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been, then so be it. Right now, he didn’t care.
    He watched a car pull into the apartment parking lot and drop off a young couple. The two laughed as they waved goodbye and headed toward the front doors. Too bad Lori was sick. It would’ve been a great night to check out the action on campus. A concert, maybe, or a reading at the library. Life was about more than special-interest meetings, no matter what Lori thought.
    Luke’s mind drifted and he closed his eyes.
    Where did Reagan live these days? With her mother in New York, obviously … the place she’d run off to on September 11. But was she happy? Had she enrolled in school and continued her education? Did she work at a cafe somewhere waiting tables or had she taken time off to mourn the loss of her father?
    His words to his mother flashed in his mind: “You did the right thing. She had to know someday.” Luke gritted his teeth. He wouldn’t call Reagan-definitely not. Not when she knew how he’d changed. Not when she’d been so clear about his mother not telling him about her phone call.
    Why had she called, anyway? Wasn’t it enough that she’d refused his phone calls for months on end? She walked out on their relationship. What right did she have to try to find him now? He studied the sky above Bloomington and felt his anger 39 i
    II
    Ilj
    if
    ill
    dissipate. Maybe she needed to tell him something, something urgent. Maybe her mother had been hurt … or her brother.
    He caught his reflection in the glass and realized how long his hair was. He used to wear it short, his style conservative and clean-cut. But Lori told him a man looked better natural, with long hair and a beard, that in the crucial academic years it was important not to stifle any of himself or the power within him.
    So Luke had grown a mustache and a goatee, but he had drawn the line there.
    Beards bothered him, even if the lack of one left him powerless in his crucial academic years.
    He took a step back and caught more of his reflection. Even now-months after he’d made the decision to become someone else-he had trouble recognizing himself. Wavy hair down to his jaw, the unruly goatee and wispy mustache. The only thing
    even a little familiar about himself was the look in his eyes, a look that even September 11 hadn’t been able to destroy.
    A look that told him the truth about his feelings. No matter how often he lied to himself, he would always love a girl with long, blonde hair and a heart of gold; a girl who once told him she wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of her life with him. A girl who would’ve been Reagan Baxter.
    If only things had worked out differently.
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CHAPTER FOUR
    ASHLEY PULLED I N o the driveway at Sunset Hills Adult Care Home and grabbed the box of tea from the seat beside her. She was the manager now, and other workers shopped for the groceries. But the tea was something she took care of, something she had promised Irvel, Edith, and Helen. Ashley made sure the house was never without it.
    Halfway up the walk she paused and took in the sight of the old house. Bathed in the sunlight of a rare warm spring day, the place looked quaint and quiet. The tulips were in full bloom again, but there was nothing memorable about the brick front. Nothing that would make a passing motorist stop and take a second look.
    Yet beyond the front door was a world of pain and possibility, heartache and hope-and the sum of it had been exactly the therapy Ashley needed.
    After all, she’d taken the job at Sunset Hills Adult Care Home working with Alzheimer’s patients for one reason-to soften her own heart. She’d hoped that perhaps by working with society’s frail and forgotten, she might somehow find herself, find the
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    place from which she painted, the place she’d all but buried after her time in Paris. Yes, working at Sunset Hills had changed her.
    That, and the nightmare of September 11.
    Ashley had made peace with God and her past. In the process she’d started