When he opened one eye, he found it was nearly eleven. While Marguerite was no longer beside him, her scent was on the pillow and a tray with a small carafe and coffee cup was on the nightstand. A spray of daisies and wildflowers tied in one of her ribbons rested beneath the tented note. I’ll be back this afternoon. Had a class at eleven. If you can’t stay, I’ll be at your house tonight as planned. She’d drawn… He drew back, squinting. Not for the first time, he acknowledged that eventually he was going to have to give in and admit that standard middle-aged farsightedness was about to overcome forty-plus years of twenty-twenty vision. XXs and OOs. OOs with smiley faces in them. He smiled, picked it up. She was never going to stop surprising him. Of course, she might have dictated the note to Chloe and the hostess had added the little flourish. Since he was lying in the bed with one length of leg from sole to buttock stretched bare over the cover, he hoped it was Marguerite who’d left the note, regardless of who had written it.
