“Off the record, I think you have a case,” I told my would-be client as we sat in my office, which was really nothing more than the dining room of Craig’s house. No. My house. One day, I would start thinking of it as my house. Sometimes I did, in a distracted sort of way, like if I wasn’t thinking about it. I would think of the house as mine and then give a surprised little start. Just one of the many things I had to get used to since his death. It would be a year in a few weeks.

“Off the record?” My next-door neighbor, Mrs. Harris, stirred her coffee and looked hopefully at me from across the table.

“Well, I don’t have my license to practice in Virginia yet, but this is my advice to you: next time, get a contract in writing when you sell a piece of property. I’d be more than happy to help you with that in the future. For now, threaten this jerk with legal action if he doesn’t pay you the rest of the money for the car. You have a verbal agreement, yes, but it’s one that was witnessed by your son and daughter-in-law. He agreed to give you a total of two thousand for the car and that number was irrespective of any work that needed to be done on the car. He should’ve done his homework before he agreed to buy.” I shrugged. “Also, next time, get all the money upfront.”

She chuckled. “You know how it is. A friend of my son’s, he needed the car, I wanted to be helpful.”

“Understandable. But when it comes to money, people get crazy.”

“That’s the truth.” She looked around at the books and notepads spread across the table. “So you say you don’t have your license to practice in the state yet?”

I shook my head. “I’m getting there. I should have it soon—the Virginia state bar exam is next month. It’s been a strange journey, putting it mildly.”

“How do you mean?”

“I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I came back—well, you know that.” We’d had more than a few over-the-fence talks, coffee in hand. That was how people communicated with their neighbors in towns like that. We didn’t chat via social media or text. We got together and chatted face-to-face. How novel.

I leaned back in my chair and sipped my decaf. “So I took my time.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Mrs. Harris insisted. “You’re young. You have plenty of time to decide what it is you want.”

I laughed. “I’m not as young as I used to be, by a long shot. And I do want to practice law, but it won’t be the way I did it before. That’s a big mental hurdle to get over—no big-name firm, no big office at the top of a glass tower.”

She smiled. “It sounds very fancy.”

“Very fancy, and very not right for me. I only thought it was. But the law doesn’t have to be that way.” Just like medicine didn’t have to be the way it would’ve been for Craig had he not come home. He would’ve been at constant odds with other physicians, striving to bill and bill for the sake of pleasing the insurance companies. He’d wanted to do things his way. Just the way I wanted to do them from that point on.

“So you’ll be the next Mr. Steadman?” Mrs. Harris’s eyes twinkled.

“He could use the retirement,” I mused with a wink. “I wonder how he would feel about me replacing him, so to speak.”

“There’s no replacing him, just like there’s no replacing Dr. Miller. It doesn’t matter how many doctors we have around here; there was only one of him. And there’s only one of you.” She reached across the patted my hand before standing. “You’ve already given me far too much of your time today.”

“You know it’s no trouble.”

“Just the same, I’ll leave you to it. I should get back and start dinner. My boy is bringing the baby over tonight.”

I smiled wistfully as I walked her to the door, leaning against the doorframe with a soft sigh. We’d had the first frost the night before, and the air was crisp and cool. Halloween was coming soon—I’d had a ball decorating for it. That was one thing I never got to do in New York, and something I had always looked forward to seeing when I was a kid. Pumpkins sat at both sides of the steps, along with potted mums in yellow and orange. I’d brought them in when the weather man called for frost, so they were still fresh and vibrant in spite of the chill. There were garlands of silk leaves wound through the railing and around the pillars, and a ghost hung from the underside of the porch roof. It wasn’t bad for my first attempt.

It was my house. It was my town. It was my life. Things were good—better than I could’ve imagined. Worlds away from what I thought they would be back when I was a kid and had the sort of sureness only a kid can have that I knew what I needed. It took finding what I didn’t need to see what was really important.

It was going on four o’clock, and the light was getting that pretty, warm glow that only happened at a certain time of day in a certain time of year. I felt more peaceful than I could remember feeling in a long time, even with a bar exam looming in the not-so-distant distance.

Dawson would be back soon from the diner. We’d decided he should move into my house rather than paying for rent on his own—besides, it was bigger and more comfortable, and I was there. It just made sense. And each day was better than the one before. I would never have imagined it. Life was never like that with Michael—we were roommates who had sex. I could see that after living with Dawson. Sure, our personalities clashed sometimes and he hated how I left clogs in the shower drain, while I kept my pitching arm in shape by chucking dirty socks at his head whenever I found them on the bedroom floor or wherever else he’d decided to drop them. But there was affection and a lot of laughter, too. After the final paperwork went through and he officially owned the diner, he’d taken steps to ease his schedule. He’d even tried spending weekend mornings at home with me, when we drank coffee together and read the paper in bed. Sure, there were mornings when I ended up going over there with him—somebody was out sick, that sort of thing—but for the most part, he did what he could to make sure we got our time together.

We had a date that night, and I went upstairs to shower and change in preparation. Our dates weren’t typically fancy—we had an hour drive to Richmond if we wanted to get fancy—but it was a sure way to get time together, just the two of us. And after pizza and a movie, we always ended up in bed, which was never a bad thing. The sex was another thing that just got better and better. I glanced over at the bed as I undressed and smiled to myself.

By the time I finished getting dressed and drying my hair, the front door opened and shut. “I’m home!” As always, my heart skipped a beat.

“I’ll be right down!” I smoothed the front of my sweater over my chest and stomach, turning to check out my profile before taking a deep breath and heading down. I had big news for him, news which I hoped he would take as well as I had.

Sometimes life threw a curve ball. It had when I made that drive south almost a year earlier, wearing my pajamas and last night’s makeup. It had when I walked in and saw Dawson standing there, in the same living room where we’d be eating our dinner. And it had when I found out I had a house of my own.

It had that morning, too.

He had set two pizza boxes down on the coffee table and was taking off his jacket when I reached the living room. “Two pizzas?” I asked, arching one eyebrow. “I’m hungry, but I’m not that hungry.”

“I was in the mood for something a little different.” He took me by the waist and planted a soft, sexy kiss on my upturned mouth.

“Oh? Mr. Double Cheese and Pepperoni is mixing it up tonight? Wonders never cease.” I rested my head against his chest and breathed deeply. His cologne always stirred a mixture of feelings—comfort, calm, arousal.

“I’m not that predictable, am I?”

“The guys down at the pizza shop probably make a pizza for us every Friday night before we even call in the order.” I kissed him lightly and laughed. “But that’s just fine.”

“The one on top is the special one. Take a look, see what you think.” I went over to the boxes without a second thought and flipped open the first one. It took a moment to understand what I was looking at. A pizza box that was empty except for one thing: a velvet box in the center.

“What is this?” I whispered, covering my mouth with my hands as my eyes widened.

“Open it. Find out.” His voice trembled just a little. In the small corner of my brain that was still thinking rationally, I was touched. He was actually nervous, wondering how I would respond. Like he had anything to worry about.

I reached down and swung the top of the little box up on its hinge. And there it was. A diamond ring. All the hope I’d been carrying around in my heart ever since I came back exploded in a dizzying burst. It felt so right. Like something was sliding into place. At the same time, I was almost giddy with excitement.

“Marry me?”

I pried my eyes from the ring and focused on his face. He had all the joy and hope in his eyes that I’d always dreamed of seeing there. He looked like a teenager again, with the entire future ahead of him. But no, he wasn’t a teenager anymore. He was a man, the sort of man I wanted standing by my side for the rest of my life. The sort of man a woman dreamed of and swooned over and wished she could have for her own. He was my own. All I had to say was yes.

“You know I will,” I whispered, running the tips of my fingers over the side of his face.

“Yes?”

“Yes.” I took his face in my hands and kissed him, then threw my arms around his neck with a tearful laugh. “Yes, yes, yes.”

“Here. Maybe you should try this on.” He slid the white-gold band over my finger. I admired the big, round center stone surrounded by a halo of tiny stones that sparkled like they were on fire.

“I can’t believe it,” I whispered. My hand shook. “I just can’t believe it.”

“You can’t? Is that a bad thing?”

“No, no.” I stroked his face again as he blurred in front of me thanks to my tears. “No, it’s not bad. And I guess I can believe it—I mean, this is where we always wanted to be. But how often does a dream come true? How many people get this lucky?”

“I don’t know. I just know that I did.” He kissed my forehead, my nose, my cheeks as I cried happy tears.

“This sort of makes my news pale in comparison,” I giggled. Was it really happening? It had to be happening. I was awake. It wasn’t a dream.

“What news?” He smiled as I sat him beside me on the couch. The weight of my new ring was welcome on my hand, and I couldn’t stop looking at it. Every time it caught my eye, I admired it.

“I don’t want you to freak out,” I whispered, taking his hands.

“Uh-oh.”

“It’s not bad news. Well, not objectively bad. But…”

“Just spill, okay? Wow. I feel like the mood took a left turn.”

“I’m sorry.” I drew a deep breath and hoped he would take it well. “I went to the doctor today.”

“Jesus, are you sick?” He took me by the shoulders. “You should’ve told me.”

“I’m not sick. Well, I might be, on and off, but for a good reason.”

Understanding started dawning in his eyes. I waited for him to put it all together. When a slow smile started spreading across his face, the relief I felt was palpable.

“Are you telling me you’re going to have a baby?” He almost didn’t want to believe it, just in case he was wrong. My heart swelled.

“I am.” I bit my lip, waiting.

His face broke out into a huge, bright smile. “You are? Really? I mean, I didn’t think…like, I thought, but…”

I held up a hand. “I know. I’m not as young as I used to be, but women are having babies later all the time. I didn’t think it would be so easy, I admit, but here we are.”

“How far along are you?” He placed a tentative hand against my stomach.

“About ten weeks. I’ve been so busy studying, I didn’t notice my schedule was so far off until yesterday.”

“And you’re okay? Everything’s okay?”

“Everything’s great.”

“Oh, God.” He took me in his arms and held me close. His heart pounded frantically against mine. “What happens when all your dreams come true at once?”

I closed my eyes and thanked whatever unseen force was out there, whatever had brought me home. I might have lost my best friend, but I had gained so much in return. I couldn’t help but think about how smugly satisfied he’d be if he knew he’d been right about us being together.