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Nice To Come Home To
Liz Flaherty
Will an apple at day keep love at bay?For Cass Gentry, coming home to Lake Miniagua, teenage half sister in tow, is bittersweet. But her half of the orchard she inherited awaits, and so does a fresh face—Luke Rossiter, her new business partner.Even though they butt heads in business, they share one key piece of common ground: refusing to ever fall in love again. But as their lives get bigger, that stance doesn’t feel like enough…


Will an apple a day...
Keep love at bay?
For Cass Gentry, coming home to Lake Miniagua, teenage half sister in tow, is bittersweet. But her half of the orchard she inherited awaits, and so does a fresh face—Luke Rossiter, her new business partner. Even though they butt heads in business, they share one key piece of common ground: refusing to ever fall in love again. But as their lives get bigger, that stance doesn’t feel like enough...
LIZ FLAHERTY retired from the post office and promised to spend at least fifteen minutes a day on housework. Not wanting to overdo things, she’s since pared that down to ten. She spends nonwriting time sewing, quilting and doing whatever else she wants to. She and Duane, her husband of...oh, quite a while...are the parents of three and grandparents of the Magnificent Seven. They live in the old farmhouse in Indiana they moved to in 1977. They’ve talked about moving, but really...over forty years’ worth of stuff? It’s not happening!
She’d love to hear from you at lizkflaherty@gmail.com.
Also By Liz Flaherty (#ua867f1a3-851d-5e33-8062-ccf214bd147f)
Back to McGuffey’s
Every Time We Say Goodbye
The Happiness Pact
Nice to Come Home To
The Debutante’s Second Chance
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Nice to Come Home To
Liz Flaherty


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-08586-1
NICE TO COME HOME TO
© 2018 Liz Flaherty
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
“In my experience, there’s always a shoe about to drop somewhere.”
She raised her head as he lowered his, and their lips met in a sweet version of an age-old dance.
“What do you do,” he asked slowly, “when the shoe drops?”
“Oh.” Her voice sounded reedy. “It depends.”
“On?”
Cass laughed, not very convincingly. “On whether it’s a combat boot or a flip-flop.”
“What about a nice, comfortable loafer? How do you react then?”
“To tell the truth, usually it’s the combat boot, in which case I turn tail and run.”
“Well, what’s between you and me doesn’t have to do with the orchard or the coffee shop,” he whispered. “It’s courtship simply for the pleasure of it. Nothing more and nothing less. No promises, no demands. No permanency.” He kissed her again, treasuring her sweet response. “No shoes.”
Dear Reader (#ua867f1a3-851d-5e33-8062-ccf214bd147f),
When people ask if I write about friends and family, I usually say, “Not really” (with a couple of notable exceptions). There will be characteristics and habits I borrow from time to time, but nothing identifiable. However, when Luke Rossiter, the hero of Nice to Come Home To, showed up with a guitar, it was my husband’s fingers I saw on the strings, tugging the notes out without benefit of a pick. When Cass, the heroine, sat at the corner table in a coffee shop with her laptop, she was every writer I know. It was a reminder of how deeply personal our Heartwarming stories are and how beloved the people that we write about are. I hope you love them, too.
Liz Flaherty
Although their help was unwitting, I am grateful to McClure’s and Doud’s, the local orchards I visited to give Keep Cold Orchard its sense of place. I’m grateful to every barista in every coffee shop I’ve written in over the years—I hope the book does you justice. Thanks to Cheryl Reavis for giving the orchard its name and introducing me to the Robert Frost poem from whence it came. And thanks, Charles Griemsman, for everything.
To Nan Reinhardt, friend and writer extraordinaire—this one’s for you.
Contents
Cover (#ue20d5a04-4ca3-58b1-8fff-147ad98c1fc1)
Back Cover Text (#u85a0b86f-31c4-550d-8287-f5be6ba18fd3)
About the Author (#u3c158116-adfd-5e69-b74d-4575dfc77ab0)
Booklist (#u892225af-2bf9-5270-a5d3-52d78a80aa17)
Title Page (#u25d9fbd1-7989-5e3c-b0db-927d3165461f)
Copyright (#uf7e5c1b9-e362-502a-a08c-bfe4823ed203)
Introduction (#u976a8312-1f1a-5d74-ba76-e59cae8c5474)
Dear Reader (#uc6754578-38da-5ee5-9cf4-7fdfa8b4fb08)
Dedication (#u129d828a-b40c-595a-bdf3-bff7bc92134c)
CHAPTER ONE (#u03748034-fa44-560a-9ad1-412487905eb7)
CHAPTER TWO (#u31de2ccb-eb10-56d5-9711-9e2bdd2d6219)
CHAPTER THREE (#u00e001e3-e122-5e0f-aaf2-458ed9f814ea)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ubd66e2e6-01d3-50cd-bfd1-43ee00379ddd)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ubb8800b0-6b43-5612-b8da-30816e546164)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ua867f1a3-851d-5e33-8062-ccf214bd147f)
“WHY DIDN’T YOU ever come back here?”
They were the first voluntary words Royce had spoken since they’d left the Missouri hotel early that morning. She’d read for a long time with her earbuds in, eaten a drive-through lunch in sullen silence or monosyllabic responses to questions, then stared out at Illinois until she fell back to sleep.
Cass Gentry looked over at the half sister she sometimes felt she barely knew. “The orchard is where my mother and aunt grew up, not me. Mother and Aunt Zoey inherited it from my grandparents and when Mother died, she left her half to me.” How many times did she have to say this? Royce was sixteen, not six.
“Why didn’t you sell it and stay in California?” Royce looked out the passenger window again, at the seemingly endless fields of corn, soybeans and hay that filled this part of central Indiana. Barns and silos and old windmills, some of them in disrepair, sat spare and silent sentinel over farmhouses.
There weren’t as many fences as Cass remembered. Not nearly as many cows, either, which could explain the reduction in fences. A few miles from the highway they traveled, she could see the eerie moving silhouettes of a wind farm. She didn’t remember that being here before.
“There’s nothing here.” At the back of Royce’s disgruntled voice was a thread of fear. Cass recognized it. Remembered it. She wanted to say something sympathetic, but sensed it wouldn’t be welcome.
“I know.” People had been saying that eighteen years ago, too, when Cass had spent that utopian year in the little community that surrounded Lake Miniagua.
“This isn’t a place people move to,” her stepcousin Sandy had said as they’d kayaked around the lake’s six hundred acres. “It’s one they leave.”
That had been true then and probably still was. When the summer people left the lake, its population was sparse, its activities on the slim side. The bed-and-breakfasts and Hoosier Hills Cabins and Campground shut down between October and April. The closest supermarket, movie theater and department store were in Sawyer, five miles away from the lake.
But. “It’s the only place I was ever happy.” A sad truth speaking from the downhill slope of thirty-five, but a truth nonetheless. Memories of the childhood visits to the orchard and the year in the lake house had saved her sanity on more sleepless nights than she wanted to contemplate.
Royce’s expression was both disbelieving and disdainful. “Come on, Sister Smart One. You were married. You didn’t have to follow Dad all over the world with the army and make new friends every couple of years. There had to be some happiness in there somewhere. You had a life. You had choices.”
“I did my share of Dad-following, too, but I did have a life. You’re right. Let me change what I said. The year on the lake was the happiest I’ve ever been.” She’d had choices, too, and she’d too often made the wrong ones. She hoped this move wasn’t one of those.
“You chose to divorce Tony and let him keep most of everything you guys had.”
“It’s called a prenup.” And she’d given up more than she had to, just because she thought it had somehow all been her fault, but Royce probably wouldn’t understand that. Cass wasn’t sure she understood it, either.
“My mother told Dad he should come and help you, but he wouldn’t. He said you’d made your bed and you could lie in it.”
“She has always been very kind to me.” This couldn’t be said about all of Cass’s stepmothers. The one after her own mother had been determined to marry an army officer, regardless of the cost to anyone else. She’d had a handsy son who had made life difficult for the pubescent Cass. The next one had borne shocking similarities to all the stereotypes ascribed to a Barbie doll, a fact made worse by the fact that her given name was Barbara Ann and Cass’s father’s name was Kenneth.
Royce’s mother, Damaris, came into the picture when Cass was eighteen and married to Tony Moretti, and had been a friend from the very beginning—even more so after she divorced Cass’s father. That Damaris and Cass’s mother had become friends as well had made them into a quirky but workable family.
Royce snorted. “Until she foisted me off on you, right?”
“She’s deployed to Afghanistan. Not exactly her choice. Would you rather have stayed with Dad?” Cass heard the exasperation that laced her voice. Royce’s smirk said her sister heard it, too.
She supposed this was the good side to why she and Tony hadn’t had children. If they had, their progeny would be about the age of Royce, give or take a few years. Divorce had been bad enough as it was, when there hadn’t even been pets to decide the custody of. How would Cass have handled Tony’s defection and a harrowing battle with breast cancer at the same time if grumpy teenagers had been added to the mix?
She rubbed her arm absently. It didn’t hurt much anymore, but less than a year past chemo and radiation, she still expected it to.
“Are you all right?”
The solicitude in Royce’s question surprised her. It was nice to hear. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“Where will we live?”
“I’ve told you that already, several times.” Cass kept her voice even with an effort. Had she been like this at sixteen when her parents, in a rare mutual decision, had sent her to stay with her grandparents? Probably. “We have a cottage on the lake called Little Dream for two weeks. Many businesses and a lot of houses in Miniagua use Cole Porter titles—or parts of them—as their names.” She raised a quelling hand. “If you ask me one more time who Cole Porter is, I’m going to stop the car and make you walk.”
“I know, I know. He’s a really famous songwriter who grew up close to this lake of yours. You sang ‘Don’t Fence Me In’ halfway across Kansas to punish me for asking the last time.”
Cass laughed and, to her profound pleasure, so did her sister.
“What about after the two weeks? Will we go home?” Royce sounded wistful, and Cass stared into the eastern sky as she drove toward the lake. Her heart ached.
Home. To Royce, that was California because that’s where her friends were. It’s where the duplex was that she shared with her mother. Their father, retired somewhere in Idaho, paid her no more attention than he had Cass, but Damaris had given her daughter all the security she could within the bounds of what the US Army decreed. They’d been in California for five years. Royce had a California driver’s permit, which to a sixteen-year-old meant permanence.
“I don’t know,” Cass admitted. But I hope not. I don’t want to go back. I was happy here once. I want to try to find it again.
“I don’t want to start school at your lake if we’re not staying.” That she didn’t want to stay there at all was patently obvious, but she was enough of a military brat not to bother saying so.
Cass nodded. There was still another few weeks before school started in either place and the sky wouldn’t fall if she started late—she was a good student. However, she didn’t blame Royce for wanting to know if she was going to have to start all over again. Get another learner’s permit if that was what Indiana required.
Was she doing to her little sister all the things that had been done to her when she was sixteen that she’d never truly forgiven her parents for? Moving her all over the place with no regard for her emotional needs. Making uncertainty a major part of every day.
“We’ll know soon,” she said, and then made a promise she hoped she could keep. “I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to.”
“So, who’s the other owner?” Royce grinned, hiking her pretty young knees up onto the seat and twirling a lock of her shiny dark brown hair. “And I haven’t asked you that because it wasn’t my business. It’s still not, I guess, but I’m curious. Maybe he’ll be some hunk, and you and he will fight over apples until you meet up over the Golden Delicious and the Honeycrisp and fall in love forever.”
“I’m impressed. You can tell apples apart.”
“Only those two. They’re the ones Mom buys when she’s on a health kick and the ones your mother always had in that green glass bowl in the middle of the dining room table. I never saw her eat them, but they were always there.”
“I understand the health kick thing. I’ve always thought apple dumplings with ice cream should qualify as fruit and dairy in the daily food pyramid.” Cass smiled with the memory her sister’s words had called forth—part of it, anyway. “Even when I was your age, Mother had that bowl in the middle of the table. I still have it somewhere.”
Cass took the exit that put them on the first two-lane road they’d been on since they left California. “Oh, to answer your question, his name is Lucas Rossiter. Apparently he bought Aunt Zoey’s portion a few years ago and would like to buy mine, too. I imagine that’s how it will work out, but I wanted to see it first.” She sighed. Sometimes life was heavy. “I wanted to come back to the lake.”
* * *
“I DON’T GET IT. This is your orchard.” Seth Rossiter looked down from the ladder propped against a tree in the back field of Keep Cold Orchard.
“Half of it is,” Luke corrected, hefting a box of Earligolds onto the back of the flatbed and handing an empty bag up to his younger brother. “Half of it belongs to the woman who’s coming today, Cass Gentry.”
“Why’s she coming? What does she want?”
“I don’t know for sure.” Luke was as confused as Seth was by the sudden correspondence from the woman who’d inherited half the orchard. Her mother and Zoey Durand’s sister, Marynell Bessignano, had been a silent partner, a woman he’d only met twice. Once at Zoey’s sixtieth birthday party two years ago and once when they’d met in the lawyer’s office to sign the agreement. He did all the work, so he got a larger percentage. Zoey had maintained ownership of the farmhouse on the property and still lived in it. Zoey’s sister had been good with that—he hoped Zoey’s niece would be, too. Actually, he hoped she’d just want to sell out.
“You’ve never met her?”
“Yeah, I did. Well, saw her, anyway.” She’d sat with Zoey at Marynell’s funeral in California six months before. Cass Gentry was tall and nearly too slim—her black dress had been too big on her, but her posture was military straight.
She’d also been wearing a wig, which he’d wondered about but hadn’t mentioned to Zoey even on the long plane trip home. Zoey was a close friend, but she was as private as they came. All she’d ever said about family was, “You know that word dysfunction? Well, we invented it.”
Cass hadn’t looked either right or left during the funeral, and when he’d gone to see if Zoey was ready to return to the hotel, her niece had disappeared.
“So, she’s coming today?” asked Seth. “Here or to Zoey’s?”
“I don’t know. She’s staying at the lake for a while, I guess. She might just go there. I don’t think she and Zoey are close.”
“So.” Seth handed down the bag of apples from his shoulder, his muscles bulging with the effort. “Have you decided?”
“Decided what?” Luke knew what the kid was talking about. He’d been asking every other day for two weeks already.
“You know.”
Seth had been hassling him for an answer ever since their parents had followed their dad’s auto industry job to Detroit in June. It had been fine this summer. Seth stayed with Luke and spent the occasional “parental unit” weekend in Michigan; sometimes the folks drove down instead. It would be different during the school year. High school senioring was busy stuff, plus their father and mother still worked—they’d used up most of their time off this summer. “Have they said anything more?”
“Mom doesn’t want me to stay here in case you get another job somewhere else. Dad’s waffling back and forth. But they’re going to let me if you say it’s okay.” Seth came down the ladder. “I know it’s asking a lot, letting me stay with you the whole school year. I cramp your style and all. But geez, Luke, I don’t want to change schools now. I want to spend my senior year as a Miniagua Lakers running back, not a benchwarmer at some school around Detroit where I don’t know anybody.” He grinned hopefully. “Don’t forget, me being here keeps you off the ladders.”
There was that. Luke wasn’t precisely afraid of heights, but he wasn’t crazy about them, either. Zoey had nearly laughed her head off when she’d found that out. “Son,” she said, “you do realize you just bought half of sixty acres of fruit trees, right?”
He’d realized it, all right, but when he bought into Keep Cold Orchard, he’d planned on it being an investment, his house on the lake a weekend getaway. However, when the company where he had been an engineer closed its doors three years before, he put his severance pay into his retirement account and went to work for himself at the orchard. He didn’t intend it to be his life’s work, but it was satisfying for now.
“You are good for something.” He grinned at his brother and looked at his watch. “You need to call it a day and get something to eat before practice.” The football team was doing two-a-day practices and Seth was working several hours at the orchard between them. It was a brutal schedule.
They unloaded at the apple barn and Luke tossed Seth his car keys. “I’ll take the orchard pickup home. Be careful.”
“All right if I go out after? Just swimming over at the public beach. Playing some music.”
“Just swimming and music,” Luke reiterated. “No booze or anything else that will get us both in trouble with either our parents or the law.”
“Gotcha.”
Luke was the last one to leave the orchard. That was a promise he’d made to himself and the employees when he became a hands-on boss. Most of the time it worked out well, but there were occasional middays that found him asleep on the couch in the office.
“That’s why it’s there,” Zoey had said. “Anything happens, they’ll wake you up.”
“Anything” usually meant something had broken down. Luke had gotten good at keeping the sorting machine and the tractor running. The cider press, an antique by any standard, presented more of a challenge. He’d taken to calling it Rachel’s Revenge because his two-years-younger sister had been threatening retribution for years for brotherly sins both real and imagined.
“Mr. Rossiter?”
The voice came as he was locking the door of the apple barn behind him. He turned, squinting into the setting sun. “Yes? We’re closed, but can I get you something quick?”
“I’m Cass Gentry.”
“Oh.” The sun moved enough that she became less of a silhouette and more of the tall, slender person he remembered from Marynell’s funeral. She wasn’t as slim now, and the cap of light brown hair was almost certainly her own, but he’d have recognized her anywhere. He extended his hand. “Nice to meet you. I expected you earlier today.”
“My apologies. I underestimated the time it took to drive from the western edge of Missouri with an unfriendly teenager.”
He smiled at her. “I’ve done that. Well, to Detroit, anyway. Two hundred miles of loud silence.” He was inexplicably disappointed that she had a child. Did that mean there was a husband, too? He gestured toward the door. “Would you like to look around?”
“No, it’s all right. I’ll come back tomorrow. I didn’t even think about what time it was when I came by. I just dropped Royce off at the house we’re renting and came here. I thought a little time apart might be a good thing.”
“Probably,” he agreed. “A little breathing space never hurts. How old is your daughter?”
She smiled at him this time, the expression hesitant enough he thought maybe she didn’t use it much. “My sister is sixteen. Going on thirty. Your son?”
Luke nodded in acknowledgment of her remark. “My brother is seventeen going on twelve. My father was transferred to Detroit with his job and Seth’s a senior in high school. It looks like he’s going to spend the school year with me.” He wasn’t sure what they’d do if an ideal engineering job presented itself, but he wasn’t going to worry about it—there were worse things than long commutes.
“Ah. Royce’s mother, a couple of my dad’s wives removed from my mother, was deployed to Afghanistan. It’s probably her last deployment—she’s ready to retire—but she had to go. Royce preferred my company to our father’s. At least she did before driving across country with me. I think now her choice might be up for grabs.”
“Have you seen Zoey yet?”
“No.” She looked uncomfortable. “I don’t really know her very well anymore. Royce knows her even less. She met her when my mother died, but only briefly.” She hesitated, looking up at him in the darkness that followed the sun’s drop into the horizon. “You were there, weren’t you? You came all the way to California for a woman you didn’t even know.”
“I came for Zoey, whom I know very well. She’s hale and hearty, but I didn’t like the idea of her traveling cross-country by herself when she was grieving.” He gentled his voice. Cass Gentry wasn’t as slim as she’d been, and warm color washed the cheeks that had been ashen the last time he saw her, but he sensed fragility in the woman beside him. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” She started toward her SUV, which was parked beside the pickup. “When can we talk about the business?”
“Whenever you like. When would you like the fifty-cent tour?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Tomorrow? There will be a hayride through the orchard at ten. It gives you a good view of the place.”
“A hayride? Seriously?”
He wasn’t quite sure if she’d meant to sound derisive or if that was just how it came out, so he pushed back impatience. “Yes. We have them for groups by appointment or spur of the moment if someone wants to go and there’s an available driver. In October, we have evening ones.”
“All right, Mr. Rossiter. I’ll see you at ten.”
“It’s just Luke. Mr. Rossiter’s my dad, who would tell you, no, Mr. Rossiter’s my grandpa.”
She nodded, looking uncertain. “Can you tell me where the nearest supermarket is?”
“Sawyer.” He pointed. “Three miles that way.”
“I remember.” She sighed. “I think that can wait until tomorrow. I’m sure Royce won’t mind going out for dinner. What’s available at the lake?”
“Anything Goes Grill and Silver Moon Café. There’s also a pizza place that does carryout. The bulk foods store is great for groceries and has an excellent deli section. Are you staying at the lake?” Why would she do that with Zoey rattling around alone in that twelve-room farmhouse behind the hill of the orchard?
“Yes. For two weeks. That’s how long I’m giving myself to decide what to do.”
“What to do?”
“Yes.” She turned in a tight circle on the gravel drive, lifting her chin and gazing outward.
He followed her gaze with his own, wondering what she saw. The apple barn was there, its retail store convenient for customers. The cold storage barn, newer and bigger, had been built farther up the rise. The replica round barn, smaller than an original but true in shape and scale to the ones built in the area during the early twentieth century, held pride of place across the parking lot from the apple barn. The grapevines were behind it. The pumpkin patch filled the area between the driveway and the apple barn.
Trees were everywhere. Close to a hundred varieties of apples grew in neatly rowed sections all the way back to where Cottonwood Creek created the farm’s boundary. The way the orchard’s land rolled made keeping up with everything a challenge sometimes, but it was always rewarding.
The drives and parking lot were still gravel. Something always needed fixing. There was evidence of too many ideas conceived of but never hatched—the round barn being the greatest of those, the grapevines behind it another. Luke thought it was the most beautiful place in the world.
He wondered what she saw. With more urgency than he liked, he also wondered what she thought.
CHAPTER TWO (#ua867f1a3-851d-5e33-8062-ccf214bd147f)
“WHEN ARE WE going to go see your aunt?” Royce stood at the bar that separated the lake cottage’s minute kitchen from its living area.
Cass slid the take-and-bake pizza out of the oven. “Come and get it. Ouch!” She licked the thumb she’d accidentally dipped into pizza sauce. “I don’t know. It’s complicated with Aunt Zoey. You know that.”
“Not to be rude—” which meant that was probably exactly what the teenager was going to be “—but everything in your family is complicated. Once we move back to the real world and I go back to school, I’m going to write a paper on it. You and your aunt and your past and present stepparents and Dad can be my expert witnesses. Do you want some milk?”
Cass shuddered. “No, thank you. And don’t forget, you’re related to some of that family, too.”
Royce bit into her pizza, chewed and swallowed before saying, “Just you and Dad. Mom’s not weird like you guys.”
“No, she’s not.” Cass poured coffee, glad whoever had been in the cottage last had left an opened bag of breakfast blend in the pantry. “Your mother has been a port of calm for me ever since I met her.” She eyed her sister’s plate when Royce took two more slices of pizza. “At least until now. Can you really eat that much pizza?”
“In a heartbeat.”
A half hour and an entertaining conversation later, Cass was surprised to realize that she, too, could eat four pieces of pizza without so much as blinking an eye. “What do you say?” She got up from the table with a groan and put their plates into the dishwasher. “Want to take a walk along the lake? As I remember it, there’s a nice path. Or we can walk on the road.”
Royce looked scandalized. “I don’t know if you’ve realized it, Sister Authority Figure, but it’s dark out there.”
“I know.” Cass put on one of the hooded sweatshirts they’d hung inside the entry closet and tossed the other one to Royce—the evening air was cool. “That’s why I’m taking you along. I might need protection.”
Royce was right about it being dark, but it seemed to be social hour on the lake’s narrow graveled roads. Not only were people walking and running, the bicycle and golf cart traffic rivaled that of the retirement community where Marynell had lived.
Cass had thought she might recognize people and had dreaded it. She’d also looked forward to it. She’d love to explain to them why she’d left without saying goodbye. Why letters forwarded by her grandmother had gone unanswered. Why, when people had looked for her, she hadn’t responded. Why, in an electronic world that fascinated her, she remained anonymous.
But she couldn’t even explain it to herself.
“Where was the house where you lived with your grandparents that year you were here?” Royce interrupted her admittedly maudlin thoughts.
“On the other side where the condos are. They sold it to a development company within a few years after I left. The lake has gotten a little more upscale than it was when I was in high school. We’ll drive around there tomorrow and see.” She pointed toward a large Craftsman house. “That’s Christensen’s Cove. Two of my friends lived there. Arlie’s dad, Dave, and Holly’s mom, Gianna, were married. They were some of the best people I’ve ever known.”
When they reached the south end of the lake, Royce stared at the two estates that took up most of the frontage. “They look really out of place here,” she said finally. “It’s like a what’s-wrong-with-this-picture thing.”
“It is. The one over there is where the Grangers lived. Chris and Gavin were always away at school, although they were here in the summer. I think their family owns the winery we drove past. What was it called?”
“Sycamore Hill. We liked its sign, remember?”
“That’s right. The other house is Llewellyn Hall. Everyone just called it the Hall or the Albatross. Jack Llewellyn was a senior when I lived here. He dated Arlie. His brother Tucker was in my class and he dated everyone, but he was such a nice guy you didn’t even mind it. Libby Worth—” she turned in a thoughtful half circle trying to get her bearings “—she was in my class, too. Her brother, Jesse, was a senior. They lived on the farm out by the winery. As a matter of fact, I think the winery used to be part of that farm.” She turned the rest of the way, heading back toward their cottage.
Royce stayed in step with her. “Who else do you remember?”
“Sam. We dated for a while.” The prom had been the last time they’d gone out. “His dad worked at Llewellyn Lures and his grandfather owned the hardware store. It was called Come On In. Sam had a bass voice you could lose yourself in. Gianna used to say he was Sam Elliott in training.”
“The hardware store’s still there,” said Royce. “I saw it when we drove through tonight. It was just down the street from the bulk food store where we got the pie from the Amish bakery.”
“We should probably get another one of those, since all that’s left of that is the pan,” said Cass drily. “Between that and the pizza, I’m still feeling fairly miserable, and we’ve been walking for at least a half hour.”
“I’m walking. You keep starting and stopping. There’s a difference.” Royce gave her a sisterly elbow that felt better than Cass could have begun to explain. “Come on. Who else?”
“Let me think. Nate Benteen. He was one of the best high school golfers in the country. He was so much fun! He and Holly kept us laughing all the time.”
“Which one was your BFF, the one you’d have stayed in contact with forever and ever if you had any normal social skills?”
“That was cold. And we didn’t say ‘BFF’ then,” Cass retorted. She walked a little farther, separating herself a few steps from Royce. Maybe her sister wouldn’t notice that her breathing had somehow gone awry or that the color had left her face—she’d felt the blood drain from her cheeks as soon as Royce asked the question.
She would say she didn’t remember if her sister pushed her for an answer. Chemo brain hadn’t entirely left her, after all. Getting lost in the middle of a conversation was nothing new. Rather, it was exhaustingly old. So was being pale and washed-out and a mere tracing of who she’d once thought she was.
“Cass, wait up.”
She realized her pace had taken her away from Royce as if her intent was to leave her behind. “Hey.” She stopped. “Can’t keep up with the old lady?”
“Y’know what?” Her sister caught up with her and tilted her head, waiting. Cass couldn’t look away from the blue-green eyes she knew were replicas of her own, a gift from their father.
“No,” she said lightly. “What?”
“You don’t have to answer me. I get that you’re the grown-up and I’m the kid. But don’t make things up or fluff things like those ‘alternative facts’ they talk about on television. If you don’t want to talk to me, just say so. I’ve been on my own most of my life, just like you. I can deal with it fine. I’ll see you back at the house.”
Royce took off at a run Cass couldn’t have kept up with on her best day, so she didn’t try. She went down to the path that followed the curves of the lake and sat on a park bench. She thought of those friends she’d told Royce about. They’d been closer than anyone she’d met in all the years both before and since. Although there’d been much to grieve for in that time, she mourned nothing more than the empty space she’d created in herself when she left the lake without looking back.
Cass closed her eyes, leaning her head back because suddenly it felt too heavy to hold up. With the scent and sound of the lake filling her senses, she remembered that year and gave herself permission to wallow in it.
Her father had been in Iraq, her mother in a new state, job and marriage that didn’t allot room for a recalcitrant daughter. Her grandparents had been willing to keep her for the school year, but not one minute longer. She was sixteen when she arrived at the lake, five feet eight inches of long brown hair and attitude. Especially attitude.
By the time she’d been there a week, improved posture had given her an additional inch and her hair had been streaked by the sun in a way she’d maintained until chemotherapy robbed her of it fifteen or so years later. She’d made more friends than she’d ever had at one time. She’d even been recruited for the high school volleyball team. “We suck,” Arlie had said complacently, “but we have so much fun.”
And they had. She’d spent as many nights at her friends’ houses as she had in her grandparents’ cramped cottage. She’d never missed attending a football or basketball game and the volleyball team had managed—for the first time in a history the length of which they exaggerated when they talked about it—to garner a winning season. She’d asked Mr. Harrison, the high school principal, if there was a writers’ club in the school, expecting to be either ignored or forgotten. Instead, he’d said there wasn’t such an organization at the present time and suggested she form one.
She wondered if the Write Now group still existed. Holly had thrown in with her to start monthly meetings. It had been a thrill, but not really a surprise, ten years before when she’d been in an airport bookstore and found a Holly Gallagher romance on the shelves. Cass had bought that book and at least one copy of the dozen the author had released since then. Sometimes in reading them, she thought Holly had written subliminal messages directly to her; however, life had taught her not to be fanciful, so she always set the notion aside. Mostly.
Sometimes, hidden in the chapters of her own Mysteries on the Wabash stories, Cass left messages to the friends she’d left behind. Of course, those friends didn’t know who Cassandra G. Porter was—they’d never understand the messages.
The sound of footsteps on the paved lake path brought her out of the pleasant reverie of memory, and she straightened in her seat on the bench.
“Hello.” The voice was cheerful, welcoming. A blast from the past that made Cass’s heart feel as if it blossomed in her chest, one whose name had been in her mind only seconds before. “Beautiful night, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” She cleared her throat to make her voice audible, but her breath still hitched and hesitated on its way in and out. “It is.”
Not only did she know the musical voice of Holly Gallagher, she recognized the tall profile of the man who walked beside her. Jesse Worth. Always quiet, always a loner, and one of the good guys she’d known in her life. He’d been a gifted artist, but he had gone into the navy after high school and eventually become a veterinarian, opening his practice on the farm where he’d grown up.
Panic rose in her throat.
Cass hadn’t thought it through long enough before she came back. She hadn’t considered that she’d come face-to-face with the one person who would never want to see her under any circumstances. The one who’d loved Linda Saylors—the BFF Royce had wondered about—as much as Cass had. The one who would remember more than anyone else that Cass should have been sitting in the van seat Linda had occupied. The one who would know that on that prom night so long ago, it should have been Cass who died, not Linda.
* * *
LUKE STOPPED BY Zoey’s the next morning as he often did. It gave him a chance to keep her up on business concerns and to see if she needed anything done. She would never ask, but he was nosy enough that he could usually find out on his own.
“She’s here, then?” Zoey handed Luke a cup of coffee and set a piece of coffee cake in front of him. “How does she look? Healthy?”
He hated the anxiety in the voice of the woman who’d slipped effortlessly into the place of the favorite aunt he’d never had. “Still thin, I think,” he said, “but not like she was at your sister’s funeral. She’s not wearing a wig and her color’s good. Her hair—it’s about the color of maple syrup with gold stuff in it—is pretty. About this long.” He shelfed his hand just below his ear and squinted at the woman who’d sat across her kitchen table from him. “I thought she had your eyes, but they’re more green than blue.”
“They’re like her father’s. Marynell’s were darker, like mine.”
Luke thought of Seth, of Rachel and their sister, Leah. They’d been fighting each other all their lives. Their parents made a practice of professing amazement that they could have four so completely different children. Yet the siblings had never stopped speaking to each other, even when most verbal communication was done in shouts.
“What happened?” He didn’t want to pry, but the sadness in her expression prodded him.
Zoey shrugged, staring past him out the floor-to-ceiling windows in the dining area of the farmhouse kitchen. “Just one of those family stories they make TV movies about.” She lifted her cup, then set it down without drinking. “I was engaged to Ken when he discovered he preferred my younger, prettier sister. While I was covering the afternoon shift for her one day at the orchard, he picked her up in his snazzy convertible and they eloped.”
“Ouch.” Luke remembered when Rachel and Leah had argued over a friend of his they’d both liked. It hadn’t gone well for the guy. Afterward, the girls had sneaked cheap wine into their room and played the “Sisters” song from White Christmas until they’d emptied the bottle and nearly wore out the videotape.
He needed to call his siblings.
“Marynell came back here with Cass when they divorced two years later. She left her with me and married a navy pilot. It was a pattern. She was married several times, lived in different places. If Cass couldn’t spend her summers with Ken or if he or Marynell just needed time with a new spouse, they shipped Cass back here.” She stopped, as if gathering her thoughts, and regret deepened the lines in her face. “The last time, when Cass came for her junior year, I had said no, she couldn’t come. The folks had retired and weren’t well, and I was working half the time at the orchard and half of it as a phlebotomist in Indianapolis. Marynell brought her anyway and left her with our parents, even though dementia and rheumatoid arthritis were severely limiting their ability to take care of themselves, much less a teenage girl. My sister told Cass I didn’t want anything to do with either of them and I was too exhausted to argue the point.”
“And that was it? Seriously? A whole family split asunder over that?”
She sighed. “Pretty much. Marynell and I made up, of course. She came and visited and helped when our parents’ illnesses progressed and later when they died. She created no difficulty with the management of the orchard after we inherited, although she chose to remain uninvolved.” Zoey chuckled almost soundlessly. “Oddly enough, the thing she never quite forgave me for was introducing her to Ken. He’s one of those men who is ethically and maybe even morally good, but is an emotional empty shell.”
“What about Cass?”
“She and I always exchange birthday and Christmas cards. I sent a gift when she got married right out of high school, but I never really connected with her again until her mother died. I know she was ill, that she had chemo, but that’s all I know. I thought I should go and help then, but she said she was all right, that it would be better if I helped with her mother. It probably was—Cass could take care of herself, but taking care of her mother at the same time was too much. We would see each other in passing, but that was all.”
Luke heard all that she said, but his focus stayed on one point. “She’s married?”
“Not anymore.” She raised her hands, palms up. “I sent money when she got the divorce, just in case she needed it. She sent it back with a very nice thank-you.”
“Children?”
“Not that I know of. Her little sister’s a sweet one, though. I think I know her better than I do Cass, and I only met her when Marynell died.” Zoey looked away from him again. A tear crept unchecked down her cheek. “There’s this part of me that says Cass should have been my child and that failing her is like failing as a mother.”
“That’s crazy, Zoey.”
She smiled at him, just a little curve of lips that had thinned and paled over the years. “You have a problem with crazy?”
“No.” He tilted his head, looking at Zoey’s long neck and the shiny white sweep of her short hair. “It wouldn’t be much of a stretch. I think Cass favors you more than she did her mother.”
“You’ll let me know if she needs anything?”
“I will. Or you could let her know yourself. You come to the orchard nearly every day. Are you going to stop because your niece might be there?”
Zoey frowned. “I don’t know.” She filled his go-cup and gave him a push. “But you have given me something to think about.”
CHAPTER THREE (#ua867f1a3-851d-5e33-8062-ccf214bd147f)
“WHERE ARE ALL the fall colors we’re always hearing about?” Royce peered out the windows as they drove along Lake Road toward the turnoff onto Country Club Road, where the orchard was.
“It’s only the first week of August. The fall colors start up next month and peak in October.” Unless something stilled the restlessness in Cass’s mind, they wouldn’t be here. They’d be back in California with Royce in her old high school and Cass going to the coffee shop every day to sit in a corner booth and work.
“You can do what you do anywhere,” Royce had remonstrated when Cass had informed her they were making the trip to Indiana.
It was true. She could. Being the author of a bestselling mystery series gave her a lot of residential latitude; however, if they stayed at the lake, someone would eventually find out that Cass Gentry and Cassandra G. Porter were one and the same. While it was true that neither of her personas had anything to hide, keeping them separate had worked for a long time, both personally and professionally. “We’ll see,” she murmured, braking for the turn.
“See what?”
Cass started. She hadn’t realized she’d spoken until her sister replied. “Oh, nothing. Well, yeah, we’ll see how you feel about hayrides. I went on a few when I was here. They were fun.” They’d been at night, though, under starry skies and the harvest moon, and she’d had a boyfriend—that had made all the difference. Not that she and Sam had ever been serious, but they’d had a good time.
“He owns the hardware store,” Holly had said last night, holding onto Cass’s hands as if she’d been afraid she’d disappear again. “He’s married to Penny and they have three little Sams—all that’s missing is the eye patch.”
They’d sat together on the park bench while Holly had filled Cass’s mind and an empty place in her heart with reports of the friends from that year of her contentment. Arlie and Jack had married in June. Libby and Tucker were engaged and so were Holly and Jesse. Gianna had been dating Max Harrison, the high school principal, for years. Nate owned the golf course and spent half his time in Indiana and half of it in North Carolina. His wife’s name was Mandy. Linda’s family lived in Fort Wayne.
“It’s like there are no scars.” Cass had known even as she’d said it that it wasn’t accurate—all of the survivors of the prom night accident had scars whether you could see them or not.
“Oh, they’re there.” Holly had pointed at her prosthetic foot. “We miss Daddy. We miss Linda. Tuck and Jack have had to get past knowing their dad caused the accident. But we’ve all reached the point of not letting the scars define us. We had to give up some dreams, but we’ve found new ones.” Her dark eyes had searched Cass’s face. “How about you?”
Cass had shrugged. “When I was here that year, I thought I’d found perfection. I even wrote a paper one time about how the lake should have been called Lake Utopia. I’ve been looking for that same thing ever since, so in a way I guess I do let it define me.” Something needed to because she didn’t really have a clue as to who she was.
Holly hadn’t asked why she’d left, although Cass could read the question in the other woman’s dark eyes. Jesse had spoken little, greeting her and then stepping aside.
“Will you see all of us?” Holly had asked. “We’ve all wondered. We’ve all looked for you at one time or another. We wanted to respect your privacy, but we wanted to know you were all right, too.”
“I want to see you all.” That decision had been instant and much easier than Cass had anticipated.
“Are you lost?” Royce’s voice interrupted her reverie. “I think we drove past the orchard back there.”
“Oh, good grief.” Cass looked in her rearview mirror and braked. The wreck had happened somewhere near the country club that sat at the top of the hill on her left. She didn’t want to be reminded, but no sooner had the thought crossed her mind than she saw the beautifully carved crosses at the side of the road. One for Dave Gallagher and one for Linda Saylors—she knew without looking. Jack and Tucker’s father had died instantly when he’d hit the van carrying one set of parents and ten prom-goers, but no one would have included him in the roadside memorial.
“Sorry, Roycie,” she said. “I didn’t realize coming back here would be so overwhelming.”
Royce’s hand brushed her shoulder in a pat. “Bad overwhelming or good overwhelming?”
Cass laughed, surprised at the sound. And a little pleased with herself. Her life was okay in a lot of ways. She was successful in her field. She’d survived breast cancer and divorce. But she didn’t usually laugh much. It felt good.
When they pulled into the orchard driveway after turning around near the crosses, the wagon was all set for the hayride. Two pretty horses were anxious to get going. A young Amish man, his clean-shaven face announcing his bachelorhood, was on the driver’s seat. Another young man, bearing a marked resemblance to Luke Rossiter, sat beside him.
“Sorry we’re late,” said Cass, joining Luke at the back of the wagon. “I was daydreaming and missed the turn. This is my sister, Royce.”
“Royce.” Luke shook hands with her. “That’s Isaac Hershberger and my brother, Seth. The wagon’s going to be almost full of a 4-H group from near Kokomo. There’s room for you, Royce, if you want to go, but your sister and I are going to take the motorized tour.”
“I don’t know.” Royce wasn’t normally shy, but she looked uncomfortable. “Maybe I should just wait here. I won’t be in the way.”
Seth jumped down from the driver’s seat and came around. “If you’ll come along, I’ll ride in the back with you. Mary Detwiler will sit up front with Isaac and they’ll pretend they’re not going out.”
Isaac turned in his seat, smiled a greeting at Cass and Royce and tossed his flat-brimmed hat at Seth.
“Come on.” Luke urged Cass in front of him. “They’ll settle down once the passengers are on board.” He waved at his brother. “‘Settle down’ might be the wrong way to say it—they’ll entertain them. How’s that?”
He led the way to the utility vehicle on the other side of the orchard truck. “Do you want some coffee to take along? It’s always fresh inside the store.”
“That would be good.”
A few minutes later, they were back on the four-wheeler. “There are sixty acres here, as you probably know,” he began, starting down one of the wide paths between the rows of trees. “We have nearly a hundred different varieties of apples, plus a few acres of pears, cherries and plums. We also have some grapevines. Chris Granger, from Sycamore Hill Vineyard and Winery, is helping with those and eventually we hope to serve and sell wine. We already sell all kinds of jams, jellies and honeys on consignment.”
“I’m surprised,” Cass admitted. “I thought it was more or less a hobby farm. I know the income was more substantial than I expected when I inherited, but I had nothing to compare it to.” Nor had she paid much attention. She’d put the monthly checks in the bank, uncomfortable with receiving money she hadn’t earned. The cumulative amount had made her accountant raise her eyebrows.
“We’ve expanded quite a bit. The apple barn closes in January, but we’re hoping to keep the store open this year with the consigned items.”
Something in his voice jarred a distant and sweet memory. “Dumplings. Do you have apple dumplings? I remember Aunt Zoey making them when I’d visit during the summer when I was little. They were like bowls filled with heaven.”
“We do have them, although Mrs. Detwiler and a few other Amish women make them for us now. Zoey had a class and taught them all how she does it.”
Cass peered at the structures. The climate-controlled storage barn stood apart. She was almost certain it had been built since the last time she was here. The retail store was in the apple barn. The round barn seemed to be waiting to be used. “Have you thought of putting a restaurant here?”
He nodded. “Zoey’s always wanted to, but Miniagua’s not big enough to support another one. There’s already a café, a bar and grill, a pizza place and a tearoom on the lake, plus we’re a few miles from there so it would be out of the way for nearly everyone. The tearoom doubles as an event center. So does the lake clubhouse and even the country club if you’re in the mood for some exclusivity.”
“What about a coffee shop?” Cass didn’t know anything about restaurants or demand for them, but she did know coffee shops. Most of Cassandra G. Porter’s Mysteries on the Wabash series had been written in them.
Luke looked thoughtful. “There used to be one in Sawyer, but the owners weren’t big on either cleanliness or quality—or paying their utilities, for that matter—so it didn’t last long.”
Cass gestured with her empty cup. “You have a good start with this. It’s good coffee.” She was almost sure it was the same kind she’d found in the house.
“The bulk foods store sells it.”
“You could serve those apple dumplings. Maybe have a limited breakfast and lunch menu.”
“It’s worth some thought. Summer people might like it. I’m not sure lakers would care one way or another, but it could be worth its while with summer traffic, I imagine—although the location might still be a problem.” He didn’t sound especially encouraging, but he didn’t give an unequivocal no, either.
They pulled up at the barn the same time as the hay wagon did. The group of 4-H club members climbed out the back and went into the store, waving at the young people on the driver’s seat. Seth and Royce were the last ones off the wagon. Royce ran to where Cass and Luke were getting out of the utility vehicle.
“Seth says I can help pick apples. Can I? Isaac and Mary are going to help, too. He says they’re picking the Earligolds now. I promise I won’t get in the way.”
Cass looked at Luke. He shrugged. “A dollar an hour over minimum wage. Keep track of your hours and do what Seth says. Fill out your paperwork in the office after work today. Be careful. If you fall out of a tree, Zoey will have my head and it would increase the possibility I might have to climb one.”
“What are you going to do for lunch?” Cass protested. “You can’t go two hours without eating, much less the rest of the day.”
“I will bring enough for Royce if it’s all right.” Mary’s English was lightly accented, and Cass remembered the musical sound of the Pennsylvania Dutch the Amish often spoke. “She can bring lunch for me tomorrow.”
“Well then, sure, if you want to, Royce. Thank you, Mary.” Damaris had been concerned about the influence of some of Royce’s friends in California. Cass had a feeling she’d be pleased with Mary, Isaac and Seth. At least on the face of things.
“If you’ll come to Zoey’s with me,” said Luke, when the teenagers had gone to work, “we’ll get a good lunch plus she and I can explain how the business is run. She still knows more about the orchard than I do. It’s up to you how active you want to be, but you need to make an educated decision.”
“I don’t think Aunt Zoey wants to see me.”
His gaze went to the round barn, then flicked back to her. He took off his baseball cap, pushed back his thick brown hair and put the cap back on. “Based on what?”
“What?” She frowned. What was he talking about?
“Yes, what? What makes you believe that?”
“My mother told me, although what she said turned out to be not exactly true. But the year in high school when I lived here, Zoey didn’t want me to come even though I didn’t have anywhere else to go. And I hardly ever saw her when I was here.” That still stung. Her aunt had been her favorite person in all the world. Finding out the feeling wasn’t mutual had hurt.
“Even if that’s true—and I know Zoey well enough to think there’s more to the story than you’ve been told—would you seriously hold that kind of grudge for, what, twenty years?”
“It’s not a grudge,” she protested. “I love Aunt Zoey. Having her come out to California when Mother was ill and again when she died was what got me through those days.” She hesitated. Talking about her personal life wasn’t something she did, especially with stomach-clenchingly handsome men she hardly knew. “I had divorced parents and numerous stepparents whose revolving-door comings and goings made me relationship shy. My father and some of those stepparents were military—not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it makes for a complicated lifestyle. Add my own shockingly bad choices to the mix and you have someone who stays inside a shell because it’s comfortable there.”
“I’m sure it is.” He touched her arm, leading her away from customer traffic. “Did you like it here? In high school, I mean.”
“Like it?” She shook her head. “I loved every minute, I think.” She frowned. “Did you live here then? I don’t remember you, but I wasn’t here that long.”
“No. My folks transferred here from Pennsylvania long after I got out of high school. Dad worked in Kokomo, but they lived in Sawyer. I liked it so well that when life dictated a change, I got a job as close as I could and bought a fixer-upper on the lake. About the time I got the kitchen paid for, the company I worked for closed. I’ll go back to real work one of these days, but for the time being, I’m enjoying the orchard and the lake.” He stopped. “I just told you my entire life story in what I’m sure was less than a hundred words. Are you impressed so far?”
She laughed, the sound coming easily. “You know, I am.”
“Impressed enough to come to Zoey’s with me? If it doesn’t work out and you have to spend an hour making polite noises, will it really hurt anything?”
Images of her last conversation with her father, facing Tony in court the day their divorce was final and watching cancer claim her mother made a painful collage in her mind. So many things that couldn’t be unsaid or undone. Maybe, just maybe, the fissure with Aunt Zoey could be healed. “No. It won’t hurt a thing. I’ll be glad to go with you.”
“You up for a walk?”
She was. She fell into step beside him to go down a grass-divided lane to the big house that sat watch over the orchard. “I’d forgotten that everyone walks at the lake. Or rides bikes or golf carts.”
“Or all three. Where did you live in California? Not where, exactly, but how? Were you in a house or an apartment?”
“When I was married, we lived in a house in Chula Vista, but when I got divorced, I moved up to an apartment in Sacramento. My mother and Royce and her mother all lived there.” She swallowed, pushing her hair out of her face when a gust of wind tunneled down the lane. “I was sick, and even though I could take care of myself most of the time, I didn’t want to be alone. Then Mother got pancreatic cancer, and I helped take care of her.” She took a deep breath and then another, trying to remember the things she’d learned in yoga class. “I sound pathetic,” she said apologetically, “and I’m not at all.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
The house came into full view when the lane meandered around a wooded curve, and Cass stopped, unable to keep in the soft “Oh” that passed her lips. The big Queen Anne farmhouse, still painted dark blue and trimmed in cream, hadn’t changed so much as a board since her summer visits here. White picket fence still surrounded the lawn. Lacy iron furniture, painted the same cream as the house’s trim, sat under the maple trees. Although the garage doors were new, they were still carriage-house style.
It was the safest place she’d ever known.
“It’s still beautiful,” she whispered.
“It is.”
“There used to be a swing on one of the trees in the backyard. I spent hours out there, watching the apple trees and catching a glimpse of the creek that was the property line.”
“It’s still there. Well, not the same swing, but one on the same tree, with the rope wrapped around the same limb.”
“Aunt Zoey spent so much time with me then. She was the best aunt ever. I must have driven her nuts.”
“That’s not the way she tells it.”
He had to be wrong. Surely he was wrong. Her mother would have told her, wouldn’t she, if Aunt Zoey had wanted to see her again? Marynell had been...difficult, but not possessive. She’d been relieved when Cass spent more time at friends’ homes than she did theirs. Even when Cass’s father hadn’t wanted to take advantage of his court-ordered visitation, Marynell had forced the issue. That alone had accounted for most of her summertime visits to Miniagua.
Luke didn’t wait for her to say more, just led the way up the front porch steps and around the side of the house to the kitchen door. “Zoey?” he called through the screen. “I brought you company for lunch.”
The sound of quick footsteps preceded Zoey to the door, and there she was, unchanged from how she’d looked when Marynell died. Almost unchanged from those long-ago summers. Her hair was white now instead of the light brown it had been, but she still wore it short and parted on the side so that it lay in a sleek curve over her ear. Makeup brought out the deep blue of her eyes. She was as tall as Cass and nearly as slender. She wore jeans and a floaty top, and her smile of welcome was wide and tremulous.
Cass’s heart thumped so hard she thought it was probably visible from where her aunt stood on the other side of the old-fashioned screen door. “Aunt Zoey.”
Zoey drew in an unsteady breath. “Cassiopeia.”
“Really?” said Luke. “You don’t look like a Cassiopeia.”
Cass spared him a glance. “No, but it’s who I always wished I was.” Her name was simply Cass. No Cassiopeia. No Cassandra. No middle name. She didn’t mind it now—she’d given herself Cassandra as a present when she’d chosen her writing name—but she’d hated it as a child, feeling that her parents hadn’t even cared enough to give her a whole name.
“It’s who you are to me.” Zoey pushed open the door. “Welcome home.”
CHAPTER FOUR (#ua867f1a3-851d-5e33-8062-ccf214bd147f)
“SHE IS SO PRETTY.” Seth stared out over the windshield of Luke’s boat as they cruised Lake Miniagua after helping Father Doherty and Chris Granger trim the hedges at St. Paul’s.
“She sure is,” Luke murmured, lifting his arm to wave at Tucker Llewellyn as the big pontoon boat he and Jack owned glided past.
“That’s just sick.” Seth sounded disgusted.
“What’s sick?”
“What are you doing looking at a sixteen-year-old girl? You could be her dad.”
“Who’s talking about a sixteen-year-old girl?”
“We are.”
“Well, I wasn’t,” said Luke mildly. “Who are you talking about?”
“Royce Gentry.”
“Oh.” She was a beautiful girl. Prettier than her older sister, but not as striking. She worked hard, too, laughing at herself as the new kid, and falling into easy camaraderie with the others. She’d arrived her second day at work with enough lunch for Mary and herself and doughnuts from the Amish bakery that she shared with everyone.
“So, who were you talking about?” Seth passed him a sly look. “Someone Mom would get all excited about? She thinks there’s something wrong with a guy being thirty-eight and single. Dad says—”
“—leave the boy alone,” Luke finished in unison with him.
“Don’t you want to get married again?” Seth steered the boat carefully as they approached Luke’s dock. “I mean, I hope I don’t get married real young, either, but you’re kind of pushing the envelope on that, aren’t you?” He hesitated. “Jill has been gone a long time.”
“It’s Mom’s envelope I’m pushing. And her grandma buttons, too—that’s for sure.” Luke stepped out of the boat to tie off. “Jill died ten years ago, and she’d be in line behind you and Mom telling me it’s time to get married again. But, you know—” He stopped, staring toward where the evening sun was dipping into the water. “I wouldn’t give up a minute of the time we had together, but the truth is, I don’t want to feel that way about somebody again. Losing her was a kind of hell I’m not willing to chance going through twice.”
“She was so great.” Seth had only been seven when Jill’s faulty heart had failed for the last time. Luke thought his little brother’s grief had been nearly as intense as his own. The young woman who knew she’d never be a mother had been a sister-in-law extraordinaire to the little brother no one ever had enough time for. She’d been his first babysitter, had seen him take his first steps and heard his first words.
“She was.” He smiled at Seth and gave his shoulder a squeeze when he stepped onto the dock a lot more lithely than Luke had.
“So, she’d want to know, too. Who’s pretty besides Royce? And don’t give me the whole none-of-your-business thing. It’s my night to cook and I have no problem with build-your-own bologna sandwiches.”
Luke’s stomach growled as if on cue. “Her sister, Cass. She’s pretty.”
“Oh.” Seth thought over that for the length of time it took them to reach the back porch of the house. “She is, I guess. For someone nearly as old as you, I mean.”
“Keep it up and I’ll send you to Rachel for the school year.”
“Oh, no, say it isn’t so!” Seth threw himself up against the back door, his arms raised in supplication, and Luke pushed him aside, laughing.
“You should be in drama instead of football.”
He showered while Seth prepared dinner. Sometimes he felt guilty because the kid worked so hard, but he was also proud that Seth thrived on it.
“I want you to take this weekend off,” he said when they were seated at the bar in the kitchen eating spaghetti with meat sauce. “It’ll be the last one for a while, between football and apples coming on.”
“Can I use your car?”
“As long as I’m not in it, you can.”
“No curfew?”
“None at all.”
It was a safe concession to make because no matter how often Seth intended to stay up late, he was invariably asleep by eleven. Luke had even bought a TV for the cottage’s second bedroom that had a timer on it, because his brother was usually out for the night within ten minutes of lying down.
“I’m going to meet Cass for a drink at the Grill.” Luke loaded the dishwasher. “If you have friends come over, stay out of the liquor.”
“Nah.” Seth already looked sleepy. “I’m tired. Two-a-days are deadly.”
They were. Luke remembered that. Plus the kid had done more than his share of work at the church. “Get some sleep, then,” he suggested.
“I will.” But Seth was already reaching for his guitar, and Luke hesitated. They usually played music together for an hour or so—it was a habit he didn’t want to break.
“Go.” Seth waved him off. “The more I practice and you don’t, the better I get...and you don’t.”
“In your dreams, little brother.” But he left, a little puzzled by how eager he was to see Cass again. Admittedly, there was some sort of connection between them, but he thought that was probably because they both cared for Zoey. He was anxious to hear how both women felt about the lunch of the day before. They’d been affectionate with each other but also uncomfortable. He’d left them alone after lunch and hadn’t seen either of them since.
Cass was at the bar in Anything Goes, talking to Mollie, the bartender, and sipping from a tall mug of hot chocolate.
“You do know that chocolate comes loaded, right?” He took the stool beside hers, waving at Mollie.
Cass flashed him a smile that had his heartbeat moving around the way his parents did when they danced the jitterbug. “I do, but I’m on foot. I can take it.”
“If you two kids want to sit at a table, the lake view ones are emptying out,” said Mollie. “I’ll bring your drinks over.”
“Good idea.” Luke got up. “Thanks for the ‘kids’ thing. Having Seth in the house has added considerably to my age.”
Mollie flipped him with the business end of a bar towel. “Shame on you. That’s a good kid there and you know it.”
“He is.” Luke held up a hand to protect himself. “Mom and Dad were already over the having-babies thing by the time he came along, so Rachel, Leah and I take full credit for how he’s come out.” He smiled. “We all admit Jill got him off to a good start.”
Mollie’s face softened. “She sure did. What a mom she would have been.”
The bartender was one of the few who didn’t avoid talking about Jill, something Luke appreciated.
“Royce thinks he’s a good kid, too. The word hot entered the conversation about ten times.” Cass followed him to a booth beside the window-lined wall. “She hasn’t been nearly as bored as she anticipated when we drove in. Of course, it’s only been two days. Things could change.”
When they’d sat down and Mollie had brought their drinks and a bowl of popcorn, Cass asked, “Who’s Jill, or shouldn’t I ask?”
“My wife. She died of heart disease ten years ago.”
“Oh.” Cass withdrew the hand that had been reaching for popcorn. “I’m sorry. How awful.”
“It was.”
“How long were you married?”
“Nine years and change.” He waited for the pain to strike, even knowing it wouldn’t anymore. He’d loved his wife and he missed her, but time had faded the memories to where they were a gentle kind of pleasure.
“I hope you had a great time every minute.”
He nodded, a smile breaking loose. “We did that. We knew there wasn’t much time, so we were able to make the absolute best of it.” It had been hard when they’d argued, because he hadn’t wanted to waste that time, but Jill had argued anyway. She was unwilling to miss out on any of life’s experiences just because she didn’t have enough time for all of them.
“Children?”
“No. She couldn’t, but she and Seth worshiped each other from the day he was born, so he was as much like our kid as my little brother.” He met Cass’s eyes and held her gaze, thinking how strange it was that despite their acknowledged connection, he had no clue what she was thinking. “You were married, too?”
“Yes.” She looked almost embarrassed, and reached for the popcorn again, taking a handful and dropping it onto a napkin. She ate a few bites. “He had the ideal family. They stayed in one spot, stayed married to each other and had enough money to buy anything they wanted. Not rich, but more comfortable than I was used to. Tony always said I married him to get his family, and he was probably right.” She shrugged. “It only took us fourteen years or so to figure out it wasn’t working. Eventually he settled in on someone younger and prettier and we got a divorce ten years after we should have. I got sick while it was going on, so it was an eventful few years there.”
Luke could think of absolutely nothing to say. “Wow.” It was weak, but it was accurate.
She looked appalled. “I am so sorry. I can’t believe I just did that. People have been asking me how I’m doing ever since I got sick and I have managed to say ‘doing fine’ a gazillion times, even when I was bald and the color of cigarette ashes. I just blew that record for nobility in one short conversation and you didn’t even ask how I was.”
“You have hair and your skin’s a nice golden color, too.” Luke was laughing. He couldn’t help it. “You know, nobility’s overrated anyway. I tried that with Seth the last time he used my car. He said the only reason I let him use it was that it always came back cleaner than it left. He was pretty much right.”
She laughed, too. “I’ll remember that the next time the martyr cross gets too heavy to carry.”
“Seriously.” He caught her gaze again. And held it. He thought he might very well get lost in those ocean-colored depths. “How are you doing?”
“Seriously, doing fine. I had my two-years-after-diagnosis testing done this spring and am still clear. At least until November, when I go back into full-scale panic when they test again.”
Relief cleared the air between them. “I am so glad for that.” He reached for her hand and squeezed it, wanting to touch her and hoping it didn’t come across as creepy. She squeezed back, so it must not have. “So we can talk about important stuff then, right? Like what you think of everything we’ve done at the orchard.” He rested his forearms on the edge of the table and did his best to look macho—an automatic fail. “I am a guy, you know. My sisters say I am the master of making things all about me. I don’t want to disappoint them.”
Cass beamed, her eyes lighting. The expression opened a place in him he’d thought was permanently closed. Oh, boy. “I love the orchard, and I love everything you’ve done to it.”
Encouraged, he asked the question that had lingered uppermost in his mind since they’d toured the orchard earlier in the day. “Do you know what you’d like to do? Stay a silent partner like your mother was? Sell out? I don’t have the money, but having a financially savvy brother-in-law has ensured I have good credit.”
It was as if he’d slapped her. The light left her eyes and her beam faded to a polite smile. She started to speak, then stopped, turning her head to gaze out at the lake. Spangled with moonlight, starshine and colored lights on boats cruising the calm water, it was a good thing to look at. Calming and exhilarating at the same time.
What had he said? Whatever it was, she was neither acknowledging nor answering.
“Cass?”
“I’d like to try the coffee-shop thing. I talked to Neely at the tearoom this morning, because that would be the most direct competition, and she thought it was a good idea.” She turned back to meet his eyes again, and he thought she looked defeated. He hoped he hadn’t caused that.
“In the round barn,” she specified. “It wouldn’t need to be a big shop. Maybe ten or twelve tables. Wi-Fi. Coffee and pastries in the morning. Soup and sandwiches at lunch. Just coffee and packaged things in the evening, unless it works out really well, in which case we could continue the lunch offerings.”
He hadn’t wanted her to be defeated, to feel like a stranger in a strange land. He also hadn’t expected—or wanted, his snarky inner voice muttered—her to want to change things. She was being naïve. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t considered having a café on the premises, but it hadn’t seemed to be a viable use of resources. He’d been running the orchard for three years. She’d been at the lake for two days and had taken exactly one tour of the premises.
She also owned half the orchard. Exactly. There was no 51 percent or anything like that to give him a louder voice in negotiations. He wasn’t a proponent of loud voices anyway, but...well, he’d expected her to pick up where her mother left off. That amounted to cashing the checks, signing things that required both their names and exchanging Christmas cards.
“We could think about that,” he said slowly. “Maybe you could come up with some numbers.”
“I can do that. I’ve spent hours of many hundreds of days in coffee shops for the past fifteen years. I already know a lot and I know where to find out the rest. As far as numbers go—” she scrambled in her purse for a pen, wrote on a napkin and pushed it across the table “—I can invest that.”
* * *
“SHE’S YOUR AUNT. Why are you so nervous?” Royce scowled at the table Cass had set in the dining area of the cottage. “I thought we were the beer-and-brats segment of the family. This looks like the way Dad used to want the table set when officers came to dinner. There are too many forks and glasses.”
Cass laughed. “You’re right. Okay, let’s back it off.”
They started from scratch, using the jewel-toned placemats that had come with the house instead of the embroidered tablecloth Cass had bought at an antiques store on Main Street. They left water glasses on the table, but set wineglasses and cups and saucers out of the way on the counter. They replaced elegant tapers with squatty candles and set the autumn centerpiece back on the end table in the living room where Royce had put it when they brought it home.
Dinner was a combination of their talents. Cass had cooked a pot roast with vegetables and Royce had made a salad and deviled a pretty little platter of eggs. They’d bought dessert and dinner rolls at the Amish bakery and wine at Sycamore Hill. Cass had promised her sister she could have a glass if she wasn’t going out afterward, but a phone call from Seth Rossiter asking her to go to the late movie in Sawyer put an end to that.
Zoey was right on time. One shoe on and one shoe off, Royce opened the door. “Aunt Zoey! I’m so glad to see you!”
Cass watched the two tall, slim women she loved as they hugged each other, drew back to take a good look and hugged each other again. She was happy for Royce, she told herself, that Aunt Zoey’s love for a girl who wasn’t actually her niece was so unrestricted. She was jealous, too.
“Come here.” Zoey stretched her arm toward her. Her eyes were awash with tears, something Cass didn’t remember seeing before. Even when Marynell had died, grief had made new lines in Zoey’s face, but Cass hadn’t seen her cry. “I know we have issues, but right this minute, we don’t.”
Zoey smelled like pink Dove soap and the same kind of shampoo Cass and Royce used. Her hug, complete with strong, thin arms and a soft, wrinkled cheek against her own, made Cass know more than anything else that, at least for now, she was home.
By the time they reached the table, Zoey had handed Royce a handful of photographs. “A record of your sister’s life you can use for blackmail if the need arises.”
Cass laughed, although it took all she had not to snatch the pictures away. They were a record of a childhood she didn’t want altered by someone else’s perception. “Did Mother do that with you?”
She could have cut her tongue out as soon as the words left her mouth. She’d forgotten that Zoey had been engaged to her father first, before he’d met her younger sister. Marynell had been the first of the young, beautiful women he’d pursued and caught. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have—”
Zoey shook her head. “No, it’s all right. I wouldn’t say she blackmailed. She never had to. Marynell was so beautiful we all enabled her.” She met Cass’s eyes and grasped her hand. “It didn’t make any of us bad people.” She grinned wickedly. “Even your father.”
Royce laughed, delighted, and Cass joined her. In his own way, Ken Gentry loved his daughters, but they’d both always known where they stood in his line of priorities. Even Royce, gorgeous as she was, was a testimony to his aging. He’d been fifty-two when she was born, and inevitable queries about his “grandchild” were still hard for him to take. He was generally happier just being able to show off her pictures.
“Everyone has weaknesses,” Zoey concluded, “and mine combined with your parents’ created quite a cluster of pain and sorrow.”
Seth came as they were finishing dessert, and Cass excused her sister from cleanup duty. Before the cottage’s front door closed behind the young couple, awkwardness slipped inside.
“I should go.” Zoey pushed back from the table. “Let me help with the dishes.”
Cass almost let her leave. That was how she’d spent most of her life, wasn’t it, walking the long way around to avoid being hurt more than necessary? She’d learned to live without her beloved aunt’s emotional support. Why take a chance of regaining it only to lose it once more?
Because she was thirty-five, not sixteen, that was why. Because she had a little sister she needed to set an example for. Because there were steps out of loneliness and she was ready to take a big one.
“No,” she said. “Please.” She stood up. “Will you make coffee while I clear the table? Or would you rather have more wine?”
“Coffee would be good.”
“Yours always was, even when it was half cream and two-thirds refined sugar. Did Nana know you gave it to me like that?”
Zoey chuckled. “I doubt it. It didn’t seem to have taken, though—you’ve been thin as a rail your whole life.”
When the coffee was done and they were once more sitting across from each other at the table, Cass revealed, “I got chunky in high school, when we were in Korea. Dad found a doctor who put me on a program that un-chunked me in a matter of months. I took pills that were illegal here, but that was during the Barbie-stepmother time and she used them all the time. We both survived and I stayed thin until after I was married.”
“You gained weight then? It’s hard to imagine.”
“Some. Enough to make Tony panic. So I became an exercise and fasting addict. I couldn’t stop losing weight when I was ready to and it scared me to death. My metabolism was so messed up, and it pretty much stayed that way until I got the breast cancer diagnosis.” Cass smiled, although the gesture cost her—there was nothing funny in the memories. “So now I’m your basic slug. I walk for exercise, but I do it better if there’s ice cream at the end of it.”
Zoey laughed, a big sound that filled Cass’s heart and gave buoyancy to her own chuckle. “I’m with you, sweetheart.” The older woman sipped from the coffee in front of her, then leaned her forearms on the table and met Cass’s eyes. “Where did you go, Cassandra? Did you really believe I didn’t want you here? That I ever didn’t want you at all? That the people at the lake didn’t want you? Gianna Gallagher used to ask me, but I never said where you were, just that you were all right even though I was never really sure you really were.”
“Mother could be pretty convincing. You know that. It wasn’t until she got sick that she admitted she’d made most of it up, that you’d only been concerned about me staying with Nana and Grandpa because they weren’t all that well. I should have talked to you then.” Marynell had made other confessions, too, all in one long, pain-ridden night. She’d asked her daughter’s forgiveness and Cass had given it.
She hadn’t meant the words of forgiveness, but she’d said what a dying woman needed to hear. Six months and change later, she thought she’d done the right thing, but a pardoning heart had come harder than the words had.
“Will you forgive me?” she asked. “For believing her and for not making it right even when I knew better?”
“Oh, honey.” Zoey got up, came around the table and drew Cass out of the chair and into her arms. “Marynell was who she was and she couldn’t help that. We all fell prey to her at one time or another. Let’s just concentrate on not losing each other again. What do you say?”
“I’d like that a lot.”
When they were seated again, their cups refilled and second servings of dessert on plates in front of them, Zoey said, “What do you think of Luke?”
“He must be a good businessman. The orchard looks great.”
She thought more than that, of course. Noticed more. Thought about him before she fell asleep in one of the cottage’s two little bedrooms. She knew he had beautiful, sun-streaked dark brown hair and thickly lashed eyes the color of milk chocolate. That he would probably be a little taller than she was even if she was wearing heels. That he was built really nicely but not as if it was on purpose—it was more like the muscles were a by-product of pruning and picking apples. That his voice warmed places in her that hadn’t known warmth in a long time. Maybe ever.
She took a deep breath. “I suggested a coffee shop on the premises, in the round barn. I don’t think he likes the idea.”
Zoey shrugged. “Convince him, if it’s something you’d like to do that you think would be successful, but remember that he’s run the place by himself for several years. As long as your mother got her checks, she never offered any input. I’m sure Luke expected the same thing from you.” She smiled, her eyes twinkling. “I’ll be so delighted to see him be wrong.”
CHAPTER FIVE (#ua867f1a3-851d-5e33-8062-ccf214bd147f)
HE WASN’T READY to give in on the coffee shop idea, but Luke had to admit he liked having an active partner in the orchard. For one thing, she didn’t mind climbing trees and she was—for someone he thought was on the skinny side of slim—strong enough to fill the bag over her shoulder as full as her sister did. It was the busiest time of year at the orchard and she pitched in wherever help was needed. She was great in the retail store and on the sorting machine—not so good when it came to making the orchard’s signature dumplings.
“It skipped a generation. That’s all I can figure,” Cass said, laughing, when Zoey and Luke looked at her first attempt with something like horror.
She often joined him and Zoey at the farmhouse for coffee in the morning. This became an increasingly pleasurable point during the day, since Zoey seemed to be on a one-woman crusade to fatten up her niece. Not wanting to make anyone feel uncomfortable about eating in front of him, Luke filled his plate and joined them at the table. They brainstormed about the orchard, about the Miniagua Lakers football team, about the coffee shop.
The daggone coffee shop.
She was serious about it. She’d even hauled him over to Peru on Monday morning to a place there called Aroma, where he drank two cups and got one to go of something really strong and good. She’d had something girly. Then, just when he’d built up a good argument, she’d taken him to a chain coffee place in Kokomo and another local one that sat just off campus at a nearby university. He’d eaten pastries at that one, and they hadn’t been as good as the ones from the Amish bakery, but Cass had shown him how popular they were and gotten off-the-top-of-her-head numbers from the barista about what their revenue was on a fairly slow weekday.
He was running out of arguments.
On Friday, Cass texted and said she couldn’t make breakfast and Royce called Seth and said she’d be late at the orchard. Neither of them offered an explanation. Zoey came to the apple barn, looking fretful, and stood at the sorter for a while. Sort of helping.
“What are you doing here?” Luke asked bluntly, dumping a box of Galas onto the conveyor. “Not that you’re not welcome—you most certainly are—but you don’t generally hang out in the barn. You go up to the store and the apple dumpling assembly.”
“Luke, what if they’re getting ready to go home? Royce needs to start school, so even though they planned to stay two weeks, they might not. It’s a long, hard drive.”
She literally wrung her hands, and Luke wanted to wring Cass’s neck. She’d had no business getting her aunt’s hopes up that she might stay at Miniagua if her intent all the time was to hightail it back to the West Coast. While he was relieved in a way not to have to come up with more reasons not to open a coffee shop in the round barn, he was seriously ticked that she would get everyone all excited and then just take off, even though from everything he’d heard that seemed to be her modus operandi.
Her friends from the wreck had stood by her since she’d come back. All the ones who were local had met at Gianna Gallagher’s on Tuesday night. “Not to ask questions,” Gianna had said, “but to welcome you home.”
Cass had cried when she’d talked about it at breakfast. Not the boo-hoo kind that Rachel had made into an art form when she was in high school, but silent, heartfelt weeping that she apologized for.
He knew all the other survivors of the wreck, what they’d been through and how they’d come out on the other side. Having her come back only to leave again would be like a slap in the face to them as much as it was to Zoey.
And to him. Daggone it. He didn’t want to take her likely desertion personally, but he did. They were getting to be friends, weren’t they? And he liked her. He thought she was pretty hot, too, but that was incidental and not to be acted on—she had way too much baggage going on and he just wasn’t going there. Not with her. Not with anyone.
“There’s nothing we can do either way,” he told Zoey. “You’re reestablishing a relationship with her and she’s not going to let that slide any more than you are.” I hope. “She has to consider Royce, too. Don’t forget, I’ve got that running back out there with me for the whole freakin’ school year because of a consideration like that.” He didn’t feel like defending her, not at all, but he owed her that one as one custodial sibling to another.
“I know, but it would be so nice for Royce to go here this year while her mother’s gone. It was great for Cass regardless of how things ended up. I believe that with all my heart.”
It was Zoey’s heart he was worried about. As far as he knew, she was healthy, but that heart was big and pretty wide open—he hated to see it get broken.
“Well, come on into the store. I’ll buy you some coffee and a dumpling.” He stepped away from the sorter and waited for her to join him.
They were at the open doors of the barn when Cass’s red SUV pulled into the parking lot, spitting some gravel when she stopped a little more suddenly than she maybe should have. That was explained when Royce got out of the driver’s side and took off running toward the trees where Seth and the others were picking. She had papers flapping in her hand, and she didn’t bother closing the door.
Cass got out of the other side, moving more slowly but with a certain buoyancy in her step that made Luke’s heartbeat go skippy for a couple of beats. She walked around to close the other door, then approached where Luke and Zoey waited. “Sorry to miss this morning.” She hugged Zoey and smiled at Luke. He couldn’t see her eyes behind the sunglasses she wore, but he’d have bet they were smiling, too.
They didn’t ask her the circumstances of her absence. She was a grown-up and he knew Zoey didn’t want to push her away. Luke didn’t, either, but he was still in the stage of maybe they’d be friends and maybe not; trying to bring her closer might scare her off completely.
She spoke before he could. “I have had no coffee. Can we get some?”
They went into the store, waving at the woman behind the counter, and back to the self-serve coffee station. Cass had replaced the foam cups with promotional cups from all over Miniagua and Sawyer. He didn’t know how she’d found time to collect them, but they were nice for customers and the environment, and the coffee sure tasted better out of them.
“Royce and I talked a lot last night,” she said when they’d gone back outside and taken seats at one of the patio tables on the wide porch. “I said we needed to leave by Wednesday of next week in order to get her into school for the second week. Not being there the first week is fine, not so much another one. She misses her friends, misses the shopping and looks forward to the advanced placement curriculum and getting into Berkeley. She has mentioned a minimum of seven hundred times that there’s nothing to do here. I thought, other than her no longer seeing your ‘seriously hot’ younger brother and my ‘seriously cool’ aunt every day, that Royce was ready to go home.” She cleared her throat and took a long drink of coffee. “I was wrong.”
“Oh.” Zoey clasped her hands in anticipation, and Luke almost did. What was wrong with him anyway? Any minute now, he’d be telling her he thought the coffee shop was a fine idea. And it wasn’t. For heaven’s sake, it just so was not.
“Yes.” Cass sounded gleeful, and Luke caught a glimpse and a sound-bite of the girl she must have been when she’d spent her junior year here. “Even though she wants to return to California when her mother comes home, she’d really like to try school here and she’d like to spend quality time—yes, she actually used that term—with Aunt Zoey and...yeah, she wouldn’t mind seeing Seth occasionally, too.” Cass bounced—literally—in her seat. “Where is that boy? I need to find him and kiss his face.”
“So, you’re staying.” He couldn’t be wrong if he stated the obvious, could he? And he wasn’t going to think about her kissing Seth’s face. Or anyone else’s.
“Yes. At least until Royce’s mother gets home, and longer if I can find a place to live and settle in. We enrolled Royce in school this morning and have spent the last thirty minutes discussing the fact that she doesn’t have a single thing to wear, which means spending a whole day and a bunch of money in Kokomo.” Her brows knit into a slight frown. “It shouldn’t be a problem finding a house to rent, with the lake season ending, should it?”
“No.” Zoey sounded frantic. “No.” She pointed in the vague direction of the farmhouse. “Twelve rooms, Cass, and four of them are upstairs bedrooms. You and Royce wouldn’t even have to share a bath because there are two of them up there. It’ll be yours someday anyway, so move in now. Make it your home.”
“Aunt Zoey.” Cass pinned her gaze to her aunt. “How long has it been since you’ve lived with a sixteen-year-old? It’s not for the faint of heart.”
Zoey laughed, that big, full sound that delighted everyone within hearing. “I shared a room and a bathroom with your mother and lived to tell the story. Any more questions?”
“Are you sure?”
“More than sure.”
It was already a sunny day, but Luke thought it had gotten brighter within the last few minutes. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Maybe a coffee shop would be a good idea.”
* * *
IT HAD BEEN a busy, busy day. When they’d gotten home from the orchard, accompanied by a pizza and two milkshakes, Cass had to convince Royce they couldn’t move into the farmhouse that very minute. After supper, she spent an hour trying to decide what to do with her apartment in Sacramento.
When Royce Skyped with her mother that evening, Lieutenant Colonel Gentry asked to talk to Cass.
“Is it okay,” asked Cass, “that we’re staying here?”
“More than okay.” Damaris bit her lip, and Cass thought she looked tired. “Your dad probably won’t come there. I think that’s a good thing for both of you.”
“I think so, too.” Cass hesitated, frowning at her favorite stepmother’s flickering image. “Damaris? You doing all right?”
“Yeah.” The other woman’s face cleared. “Not a good place or a good time. I’m so grateful to you for keeping Royce. It’s still okay...you know, if anything happens—you’ll still keep her?”
Alarm shivered up Cass’s spine. “I’ll always keep her,” she said, her tone as level as she could make it, “but nothing’s going to happen to you. You survived life with Major Gentry, sir, remember?”
They all joked about it, even the two stepmothers Cass hadn’t bonded with, that they’d escaped unscathed from life with her father. They used to say that when he’d read Pat Conroy’s The Great Santini, he’d thought it was an instruction manual.
“You’re right. Nothing’s going to happen. Except we both know something might. I’ve always heard about the lake. From you. From your mother. Even from your aunt Zoey when Marynell was ill. I like the idea of Royce being there and of her being with you.” She smiled. “Are you giving up your apartment?”
“I’m trying to decide.”
“Let me help with that.” Damaris leaned closer, and it was as if she was reaching through the screen of Cass’s laptop computer. “Let it go. Hire someone to pack it up and ship it to you. You’re home now. Plan on staying there.”
Where shivers had been, Cass thought maybe some steel was working its way up her spine. Home. “I think you’re right.”
“I need to go. Give my girl a hug for me. I love you, stepgirl.”
Cass went still. Damaris called her that sometimes and, occasionally, she added a casual “love ya” at the end of their conversations, but not like this. Never like this.
“Damaris?”
“Got to go.”
“Okay.” She shook off the wave of foreboding. “Love you, too, Colonel.”
After Royce went to bed, Cass poured herself a glass of wine and sat at the table in front of her computer. She hadn’t been very productive since they’d gotten to the lake, something nearly unheard of—one of the things Cassandra G. Porter’s readers counted on was that she would have a new mystery on the shelves every June and every December. That meant writing a certain amount every day. She still wrote every day, but the word count had taken a serious road trip to the wayside.
She’d finished a book while she was taking chemo. “It’s not my best,” she qualified when she sent its file to her editor, “but it was my best at the time.” Lucy Garten, the sleuth who was the protagonist in the series, had developed breast cancer and gone through treatment as Cass did, solving TheCase of Daisy’s Ashes while she was bald, grouchy and nauseated.
Damaris had been her beta reader, proofreading as she went. It had cemented a bond born from the tenuous threads of their step-relationship.
To date, it was her bestselling book. Clutching that success close was what had given her the courage to come back to the lake, but now she needed to stay successful.
The thought made her grin at herself. It also led to getting several pages done by the time the wine bottle was empty and her eyelids were drooping. Before she went to bed, she walked down to the lake, looking out over its surface. The moon was waning, but still lent its light to the ruffly little waves that slapped the shore. She thought of the look on Damaris’s face, of Royce’s almost palpable excitement when it was decided they would stay in Miniagua, of the warmth of Zoey’s jubilant hug.
She thought of Luke Rossiter and of what tables and chairs she’d find for the coffee shop and wondered if she was insane for wanting to be a barista. You’re a writer, for heaven’s sake, and you can finally almost make a living at it. But the round barn at the orchard had called out to a part of her she’d been holding back since she left the lake, the part that didn’t want to be alone. As much as she loved writing and the solitude that went along with it, she needed something that would force her away from that aloneness.
And she loved coffee shops. What more reason did she need?
Back in the cottage, she went to bed, thinking again of Damaris’s tired face. And then, before sleep overtook her, of Luke Rossiter’s smiling one.
* * *
“TELL ME AGAIN why we can’t just have the coffee shop in the center corridor of the barn. It’s plenty big enough and access is right there from both entrances. That leaves the side areas for offices or even other little shops if this thing takes off.” Luke looked both tired and impatient. And on the edge of angry.
Cass wasn’t good at standing her ground—it wasn’t something that had ever worked particularly well for her. But... “Because the coziness factor would be gone. It would never be quiet or intimate or conducive to working.” She had said all this. She knew she had. Who knew that under that straight, silky hair of his, Luke Rossiter had such a thick head?
“Working? I thought it was for coffee. If people want to work, they should rent their own office space—maybe in the side rooms of the round barn.”
“How did you get through college without studying in coffee shops?” she demanded.
“Easy. I studied in the student union or even occasionally—call me crazy—in the library. I thought a coffee shop was for drinking coffee.” He grinned, but it wasn’t his usual funny, endearing expression. It was more like a smirk.
“It is. And for visiting, studying and working. It’s a great place for parents to recharge after a day with kids. For artists to sketch and writers to write. Even for music. Open mic nights or karaoke.”

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