Page 19 of Embracing the Change

Unconscionable.

When Jamie managed to talk the captain into turning us right back around, I was going to find her.

And then I was going to throttle her.

Metaphorically, of course.

But make no mistake, I was going to do it.

Meticulously.

CHAPTER 3

MICHAEL ARAM

Jamie

Several years ago…

“We can’t, it’s not right. We can’t do it like this.”

Jamie stood at the front of the church with his daughter, who was in a mild panic.

There were reasons why, and they all centered around the handcrafted, nickel-plated Michael Aram urn with its gold lid and base and the single white cast anemone fixed to the bottom that sat on a plinth at the front of the altar.

Or, more precisely, what lay in that urn.

However, Dru’s words were not about the urn, or the occasion, but about the flowers adorning the church.

She had, he remembered distinctly, requested peach roses for her mother’s funeral sprays.

They were her mother’s favorites.

And Dru’s.

Now, she was saying she’d ordered red, to match Rosalind’s, and Dru’s, hair.

“Darlin’, people are arriving,” Jamie said gently. “I’ve been told the vestibule is filling up. We can’t keep the doors closed much longer.”

As if his words rang to the back of the cathedral, they heard a door open, the low buzz of conversation coming from the lobby, and Jamie and Dru turned that way.

But, he suspected, only Jamie knew the woman who had closed the door on their guests and was walking swiftly down the aisle in their direction.

Her dress was prim with short, capped sleeves, an exaggerated, pointed collar buttoned up to the base of her throat, and a tie belt at the nipped waist, the latter two were black, trimmed in white. The skirt was wide. The style was reminiscent of the fifties, including the black gloves she wore on her hands that ended at her wrists.

He didn’t understand, on seeing her making her way to them, why the weight of the day and his and his daughter’s grief seemed less heavy, but it did.

When she made it to them, she stopped, tearing her sorrow-filled, warm brown eyes from Jamie to look at Dru.

“Hello, dear,” she said tenderly.

“Uh, hi,” Dru mumbled.

Nora Ellington looked back to Jamie. “Can I be of help?”

Of course.

Of course she was there to help.

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