Man With A Mission. Muriel Jensen

valley after being away for so long. If Jackie Bourgeois didn’t live here, he thought, it’d be perfect.

      Judging by outward appearances, very little had changed in Maple Hill in over two hundred years. Realizing that its cozy, colonial ambience was its stock-in-trade when tourists visited, the local merchants’ association with the aid of City Hall had done everything possible to maintain the flavor.

      The road to town was lined with old homes in the classic saltbox and Georgian revival styles and set back on spacious lawns, their trees now naked against the sky. Old barns housed businesses, and old inns had been refurbished.

      Houses were built closer to the street as Hank drew nearer to town. Some of the cobblestones were still visible, and the streetlights looked like something out of Old London.

      Maple Hill Common, the town square and the heart of commercial downtown, boasted a bronze statue of a Minuteman and a woman in eighteenth-century dress, surrounded by a low stone wall. Around the square were shops that looked much as they had in the 1700s. A 50-star flag and an old colonial flag with its thirteen stars in a circle flew from a pole on the green.

      The sight never failed to move him. He felt connected to a historic past here, while bound to a town looking toward the future. You could buy a mochaccino, high-tech software and designer clothing, or sniff oxygen in a bar if you so desired. Maple Hill was quaint, but there was nothing backward about it.

      Hank pulled into a parking spot on the City Hall lot, pleasantly surprised that it hadn’t already been claimed. The spot next to his held a red Astro van and a sign that read, THE MAYOR PARKS HERE.

      He turned off the engine and retrieved his key, annoyed that thoughts of Jackie interrupted his pleasant musings on the good life he lived here. But he’d better get used to it, he thought philosophically. He might not have to deal with her, but he was bound to run into her more often with his office in City Hall.

      SUICIDE HAD SO MUCH APPEAL, Jackie Bourgeois thought as she put a hand to the rampaging baby in her womb. She would do it with a dozen Dulce de Leche Häagen-Dazs bars, pots of caffeinated coffee and several bottles of Perrier-Jouët champagne—all the things she hadn’t been able to touch since she’d found out she was pregnant.

      She’d have to wait until the baby was in college, of course. Responsible women simply didn’t walk away from their problems. The Yankee ethic wouldn’t allow it.

      By the time the baby was eighteen, Erica and Rachel would be married and able to provide for him when he came home on school breaks. They wouldn’t even miss her. They were all convinced her sole purpose in life was to make them miserable anyway.

      Her father loved her, but he’d made his life without her and the girls since her mother died several years ago. He’d bought a place in Miami and often forgot to check in with his family as he embarked on new adventures.

      And two of the city councilmen wouldn’t miss her, except as someone to accuse of feminine ignorance or heartless female highhandedness, depending upon which complaint best suited their current disagreement. At the moment she was a harpy for renting space in the basement, a capitalist venture they considered beneath the dignity of city government.

      Holding on to the railing, Jackie made her way carefully down the basement steps, checking on the city’s two new tenants as a way of avoiding the councilmen blustering upstairs.

      City Hall was housed in an old colonial mansion that had been built after the Revolutionary War by Robert Bourgeois, an ancestor of Jackie’s late husband. City offices were on the first floor, the mayor’s office and meeting rooms were upstairs, and local events were hosted in the old ballroom. The basement had been cleaned out and redecorated after a hurricane last summer left it water damaged, and Jackie and Will Dancer, the city planner, had come up with a plan to rent office space there to help support the aging building’s many repairs. Will’s office had handled the actual rental of space and Jackie had been too busy with other city affairs to find out who’d secured them.

      She peered into the first office and found it chaotic, a sort of examining bed, an odd-looking chair, a file cabinet painted lavender and several pieces of brocade furniture clumped in the middle of the room. There were boxes on the floor filled with what was probably the contents of the file cabinet, and several framed landscapes leaned against the wall.

      “Hi!”

      Jackie almost jumped out of her skin at the high-pitched greeting. She turned to find a tall, slender woman perhaps a few years older than she, dressed in lavender leggings and flats and a long-sleeved lavender T-shirt. A wide purple band circled her carroty hair and was caught above her left ear in an exaggeratedly large bow.

      “Mrs. Mayor!” the woman said breathlessly, offering her hand from under a large box she’d apparently just brought in from the side entrance. “How nice to meet you. I’m Parker Peterson.”

      “Hi.” Jackie shook her hand and wanted to try to help her ease the box to the floor, but her pregnancy allowed very little bending at this stage. The woman seemed to have no trouble handling it on her own, a taut line of arm and shoulder muscles revealed by her snug shirt.

      She straightened and put one hand on her hip and the other up to fluff her bow. “What a good idea this is! I’ll be right in the thick of the stress and strain of business life. These poor nine-to-fivers are my client base, you know.”

      Jackie looked a little worriedly at the curious couch, the odd chair and Parker Peterson’s flamboyant style of dress. She was almost afraid to ask. “What is it you do, Ms. Peterson?”

      Parker gave the odd little chair a pat. “I’m a massage therapist. Here. Sit down and put your head right here.” She fluffed the small cushion on the funny arm sticking out in front of the chair. “You straddle it like a horse.”

      Jackie patted her stomach. “We’re not very athletic these days.”

      “It doesn’t really take much effort. Here, I’ll help you.” She steadied Jackie’s arm as she spoke and encouraged her to lift her foot to the other side of the stool-like chair.

      Jackie would have continued to resist, except that Parker had put her hand to the small of Jackie’s back as she spoke and rubbed her fingertips at the base of her spine where the pressure of five or six pounds of baby and fifteen or so pounds of “support” sat twenty-four hours a day. The relief was instant and melted her protests.

      “We need to loosen up your back muscles,” Parker said. “That’s it. Feel that? Gotta prevent that tension or you’ll be miserable until you deliver. A couple of weeks?”

      “About a month and a half,” Jackie replied, unable to believe she was a pile of jelly in this woman’s hands after two minutes’ acquaintance. She was usually very much aware of her dignity as mayor—not because she was pretentious, but because her council was always looking for something about her to criticize.

      And she had to pretend to the town that though her husband had died in the arms of a cocktail waitress after promising Jackie he was rededicating himself to their marriage and their two children, he hadn’t humiliated her, but embarrassed his own memory. And she liked to think that the pregnancy that had resulted from that promise was a testament to her trust.

      The baby stirred as though also appreciating the massage.

      Parker’s hands went up Jackie’s spine and down again with gentle force.

      “You have to stop,” Jackie said weakly, her voice altered by her cheek squashed against the pillow and the total relaxation of her now considerable body weight. “I have a meeting in fifteen minutes. You’ll have to roll me in on the chair.”

      Parker laughed as her fingertips worked across Jackie’s shoulders. “You’ll have to come and see me when you need a break. I’m good, I’m reasonable and I’ll give special rates to anyone who works in the building. I’ll be here from eight to six.”

      Parker stopped working and helped Jackie to her feet. “Isn’t that better?”

      Jackie