Free On the Scent by Angela Campbell

of
Pride and Prejudice
in her DVD collection when the classic film channel started showing weird stuff, which happened without fail every morning around two o’clock. And no more online streaming
Doctor Who
. It was making her wonky.
    â€œMaybe I should have moved to London like Sarah suggested. What do you think, Costello? Would you like to live in England? I think you have some corgi in you, and we all know the Queen loves corgis.”
    The dog made a whiney-growling sound, rolled onto his side and covered his eyes with one stubby leg. She’d take that as
You’re a completely nutter, woman. Leave me alone.
    Sighing, Hannah stepped away from the bookshelf and made sure the three baby blue candles she’d found in a box were positioned in a way that didn’t clutter the thing, but ah, who was she kidding? She didn’t own enough of anything to clutter a house of this size. It had been whimsical of her to buy this place in such a ridiculously wealthy neighborhood, but she’d wanted to start fresh somewhere memories couldn’t haunt her—without leaving the city she loved.
    When she’d lived in a dorm at college, she’d had so little space and money, she’d never bothered to decorate with more than a few posters or torn pages from a magazine. Her first apartment had been shared with two roommates, and she’d spent so little time there, she’d never seen the point. With Eric, she —
    No. Don’t go there. Don’t think about him.
    She sighed and rerouted her thoughts. When she’d moved in as Ellie’s caretaker, she’d never felt right about trying to mix her own personal style with the older woman’s outdated décor.
    She’d lived there, but it hadn’t been her home. She’d never really had a home, until now.
    As soon as she’d seen this house—built in the 1930s and in need of a few repairs—she’d liked the idea of patching it up and making it
hers
. Maybe someday she’d have her own family, enough kids to fill the four bedrooms.
    Hannah knelt beside one of the boxes filled with items from Ellie’s house she either needed to sell, donate or put away and discovered a bunch of knickknacks she didn’t remember packing. Ellie had owned a lot of knickknacks that seemed cruel to discard now without closer inspection. The older woman had spent almost ninety years collecting the things. The least Hannah could do was make sure they went to a home with someone who appreciated them.
    She fingered a porcelain figurine of a white cat and shook her head. So far, she’d found at least one other box filled with similar figures. She felt the sting of tears behind her eyes. “Ellie did love animals, didn’t she?”
    Hearing her voice, Costello picked up the chew toy he’d been playing with and wandered closer, plopping down a few feet away before returning his focus to mauling the fuzzy goat.
    She missed the older woman so much. Hannah hadn’t realized how much she’d come to care for Ellie Parham until the woman had been gone. It was hard to believe her friend had been dead almost a year.
    When Ellie’s dog Fairbanks had passed away a few weeks after Hannah had moved in with her, Ellie had said, “Let’s go save another life. This time the lucky critter will have two moms. Trust me. Whoever said money can’t buy happiness has never paid a shelter fee.”
    They’d come home with not only a puppy, but a kitten, too. Hannah had always thought of Abbott and Costello as partially hers from that day forward. Even without the inheritance, Hannah would have taken care of the boys. Ellie had known that.
    Blinking away the emotion that particular memory caused, Hannah closed the box and slid it toward the ones she’d marked “Garage.” She twisted and turned to inspect a bigger box, only to squeal when Abbott sprang out of nowhere and landed in it before she could look