greet her as she came through the door.
For a split second, she actually considered it. She certainly had an abundance of love to give to a pet. But then she thought of how guilty she’d feel about keeping the poor thing cooped up in the apartment while she was away at work. Considering how sporadic and unstructured her engagements were, the puppy wouldn’t be able to have anything that resembled a normal, regular schedule.
Besides, she reminded herself, Mrs. Goldberg had Lizzie and she was forever telling her how lonely she was for actual company ever since “her Albert” had passed on. The feline, while fairly affectionate, still didn’t fill the gap she had in her heart, the older woman had confessed sadly.
No, the cure for this loneliness that kept wrapping its tentacles around her lately was just more work, Elizabeth decided. It was while she was playing that she felt whole, as if she was contributing something worthwhile and beautiful to the universe. The violin was capable of making its audience both laugh and weep, and she could make it do both with aplomb.
Elizabeth glanced at the answering machine as she walked past it. The red light was blinking, telling her she had messages.
One, she knew, was bound to be from her father. That wonderful man always called her every night, no matter how busy his day had been, just to check in on her.
Now there’s something to really be grateful for, she told herself. Not everyone had a father like that, a man who had single-handedly raised her and her two younger brothers while he was juggling a full-time career as a physician.
With very little warning, he’d been blindsided by his wife’s sudden onset of pancreatic cancer and just like that, he’d found himself a widower with three young children.
Rather than farming his kids off to a female relative, or gladly abdicating his role to some full-time nanny he paid to raise his children, he’d painstakingly rearranged his life so that he could be there for every school play, every concert, even every parent/teacher conference. Elizabeth would forever be grateful to her dad for all the sacrifices he’d made over the years. There wasn’t anything that she wouldn’t do for him—and she knew her brothers felt the same way.
Maybe that was part of why she was having such trouble finding someone to share her life with, Elizabeth thought. She wanted to meet a man who had the warmth, the integrity, the sensitivity that her father had. She supposed that her standards were just too high.
But then, her father met those standards. So wasn’t it reasonable to believe that there might be someone else in the world like that? Someone who, in addition to all the aforementioned attributes, could also make her world stand still.
That was how, she remembered, her mother had told her that she’d felt the very first time that she’d met her father.
It was one of Elizabeth’s most cherished memories, sitting beside her mother, flipping through an album of old photographs. She remembered it was raining that day. She had to have been around four or five. Eric had been around two, and Ethan was still in his crib. She and her mother had looked over the album for hours. Her mother had a story about every photograph.
The next summer, her mother was gone.
Just like that.
A victim of an insidious, cruel disease. It had taken her father nearly two years to forgive himself for not being able to save her.
That was real love, she thought.
And that was what she was never destined to find for herself. Elizabeth pressed her lips together. She was just going to have to make her peace with that—if she was ever to have any peace at all.
Besides, she thought, how would she feel if she finally found that one special someone and then lost him, the way her father had lost her mother? Maybe it was for the best to just avoid the pain altogether.
With a resigned sigh she went to the refrigerator to see what she had that might lend itself to at least partially filling the emptiness she felt in her stomach.
There wasn’t much to choose from.
Her father always sent her home with food whenever she visited him. In addition to being a top-notch physician, her father was also a terrific cook who could throw together sumptuous meals out of next to nothing.
She, however, lacked the cooking gene that thrived so well in his veins. Despite the fact that her brothers both knew how to whip things up, her father had failed to pass that particular trait on to her in any manner, shape or form.
She burned water when she boiled it.
Consequently, the only items that resided in her refrigerator after she ran out of the home-cooked meals her father loaded her down with were leftovers from the local take-out restaurants.
She took a quick survey—not that there was all that much to look over.
“Leftover Chinese it is,” Elizabeth murmured, pulling out a couple of cartons with red Chinese characters embossed on the sides.
She brought the cartons over to the small dinette table she had set up in the alcove. Taking the portable phone receiver over with her as well, Elizabeth made herself comfortable. She took a few bites of food—she wasn’t altogether clear on exactly what she was eating at this point since the meals all tended to blend together after a couple of days—and pressed Play.
The first call, as she’d guessed, was from her father.
Elizabeth smiled as she listened.
“Are you there, Elizabeth?” There was a slight pause as he waited for a pickup. “No? Guess you’re busy playing. I know, old joke. But I still like it. Old has its place, you know. Like your old dad.”
“You’re not old, Dad,” she murmured affectionately. “You’re distinguished.”
“Hope it was a good evening for you,” her father continued. “Sorry I didn’t get to talk to you in person. Nothing new on this end. One of your brothers is working, the other one isn’t.” A slight chuckle accompanied the statement. “Two out of three isn’t bad, I always say. Sleep well, my virtuoso. I’ll try to catch you tomorrow. If not, see you on Thursday. Love you.” It was the way her father ended every phone call to her, the way he sent her off each time they parted company. Hearing it always made her smile—and feel safe.
“Love you, too, Dad,” Elizabeth said softly to the machine.
Just the sound of her father’s deep, authoritative voice somehow managed to make her feel better, she thought as she pressed for the next message.
Ten seconds into the call, she pressed the button to bypass the message. It was someone asking for a contribution to some college on the East Coast that she had never heard of.
The third and last message was the kind of message that she listened for, the ones that involved her bread and butter.
The deep, resonant voice caught her attention immediately. Putting down her fork, she picked up a pen, drew her pad to her and listened for details.
“I’m not sure if I have the right number, but a Mrs. Manetti suggested I call. She’s catering for me. Well, not me, but my parents, except they don’t know—” She heard the man sigh, as if annoyed with the way that had come out.
