Oh, yeah! I’m in Sheryl Morris’ house.

We’d walked back to her house after spending almost an hour wandering around Lance’s (then Chris’, then, I suppose my) house. I’d said I could barely keep my eyes open when we flopped down on one of the sofas in her outdoor patio when she’d inquired about how I was feeling.

She nodded sagely. “Jetlag, huh?”

I mustered a wan smile. “Something like that.”

She’d insisted I take a nap in her guest room, since I’d been in no condition to drive, or even walk, anywhere.

I slipped my wedge sandals back on and padded down the stairs, following the sound of “Rigoletto,” that was playing somewhere in the house. It had been one of my parents’ favorites. Mom and Dad had been hopeless romantics. I was surprised that they hadn’t named me after Gilda, Rigoletto’s daughter, and object of the main protagonist’s, the Duke of Mantua’s, affection in that opera. Thank goodness. I felt like my life had fallen into the dramatic peaks and valleys of a lust-filled Italian opera as it was. Being named after a heroine like that would have really done a number on my present mental state, I teased myself.

I sang out a few lines from the most famous aria of that opera just as the tenor started to belt it out, “La donna e mobile, Quai piuma al vento, Muta d’accento e di pensiero…”

Sheryl interrupted my private performance with a chuckle. “Wow, sounds like you feel much better, Aerin!”

I saw that she’d changed from her outfit earlier, from her shaggy gardening clothes to a cheery sundress and sandals, switching out of her gardening clogs.

“If you don’t have plans for dinner maybe we could grab something in Abbot Kinney?” she asked as she stood.

I asked curiously, “Is that a restaurant or something?”

She laughed again. She seemed to delight in laughing with or at me, like I was a pet daughter or grandchild or something. I smiled back at her. Chris had been right in saying that she felt Sheryl had been a doting mother/grandmother type who’d been sincerely fond of Lance and seemed to have extended that feeling over to Chris. Maybe she was extending that to me, too.