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right-hand man had been like a second father to me. He might be more upset than my dad.
    “I thought the saying was ‘why buy the milk’—”
    Dovie cut me off. “Work with me, LucyD.”
    I was shaking my head when the buzzer chimed. “It’s too soon,” I repeated as Suz said, “Valentine, Inc.,” into the intercom. Was I the only one with any sense?
    “Meaghan Archibald here to see Lucy Valentine.”
    I jumped up, grateful for the reprieve as Suz buzzed Meaghan upstairs. Preston pulled on her boot.
    “Can you send her back to my office, please?” I asked Suz, heading that way. Preston gimped ahead of me and turned into the little kitchenette off the hall. I gave my mother and grandmother kisses. “You two behave yourselves.”
    “We always do,” Mum said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ears.
    “Hardly.”
    “Shoo with you,” Dovie said. As I headed down the hall, I heard her say, “Shall we throw a shacking-up party for her?”
    “You’re not funny!” I yelled.
    “Are, too!” echoed back to me.
    In my office, I set down my tote bag, pulled a pad of paper from my desk drawer. Preston limped in, carrying a coffee urn and mugs on a silver tray. She pushed back her spiky blond bangs and looked at me out of the corner of her eye.
    “What?” I asked.
    “You were about to say something earlier before and cut yourself off.”
    “Was I?”
    “You’re not a good liar.”
    Ha—I had her fooled. I was a great liar. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    She sank into a chair. “It sounded like you were about to say ‘Cupid’s Curse.’ ”
    “Cupid’s Curse?” I forced a laugh. “Sounds like a bad attraction at a haunted house.”
    “You may as well just tell me. You know I’ll figure it out.”
    That’s what I was afraid of.

3
    Meaghan Archibald’s pale green eyes twinkled with happiness. She looked like a siren from a vintage Herbal Essence bottle. Stunning curls spiraled through her long black hair. There was a hint of color in her cheeks, a swipe or two of mascara at most. A natural beauty. We’d already run through the particulars. She was twenty-three, a graphic designer living in an apartment near Fenway. Never married, no kids. “How old were you the first time you fell in love, Ms. Valentine?”
    She’d caught me off-guard. It was the sort of thing I, as a matchmaker specializing in reuniting lost loves, might ask my client, not the other way around.
    Yet the question Meaghan asked was easy. A first love was almost always imprinted in the mind—and the heart—forever.
    “I was five. Gabriel Harris. Angelic eyes, downturned lips, unruly hair, ninety-six of Crayola’s finest when the rest of us only had forty-eight, and he always picked me first for Red Rover. He was the love of my life from the first day of kindergarten well into second grade. That was when during the school’s Thanksgiving play I caught him trying to stick his gobbler up my best friend Em’s Pilgrim’s dress. I was inconsolable and cried for days on end. Soon after, I found out he’d been loaning his crayons to lots of girls in the class, not just me.” I smiled. “He has triplet girls now. Karma, that’s what that is.”
    The noise of a delivery truck in the alley below my second-floor window rumbled through the historic brick walls. Stretching out my long legs, I worked out a nagging ache in my left calf. I smoothed a crease in my gray pin-striped trousers and tried not to think about Mac Gladstone, though, to be honest, it was hard to push him from my thoughts. I was intrigued by his disappearance. I wondered what kind of information I could weasel from Detective Lieutenant Aiden Holliday, my contact with the state police.
    Preston had her digital recorder running on the table. “I was eight. Matthew Dennehy. He chased me endlessly around the playground. I had a wild crush on him until the day he finally caught me—and demanded my lunch money.” Her Kewpie lips pursed. “Last I