Fat rain pelted Jen’s car. The ocean waves licked at the purple-gray evening sky, threw an angry wash over the rock bridge, and spit a thick spray of saltwater across the road. In quick return the sky darkened to black and retaliated with the crack of thunder.

Jen made a cautious turn off highway 101 and wound up the long, steep road to her grandparents cottage. Lightening filled the sky and illuminated the gray and white house wrapped in a wide porch. Heavy blankets of fog moved in from the ocean and broke momentarily as more thunder and another cluster of bright veins stretched across the sky. The dreary turbulent setting offered an unwelcome greeting.

Birds whistled, chirped, and sang. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the trees bringing forth soft, soothing, whisperings. The usually placid lake churned and rippled causing the morning's light to wobble and bob as another rock was hurled into a watery grave. The lone figure of a giant-sized man stood at the shore, a pile of stones sitting in one of his oversized hands. In a careless and lazy manner the man would pick up one of the stones and give it a light toss. Hulgar brooded.

I arrived at the Buffet Diner fifteen minutes late and found David seated in a corner booth with food mound on three huge platters, munching on a chicken leg, and reading a thick novel.

“I can’t do that.” I tried to swallow my embarrassment for my tardiness.

“Do what?” David asked, peeking over the rim of his mystery-thriller, lips curled into an unforgettable smile people would kill to receive.

Tara cupped one hand over her forehead and squinted through the sun’s bright light. A sigh parted her dry lips. She hated to admit it but she was lost, no library, for that matter, no buildings, except for the squatty, run down shanty holding up the “Diving School” sign, or was it the other way around?

No breeze, no flowers, no birds, no water, nothing to draw a person to linger. Tara slipped on her sunglasses and followed the dirt path around the side of the shack. She stopped midstep and wished she’d spent a moment applying fresh makeup.

“If I could start my life over I’d be a lilacina,” said Meredith, with a dreamy look in her eyes.

Debra dropped the garment in her hand and wrinkled her nose in distaste. “What? It sounds like the name of a cult group.”

“It’s a lacecap hydrangea with blue or pink florets. Blue. I would definitely be blue.”

“Honestly, if we aren’t the antipodal of each other. You racing off to la-la land spilling out silly notions, while I remain firmly grounded to the task at hand. Now if you were a painter, knee deep in oil colors and painted canvases of flowers overflowing an atelier, I could try and imagine such a statement coming out of your mouth. But good grief, we’re sitting on your sofa, not even a floral print at that, in the dead of winter on a cold and rainy afternoon, sorting through these boxes of clothing for the church bazaar. How ever did you manage to come up with such an idea?”

The house had stood empty for six months before a moving van bulged in the driveway. Normally, I don’t press my nose to my livingroom window, but the fascinating items rolling down the ramp of the large moving van held me captive. The only furnishing I could identify with certainty was a large carved wooden chest inlayed with colorful jewels dazzling in the sun’s morning light. If I didn’t know better everything else carried through the double front doors resembled parts and pieces of a seaworthy vessel. After three burly men carried in a huge carved mermaid my imagination rode on high waves of anxiety, turning the pit of my stomach over and over, while I studied the sea sickening adventure that had capsized across the street.

His feckless proposal reduced her to tears. Tears he mistook for joy. In his nervous excitement to ask for her hand in marriage he had over looked something essential, the timing and delivery of the crucial question.

She could excuse him not getting down on one knee before her. That was quite impossible hanging upside down from a fifty foot oak tree crowned in mistletoe. She could forgive his raised tone, necessary to be heard over the noisy hawks flying overhead. She could forgive him the inability to place the ring on her finger, since she herself hung a few feet lower in the same mammoth tree. Her modest distance from him, made it impossible for her to see nothing more than a sparkle from the diamond, or did the ring carry more than one?

Half a mile after Janie spotted the for sale sign and turned off the main road onto the private narrow dusty lane, she squinted into the sun and spotted the old abandoned three story estate, complete with wrap around porches, cupola, and turrets. A carriage house sat some distance behind and off to the side. Oak and Douglas Fir trees dotted the one hundred acres included in the sale. She stopped the car and held her breath, knowing the perfect Bed and Breakfast business stood in the distance. Why hadn’t someone snatched it up long ago?

More than an hour ago Rita had called to say she was running late and we would have to meet at the Arling House. The room continued to grow smaller as more and more singles mingled around the elegant space. I had planned to stay tucked in the corner, near the door, but the huge bowl of punch across the room offered an instant reprieve to my parched throat. My tiny steps around the perimeter of the room in the ridiculous purple stilettos Rita insisted I buy at a closeout price, already made my legs and feet ache. What did it matter that they were guaranteed to slenderize and elongate my legs? The packed room didn’t allow anyone to view anything below waist level.