Marie Ferrarella - A Second Chance For The Single Dad

* * *

“I’ve got a candidate for us!” Cilia declared as she crossed the threshold later that evening, walking into Maizie’s living room.

“We’re in here,” Theresa called out to her from the family room.

The moment Cilia entered the family room, where all their card games took place, Maizie told her, “Cilia, you took the words right out of my mouth.”

Slightly puzzled, Cilia looked at her friend. “I was the one who called for a meeting,” she reminded Maizie.

“Only because I haven’t had a chance to,” Maizie answered. “I was busy meeting with our next matchmaking candidate.”

Cilia was accustomed to Maizie being the unofficial leader of their group. She always had been. But this one time, she decided to dig in her heels. “I think my candidate needs our attention first.”

Maizie wasn’t used to arguing, but she stuck to her guns—because this was personal. “Mine’s my goddaughter.”

One of the reasons they had remained such close friends over the decades, weathering good times and bad, was that none of them pulled rank or disregarded the other two. Because it sounded as if this match Maizie had brought up was so important to her, Cilia inclined her head in agreement.

Sitting down at the card table where they did all their best brainstorming, Cilia said, “All right, it’s your house, Maizie. You go first.”

As she began to tell Theresa and Cilia about what had inspired her to take on this match, she wondered if her friends were going to think she had gone over the deep end.

She looked from Theresa to Cilia. “You two remember my friend Karen Quartermain, don’t you?”

Theresa’s response was an animated “Of course.”

Cilia looked momentarily saddened as she told Maizie, “Karen was much too young when she died.”

Maizie nodded. “Agreed. Karen always said that if she died first and ever needed to get me to do something, she’d find a way to drop a penny in my path so I’d know she was trying to communicate with me.”

She gazed at the two women she’d been friends with since the third grade. She was fairly certain that they would understand what she was about to say next, but she wasn’t 100 percent convinced. Mentally crossing her fingers, she continued.

“I dreamed about her last night. It was a very vivid, very real dream. She asked me to find someone for her daughter, Kayley. When I woke up, there was a penny on my carpet. I have no idea how it got there, but I know it wasn’t there when I went to bed.”

Cilia studied her closely. “Are you sure about that?”

“Absolutely,” Maizie answered with feeling. “Kayley is a wonderful girl. She gave up her job at a medical clinic in San Francisco to come home and nurse her mother through her final stages of bone cancer.”

The words medical clinic instantly caught Cilia’s attention. “What did she do at the medical clinic?” Cilia asked.

“Kayley’s a physician’s assistant. I can’t tell you what a comfort she was to her mother—What?” Maizie asked, seeing the wide smile on Cilia’s face.

Cilia suppressed a laugh. “I think that you just came up with the perfect solution for both of us,” she told Maizie.

It was Maizie’s turn to be confused. “Come again?” she asked uncertainly.

Cilia’s face was a wreath of smiles as she happily said, “Trust me, I have the perfect guy for your goddaughter.”

* * *

Kayley Quartermain glanced at the address on the piece of paper that her godmother, Maizie Sommers, had given her.

After her college graduation, Kayley hadn’t seen the woman she called Aunt Maizie for several years. Then Maizie had visited a week before her mother died. Maizie had been upset that she hadn’t heard about Karen being sick until the cancer had reached stage four. It was Aunt Maizie who had kept Kayley from going to pieces. She’d also been the one to help her with her mother’s funeral arrangements.

Looking back now, Kayley had to admit that she didn’t know what she would have done without her godmother’s help.

She laughed softly to herself as she pulled into the medical building’s parking lot. Aunt Maizie was more like a fairy godmother than just a run-of-the-mill godmother, Kayley thought. Not only had she helped to get her through what had to be the worst point in her life, but just last night, Aunt Maizie had called her to say that she thought she had found a possible position for her. She had a friend who knew a surgeon reestablishing his practice and he needed—wait for it, she mused with a smile—a physician’s assistant.

Maybe life was taking a turn for the better after all, Kayley thought, pulling her car into the first space she found.

It was a tight fit, requiring her to pay close attention to both sides of her vehicle as she pulled into the spot. Getting out of the car, she found she had to inch her way out slowly in order to keep from pushing her car door into the other vehicle.

Being extra careful, she eased her door closed and fervently hoped that the owner of the car next to hers would be gone by the time she was finished with her job interview.

She moved away from her door, backed out gingerly, then turned to make her way to the entrance of the two-story medical building.

Which was when she saw it.

There, right in front of her just as she was about to walk to the entrance of the building, was a bright, shiny new penny.

She stared at it for a moment, thinking she was imagining it.

Ever since her mother had died, she’d been on the lookout for pennies, even though she told herself she was being foolish because only a fool would really believe that her late mother would be sending her a sign from heaven.

But there it was, a penny so new that it looked as if it had never been used.

Unable to help herself, Kayley smiled as she stooped down to pick up the coin.

She was also unable to keep herself from wondering, Does this mean I’m going to get the job, Mom? That you somehow arranged all this for me?

Even as the question darted across her mind, she knew it was silly to think like this. Logically, she knew that the departed couldn’t intervene on the behalf of the people they had left behind.

She was letting her loss get to her.

And yet...

And yet here was a penny, right in her path. And now right in the middle of her hand.

Was it an omen, a sign from her mother that this—and everything else—was going to work out well for her?

She really wanted to believe that.

Kayley caught her lower lip between her teeth and looked at the penny again.

“Nothing wrong in thinking of it as a good-luck piece, right?” she murmured under her breath, tucking the coin into her purse.

Lots of people believed in luck. They had lucky socks they wore whenever they played ball, lucky rabbits’ feet tucked away somewhere on their bodies when they took tests.

They believed that luck—and objects representing that luck—simply tipped the scales in their favor.

Nothing wrong with that, Kayley told herself again.

Thinking of the penny in her purse, she squared her shoulders and walked up to the entrance of the medical building.

The electronic doors pulled apart, allowing her to walk in. The entrance, she realized, opened automatically to accommodate people who might have trouble pulling open a heavy door because of conditions that brought them to an orthopedic surgeon in the first place.

Once inside the building, Kayley moved aside, away from the electronic door sensors. She needed to gather herself together in order to focus. She was good at what she did, very good, but she knew that she could still wind up tripping herself up.

You want me to get this job, don’t you, Mom? You brought Aunt Maizie back into my life because you knew I was going to need her to get through this. And then, because you were always worried about me, you had her call me about this job opening.