“Are you ready for bed?” she asked Garth.

“In a bit,” he promised.

Her husband was generally the first to retire for the evening, and his willingness to stay up for the news surprised her. He must have noticed her hesitation because he glanced her way. “Can I wake you?” The question held a much deeper connotation.

Karen smiled and nodded. “You can wake me anytime you want, Garth.”

He smiled and then playfully growled.

How fortunate she was, Karen mused, as she headed for their bedroom, to have a husband who loved her.

Chapter 4

Cassie had a fifteen-minute break between clients and was sitting in the break room, checking her cell for messages. Earlier Rosie had connected her with her cousin Russell, who said he might be able to get Cassie a weekend job working for the catering company that serviced the suites for the Sounders’ soccer games. She already had a health card from the time she worked in a fast-food restaurant while going to cosmetology school. If she got hired as a server for even two or three of their games, she’d be able to earn enough to rent a truck and drive to Spokane to collect the furniture Karen had mentioned. Her sister had made it plain she didn’t want to be paying storage fees for more than two months.

Cassie had her feet braced against the chair. When she saw she had a voice message and who it was from, both feet dropped to the floor like a bag of concrete.

Habitat for Humanity.

This was it. Cassie was about to learn if she’d been accepted as a candidate for the program. She’d had to supply every bit of identification she’d accumulated in her entire life, including her birth certificate, her Social Security card, an income tax return, and bank statements. Plus she had to have worked six months with proof of income.

Megan Victory, who’d helped Cassie through the application process, mentioned that in addition to everything else, Cassie had to show proof of a savings account. Cassie opened an account with the minimum deposit. She learned that before she would be eligible to move into her new home, she’d need to have enough saved to pay the first year’s home insurance premium.

Anyone applying through Habitat had to be serious about wanting a home to go through this process. Once all the paperwork was compiled and Cassie had filled out the application, she met with the family selection committee. Following the interview, she then had to be approved by the board of directors. It’d been a month she’d been waiting for their final decision.

For a long time Cassie simply stared at her phone, unable to find the courage to play the message. Her biggest fear was that she hadn’t been considered a good candidate.

Teresa, the shop owner, came into the break room and grabbed a soda out of the communal refrigerator. She took one look at Cassie and paused. “You feeling okay?”

Cassie looked up from her phone and knew she must have gone pale. “I don’t know yet.”

“Yet? What’s the problem?”

Thrusting out her arm, Cassie handed her cell to her friend. “Here, listen to the message and let me know what they say.”

“Who called?”

Cassie didn’t have time for explanations. “Just listen, and don’t ask questions.”

Teresa reached for the phone, pushed the appropriate buttons, and pressed it to her ear. Intent on watching Teresa’s face, Cassie didn’t notice that Rosie had come into the room.

“Mr. Greenstein is here for his haircut.”

Cassie’s gaze didn’t waver from the shop owner. “He’s early. Tell him I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

Rosie left the room and Teresa handed the cell back to Cassie.

“What did they say?” Cassie asked, doing her best to keep the quiver out of her voice.

“Well, my dear, it looks like you’ve been approved.”

Cassie closed her eyes in order to absorb the sheer magnitude of the news. “They approved me?”

“They sure did!”

“They approved me,” she repeated, louder this time, so excited that it was impossible to hold still. She leaped to her feet and pumped her fists into the air. “I’m going to have a home. A real home for Amiee and me.” No more stove with no oven and nonworking burners. No more leaky bathroom faucets and a hot-water heater possessed with an evil spirit.

“They want you to stop by their office tonight after work, if possible.”

“I’ll be there.” Cassie danced around the table, so overcome with joy that she could barely breathe. For the first time in her young life, Amiee would have stability. She would live in a neighborhood, have a sense of place and of belonging. At last Cassie would be able to give her daughter the roots Amiee had never known.

Cassie understood that this house wasn’t a gift. She’d be expected to volunteer a number of hours, making her own contribution in return for this amazing opportunity. How many hours depended on what kind of house was available to her.

A foreclosure would require one hundred and eighty hours of volunteer work and not necessarily on the house that would be hers, but on whatever house needed work. Three hundred to five hundred hours was what was expected if her home was being built from the ground up.

“I told you about the conversation I had with my sister, didn’t I?” Cassie cried, covering her mouth with both hands, unable to hold back her glee. This good news was almost too much for her to absorb, especially following on the heels of hearing from Karen.

“Cassie,” Teresa said, laughing. “I believe you’ve told everyone.”

“Have I?” She must have done something very right to have received two tremendous gifts in a row. First the offer from her sister and now this. Cassie longed to toss out her arms and twirl around and around as if to say her life and her heart were open and receptive to all the good things that awaited her. She’d paid her dues in misery. She’d made mistakes and learned her lesson. From this point forward, Duke and all the anguish he’d brought into her life was done. Finished. Caput.

Cassie’s last appointment of the day was Mrs. Wilma Scott, who came in weekly for a wash and blow-dry. The elderly woman was close to eighty and continued to live in her own home. Raising her arms above her head had become difficult, so she had a standard appointment once a week to have her hair washed and styled. Cassie had grown fond of the older woman and enjoyed their weekly meetings.

When she’d finished, Wilma gave her a generous tip and Cassie walked her to her vehicle. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to drive,” she muttered, as Cassie held open the driver’s-side door. “I suppose there will be the time when I’ll need to consider moving into one of those assisted-living complexes. At my age it’s difficult to make significant changes, but then that’s life.”

“It is,” Cassie agreed, as she handed Wilma the seat belt, stretching it out to make it easier for the older woman to snap it into place. “I’ll see you next week.”

“You do good work, Cassie. I wanted to look especially nice tonight. I’m taking my nephew and his wife out to dinner. They have two girls in college and can’t afford an evening out, so it’s my treat.”

“You’re so thoughtful,” Cassie told her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been treated to dinner by anyone. If she could manage a dinner out, Amiee would insist on KFC.

“John and I never had children of our own, so I’ve adopted my brother’s three. I enjoy spending time with them. Thank you, Cassie. No one does my hair better than you.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Scott.” Cassie closed the car door and stepped back as Wilma pulled out of the parking space and headed down Fourth Avenue.

As soon as she’d finished cleaning up her station, Cassie collected her purse and headed for the Habitat for Humanity offices. Her heart hummed with joy the entire way. She couldn’t wipe the smile off her face. She sent a text to her daughter and promised to be home as soon as she could. But she didn’t tell Amiee why she’d be late; she’d save that surprise for later.

Megan Victory glanced up when Cassie entered the office. A man stood next to Megan’s desk, dressed in work jeans, with a tool belt strapped to his waist. He glanced toward Cassie and frowned. It seemed he didn’t like what he saw, which might possibly be her hair. Teresa had recently cut and styled it as part of a stylist competition held at the Tacoma Dome. One side of Cassie’s head was shaved close and the other side was left long and cut at an angle so that it fell forward over the side of her face. Teresa had added purple highlights to the tips of her brown hair.