She wanted the right beginning to this special day: the first day of her new job, the first step toward a secure future.
“I got it, Daddy,” she said, lifting her coffee cup to toast the fountain in the square below. “I start today. Wish me luck.”
Darien surely would have, if he’d still lived. Three months and six days ago, while sitting in the square and dozing in the sun, Min’s father had gone home, his worn-out heart coming to a final, peaceful stop. She’d walked out to wake him for dinner and found him still and silent, his dark eyes closed and his white hair breeze-ruffled, a copy of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court still in his hands. As if even Death himself couldn’t part Darien from his beloved Twain.
For a long time afterward, the weight of Min’s grief had flattened everything to gray facades of what had been. But gradually the terrible pain had eased a little, and she began to see Darien’s death as more than her own loss. Her father had died as he had lived: quietly, with dignity, in a place he loved. Every time Min walked through the square now, she could almost feel him there, watching her and smiling a little.
It’s all yours now, baby girl, he’d written in the letter that his lawyer had handed her after the funeral, along with Darien’s entire estate. Keep it safe and watch your back.
That Min’s father had left her one of the oldest and most historically important private homes in Savannah had outraged plenty but surprised few. Over the last forty years Darien had flatly rejected hundreds of generous offers to buy Sapphire House, and not even the richest of the museum people—the righteous snoots, he’d called them—could convince him to sell his home into their covetous hands.
“That girl’s only twenty-three,” the president of the Savannah Ladies Historic Society had mourned aloud after her fourth mimosa at their most recent monthly luncheon meeting. “I’ve got purses that are older.”
“I don’t know what Darien was thinking.” Her vice president held a delicate lace hankie, with which she dabbed at the sweaty space between her large nostrils and thin upper lip. “She’s never been one of us. She’ll sell it to the first Yankee who comes along with a carpetbag full of cash and parking lot plans—I guarantee.”
The ladies really couldn’t be blamed for their assumptions. No one knew much about Min, except that Darien had kept her out of society and had sent her overseas to be educated. They had never bothered to get to know her, either, or they would have understood how much she loved Old Blue, and what she was prepared to do to take care of it.
She looked past the dew-beaded dark green iron leaves of the narrow balcony side railing to see the first rays of the sun gild the thick, bubbled glass panes in the third-story windows. The old oak shutters by the Rose Bedroom needed replacing; she’d have to talk to Thomas Gaudette about it the next time she saw him at church. He worked as a general handyman around the square, and had the know-how to find or make two new shutters to match the other forty-six—without charging her an arm and a leg in the process.
Her father’s weathered face smiled at her from the shadows of her memory. That’s my girl.
She blew a little steam off the top of her cup before sipping the sweet, milky coffee she’d brewed for herself. Geraldine’s was better, but after her father had passed away the old cook had finally retired to live out her golden years on Tybee Island with her husband, six children, and twenty-seven grandchildren. Min was happy for her, but she missed her terribly.
Soon she’d have to go inside and start getting ready for work. She’d chosen what she planned to wear the night before—her favorite navy blue suit with a tailored snow-white blouse—but she wanted an hour to do her hair and makeup.
You can’t run do everything, sugar, Geraldine had said whenever Min had complained about how long it took to brush and braid her long hair. Young lady like you have to take her time, so she always look as cool and sweet as a peach.
With time Min had tamed her impatience, and now carefully planned and prepared for everything. Last week she’d ruthlessly traded the long, girlish length of her hair for a more stylish, asymmetrical wedge cut. She still hadn’t grown used