Bad Heiress Day. Allie Pleiter

      Ernestine clasped her hands together like a teacher making an announcement. “Now, you go two doors down to Stephano’s for lunch, there are some splendid salads waiting for you and some dessert that’s going to make you feel like the treasures you are. I’ve had his chocolate mousse, dears, and it’s absolutely heavenly. Off with you now. You come back at one-thirty for facials and massage.”

      “Oh. Oh, this is fantastic. I’d ask for seconds if I didn’t feel like such a pig already. And even that might not stop me.” Kate was leaning back, eyes closed, savoring the chocolate dessert before her.

      “Worth every despicable calorie,” murmured Darcy, her own mouth full of the spectacularly smooth, silky mousse. The meal had been wonderful. What she’d eaten of it, that was. She’d spent the majority of the time outlining her brainstorm to Kate. Darcy was glad Kate seemed to like the idea as much as she did.

      “Really.” Kate finished off another spoonful and licked her fingers. “I love your idea of giving women under the strain of care a day of respite just like the one we’re having. Who knows better than you what happens to people when they spend such a long time in dying-loved-one mode? It’s taken so much out of you, Dar. And not just you. Jack and the kids, too.”

      “I know,” agreed Darcy, thinking of the way Jack looked the other week. “Even with everybody trying to make the best of it, things have been wearing pretty thin at our house. Jack and I have argued more in the last six months than in our whole marriage. I’m fried, he’s tired of my being fried, the kids act up, and no one wants to say anything because how can you blame a man for dying? Nobody wants it, but it…rots—” she pointed her spoon for emphasis on their new catchphrase “—just the same.”

      Kate leaned in. “But you see, that’s the great thing about this. It does rot and you can’t blame anyone. Near as I can tell, there’s this sort of unwritten rule that you can’t get angry at it. You have to be noble and enduring, because it’s your parent and all, but it shreds people from the inside out.” Kate sucked in a breath and looked down, as if she hadn’t meant to be so direct about the state of affairs at the Nightengale house. “It’s been hard to watch all of you. There’s nothing I can do to make it better. Your dad was going to die, you had to practically put your life on hold to deal with it, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to change it. If someone had given you a nudge to take care of yourself, the kind of reminder you’re talking about, then things might not have gotten so bad.”

      Darcy swirled her spoon in the rich, brown ripples. “Things have gotten ‘so bad,’ haven’t they?” she asked softly.

      “Jack’s been a saint, but he’s human. You can see the frustration in his eyes. Look, Dar, no one can blame anyone. There doesn’t seem to be a painless way to do this. Damage happens. I don’t know that I wouldn’t turn into an absolute shrew under the circumstances. I’d doubt anyone can guess what it’s like to go through what you’ve been through.”

      “Things are still messy. But I feel better. Loads better. Maybe if I feel better, than things can get better. Or at least I can start making them better.” She paused for a moment before adding, “Dad had his daughter’s attention for a long time. Maybe it’s time Jack gets his wife back.”

      Kate winked. “Oh, but he’s not getting his wife. He’s getting a new, improved version. I’d give anything to see the look on his face when he sees you.”

      They laughed. And Darcy realized things were already on their way to getting better. She pulled a pen from her purse and snatched a paper place mat from the next table, flipping over to the blank side. She wrote a number one in a big, bold hand.

      “First, I think we need to run a test. See if every woman gets the same boost from the pampering. Today ran us about four hundred dollars, including lunch. It’s got to be the women and a friend—this would be no fun alone, and I’m betting these ladies haven’t had lunch with a friend in weeks, if not months. If we pull two thousand dollars, we can run a five-pair test group. I thought of more than six names off the top of my head from women at the hospice center. They run a gamut of ages, too, so we can try a good mix.” She wrote “Test Group” in capital letters after the number one.

      “Ernestine?” Kate suggested.

      “She’d be fabulous, but I think we’d better stick closer to home. Any ideas?”

      “We can ask Ernestine to suggest someone, but I have a friend who does the spa thing all the time. The lady’s nails are perfect every waking moment. She’d know where to go.” Kate admired her own newly perfect nails.

      “Okay, but not too posh. We want really nice, but not too over the top. I wouldn’t want to sit in the pedicure chair listening to a bunch of country club types talk about their latest trip to the Virgin Islands, would you?”

      Kate pointed her spoon at Darcy. “Good point.”

      Darcy penned a number two. She spread her hands on the table, her mind whirring. She didn’t even have words to describe the sparkling sensation in her chest. “We need a go-between. Someone to let the women know they’re receiving this gift. I think we have to do this anonymously.”

      “What?” balked Kate. “You don’t want to be known as the patron saint of martyr beauty?”

      “That’s a good one,” Darcy replied, laughing. “I’ll put it on my business cards. But I’m sure we need to do this without anyone knowing who we are. And we need someone who can convince these women that this is on the level, and that it is important and worth taking the time. Someone from the hospice, like…Meredith. She’s the hospice center’s executive director. Oh, she’d be perfect. She’s got that sage-wise-woman quality about her that makes you listen to what she has to say.” Darcy wrote “Contact—Meredith?” beside the two. She looked up to find Kate staring at her. “What?”

      “Business cards. Dar, that’s the first joke I’ve heard you crack in nearly three months.”

      Darcy thought. “It is, isn’t it?”

      “And what’s with the ‘we’? Nobody left me a fortune to give away, you know,” Kate added, hesitantly.

      Darcy stopped short. She’d never even considered that she ought to ask Kate if she wanted to be involved. Perhaps that was a bad assumption. But she needed her. Badly. She looked at Kate intently. “You’re in on this, aren’t you? Kate, I can’t do this without you. You’ve got to be in on this.”

      Kate’s smile was as rich as the mousse. “You betcha. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” She held out her hand. “Partners.”

      Darcy shook it, manicure to manicure. “Maybe co-conspirators is more accurate. But that sounds too…I don’t know…too criminal.” Darcy pondered. “What’d Robin Hood call his buddies?”

      Kate narrowed her eyes, thinking. “The Merry Men, wasn’t it?”

      “Ick. We need something better than that.”

      “Bandits of Beauty?”

      “Ugh. Even worse.”

      “Drive-by Pamperers.”

      Darcy laughed. “That sounds like we’re chucking diapers out of a minivan window. Definitely not.”

      “I’m stumped.”

      “Me, too.”

      Kate folded her hands under her chin. “Well, how do you feel? What word would you give to what’s happened to you today?”

      Darcy considered the question for a long moment. She finally said, “Healed. Put back together. Restored.”

      “Restored. I like the sound of that. That fits.”

      Without another word, Darcy put her pen to the top of the page and wrote, “The Restoration Project.”

      Kate nodded in agreement. “So it is written, so may it be done.”