"Listen," I said. "It's my fault. You two go walk, and I'll try to find a hotel by the time you get back. I can always walk later."

"No way," Tess said. "First we'll walk and then we'll find a hotel. And then we'll book our flights. Today."

"I can't today," Rosie said. "I'm lucky to get out for a quick walk. I've got plans that I have to finish drawing, and the lavender fields are choking in weeds."

"And then we'll go help Rosie weed," I said.

"Speak for yourself," Tess said. "I've got weeds of my own."

It was the quietest walk we'd had so far. Our rhythm seemed off, too, as if our strides didn't quite match anymore, and we stretched out into a single file on the sidewalk, even though we didn't have to. Maybe the honeymoon was over, and pretty soon we'd take turns making up excuses why The Wildwater Walking Club wasn't walking today.

It was going to be a hot one. It was just July and it already felt like August. I wiped some sweat off my upper lip with the sleeve of my T-shirt. Maybe Rick didn't want to appear overanxious. Or maybe he was having second thoughts. Or maybe for him, later meant tomorrow, the way next summer can mean this coming summer to some people and the summer of next year to other people.

Maybe I'd just call him and tell him not to bother calling me, because I really didn't need the aggravation. I mean, I was fine with him calling me, and I was fine with him not calling me. But what I really hated was not knowing whether or not he would call, and even assuming he would, exactly when it might be. I just couldn't take it. Maybe there's a point in your life when you've simply had enough of this kind of thing.

I stepped off the curb, and Tess yanked me back by my T-shirt. A car beeped.

"What are you trying to do?" Tess said. "Get yourself killed?"

ROSIE, TESS, AND I leaned over my computer and searched the Internet in the bedroom I'd converted into a home office. I would have dusted things off a little if I'd known I was going to have company, but other than that, it wasn't too bad. We'd dragged a couple of my dining room chairs in for Rosie and Tess to sit on, and I'd passed out bottled water all around. I wasn't Martha Stewart, but I thought I was doing okay in the hostess department. I leaned over my computer and searched the Internet in the bedroom I'd converted into a home office. I would have dusted things off a little if I'd known I was going to have company, but other than that, it wasn't too bad. We'd dragged a couple of my dining room chairs in for Rosie and Tess to sit on, and I'd passed out bottled water all around. I wasn't Martha Stewart, but I thought I was doing okay in the hostess department.

We scrolled past a lavender-themed lesbian Internet chat line and a lavender-named historic railway run solely by volunteers in the village of Isfield in East Sussex, England. We learned that "laid out in lavender" could mean prepared for burial, since lavender was one of the herbs traditionally used to mask the strong smell of dead bodies, or it could also mean to show something in the best possible light. We found out that Adam and Eve may or may not have taken lavender with them when they were banished from the Garden of Eden, and that long ago, women used to throw their laundry over lavender bushes so it could absorb the scent as it dried.

"Do you think I could have sea lavender in my garden?" I asked.

"Sure," Rosie said, "but it's not really lavender. It's actually statice." She took over the mouse and surfed up a picture.

Eventually we moved on to finding a hotel. Nothing. Not a single available hotel within a hundred miles of the Sequim Lavender Festival.

"Bummer," I said. "I'm really sorry. I blew it."

"I'm sure a day didn't make a bit of difference," Rosie said.

"Wouldn't you know," Tess said. "Just when I was starting to get used to the idea."

"All right," I said, "let's think for a minute." I propped my elbows up on the desk and rested my head in my hands. One of the things I'd learned at work was that there was usually a solution if you just backed up, reassessed, and then approached the problem from a slightly different angle.

It was so quiet in the room you could almost hear our brains ticking. Outside, we heard a distant cock-a-doodle-do. cock-a-doodle-do.

"Oh, Rod," Rosie said, "keep it down, will you."

"I thought roosters were only supposed to crow to greet the day," Tess said.

"Try telling Rod Stewart that," Rosie said.

"I've got it," I said. "I'll print out a list of hotels and bed-and-breakfasts in the area. We'll split it three ways and just keep calling until we find one that's had a cancellation. I bet lots of people book their hotel early and then something comes up."

"Let's just go to New Orleans instead," Tess said.

"I can't," Rosie said. "I've got way too much to do without visiting teachers I don't even know. And I really think we should wait until next year to go anywhere."

"Never mind," I said. "I'll do it myself."

The minute they left, I printed out a list and curled up on the couch in my living room and started calling. Just on the off chance that today was Rick's idea of later and in case my call waiting wasn't reliable, I made sure I used my home phone and not my cell.

On the fifth call, to an all-suites hotel just off Highway 101, I hit pay dirt. "Good afternoon," a friendly woman's voice said. "Sequim Suites, how may I help you?"

"I'm hoping you can conjure up a hotel room for my walking partners and me for the lavender festival. We have our hearts set on going and we all really, really need to get away. One of us even has a lavender farm way over here on the East Coast in Massachusetts, and I just took a buyout from my company and it's the first vacation I've had in-"

"You're not going to believe this," the woman said.

"What?" I said.

"I just had a cancellation not five minutes ago. Technically, I'm supposed to check the waiting list..."

"Oh, please," I said. "Please, please, please. I'll bring you a pair of sneakers. Balancing Act. The Walk On By-top of the line. What size shoe do you wear?"

I called Tess and Rosie right away, and they came back over after dinner. I poured them each a glass of white wine. "It's not lavender black currant champagne," I said.

"It'll do," Tess said.

"To hot times in Sequim," Rosie said. We clinked our glasses.

"I can't believe the woman who answered the phone wears an eight and a half," I said. "I mean, how lucky can you get?"

"I can't believe you got us a hotel room," Rosie said. "And a suite, no less."

"No way am I sleeping on that pullout sofa," Tess said.

"We'll take turns," I said. "Come on, let's spend those frequent flier miles."

It took almost two hours, but eventually we worked our way through the online frequent flier reservation maze, and got all three of us on the same flights, both ways no less.

"What a workout," Tess said. "They sure don't make it easy. I can't believe how many miles it took. And how about that fuel surcharge-such a rip-off."

"But we did it," Rosie said. "That's the important thing. Ohmigod, how am I ever going to take that much time off?"

"Not a problem," I said. "I'll come weed for you tomorrow."

"Really?" Rosie said. "You'd do that?"

"Sure," I said. "As soon as we finish walking. And lifting and stretching."

After they left, I went into my kitchen and stared at my phone for a while. I closed my eyes and willed Rick to call. I went into the bathroom, washed my face, slathered on some moisturizer, brushed my teeth, gargled with mouthwash.

Just as I was walking to my bedroom, my cell phone rang.

"Wow, that was quick," I said out loud. I took my time walking to the phone. unavailable, my caller ID said, which was probably true, but I thought I should talk to him anyway. My heart took an extra beat as I reached for the phone.

"Hello," I said, trying unsuccessfully to conjure up my sexy dream voice.

"How're your windows working for you?" a rich male voice said.

I knew I should just hang up. "Okay, I guess," I said.

"Did you know that hands down the best thing you can do to increase your home value is to install tilt-to-clean vinyl replacement windows?"

I closed my eyes. "Really?" I said, just to hear him talk some more. I imagined him handsome, but not too, with kind eyes and a killer smile. I mean, everybody had to make a living, and who knew, he might make big bucks selling tilt-to-clean windows. Not that money was the most important thing.

"I kid you not. You'll pay them off in one to five years with just the energy savings alone. And that's without factoring in the sizeable tax rebates you can receive for making your home more energy efficient. And best of all, our personalized, professional estimate is free, and if you hurry you can just make the deadline on our thirty percent off special."

I'd heard stories about a woman my age at work who was paying some guy in his thirties for regular "massages" that included more than a massage. Maybe it had all started with a phone call like this.

I was lonely, but not that lonely. "Thanks anyway," I said before I hung up. "But windows are the least of my problems."

Day 17

10,013 steps

"I'LL BE OVER AS SOON AS I CHANGE," I SAID TO ROSIE. THE I SAID TO ROSIE. THE three of us had just finished working out, and Tess was already on her way back to her house. three of us had just finished working out, and Tess was already on her way back to her house.

"Are you sure?" Rosie asked.

"Absolutely. I've got nothing else planned for the day." Actually, I had nothing else planned for most of the rest of my life, but why go there.

"Thanks," Rosie said. "I'll meet you out in the lavender field."

I'd just replaced my sweaty, white walking T-shirt with a ripped-up old red one, and I was putting on an old pair of sneakers I didn't mind getting dirty, when my phone rang.

One shoe on and one shoe off, I hobbled into my kitchen. Sherry's name peered out from my caller ID. I wasn't sure I wanted to talk to her, but I figured I might as well get it over with, instead of worrying about whether or not to call her back.

"Hello," I said, as if I didn't already know who it was.

"Hi, Noreen, it's Sherry."

"Oh, hi, Sherry." I felt totally phony and it wasn't just about the caller ID. "How's it going?"

"Fine. I'm at work, so I have to make this quick. I was just wondering if you were planning to go to O'Malley's tonight."

I looked at my calendar. It was Wednesday again. Who knew. "I hadn't really thought about it," I said.

"Well, I was just thinking if you were already planning on going out, maybe we could skip O'Malley's and meet at Lemongrass instead. Remember the place where we had drinks and appetizers last time? Near that mall?"

It couldn't possibly be a good idea, but I also couldn't think of an easy way out. "Sure," I said. "What time?"

"Five-thirty?"

"See you then," I said.

I grabbed a handful of walnuts and pushed my back door open. Hannah was leaning against the fence that separated our properties, talking on her cell. She jumped when my door slammed.

I waved as I walked across my backyard.

"I'll call you right back," Hannah said into her phone. She clicked it off, then looked up at me. "What?"

I pointed to the path to Rosie's house. "Nothing. Just saying hi."

"It's a free country," she said. "I should be allowed to talk on my own phone."

I kept walking. "Have a nice day," I said.

Rosie was already weeding when I got to her house. An old, faded purple bandana covered most of her curls. I wondered if it had belonged to her mother.

"Wow," I said. "It's like a sea of purple around here. And I just can't get enough of the smell."

"Thanks for reminding me," Rosie said. "Sometimes I actually forget to smell the lavender. You get so used to it, you know? Here, jump right in." She pointed to a wheelbarrow. "If it's not lavender, it goes in there. The weeds are brutal this year. All that rain in June. We've got some sand down for mulch, but it doesn't do much. We can't use bark mulch-it holds in too much moisture and causes rot."

Rod Stewart strutted past us, stopping occasionally to scratch and peck at the ground. The Supremes followed him in a single file that was so perfectly spaced it looked almost choreographed. I kept waiting for them to break into the poultry version of "Stop! In the Name of Love."

"Not again," Rosie said. "Don't you dare eat my lettuce," she yelled. She lowered her voice again. "Just in case you were wondering where the expression 'fly the coop' comes from, they're amazing escape artists. Let me know if they're bothering you."

Maybe it was all that walking together, but Rosie and I fell into an easy weeding cadence, standing a few rows apart and working from left to right.

"Will the lavender still be in bloom when we get to Sequim?" I asked.

Rosie laughed. "Of course. They plan the festival around the peak of the bloom season. Theirs is a couple weeks after ours."

"So this is past peak?" I asked. I looked out over the rows and rows of bushy plants covered in spikes of flowers. Most of the flowers were some shade of purple, though a few plants had pink blooms like my Hidcote, and even white. Bees and butterflies were everywhere, as well as an occasional hummingbird, something I only remembered seeing in photos. The bees were making me a little bit nervous, but as long as I stayed out of their flight patterns, they didn't seem interested in me.

Rosie adjusted her purple bandana and left a streak of dirt under one ear. "Yup. Enjoy it while you can. Another few weeks and the show's pretty much over, though some of the early bloomers will have a second, smaller flowering, which you can help along if you cut them back fast once the first one is over. Anyway, I should be harvesting. The best time is as soon as the blooms open."

I looked around. "It seems like such a shame to pick them."

Rosie pulled a big leafy weed, shook the dirt off the roots, then tossed it into the wheelbarrow. "Yeah, especially when I'm not really using the harvest. Most of the stuff in the shop has been sitting there for a while. I should at least change out last year's dried bouquets and check to make sure nothing has gone bad. Not that we get many customers anymore."

An older man, who looked just like Rosie, but with only a hint of red left in his yellowy white curls, came out to join us.