Return to Emmett's Mill. Kimberly Meter Van

when her family needed her the most. She risked rejection and gently placed her hand on her father’s shoulder. “I’m sorry it wasn’t good enough. Sorrier than anyone will ever know,” she added in a whisper. “I can’t take it back. I’d do anything if I could. Deep down somewhere, you have to believe that, Dad. I loved her, too.”

      His throat worked convulsively as he raised his head, searching for the truth in her eyes. Please believe…

      After a long moment he nodded and tears of relief sprang to her eyes, but she choked them back for her father’s sake. He was drowning in a sea of his own heartache, and she wouldn’t do anything to further drag him under, but she yearned to hear something else from him—something she was not likely to get.

      “Oh, Tasha… My Missy…she died in so much pain.” He looked away, but not before she caught the open anguish in his heart. Fresh guilt washed over her. She tried to speak, to offer something to ease the burden he carried, but nothing short of a watery croak came out. Say something, her brain urged, but she didn’t know what to say. She knew nothing would ease his sense of loss, because she knew nothing anyone could say to her would mend the jagged hole in her heart. So it was better to just sit there and freeze your ass off? “Dad, please come in out of the cold. Everyone is worried you’re going to catch pneumonia out here. Please.”

      A long moment passed before her words reached that closed-off space blocked by his grief, then he turned slowly, a measure of his old personality asserting itself in his gruff voice. “You go on. I’ll come in when I’m ready,” he said, dismissing her.

      She blew a hard breath in mild frustration. “Dad, Nat and Nora sent me out here to bring you in. If I go back in there without you, either they’ll just send me out again or Nat will send Nora, and trust me when I say that girl is not big on saying things nice. She’s likely to have you declared mentally unfit and put in one of those old-folk homes where they feed you nothing but Jell-O and Ritz crackers. You don’t want that, do you?”

      A part of her was joking, but another part had to admit that sometimes Nora was unpredictable. She wouldn’t put it past her sister to do something so rash, if only to make a point.

      Her father’s chuckle sounded dry and rusty but she welcomed the sound. He rose on stiff limbs from the old porch. “That girl has balls the size of Texas sometimes,” he said.

      “She reminds me of someone else I know,” she retorted under her breath, fatigue suddenly pulling at her eyes and forcing a yawn despite the chatter of her teeth. She followed her father into the house, glad to be out of the cold and to have accomplished her objective.

      The minute they came inside, Natalie fussed around their father, trying to put a shawl across his shoulders until he waved her away and announced he was going to bed, leaving Nora to stare after him in hard-edged annoyance and Natalie to groan over all the food she’d just prepared.

      “Tasha, can’t you talk to him? He needs to eat,” Natalie implored, ignoring Nora’s muttered comments even as she looked in the direction their father had disappeared. “I’m worried about him. He hasn’t eaten a good meal in days.”

      She sighed wearily and grabbed her coat. “Nat, I think he needs a little space. He’s dealing with a lot right now. It’s not every day your life is destroyed, you know. You can’t expect a raging appetite when everything you’ve ever known is gone.”

      “I understand how he feels…” Somehow, Tasha doubted that, but there was no point in arguing and even if there was, she didn’t have the energy. Natalie ignored Tasha’s sigh and continued, “But even so, he needs to eat.”

      “He’ll eat when he’s hungry. Just wrap everything up and leave it in the fridge,” she suggested, sliding her arm into her coat, eager to seek the solitude of her hotel room.

      Nora came into the room and eyed Tasha’s state of dress with a gathering frown. “Where are you going?”

      “Back to my hotel,” she answered.

      “I don’t think so. We have details to discuss.”

      Natalie stepped forward but Nora ignored her, her voice rising as she crossed her arms across her chest. “You’re not running out on us again when we need you the most.”

      “I’m not running out on you,” she returned brusquely, rubbing at her eyes with the flat of her palm. “I’m tired and I want to go to bed.”

      “We’re all tired, Tasha. But we need to talk about a few things.”

      “Like what?”

      “Like who’s going to go through Mom’s things, who’s going to help Dad with the day-today stuff, you know, things like that.” Foreboding tingled at the edge of her thoughts as she waited for her sister to get to the point. “And—” she lifted her chin, as if knowing what she was about to say was going to go over like something icky in a punch bowl “—we need to decide how to split up the shifts.”

      “Shifts? What are you talking about?”

      Natalie jumped in even as she shot Nora a look that said she wasn’t happy with her delivery, clarifying, “Tasha, what Nora is trying to tell you is we need you home for a while—”

      “I can’t,” she broke in flatly. “I have to return to Belize in a few days. I have projects, people who depend on me. My team is right in the middle of creating a serviceable water-treatment system and I can’t just drop everything because—”

      “Because our mother died?” Nora finished for her, two high points of angry color flashing in her cheeks. “No, heaven forbid, that Tasha rearrange her schedule to accommodate a death in the family.” She threw up her hands and stalked into the kitchen, still ranting. “Gotta make sure some obscure village in the jungle has running water or else Tasha might lose her saintly status.”

      “What’s her problem?” Tasha queried Natalie, who was looking as if she were caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. “She’s been pissed off at me since I returned. I don’t understand what she’s so angry about.”

      Natalie took a seat on the armrest of the sofa, something she never would’ve done if their mother was still around, and sighed. “This is how she deals with her grief, I guess. She turns it into anger.”

      “Yeah. Anger against me.” Tasha exhaled loudly, then turned to her sister. “But you understand, right? Why I can’t stay? I mean, I really do have obligations.” Tasha expected a quick answer, but Natalie’s long pause made her look sharply. “What? Are you mad at me, too?”

      “A little,” she admitted, but she seemed ashamed of her admission and elucidated in a quiet voice. “I know why you wouldn’t return before…but the man who hurt you died five years ago, Tasha, and Mom needed you.” Her voice cracked a little and tears glistened as she added, “We all needed you. And now that you’re back, we need you to stay at least long enough to get Dad back on track.”

      Stay? Here? “I could lose my post,” she blurted out, hoping to appeal to Natalie’s more pragmatic side. When Natalie’s expression didn’t soften, Tasha knew she wasn’t going to back down. “What if I can’t?” she asked, knowing Natalie would understand she was talking about more than just helping out around the house. “What if it’s just too much? Being here makes it real all over again.” She lowered her voice to a painful whisper. “I ran into Diane Lewis at the store.”

      Natalie’s face softened. “What did she say?”

      “Not a lot,” she admitted. “But it was incredibly awkward and…I don’t want to go through those kinds of encounters on a daily basis.”

      “I understand.” Natalie came toward her and pulled her into a fierce hug. “But you’re not alone. We’ll be with you every step, every moment. And if anyone, including Diane Lewis, even looks cross-eyed at you, we’ll handle it. You can’t keep running. We need this. You need this,” she stressed softly, sending a sharp pang straight