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Maureen O'Casey, with three family-sized pizzas stacked on the passenger seat of her Jeep Cherokee, stopped beneath a street light to check her map of Bixby. |
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She looked for Mercer Lane. She'd set out from the pizza parlor certain that she knew where to find it. But the street had turned out to be Merced, and she realized she didn't have the foggiest notion where Mercer might be. |
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Her brother, Rory, would probably be able to drive there blindfolded. He'd been delivering pizzas for six years, ever since the family moved here from Modesto. Except for occasional visits, however, Maureen had spent those years in San Francisco doing graduate work and later writing books for children. Her visits had provided her with knowledge of Bixby's general layout and quite a few of its streets, but not Mercer. |
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Maureen found her ignorance annoying. She liked to feel in control of whatever situations presented themselves, and she was definitely not in control of this. She should've anticipated that she would be asked, sooner or later, to make deliveries. But she |
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