Suddenly by Barbara Delinsky

two of the three blocks of stores that made up Tucker’s center, nearly half of the shabby double-deckers in lower Tucker, and miscellaneous other pieces of real estate scattered through town. He was tall and skinny and wore his clothes too short and too tight in a way that made him look as miserly as he was.
    “So she’s gone, huh?” he said, stopping at Peter’s booth. “Can’t say I’ll miss her. She was a royal pain in the butt.”
    Peter snorted. “She loved you, too.”
    “Didn’t like what I was doing around town, that’s for sure.”
    Peter didn’t, either. A person didn’t have to be a crusader like Mara to recognize decay. “You have to admit lower Tucker’s looking pretty bad. Can’t you do any cleaning up out there?”
    “That’s the job of the tenant. Says so right on the lease.”
    “The houses need painting. That’s your job.”
    “And I’ll do it soon as they clean up the yards. That’s their job.”
    “Come on, Jamie. You’re the one with the money.”
    Jamie scowled. “Jeeez, you’re sounding just like her. If you’re planning to pick up where she left off, don’t bother. I don’t care if you were born here, you won’t have any more luck than she did. It’s my money that keeps this town going. That gives me a certain say-so.”
    “But she was right.” There was a nobility to admitting it on this one small score. “Especially about the movie house. It’s a fire trap.”
    “It’s a gold mine, what with films every weekend and a special event in between. The concerts coming up are all sold out. I saved a few tickets, if you want a pair.”
    Peter grunted. “No thanks. I’m not into suicide.”
    Jamie gave a thin laugh and swatted his shoulder as he walked on past. “Bet you didn’t think she was either, huh?”
    Left without the last word, Peter felt a new stab of anger toward Mara, because Jamie was right. Peter hadn’t thought her capable of suicide, hadn’t thought her a coward, but that was just what she was. If she’d had any guts, she wouldn’t have killed herself. She would have faced her sorrows and dealt with them.
    Not that he was sorry she hadn’t, he thought as he took a long, cool, calming drink. She might have had those few soft moments when he had found her irresistible, and those few mellow moments when he had found her interesting, even those few lighthearted moments when he’d found her fun, but the rest of the time she was as difficult a woman as one could meet.
    Mara O’Neill wasn’t irreplaceable, either as a doctor or as a lover. The proof of that sat before him right now.
    He glanced around the Tavern, then at Lacey, and suddenly he wasn’t in the mood for a burger and beer, but for a filet mignon and fine red wine. “We can do better than this,” he muttered. After dropping several bills on the table, he slid out of the booth and reached for her hand as he strode toward the door.

five
    T HE PICTURE SAT IN ITS WHITE WICKER FRAME, in its customary place on the mantel. It was a black-and-white photo, a family portrait, with a youthful Nonny at its center and six-year-old Paige perched on her lap. Paige’s parents, Chloe and Paul, flanked Nonny’s shoulders, looking younger than their twenty-five years and trapped by the camera in the way of creatures of the wild, frozen one instant, only to flee in terror the next.
    And flee they had. Paige recalled the day well. It had been her birthday, and she had had such high hopes. “We’ll do whatever your heart desires,” Chloe had written from Paris weeks before. “It will be your day.” So Paige had planned a special breakfast, then a trip from suburban Oak Park to Chicago to shop for her birthday gift, then a movie, then a dinner at home that Nonny and she prepared. She had wanted her parents to see how grown-up she was, how able, how well mannered and pretty. She had been desperate to please, and she had, she thought. Everything had been perfect. More than once Chloe and Paul had told