I shrugged, shutting the door behind them.

"Don't know if you remember me, but I'm Shawn. Nice seeing you again." The new guy shoved his beefy hand in front of me. I shook it and peeked at Jericho, already across the room and seated at my computer.

"Same here." I extended my hand.

Roch.e.l.le gave us both a little shove. "Later for all that. Listen. Since you were too rude to hang out with us, I took Shawn over to the health food store so he could see some of your stuff." She paused for effect.

It worked. "And? What?"

"It wasn't there, that's what!"

"That's impossible. I just gave them a new display last month."

My nephew dropped onto my leather sectional. "The display is still there, but it's full of Adrian's candles. And that's not all..."

What else could there be? "Spill it." I wasn't in the mood for a tease.

"I figured I'd have to go way to the mall then and show him your stuff at Smelly Chick. Your stuff was gone there, too."

"Don't tell me. Candles again." My chin hit my chest.

"Yep. I checked all your accounts in town and I couldn't find a thing. Not one bar of soap. Not one bottle of lotion, shampoo, nothing. Even the Vanilla Smella display at High Life was gone."

I dropped to the couch, wondering how I could have missed the signs-the unreturned phone calls, the lack of interest in my new lines, no requests to restock the displays-it'd been so long since I'd been dumped by a guy, I'd forgotten the signals. A few new stores had sprouted up since I'd opened, but I'd managed to have a presence in all of them. Until now.

Now I remembered the signs of being jilted, and even though it wasn't Trevor or some other man this time, it hurt the same. And it was all Adrian's fault.

He was sleeping, but I didn't care. When Adrian came to the door wearing his pajamas, I stormed right in, with Roch.e.l.le and her boyfriend behind me.

"What are you trying to do, wreck me? First you steal my idea and now you take my wholesale accounts? I thought you were my friend." Or something.

He woke up real quick. Slammed the door. "Hold up. First off, how are you just going to bust in here talking to me like I'm a child? And stealing? I haven't stolen anything from you. The stores came to me. I tried to ask you who you had accounts with months ago to keep this from happening, but as always, you wouldn't respond."

"And stealing ideas?" He turned to Roch.e.l.le. "Is she talking about Kick!?"

Roch.e.l.le nodded.

Adrian paused and offered Shawn a seat. "Hey, man, sorry they put you in the middle of this."

"No problem. Anything to eat?"

Still playing it cool, Adrian nodded toward the kitchen. He wasn't fooling me. Any second now, his entire face would squish into a ball of anger. And then...fireworks. This time I didn't care.

"So you think that Kick! was your idea, Dane? The actual store itself?"

What did he think I was talking about? I crossed my arms. "If the candle fits."

He raked a palm over his sweaty dome. "It was my idea. Mine. Don't you remember?" His voice climbed in volume.

Shawn returned from the kitchen with a sandwich worthy of Dagwood, but quickly sensed the mounting tension. "Maybe we should go."

Adrian didn't even turn around. "Sit."

I squared my shoulders. I remembered all right.

He shook his head. "That last night on the stoop...after they took-" his voice faltered "-my mother to the inst.i.tution. It was raining and your feet hurt because we'd walked up the hill to get ice cream for the apple pie."

I hadn't recalled the specifics until now. It made no difference though. I remembered the big stuff.

"I was rubbing your feet and you asked me if I thought anything could help her-Mama, I mean. All I could think of was the way she smiled when we lit candles. And how one time Daddy had lit them all over the house and she'd laughed and laughed. For a few minutes it was like before she got so bad." He turned away. "I wanted to make a place that captured that laughter forever. A place where she would know I was always burning a candle for her, waiting for her to come home."

I scratched my chin, trying to grab at a response. That wasn't how it went, was it? It couldn't be. I was so sure, but he seemed so sure, too. And my mind is bad sometimes. What if I was wrong? How would I talk myself out of this one? "That's not how I remember it, Adrian. I told you about my dream place."

He sighed and strode away from me, sinking into his sectional. "No, Dane. You told me you like to swim your toes in carpet and that too many smells at once gave you a headache. So I only burn one scent an hour and the s.h.a.g is as long as they could make it. So there, that's what I stole from you-barefeet and a headache. Anything else you want to scream at me about?"

Why did you marry Sandy in the first place? Let's start with that? I cleared my throat. "Not that I can think of."

"Good. Now sit down and listen to me for a second."

"I'll stand."

"Whatever, Dane." He stretched up to the ceiling, working the anger out of his muscles.

Goodness.

I needed to get out of here. My confidence and my ability to keep from either slapping or kissing Adrian was waning. "I guess we should let you get back to your nap. We can talk about this later."

Adrian shook his head. "I'm up now. Maybe you'll think twice next time you go banging on people's doors like the police, accusing them of things."

He dropped to the couch, still simmering. "Did you get that business plan revised for the bridal line?"

I groaned. "I don't have time, okay?"

"See? You have time to berate me for doing my job, but don't have time to do yours. I see you over there all times of the day and night. Working yourself to death. Streamline it, Dane. You'll kill yourself."

He'd been talking to Roch.e.l.le, no doubt. "You do it like you do it and I do it like I do it, okay? All that organizational stuff just doesn't work for me."

"How do you know? You don't even try."

For a reason I'll never understand, I walked to the couch and plopped. I guess everything just caught up to me. Tears streamed down my face. "I'm tired of trying. I'm just plain tired."

Adrian leaned close. His arms circled me. His lips brushed my head. "I know. Me, too."

"And I feel like a fool. I really believed-"

"I know. I've always known there was a problem about it. I thought it was just because of Sandy...." His words drowned between my braids.

I looked up at him slowly as if seeing him for the first time in many days, his eyes brown and clear. Everything Adrian had said about his mother ringing in my head. Sometimes, like today, he looked like her. Beautiful.

My eyes fluttered shut, oiled by fresh tears. I had to admit, there was a lot of his daddy in him, too. Especially around the mouth.... I reached for his hand. He pulled away.

"I went to see my mother at the mental health center before she died."

Shawn coughed. I prayed. Adrian always used terms like "inst.i.tution" or "hospital," but never had I heard him use the words mental mental and and health health in a sentence together. in a sentence together.

"You know who she asked for?"

Uh-oh. I'd gone to Sunnyside once a week until the day she died. I read her the Bible and let her beat me at cards. She never asked about Adrian except to tell me to feed him more carrots. "That child's eyes are just bad," she would say, then shudder at the horror of it.

"You, Dane. She shouted it. 'Dana, tell him to leave. Dana...'"

I tried to swallow, but I couldn't get the knot down this time. Why were crazy folks always calling for me? I couldn't even help myself.

"It's because I went there sometimes. Prayed with her." He glared and turned his head. I clutched his shirt. "Listen to me. Please."

"No. I won't listen. You're always crying about what somebody took from you. What you don't have. You have everything. Always have had it. She always loved you."

No use arguing that. I'd often thought growing up that Adrian and I had been switched at birth. His mother, with that mole on her face and that big red afro...She looked like sunshine to me.

When I came over, we didn't talk. She'd grip her cigarette and grab a Jimi Hendrix eight-track and a sketch pad. Blues, greens and yellows on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and red, orange and purple on Tuesday and Thursday. She'd sneak me into the Bid Whist game on Sundays if my parents didn't catch it. Adrian was always somewhere reading, playing with his chemistry set or...something. I'd never considered that I'd stolen her from him.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

He looked away. "Me, too."

I've always been the same pretty much. The same friends, same places. Right down to still living in the apartment I grew up in. Tracey, Roch.e.l.le, Adrian-we'd all lived here once, on the second floor. One by one, they moved away. Tracey's parents' divorce, Adrian's mother's nervous breakdown and his too-tired father's too-soon heart attack had plucked them away.

Only Roch.e.l.le had stayed, abandoned by her mother when she learned of her pregnancy. The woman had come to our apartment and asked my mother to look after Roch.e.l.le, saying that she was moving to Arizona with her new husband. I'd often wondered what Roch.e.l.le really thought of that whole thing, but what did it matter? She would have done anything to be with Jordan then, and anything to be rid of him now.

Maybe she regretted it. Not Jericho, but loving Jordan so hard. She would have died for him then. In truth, she had died for him. We all did. I'd just pretended to live so as not to hurt my mother's feelings. Wasn't losing one child enough? And he wasn't any ordinary child.

Neither was I, I realize now, but survival clouded my greatness in a haze of coping routines-prayer with Roch.e.l.le, cooking with Daddy, hanging with Adrian, talking to Tracey, staying out of Mama's way, babysitting Jericho and when I could, riding like the wind on my motorcycle. Our place was one big pile of crazy, a place that only my true friends understood.

And of all my friends, Adrian was the truest. Even once he was staying with his grandfather across town, he could pick up my vibe on the phone and jet right over on his moped or even take the dreaded Leverhill transit bus if that's what rescuing me required. He told me years later that he'd been saving himself, too. Our family, our fireworks of emotions, was a welcome change to the sterility of his uptown world.

Now standing here on the landing outside his apartment, I wondered who would save him this time? I'd had my chance and fumbled the ball. Tracey was the next natural choice, but from her e-mails, she could use a little salvation herself. Not that she and Ryan didn't love each other.

But was love alone enough? Even in the best of matches, you're still marrying a stranger. And sometimes they're stranger than you thought. I hadn't tied the knot myself, but I'd watched it choke plenty of folks, all the while wondering if it would have been like that between me and Adrian.

Today, I realized that no matter how close people are to one another, there's always a place-a secret place-that only G.o.d can see. A place that folks don't know exists until it's too late. Some people know about it, but they stuff it with all the wrong things and when they open it, like Pandora's box, it unleashes devastation on their relationships. I now know my box was stuffed with fear. And Adrian's? Chock full of memories of his mother's schizophrenic screams and his father's powerlessness. All the words he'd never said, tears he'd never cried. They were there waiting....

And Sandy? The years he'd spent mourning her were just the beginning. She'd always be a part of him and though it was hard for me to admit sometimes, she'd made Adrian a better man and me a better woman. The question was, where did I fit in now?

Not in Tangela's wedding dress to be sure. Spring was a few months away. The usual post-wedding rings around my waist and hips would be permanent after a few hours in that thing.

Maybe she won't go through with it.

With Tracey's wedding, I'd thought the same silly thing. But she had gone through with it, just like she kept going to the personal trainer after I quit, met her Weight Watchers goal while I was at home staring at "come back and see us" coupons. She'd even turned Ryan into marriage material with her quiet diligence.

"Are you going to sit out here or what? We're freezing in the car." Roch.e.l.le held the banister of Adrian's stairwell.

I shrugged, then started the journey down. Tracey was definitely the one to help Adrian.

It was a finisher he needed.

The bell over the door at Wonderfully Made shrilled the announcement of a visitor, but I didn't even raise my head. It'd been a long day of intermittent chimes, signaling a trail of sniffers and lookie-loos, but no buyers.

Not one.

The day Roch.e.l.le had come to report the loss of my local accounts had been the beginning of what I'd chosen to call "The New Year Slump", for lack of a better name. Christmas had been a blur of all-night basket sessions and last-minute super sales, but since then, my customers seemed to have disappeared. As bad as it'd been though, I'd never had a day like today. A no-sale day.

Well stop complaining and make a sale, girl.

I snapped erect, realizing I'd bought into the thought of striking out. "Welcome to Wonderfully Made," I said to a man's leather-clad back, trying to combat images of a guy from my past who wore similar gear. Trevor. It had suited him.

His broad shoulders turned in my direction. "Wonderfully Made," he said, letting the syllables slide off his tongue. "Very appropriate."

I tried to smile, but those haunting brown eyes and that painfully familiar voice wouldn't allow for smiles. I could barely breathe. The guy didn't just look like Trevor. It was him. What was with the old boyfriends turning up? It was like a nightmare episode of This is Your Life. This is Your Life. A no-sale day suddenly seemed like a good thing. "What are you doing here?" A no-sale day suddenly seemed like a good thing. "What are you doing here?"

He grabbed my left hand and ma.s.saged my fingers, as had once been his habit, stopping at my ring finger. Bare. He smiled. I shuddered and pulled back. How dare he touch me, after what he had done?

"I'm looking for you. What else?" He ran a finger up the inside of my arm.

My stomach tightened. After all this man had taken me through, how dare my body, my emotions, betray me in his presence? He moved closer, stepping inside my fortress of womanhood, painfully chiseled by years of solid Christian living. Years that seemed to fade with each inch closer he came.

And I'd thought my biggest worries this year were fitting into that ridiculous dress or trying to keep the shop going.

This was something ten times worse. This was like a recovered alcoholic at a wine tasting. This was me, alone, with Trevor Ice, the worst habit I ever had.

For this, I have Jesus.

"So how's Dahlia?" My sister's name tasted bitter in my mouth.

He froze, an inch from my face. I stored the effect in my memory for future use. Man repellent couldn't have worked any better.

"Fine, I guess. You know how she is. It's always something." He shrugged, waiting for my agreement.