Deeply, Desperately by Heather Webber Page B

still there waiting for me."
    "And what, exactly, are you waiting for?"
    Letting my finger glide along the spines on a bookshelf, I absently checked titles. "Something important."
    "I don't know. That table looked pretty important to you."
    I felt a stab of longing. So stupid to want an object so much, but I couldn't deny the pull. "Not that kind of important."
    "You're crazy."
    "So you've said."
    "It bears repeating."
    I smiled as I continued to skim titles.
    Preston pulled a Laura Ingalls Wilder title from the shelf, ran a loving hand over its cover. "I grew up reading these stories."
    "You? Really?"
    "No, I was thumbing through Joan Didion since first grade. Of course I read the Little House books, who didn't?" She placed it back on the shelf, a wistful look in her eye. "My mom used to read to me every night."
    "Was it just you and your mom?" I asked, trying to piece together her early years.
    "And Nana for a while."
    Sounded familiar. "Did you always live on the South Shore?"
    "Scituate, all my life."
    Scituate bordered Cohasset. It was possible my father could have run into her mother at one point or another. "What did your mom do?"
    "Why the twenty questions?"
    "Curious."
    "She was a librarian."
    "Was?"
    Preston continued to browse. "She died when I was seventeen."
    "I'm sorry," I said. I couldn't imagine not having Mum in my life.
    "Life goes on." Preston moved over to the next bookshelf.
    It was obvious she didn't want to talk about it, but I was dying to rule out any chance that we might actually be related. I just didn't know how to ask that question. I pretended to study book spines. I suddenly froze. Gently, I took the novel off the shelf, dusted the torn cloth cover.
    "What's that?" Preston leaned in.
    "A second edition of Henry David Thoreau's
Cape Cod
." It had been published in 1864 and was currently in sad repair, with a cracked binding, water marks, and tears, but as soon as I spotted it, I had to have it.
    This was it. Sean's present. "It looks older." She wrinkled her nose. "And it smells."
    Peeking through one eye as though that would lessen the shock, I checked the price.
    Nine hundred dollars. A bit high, considering the condition.
    "Nine hundred!" Preston snorted. "As if!"
    As I pulled my lower lip into my mouth and contemplated whether I could afford the book, my gaze landed on a Regency-era tortoiseshell, ivory, and mother-of-pearl tea caddy with four tiny copper ball feet, all intact. It fairly cried Dovie's name. Magnetized, I walked over to it. Grasping the white metal knob, I opened the chest, tried to imagine who'd been using it for the past two hundred years.
    Holding my breath, I checked the tag. Three hundred dollars.
    If I didn't eat for the next three months ...
    "What are you doing?" Preston asked.
    "Christmas shopping."
    She laughed. "I thought we were here about the ring." Shaking the jar of buttons, she added, "We should probably check the local library for an obituary for David Winston."
    "My thoughts, too, but look at this caddy."
    "It is pretty," she admitted, running her fingeracross the top. "My nana had one just like it. Well, a knockoff."
    I heard sadness in her tone. "Do you have any shopping you want to do?"
    "Nah. Not really."
    "Are you done shopping already?"
    She turned away, suddenly interested in a porcelain vase. "It's just that I don't really have anyone to buy for. Oh, stop."
    "What?"
    "Looking at me that way. I don't need your sympathy."
    This was my chance to pry a bit, but somehow it felt wrong. Still, I couldn't help myself. "No other family?"
    "All dead. My dad when I was two, Mom when I was seventeen, Nana when I was twenty. And I was an only child."
    "I'm sorry."
    "There's that sympathy again. It's all right." She shrugged. "I'm doing okay for myself. Sure, I get a little lonely sometimes, but work fills the void. You're really lucky, you know."
    "Why's that?"
    "Your family loves you. As crazy and messed up as they are--and they are--they really love you."
    She