Table for five by Susan Wiggs

number by the phone, got her voice mail and left a similar message. He wished, just briefly, that he knew her better. He wished he knew if she was the sort of woman who would temporarily forget her kids.
    Now what? he wondered. He tried Maura. He didn’t know why. His girlfriend barely knew Derek and had never met Crystal and the kids. The people in his life didn’t know one another. His connections with family were disparate and shallow, something that had never occurred to him until now.
    “Dr. Riley,” she answered with crisp efficiency. A fourth-year medical student, she was working at Portland’s Legacy West Hospital this year.
    “Hey, Doc, it’s me.”
    “Sean!” A smile brightened her voice. “What’s up?”
    “I’m not sure. I’m with my brother Derek’s kids. There was some mix-up and their parents are MIA.”
    “So call them and—”
    “I can’t get hold of either one of them.”
    “Well, then…look, I’m in the middle of rounds. And I’m staying in the city for a seminar, did I tell you that? Can I call you in a few?”
    “Sure, whenever. Bye.” He had no idea what he expectedher to do. She didn’t even know these kids. This sure as hell wasn’t her problem.
    Ashley was yelling and banging something in the kitchen. Cameron had turned the radio up loud again.
    Sean hit the caller ID button on the phone and looked at the display. The first came up Private, the second was “Coombs, Jane.” The next one was “Robinson, Lily.”
    The schoolmarm, he thought. There was something vaguely familiar about the name. Maybe he’d met her before, though he doubted it. He tended not to hang out with schoolmarms, but maybe that was about to change.
    “Help me out here, Miss Robinson,” he muttered as he dialed the number.

chapter 7

    Friday
7:30 p.m.

    L ily sighed with contentment and snuggled down into her favorite overstuffed chair. There was a large bowl of popcorn and a glass of red wine on the table beside her. On the coffee table in front of her, a map of Italy lay spread out with the sinuous route of the Sorrentine Peninsula highlighted in yellow. The names of the towns, which she’d circled in red, came from story and legend—Positano, Amalfi, Ravello, Vietri Sul Mare.
    Two more months, she thought. Then summer would be here and she’d go jetting off on an adventure she’d been dreaming about for half a year. She’d be all by herself, gloriously, blissfully alone.
    Her colleagues at school thought it odd that she loved to travel solo, but for Lily, making her own way and answering to no one were her favorite parts of the adventure. Her annual summer trip was hugely important to her. It always had been.Travel gave her balance and perspective and made her feel like a different person. It occurred to her to wonder why she would want to be a different person, but she didn’t think too hard about that.
    She loved seeing new places and making new friends. Crystal always asked her what was wrong with the old ones. Nothing, Lily thought, except that sometimes they made you do exhausting emotional work. Lily was good at a lot of things, but not at nurturing the deep, sometimes painful bonds of true intimacy. Life simply hadn’t prepared her for that. She could understand the heart of a child, could find ways to inspire and teach, but she’d never been capable of taking a headlong plunge into lifelong commitment. Some people, she had long ago decided, were not cut out for the dizzying, dangerous adventure of loving someone until it hurt.
    That didn’t mean she was immune to the occasional pang of yearning. Maybe she’d even have a romantic fling this summer. A flirtation, free of complications and commitments. It was supposed to be easy to do in Italy. At the end of summer, she would return to Comfort refreshed and ready to greet a new crop of students.
    This, the cycle of school year and summer, was the rhythm of her life, and it made perfect sense to her. She had only to look at her own