next to her.

“You, too.” She placed the lid on the box and slid it to the corner of the table. “Thanks again for going with me to see—” For a moment, her brain sort of fogged over and she struggled to produce the name, though it lingered right on the tip of her tongue. “Millicent! Thank you for going with me to see Millicent.”

“You’ve already escaped death once, young lady. I can’t have you wandering into her realm all alone, can I?” He spotted the teal laptop on the chair beside him. “Is that yours?”

“Oh. Yeah. I was sharing some of my ideas with Izzy.”

“Ideas?”

The pink stained her cheeks again and she shook her head. “It’s nothing yet, really. I’m just thinking about things, that’s all.”

Nicolas’s laughter waylaid their conversation, and they watched as Izzy dove into the pool after him. Luca slowly descended the concrete stairs into the water with Luis in his arms.

“What kind of things?” Daniel finally asked.

“The future, I guess.”

“Show me?”

She hesitated. “I’m just doodling at this point. I don’t have any cohesive ideas just yet.”

“Don’t let her snow you,” Izzy chimed in, poolside. “She’s charting out a whole new path, Daniel. Show him, Shannon.”

“Iz, stop it.”

“Oh, and you know what? If you decide to go forward with this,” Izzy added, “Luca could build you a website. That’s what he does. My husband is a techie. Did I tell you that?”

Shannon looked at Daniel seriously. “I don’t really know what I’m doing yet. I only know I don’t want to go back to a cubicle, you know?”

“Sure.” When she didn’t continue, Daniel suggested, “Why don’t you show me what you’re thinking.”

She gave it a moment’s thought, and then shot a questioning look in Izzy’s direction before she shrugged and reached for the laptop. While it fired up, she warned, “These are really just notes, and I don’t even know what it might shape up into, if anything. So don’t expect—”

“Shannon, just show me.”

She opened a desktop file, and a sketch of a logo filled the screen.

“Dine-1-1,” he read aloud. A vertical knife and fork formed the double ones. Script letters beneath the logo read, For all your culinary emergencies.

“It’s a play on words,” she explained. “Like 911.”

“Yeah, I get it,” he said with a grin. “It’s catchy.”

She closed the file and produced another one in its place.

“This one appeals more to the anti-fast food clientele,” she said, and Daniel examined the colorful round logo where the title—Fresh Solutions—offset an abundance of vegetables, from lettuce and tomatoes to a zucchini and a few small onions.

“What’s the concept?” he asked. “You’re considering catering?”

“Remember our discussion the other day?” she asked him. “I can’t let go of the idea that sometimes people just need a warm meal. How to apply that, though, I don’t know.”

“Professionals in the workplace spend a really large portion of their salaries on eating out,” he chimed in.

“Right. Fast food and restaurants and stuff like that. There’s just no time for grocery shopping and meal planning and cooking, you know?”

He grinned. “Preachin’ to the choir, sistuh.”

“So I thought maybe I could do all the work, and deliver healthy meals to people’s refrigerators where all they’d have to do is heat it up and eat.”

With another few clicks, she brought up a working layout of a brochure still in progress.

“You’ve obviously retained your graphic skills,” he told her. “This is really good work.”

She lifted one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “This is all I could come up with using the program we bought with the laptop; I’ll have to get up-to-date with design software again. I just … I don’t know. The idea really stemmed from those food trucks of yours, the ones downtown. After you took me there, it just started churning around in me about taking healthy meals mobile, you know? That’s the only part of it all that keeps resonating. It’s still just the beginning of an idea. Something’s still missing, but I don’t know what it is yet. I’m in the process of pulling it together.”

“I’d say you’re off to a good start.”

“You know when you prayed for me up in my aunt’s attic on Sunday?” she asked timidly.

“Sure.”

“You prayed that I’d find my sense of purpose. Find my joy again.”

He nodded.

“Well, I feel like I’m on the right track, but I’m not quite there yet. I can’t help feeling this is all part of—I don’t know, a plan. Does that make any sense?”

He nodded and smiled. “Yes. It does.”

“I was thinking maybe—I mean, not right now or anything—but I wondered if maybe you’d consider …”

“Would you like us to pray together again?”

She nodded and puffed out a sigh of relief. “Really a lot.”

“I’ll do that, and more. Why don’t you come to church with me on Sunday.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t have to. But I’d really like it if you’d come, Shannon.”

“Well, it’s just that my aunts are coming to Sunday dinner at my house, and I have so much to do to prepare …”

“So we’ll go to church, and then I’ll come back and help you. What do you say?”

“Well … okay.” The idea seemed to settle in, and she brightened. “Okay. Thank you. That sounds nice, actually.”

“Can somebody give me a hand with the burgers?” Luca called out.

Soaking wet, Izzy wrapped a large flowered towel around her body and sank into the chair across from Daniel.

“Shannon, can you help my husband? I want to have a chat with your doctor.”

“About what?” she asked with clear trepidation.

“Go on,” she prodded, and Shannon reluctantly stood up and went to help Luca.

“Can you believe this girl is starting a business centered around cooking?” Izzy asked. “Daniel, I’ve known her since college, and I never saw her cook one solid meal in all those years. And now she says she has a dog!”

“Oh, yeah,” he laughed. “Rodney.”

“You’ve seen him? Is he awful?”

“No.” He caught himself and shrugged. “Well, he’s nothing much to look at, but he’s all right. Not awful at all.”

“Shannon never cared about dogs. What do you suppose happened to her? Have you ever seen this kind of thing before where a coma patient wakes up with a whole other personality?”

“Comas change their victims, there’s no question about that,” he replied. “Memories, personalities, preferences—they’re all unpredictable.”

“I just don’t know if this whole catering thing is a good idea,” she said softly. “I mean, starting a new business can be overwhelming, and I don’t want her to get in over her head. How do I support her when—”

Daniel touched Izzy’s hand and smiled. “I think the best way to support her is to support her. She’s trying to find her ground again, and she needs to do that in a way that seems right to her.”

The resonant sound of Shannon’s laughter silenced them both as they watched her interact with three-year-old Luis in order to distract him from the hot grill.

The boys had been safely tucked into bed for about half an hour, and the adults sat around the patio table, chatting casually. Shannon had just started on her second cup of coffee, wondering if such a bold French roast might be a bad idea so late in the day. But it tasted like heaven, and she just couldn’t resist.

She heard the glass slider slip open with a whoosh! and looked up at Albie, the middle boy, standing there in cowboy pajamas, his wavy hair mussed.

Izzy straightened when she spotted her son. “What are you doing up, young man?”

“I can’t sleep.”

Luca opened his arms, and the boy moved into them, standing beside his father’s chair but leaning full-force against him. “What do you suppose would help you sleep?”

“A story?” the five-year-old suggested with a sheepish grin.

Luca chuckled. “You want me to read you a story.”

“Well, we were thinking—”

“We?” Izzy demanded playfully. “So your brother is in on this, too. As I suspected.”

“Yeah, Nicolas is still up too, and we were thinking maybe Daniel would come and tell us a story.”

“Daniel?” Luca repeated, one eyebrow lifted into an arch as he smiled.

“Yeah, he played Goliath when we went over there for supper,” he explained. “And he made all the noises. You don’t make the noises, Popi.”

“Albie, Daniel is a guest tonight and—”

Daniel interrupted Luca with a soft chuckle. “I really wouldn’t mind.”

Alberto immediately pushed off and scampered around the table, grabbing Daniel’s hand. “I’ll show you our room.”

The moment they disappeared through the glass door, Luca let out a hearty laugh and looked at Izzy. “I’ve been replaced, baby.”

“Only temporarily,” she pointed out. “You can’t expect them to overlook the fact that Daniel makes the noises, honey.”

He shrugged. “So true.”

Shannon admired the lighthearted camaraderie between them. It resonated beyond the obvious spark of attraction, and she wondered if she and Edmund had come across that way to outside observers.

“Daniel is very good with children,” Izzy remarked. “He’ll make a wonderful father, don’t you think?”

Shannon’s face puckered and she grimaced at her friend.

“Subtle much, baby?” Luca asked.

“I’m just saying, he seems like good father material. Good husband material too, for that matter.”

“Iz!” Shannon exclaimed at the same time that Luca echoed her reaction. “Izzy.”

“Simmer down, you two. It’s just an observation. He’s a good guy. That’s all I’m saying.”

That French roast had certainly done its job. Ten o’clock had come and gone, and there Shannon sat in an oversized tee shirt and thick, nubby socks, propped up by several pillows as she watched a DVD—wide awake and forcing down sips of supposedly soothing chamomile tea. She curled her legs under the blanket, and Rodney outlined them on top of it as Rob and Laura Petrie led the way on yet another comedic adventure; her third of the night.

She paused the show when her phone buzzed and she saw Daniel’s number showing on the screen.

“Admit it. You miss me,” she answered.

“Is your tablet nearby?”

“You mean the menu thingie?” she teased.

“Yeah, the menu thingie.”

“It’s right here next to me.”

“Good. Do exactly what I tell you to do.”

Ten minutes later, a program had been installed, and a virtual Daniel sat there smiling at her.

“I can see you!” she cried. With a second thought, she gasped. “Oh no! Can you see me?”

Before he answered, she plopped the tablet screen side down on top of Rodney.

“Shannon. Is that the dog’s butt?”

She picked it up and held it to her face momentarily. “Sorry.” And she lowered it to the blanket beside her.

“Hey.”

She lifted one corner of the tablet and told him, “I don’t want you to see me. You should have warned me.”

“Why not? You look fine.”

“I do not. What do you want?”

“I want to see you. Pick up the tablet, Shannon.”

She sat there staring at it, as if it might roll right over and bite her.

“Pick it up, Shannon.”

“No.”

After a long silence, she barely heard him say, “Okay, then. Goodnight, Shannon.”

She tipped it up slightly and replied, “Goodnight.” Then, “Wait! Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“How do I turn this thing off so people can’t look at me all night?”

“No one can look at you except me.”

“Who died and made you Big Brother?” Poor choice of words. “Let me put that another way.”

“Goodnight, Shannon.”

A strange tone sounded, and she flopped forward with her face to the surface of the bed, lifting the tablet only high enough to peek at the screen and confirm that he had disappeared. She tossed the tablet aside and hopped from the bed, scurrying to the bathroom mirror. With a groan at the sight of her reflection, Shannon yanked the bright red scrunchie from the mop of hair on top of her head and ran a wide-toothed comb through it. She quickly snatched a tissue from the box on the counter and wiped the smeared mascara from underneath her eyes before rummaging through the make-up drawer until she found a tinted lip balm and dipped her finger into it. One last fluff to her hair, and Shannon flew back to the bed and covered her bare legs with the comforter.

“How do I … how do I do this?” she mumbled as she stared at the tablet screen again. “Okay. Let’s try … this.”

A moment later, the weird little space-age tone sounded, and soon Daniel looked back at her again.

“Yes?” he said dryly.

“Hi. It’s me.”

“I can see that. And this is me.”

Shannon giggled.

“Your hair looked fine before, by the way.”

“Okay, so you could have pretended not to notice that.”

“You’re right. I apologize.”

“Well, why did you beam me up before anyway?” she asked.

“Beam you up?”

“Yeah. Why did you want me to put this on my screen and everything?”

“So I could see you.”

“Oh.” She chewed on the corner of her lip as she thought that over. “How come?”

“I don’t know. I wanted to see what you were doing.”

“Watching Dick Van Dyke. What are you doing?”

“Thinking about you,” he admitted somewhat timidly. “Don’t ask me why. Which episode?”

She glanced at the frozen television screen in relief, unsure how to respond to his confession. “Oh, right. It’s the one where Rob calls Laura and pretends to be a flirtatious wrong number. Right now he’s trying to convince Buddy and Sally that she knew it was him all along.”

“Turn the tablet around to face the screen,” he suggested. “I’ll watch it with you.”

A few minutes later, it struck Shannon how truly strange it was to watch something so hilariously funny and share guffaws and hysterical laughter with someone who wasn’t even in the room with her.

“This is weird,” she said, but when she turned the tablet toward her so she could see his face, Daniel wailed.

“Hey, wait a minute! Let me see the ending first.”

“Okay,” and she faced the tablet toward the screen. Pulling it back for just an instant, she added, “But it’s weird, right?”

“Nothing weird about watching TV together. Now turn me around.”