Belatedly, Serafina’s ears caught up with her tongue. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

Margaret’s laughter tickled her ear. “You’re how old now, honey? Twenty-eight?”

“Twenty-nine, but I’m stopping there,” Serafina joked cautiously. Had Maggie really said…

“Twenty-nine. Old enough, now that you’ve got your feet firmly under you, to make these kinds of big life decisions for yourself. If you want to investigate a new possibility—follow your ‘Bliss,’ as it were—well, that’s what the whole process of getting healthy has been about.”

The knot of anxiety Sera hadn’t even known she’d been holding on to began to loosen in her chest. Maggie was the person she most trusted to tell her if her secret hope—a hope of a future that looked nothing like her past—was a mere pipe dream, or something worth pursuing.

“So you think it makes sense to stay out here?”

“Well, I mean, obviously you’re going to need some kind of a plan, a job, and a structure to keep you on the straight and narrow. But there’s no reason not to investigate the possibilities while you’re already out there. What ideas have you and Pauline been tossing around so far?” Maggie inquired.

Sera set her mug down and toyed with the errant lock of hair which, ever since she’d allowed her stylist to cut it into what he’d promised was a très chic angled bob, never stayed tucked away for long. Twisting it between her fingers, she spoke hesitantly. “Actually, Aunt Paulie’s got a whole lot of ideas for me, if I agree to stay. And I’m starting to get the feeling I’m needed here more than I knew. I think, for the first time in her life, she’s feeling less than confident, not so independent as before. Hortencia’s passing really seems to have shaken her, though she’s still avoiding talking to me about it.” Sera glanced guiltily through the doorway leading from the kitchen to the bedrooms on the other side of the house, but Pauline hadn’t stirred since heading to bed awhile earlier. “She’s lonely, and who can blame her, after the loss she’s just had? She’s offered to have me come live with her, and I’d like to support her during this tough time. It’d be nice to be able to give back a little after all she’s done for me. And I think maybe it’d be okay for us both to stay here together for a while. The house is plenty big.”

Boy, was it ever. Compared with Sera’s tiny Tribeca loft, the house was practically palatial, if more homestead than showplace. From cobwebbed rafter to crocheted rag rug, her aunt’s three-bedroom adobe fairly screamed “rustic.” But the kitchen… ah, that was a cook’s haven of wide countertops, airy open spaces, herb-lined windows, and pot racks clanking with heavy-bottomed copper cookware. There was even a kiva-style fireplace big enough to bake her own wood-fired pizzas, should she ever manage to get the dough to cooperate in these high-and-dry climes. Next stop, a bookshop for some books on high-altitude culinary techniques. Pauline had mentioned there was an excellent cooking supply store in the downtown area…

Serafina pulled herself back to the present, aware that Margaret was waiting for her to continue.

“So I'm covered for a place to stay as long as I want—or as long as I can take a daily dose of Pauline Wilde.” Sera’s lips turned up at the prospect. “Aunt Pauline had some great suggestions for what I could do out here, careerwise. Honestly, I think she’s been plotting a life for me here for quite some time.” She chuckled. “Her plans are a wee bit grandiose, but the first practical hurdle is going to be scoping out the shop and deciding what to do with it.”

“Shop?” Maggie sounded surprised, then belatedly enlightened. “Oh, right. You mentioned your aunt leases some sort of a storefront in town. But I got the impression it was on its way out of business or something?”

“Pretty much,” Sera confirmed. “I don’t think they get a lot of customers, and I doubt it’s providing much income for Pauline. It’s just about defunct, as far as I can tell. But the lease is paid through the end of this year, which gives me a few months to decide if I want to make something of it.”

“Like… open a bakery of your own?” Maggie's voice rose excitedly. “Oh, hon, if anyone could do it, it’d be you. And I know you’ve always dreamed…” Her sponsor was practically beaming over the phone.

Now it was Serafina’s turn to be the voice of caution. “Well, I haven’t seen the space yet. Pauline’s really eager for me to take a look and see if it might be suitable for my needs. She tells me it’s fairly roomy, but it may not be equipped—or zoned—for anything like that. And I haven’t done any market research… Still.” Sera choked up. “Ah, hell, Maggie. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve this. It’s like Pauline is handing me my wildest dreams, gift-wrapped. She’s as much as said that, if I like it, the store’s mine to do with as I want. Who does that?”

Pauline Wilde, that was who.

“What’s the space used for now?” Maggie wanted to know. “I don’t think you ever told me what your aunt does for a living.”

Color stained Sera’s normally ivory complexion. “Um, no… I didn’t.” There was no way to put this delicately, but damned if she wasn’t going to try. “Pauline was big in the seventies’ feminist movement. But, ah… she kind of took women’s lib in a different direction than a lot of her contemporaries. She had a bit of a following, back in the day. Started a movement that had about fifteen minutes of fame, and she’s been living off it ever since.”

“A movement?” Margaret sounded curious.

“Yeah. It was called, um…” Serafina blushed harder, closed her eyes briefly, and blurted it out.

“Ourgasms.” She cringed, anticipating Maggie’s reaction. “It was supposed to be sort of a tie-in with Our Bodies, Ourselves, I think,” she rushed to explain. “Pauline is very much a believer in the importance of the female orgasm, and empowering her liberated sisters to have them on demand. Her followers were called the Pink Panters.”

A strange yipping sound came through the phone’s earpiece. After a moment, Serafina recognized it as her sponsor’s wild, uncontrollable laughter. “Oh my God, I remember that! I think I had one of her books, or maybe it was a lecture recorded on an old eight-track tape. It was right around the time The Joy of Sex came out, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, that's right. There were books and lectures and seminars and videos that, um, Pauline kind of… ‘starred’ in. Like, ah, ‘how-to’ videos.” Remembered embarrassment made Sera’s voice faint, and to cover it, she busied herself rinsing the cupcake pan in the deep, chipped porcelain sink. It wouldn’t do to leave crumbs and crusty pans around for her aunt to deal with when she got up in the morning, Sera told herself, running a worn linen dishrag around the pan’s cups and laying it in the dish drainer to finish drying. She’d probably plop herself down on the counter and end up getting gunk all over her voluminous skirt tails, trailing crumbs for the rest of the day. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“So what’s the store all about?” Margaret interrupted her mental nattering. “A feminist book shop or something?”

“I’m not a hundred percent positive, but I think it might be some kind of a… sex shop,” Sera confided in a pained whisper.

More laughter sounded from faraway New York City, and Sera relaxed at the sound, picturing her sponsor leaning up against her own scarred kitchen counter, absently twirling the cigarette she never lit while she scratched through a junk-heaped drawer in search of a menu for some Vietnamese takeout.

Margaret was about twenty-five years Serafina’s senior, and far less squeamish about all things bodily. It was one of the things that had first attracted Sera to Maggie when she’d seen her around in meetings—her no-apologies, no-prisoners self-confidence. “We used to pass those Pink Panter pamphlets around in study hall when I was a teenager and think we were so risqué,” Maggie reminisced, still chortling. “There was one called She Stoops to Climax that we particularly relished. Too bad our male counterparts weren’t nearly as interested in what your aunt had to teach. Ah, well.”

“Ah well, indeed,” Sera muttered, rolling her eyes. She was glad one of them could laugh about Aunt Pauline’s proclivities. But then, Maggie hadn’t had Pauline for a guardian while she was growing up, nor suffered all the awkwardness that had entailed.

When Pauline Wilde had first had occasion to get acquainted with her painfully shy preteen niece, her women’s lib heyday had already been over for many years, though she continued to run “clinics” and write guest columns for various media outlets. Royalties from her seminal books had continued to subsidize her freewheeling lifestyle, which had taken her from Amsterdam to Bangkok, Brazil to Berlin and back, pursuing a career in cultural anthropology with a specialty in women’s sexual norms. Sera vividly remembered her first encounter with her “hippie-dippy aunt,” as her dad had teasingly liked to call his big sister. It had been both an awkward and an intriguing moment in her adolescence. Had she known that, less than a year later, the woman who had asked her point-blank if she’d ever examined her “love-bud” in the mirror would be her sole guardian in the wake of the senseless car accident that had claimed her parents’ lives, Sera would probably have run screaming into the night.

But Pauline’s generous heart had more than compensated for her total lack of filter on word and deed. Upon inheriting her thirteen-year-old niece, she’d put a screeching halt to her travels and settled down in Serafina’s home city to carve out a niche as a women’s studies professor at New York’s New School for Social Research. And she’d done it all, Sera knew, so that she could raise the orphaned girl and give her some much-needed stability. It wasn’t until Sera was safely off to culinary school that Pauline retired from teaching and followed in the footsteps of another female sexual pioneer, Georgia O’Keeffe, absconding to New Mexico.

Enmeshed in her own mishagos, Sera hadn’t really had much idea of what Pauline’s life out here looked like. Apparently, she’d made some pretty wise business decisions for an aging hippy. This three-bedroom house and the store in town weren’t even the whole extent of it. Pauline’s book royalties still brought in a fair chunk of change to this day—and now, it seemed, she wanted her favorite niece to take advantage of all this largesse by helping her get started with her very own bakery.

Sera’s embarrassment paled by comparison with her gratitude for the strong women in her life. “Anyhow,” she told Margaret once her sponsor’s laughter died down, “the upshot is, I seem to have a bit of a unique opportunity brewing here. It’s going to take some time to see what that amounts to, and I’m actually really glad of that. I want to open myself to whatever possibilities present themselves, you know?”

“I do know,” Margaret said approvingly, “and I think it sounds great, provided you keep your head on straight. Now listen, hon, CSI Miami’s about to start, and I’ve gotta order some dinner before they stop delivering and I’m forced to gnaw on the curtains for sustenance. But before we say good night…”

Sera grinned, knowing what was coming.

Sure enough… “Run your plans for tomorrow down for me, sweetie,” Maggie prompted.

Sera rubbed her forehead once again, trying to massage away the last vestiges of headache and clear her thoughts. “Right now we’re just focusing on what’s right in front of us, the little stuff.” Sera’s lips twisted wryly. “‘One day at a time,’ right? Isn’t that what you’re always telling me? For tomorrow, Pauline’s going to show me around downtown in the morning and we’ll see the plaza and the most famous sights. She swears all else can wait until after I’ve had a taste of the City Different, which she likes to call ‘Fanta Se.’ Then we'll go see her shop in the afternoon. Anyhow, that’s my plan. Check out her store, see what we might make of it.”

“And then?” Margaret prompted.

Sera had to smile. “Then hit a meeting. Yes, boss.”

“You’re a winner, kiddo. Don’t forget that.”

Sera pressed the “end” button on her cell phone and set the device down on the Talavera tile counter next to her now-empty mug. She let out a shaky breath. She was in a strange house, in a strange city, sharing it with a woman whose major preoccupation in life was with whether or not one was sexually satisfied, and she had not a clue in the world about what tomorrow would bring. She was perched seven thousand feet up the side of a mountain, there were coyotes—real, live coyotes—howling away in the arroyo outside her window, and she was contemplating saying a great, big “fuck it” to everything she’d ever known.