Karen was standing alone beneath a small black umbrella.
I’d known her since Daniel and I were teenagers. She’d fed me after football practice, scolded me for leaving wet towels on the floor, and once driven two hours through a snowstorm because Daniel and I had gotten stranded after a concert.
To everyone else, she’d always been Mrs. Mercer.
Somewhere along the way, to me, she’d simply become Karen.
But I’d never seen her look like this.
She wore a dark blue dress beneath a camel-colored coat. Her usually immaculate hair had loosened around her face in the damp air. She looked elegant, but exhausted.
Worse, she looked lonely.
I leaned over and opened the passenger door.
“Your carriage awaits.”
She gave me a faint smile as she climbed inside.
“Daniel sent his most sarcastic friend.”
“His only reliable one.”
“That’s debatable.”
For a moment, she almost sounded like herself.
