December 15
Rosalind reached over and turned off her alarm clock. She didn't need it to wake her, for she hadn't slept at all the previous night. How could she sleep after finding the birthday card in the advent calendar and realizing Brett was her secret admirer?
It all made sense. There was no stalker. Brett knew her favorite perfume and the name of "their" song. He also knew about her desire to visit Paris. No doubt he even knew her well enough to buy a scarf she would want.
She laughed at herself as she stepped into the shower.
"God! I must have been blind not to see all the clues! He even sent me a key chain with his book on it."
And the advent calendar was so like him. Brett was a romantic at heart. It was what she loved most about him. He had courted her with champagne, flowers, chocolates, candlelit dinners and poetry. They were all there inside the advent calendar, yet Rosalind had been too heartbroken by their breakup to see the obvious: he was using the calendar to win her back. Suddenly her thirty-ninth year didn't seem too dreadful.
What should I do now? Is Brett waiting for me to put the pieces together and solve the puzzle? Is he expecting me to call him?
No, she decided. He was an award-winning mystery writer and a master at building suspense. The items in the advent calendar were carefully selected to lead up to a climax that would be revealed by December twenty-fifth.
Unlike the previous day, Rosalind was all smiles when she went to her office. After greeting her coworkers, she told Sara to hold her calls. Then she shut her door, sat at her desk and read the David Knight manuscript right through to the end of the final chapter.
At five o'clock, she left the edited manuscript in her secretary's inbox with a post-it note instructing Sara to make a copy for the files and FedEx the original to the author. Then she headed for the bus stop, eager to go home to see what Brett had put in the drawer marked fifteen.
When she got to her apartment, Rosalind didn't go into the kitchen but instead headed straight for the living room. Inside the day's drawer was a newspaper ad from the real estate section of The Boston Globe.
Rosalind's heartbeat quickened. Brett had two townhouses: one in New York, where he lived with his wife, and a second in the Beacon Hill section of Boston, where he frequently went to write. He had once confessed to her that he didn't really care for city life and would prefer to sell both his homes and live on Nantucket. So, when she read the advertisement for the three-story colonial with ocean-front property, Rosalind knew the house was on Nantucket and that Brett was still considering the move to the quaint Massachusetts island.
