Angelique closed her sketchpad and stretched lazily. Her cat stood up and arched her back in a stretch of her own. She walked to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee and paused, like always, gazing at the faded photo framed in the hallway.
It had been twenty years and still she ached. She lived that day again and again.
She had gotten up a little earlier than normal and took her routine run on the beach. Tony had been in London for a month working on an IT project and she couldn’t wait to have him home. He had proposed a week before he left and they were getting ready to move in together.
Angelique had planned the perfect welcome home dinner. Reservations had been made at The Boulevard, trendiest new restaurant in town. His new Tag Heuer wrapped in white paper with a gold ribbon. He had been salivating over it for a year. She smiled to herself, feeling the warmth in her chest as she thought of the look on his face when he opened it. How was she going to make it through the day?
Fortunately, she had a major project to work on and had a deadline. Angelique adored her mentor and working on the new line for the spring season was thrilling for her. A gifted prodigy, she had been designing clothing since cutting and pasting scraps of magazine pictures for her paper dolls. Graduation was coming and she had a position with a major design house in the city. The future was bright and when Tony popped the question that night, it looked like every dream was coming true.
Though it was hard to concentrate, she did get her final sketches in to the director on time and ran out to her car. As usual, she had scheduled every minute leading up to the dinner. Tony was planning to come to the restaurant directly from the airport and she only had two hours to get her mani/pedicure and get home to get ready. The beautiful blue dress, one of her own designs, had been hanging on the closet door for a week, her new gold pumps sitting prominently on the dresser.
