Chapter 1

“Can I help you?” asked Dave Segrove. He was posting a notice on the bulletin board of the Community Center when a pretty, young girl came in the front door. She looked very confused and unsure of herself, and Dave also noted that she seemed very scared and sad.

“Is this where they have the meetings for ‘Lost Partners’?” she asked quietly, averting her eyes.

“Yes, it is,” Dave answered, surprised. The ‘Lost Partners’ program was a support group for widows and widowers the Community Center sponsored on Wednesday nights. Part group therapy, part support, and even part singles-bar-without-the-alcohol, the program helped individuals who had been having a tough time handling the loss of a spouse. Ever since Dave’s wife had died two years ago, he had been attending. Now, with the passage of time, the pain had subsided, but the routine of attendance functioned as a solace, and he had acquired the status of a senior member.

Dave took another look at the girl. She was much younger than the average member, most of whom were in their forties and fifties. Even Dave, in his thirties, was considered young. This girl was hardly in her twenties!

She still looked very unsure of herself, and her mind was made up when the door behind her opened and another woman entered, another regular who was old enough to be her mother. Sniffling back a sob, she mumbled, “I shouldn’t be here,” and ran back through the door. Dave stared in consternation as she stood on the sidewalk outside. He opened the door and stepped out into the cool, night air.

“Miss, miss...?” he asked as he approached her.

“Nancy, my name is Nancy,” she whispered.

Dave Segrove stepped in front of Nancy and spoke gently. “Nancy, did you lose someone recently?” Nancy nodded mutely as the tears poured out. “Come on in and join us, please? We all have, too. Maybe we can help.” With only the lightest of touches to her forearm, he turned the girl back towards the Community Center and began leading her back inside. “You don’t have to say anything, just be with us.” He opened the door and ushered her in gently. “Who was it, your husband?”

She shook her head negatively. “No, my fiancée. Does that mean I can’t come in?” She looked up at him, tears welling up again, and Dave got the first real look at the girl. She was young, but not quite as young as he had thought, and the eyes on the verge of overflowing with more tears were the most exquisite sapphire blue he had ever seen. She wasn’t pretty; she was beautiful!

“Not at all. Everybody, this is Nancy.” He led her into the meeting room and introduced her to the others as a new member. Quietly, he told her that if she didn’t want to say anything, she didn’t have to, and to feel free to ask questions. He parked her in a chair next to his around the large round table, then got them both a cup of coffee.

The new girl worried Dave somewhat. She seemed to exist in a brittle shell, and it took a couple of months before she began to feel confident enough to provide more than one- or two-word answers to any questions. She never did volunteer her last name or any personal details, other than the fact that it was her fiancée who had died, but slowly a picture began to emerge. She was only twenty-one and had been living with her fiancée prior to their wedding, when he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a cancer which was aggressive and fast growing and had already spread throughout his system. He had died two months later, but the worst was yet to come.

“It was his mother!” she said, one evening after she had begun to open up, lowering her reserve slightly. “She was this hard-line religious nut, and she figured that I caused the cancer. I had enticed her God-fearing son into living in sin, and this was God’s punishment. After the funeral, by the time I had gotten back to our apartment, she had managed to barricade herself inside the place and was screaming at me through the locked door and throwing my stuff out the window to the ground below.”

“Couldn’t you do something, I don’t know, get the cops to stop her?” asked a horrified woman in the group. This was the ultimate insult!

“Do what? The apartment was his, and most of the stuff was his as well. Outside of my clothing, I lost everything. I’ve had to start over again from scratch. I stayed with some friends until I could sell my engagement ring and pay the security deposit on an apartment,” Nancy replied.

Dave was shocked at this, and like several of the others, offered to help, but the girl waved it off. She was doing fine now, and would muddle through, she said. He admired her.

After the meeting, Dave washed the coffee pot and cleaned up, then walked across the street to the all-night diner for one last cup and a doughnut. Coming in the door, he noticed an arm waving and turned to face Nancy, sitting in a booth in the rear. Smiling, he pointed the waitress towards the booth and went back to join her. “Hi there.”

“Hi yourself. I didn’t know you came in here,” she said.