Perfectly Matched by Heather Webber Page A

absence would make me. It had been over six hours since he left the office—and no one had heard a peep since.
    The movers had been here and gone, and Raphael had taken charge of Ebbie and was in the process of bringing her—and all Sean’s things—to my place. He promised not to leave Ebbie alone with Grendel, and for that I was thankful. Grendel outweighed the small cat by a good twenty pounds, at least.
    I’d promised Raphael I’d take a cab ride home instead of trying to navigate the ferry, even though it was going to cost me an arm and a leg—money that Raphael had loaned me since mine had been carried about by a hoodlum.
    Fluffing the pillow behind my head, I wiggled, trying to get comfortable. Over the noise of the window fan, the din of rush hour traffic floated in. Oddly, I found the honking, the sirens, and the bustle oddly soothing.
    My phone rang and I answered on the first ring. It was my mother.
    “LucyD! What is this about your father squiring me away? What isn’t he telling me?”
    Ah , he hadn’t told her about the arsonist. It was probably for the best. My mother was one to dwell on things. I could hear lots of noise in the background. “It’s a thousand degrees in the office and Dad doesn’t like to sweat. Are you already at the airport?”
    “Well, now it all makes perfect sense. And yes, we’re at the airport. We’re due to fly out in an hour. I could use a vacation, but I knew there was something going on. You’ll have the week off as well?”
    I felt a stab of guilt that I kept the real reason from her. “Heading home soon.”
    “How will you survive without me for the week?” she asked dramatically.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m sure Dovie will be around lots.”
    She laughed. “Oh, she’ll be around. You should see what she’s ordered for you and Sean.”
    “Not a crib, I hope.”
    “Oh, you’ll see.”
    We said our goodbyes, and she promised to send a postcard. I hung up and looked down. I’d taken the wrap off my foot to let it breathe, and wished I hadn’t.
    It was one ugly foot.
    Even the locksmith noticed. “You ought to get that looked at.”
    He was as bad as Raphael. “I’m going to.”
    Just as soon as I found Sean and kicked his ass from here to Nantucket .
    With my good foot, of course.
    “Soon,” he said. “If it’s broken, you don’t want to have to get it re-broken to fix it.”
    I glanced at him. He was sixty if a day, with bushy eyebrows and sage green eyes. “Broken? I don’t think so. Just sprained maybe.”
    He tipped his head. “I ain’t wrong about these things. I have a sixth sense, you know?”
    “Nope,” I said. I was sick of anything to do with sixth senses.
    He dropped a screwdriver into his mini toolbox. “Well, I do. And dollars to doughnuts, that foot is broken.”
    I’d already called Em, who promised she’d take a look at it when I got home tonight. It was nice having a best friend who was a former doctor. One who lived right next door—she had been living with Dovie since Christmastime. The arrangement, which was supposed to have been temporary, had turned into something more permanent and was a good thing for both of them. It kept the loneliness at bay.
    I rather liked it, too, having her so close. My cottage sat on the edge of Dovie’s property, on a cliff with breathtaking water views. And though I insisted on paying rent, I knew she took the money and funneled it into some sort of high-yield account that would eventually come back to me. Still, it made me feel better to think I was paying my own way.
    Now that Em was engaged to Aiden, I wondered how long she’d be around. Not that Aiden lived all that far away, but still. A long engagement would be nice.
    I blinked my eyes open and dialed Aiden’s number. Em had been worried about him being standoffish lately, and filling him in on the Beantown Burner case might be the perfect reason to call him out of the blue and segue into his relationship with