Cecie’s day starts well and gets better. She has an excellent workout at her club; now that she’s on the other side of 50 she appreciates any day she doesn’t need ibuprofen. When she arrives at work the children are playing musical chairs, but the dreadful CD has been damaged. Instead of the cloying theme from “It’s a Small World,” the kids promenade to a Wallflowers song. Cecie pauses to watch. They’re a well-mixed group right now. Could be a classic Benetton ad. She quick-counts fourteen moppets, girl-boy even, fair, dark and in-between. She smiles as Carmen stops the music and thirteen butts hit thirteen chairs. She strides then into her small office, closing her door so briskly that her CECILIA COLLINS nameplate clatters on its brass hooks.

She has been executive director of the childcare center for a dozen years but she still refuses to let them paint her name on the door. She is fickle about fonts. She remembers a line from an email joke about fortune cookies – he who dies with the most fonts wins – and she tends to agree. She has eight different nameplates that will fit her door hooks, and she changes them when she pleases.

Cecie has just about decided to switch to her C. Collins, Executive Director nameplate when she glances at the pile of mail centered on her desk. Carmen has sorted it so the envelope from the Family Foundation is on top. Cecie forgets fonts for a moment, to open what turns out to be a very sweet announcement. Not only did they get the grant; it came on their terms. It’s up to them to determine how to spend this $30,000. She starts to the door, to tell Carmen and to announce a lunch meeting to discuss this award, but the second envelope in the mail pile distracts her; this time she pauses to open a small one marked “Personal & Confidential.”

What she sees makes her sit. Sigh. Smile.

The front of the card is an impressionist mountain landscape. Inside are twenty words written in Wayne’s upright script: “Living longer without you doesn’t suit me any longer. Marry me, Cecie. Dine with me tonight and tell me when.”

Cecie considers. Shall she lunch with Carmen and Andrea, to discuss the grant money while the children rest? or break away for a consult with Cass about Wayne’s proposal? Her first impulse is to go to her best friend, but that’s quickly followed by the certainty that Cass won’t encourage acceptance; Cecie decides to be a fiancée before a friend.

Of course she’ll marry Wayne. She wouldn’t have joined the matchmaking service if she weren’t aimed at marriage; the enrollment fee was too steep to attract casual daters. Even though her two other attempts haven’t worked out, Cecie is determined to try the state again. “We’re not getting any younger,” she’s told Cassie more than often. “Soon all we’ll be able to attract will be old men looking for nurses.” Cass always rebuts with “Stop treating yourself like a statistic.” Sometimes her advice is more specific and painful. Cecie winces slightly as she remembers her friend’s words. “For God’s sake, wait for your heart to inform you. You married first because you were terrified of spinster status, and second to provide a father to Curt; now you’re seeking marriage because some geriatric clock is ticking. Stop being so damned tactical.”