Finally a Family. Carolyne Aarsen

looked as if he was about to answer with a smart remark of his own when a woman’s voice caught his attention.

      “Ethan. Wait up.” A lithe blond woman came alongside him and slipped her arm through his. “I didn’t know you were coming to town, handsome.”

      Ethan flicked his attention toward the woman, then back to Hannah.

      Who, officially, was no longer interested. She had spent too much time with guys like Ethan. They encouraged women until things got too serious, then the men developed a sudden severe case of attention deficit disorder and moved on to another woman.

      Case in point, Alex Deerborn.

      No thanks.

      She moved past him, the scent of coffee growing stronger and more tantalizing by the minute.

      “So who was that?” she heard the blonde ask.

      “I’m not sure, Jocelyn,” he responded.

      His vague comment made her look back again. “Uncle Ethan” stared at her, a frown pulling his well-shaped eyebrows together, ignoring the woman clinging to his arm.

      

      “I think I saw her.”

      Morris Westerveld lowered his newspaper and favored his son with a puzzled look. “Saw who?”

      “Hannah Kristoferson.” Ethan dropped onto the couch in his parents’ house, balancing the plate he’d stacked high with the freshly baked peanut-butter-chip cookies he’d found cooling on the kitchen counter. He’d lived on the farm for the past few years, but he still dropped in on his parents in town from time to time. Though his father, the principal of Riverbend High School, hadn’t done any work on the farm since he was in high school himself, Ethan often used him as a sounding board. Although his dad had never liked farm work or living on the farm, he humored Ethan by listening.

      “Where did you see her?”

      “I thought I saw her by the bakery after I gave Susie trouble for knocking Todd over.”

      “What does she look like?”

      “She should comb her hair. I’m sure Janie didn’t let her out of the house looking like that.”

      “I meant that Hannah girl.”

      Ethan took another bite. He had known whom his father meant. He didn’t want to think about Hannah and why exactly his uncle Sam had been so insistent she come for a simple reading of a will that had been postponed against her arrival.

      “She’s tall. Long brownish hair, pretty thick. Curly. She was wearing some kind of bandanna over it. Brown eyes. Doesn’t look much different from the picture Uncle Sam had in the house.” Ethan added a shrug to the monologue as if to show his father that Hannah was simply an inconvenient blip on his radar instead of someone he’d been wondering about ever since he had first seen that picture.

      Ethan didn’t want to think about the implications of Hannah’s presence and the questions that raised. He preferred to concentrate on the chewy cookies and the shred of comfort they gave him. A feeling in short supply since Sam’s death.

      Though Sam had been in the hospital for the past six months, each morning Ethan got up, he still expected to see his beloved uncle and farming partner standing by the stove, asking Ethan how he wanted his eggs. Each morning the pain was as deep as the day before. That had made it difficult to get the equipment ready this spring for a job that, of all the farm work, Sam had loved the most. Working the fields.

      “She doesn’t sound too remarkable,” his father said.

      “Nope.” Ethan took another healthy bite. “Nothing remarkable about her at all.”

      And he was lying through the peanut butter chips filling his mouth. When he had seen the girl he assumed was Hannah standing on the street corner, her expression holding the faintest glint of humor, he’d been intrigued enough to slow his truck down for a second look.

      When she had tried to help out his nephew, she struck a chord in his heart. And then he’d tossed out that lame question.

      Do I know you?

      He blamed his lapse on the hint of laughter in the shape of her arching eyebrows and her soft mouth. Brown hair flowing like melted chocolate over her shoulders and down her back had also added to his momentary brainlessness.

      In spite of his rather uncharacteristically gauche question, he still wanted to go after her and ask her a few questions, which would have violated his hard-won rules for living.

      Keep your pride. Don’t go running after any girl. Let them come to you.

      This had been his mantra ever since Colby left him the day before their wedding because she suddenly decided she couldn’t move onto the farm.

      It took him four months to get over her, five months to use up all the envelopes that came with the thank-you cards and six months to decide he would never go running after a girl again.

      “Hannah was supposed to be here by today, so that girl could easily have been her.” Morris Westerveld gave his newspaper a shake and dived into the news of the world again.

      Ethan sighed and picked a crumb off his fingertip.

      If that girl was Hannah, she would bring nothing but questions and potential trouble to the family and—more specifically—to him.

      The family had all breathed a collective sigh of relief when Sam came back from Ontario thirteen years ago. Grandpa Westerveld, Sam’s partner on the family farm, had been injured in a bad accident and Sam was needed. Ethan was sixteen at the time and chafing to quit school so he could work full-time with his grandfather on their family farm. Ever since he could throw a bale, Ethan had spent evenings and weekends and every holiday helping his grandpa.

      Sam slipped back into the groove but never said much about the nine years he’d been gone or the woman that he’d been living with and her little girl. Nor did he ever get married.

      After Grandpa Westerveld died, Sam, his son, took over the struggling farm, and when Ethan graduated from high school Sam took his nephew on as his new partner.

      Now Sam was dead, after a six-month battle with cancer. And, per Sam’s request, Sam wanted one Hannah Kristoferson and Ethan Westerveld at a private reading of his will, the reading to be put off until such time as one Hannah Kristoferson could be tracked down.

      Though no one understood the reasons for Sam’s unusual request, the Westerveld family all knew about Hannah and her mother, Marla, and their involvement with their brother and uncle.

      Sam and his father had had a falling out and Sam had left, determined to make it on his own. He started hitchhiking across Canada and got as far as Toronto, where he met Marla and Hannah at a Laundromat. Hannah was three. He dated Marla for a time and then moved in.

      During Sam’s stay in Toronto, the family kept up a regular communication with Sam. They all wrote and phoned. When he returned, he never mentioned Marla or Hannah. The only reminder of those lost years was a few pictures and some homemade cards, and the cheques he sent Marla Kristoferson every month.

      When Sam was admitted to the hospital, he asked the family to try to find Hannah so he could see her before he died. By the time they finally found her, Sam had been dead and buried for three weeks.

      Ethan pushed himself off the couch. He didn’t need to give Hannah or her mother any more headspace. He had too much work to do and too little time to do it in.

      Chapter Two

      Hannah paused at the entrance to the acreage to check the name on the sign: Dan and Tilly Westerveld. She put the car in gear, took a calming breath and turned down the driveway. The tall spruce trees lining the driveway could have been welcoming or sinister, depending on one’s mental state.

      Right now, echoes of Hansel and Gretel were teasing her memories. Though Hannah was pretty