No: Cecie will accept Wayne first and tell Cass later.

With that decision, she walks to the door of her office. She hangs her Ms. C. Collins  nameplate and looks toward Carmen. The game of musical chairs is down to eight. Cecie has to walk to where Carmen is operating the CD player to arrange the lunch meeting, but when that’s done her thoughts return to Wayne.

She remembers thinking he looked so safe when she saw him in the album. She expressed interest in five other men, but then she added Wayne because she knew he wouldn’t hurt her. And of those first five, three weren’t interested and two made for terrible dates, but Wayne was sweet, dependable, and appreciative.

That’s how it went then, and how it kept going for the short time before she put herself on the inactive list. The men who looked sexy to her thought she was too old, or too straight, or something. The few who responded were egotistical bores. Except Wayne.

“Time enough to muse about Wayne later,” Cecie tells herself while she thumbs quickly through the rest of the day’s mail. She grins as she imagines how happy he’ll be, but she makes herself think instead about how to spend the grant. Thirty thousand dollars.  They could put it into staff salaries, or give the parents a fee cut, or spend it on the kids. They could split the baby and do a bit of all three…”The thing is,” Cecie speaks aloud as she begins to pace her office, “the knee-jerk reaction is to spend it on the kids, but that’s probably the last place to put the money. Good childcare should pay decently, and yet it shouldn’t cost so much that the parents lose money by working. That means money ought to go to pay the staff better wages or make the service more affordable.” Cecie is practically rehearsing, before meeting with her senior staff. But she knows they won’t see things her way. Soft-hearted Andrea will want to buy toys and Carmen will probably argue for that or for raises. Neither will advocate a fee cut for parents; they won’t see the need for a new approach to childcare. “Knock it off, Cece,” she admonishes herself. “Be happy about the grant. Be happy about Wayne.”

She bobbles back into bemusement. Should she change her name? Hyphenate? She’s far too old for it, but she feels like doodling new signatures. Designing nameplates. Cecilia Collins-Costello? Director Costello? Wayne and Cecie Costello…

Bob could perform the ceremony. No that wouldn’t be appropriate. She still has some feelings for Bob – she’s carried a bit of a torch for him ever since that first flirtation back when she was married to lawyer Jim and Bob hadn’t yet been made a judge – and it would be too awful if in the headiness of the ritual and the champagne she were to somehow reveal those feelings. She won’t take a chance on hurting Wayne. They’ll have to find someone else to officiate. In fact, given the proximity of Cecie’s Catholic mother, they’ll probably have to find someone with a religious affiliation to marry them. Not that Cecie could ever please her mother. Her mother likes men. She paid attention to Cecie’s father when he lived, to Cecie’s younger brother before he died, to Cecie’s husband Jim, husband Ed, son Curt, even to Cecie’s boyfriend Wayne, but she never pays any but critical attention to Cecie.