Home to Stay. Annie Jones

to help her deal with her family, almost as good as it felt to have Hank so near, the warmth of his hand sinking into the tense muscles between her world-weary shoulders.

      “Hold it right there, Aunt Sammie.” Claire Newberry burst through the door. “The doctor released you into my care and my care doesn’t reach past the edge of… Emma?”

      They had the same parents. The same upbringing. The same blue-green eyes and dark brown unruly hair. They had the same skin tone. Same height. Same bright intellect. Same faith. Same family frustrations. Same inability to fully forgive themselves for not being better able to love each other unconditionally.

      Beyond that, they had nothing in common.

      “Hello, Claire.” She turned to face her sister.

      “Why are you here?” Claire sighed. Dressed for the season in a denim skirt and white cotton shirt, both pressed and perfect, the older Newberry practically glided over the old floor as she came into the room. “I told you in my phone message that you didn’t have to come.”

      “I haven’t heard your message, Claire,” Emma said softly as she helped their aunt sit down again.

      Claire was at their aunt’s side now, too, helping the woman who kept trying to bat away both of their well-meaning attempts. “I told you Aunt Sammie was fine.”

      “I’m sure you did.” Emma clenched her jaw. Claire was too busy talking to hear a word Emma said. “But it didn’t even occur to me she might not be fine when I started out last night.”

      “C’mon, y’all.” Hank employed the same tone he had used to calm his dogs earlier.

      Both sisters glared at him. Not the effect he had hoped for, she figured.

      “I suppose, being a nurse you thought you’d be the best one to see to her recovery.” She tugged at Sammie’s arm. “Right?”

      “No. No. Absolutely not.” Emma eased her aunt’s body away from Claire’s grasp. “Listen to me, Claire.”

      “Girls!” Sammie put both hands up.

      Hank leaned in, his hands extended. “Maybe you should just let your aunt—”

      “No, you listen to me.” Claire’s gentle tugging turned to an insistent yank. “I have everything under control here. You did not have to come out here to save the day and by the looks of it straight from some fancy dinner with that doctor of yours.”

      “Girls?” Sammie wormed her arms from their hands and stepped away from them, her face colored with concern.

      “Doctor?” Hank froze, his hand still out. He didn’t take his eyes off Emma. “You have a doctor that you dress like that for?”

      Defensiveness laced with a hint of delight coiled in Emma’s chest to think that who she kept company with might matter to Hank. She opened her mouth to try to explain her situation, then closed it again.

      “She has it all.” Claire batted Emma’s hand away from reaching for Sammie Jo again. “She knows it all, apparently, and can do it all. She can be a professional, a caregiver and a mom.”

      “Girls…please.” Sammie Jo took a step away.

      “Me? I know it all? I can do it all?” Emma pushed away Claire’s hands, which had been batting away Emma’s hands. They became a tangle of fingers and hands each trying to shove the other aside. “Don’t you have that backward? You’re the one everyone counts on. I’m the flighty one, the impulsive one, the—”

      “Girls! Hush!” Sammie spun around and faced the both of them. “I have a question for you that’s more important than any of this petty sibling bickering.”

      “What?” Both girls asked at once, unable to pull their hands apart quickly enough.

      Sammie put her hand on her hip and narrowed one eye. “Where is Ruth?”

      For a fraction of a second everything went still. There was no chatter or foot stomping from Ruth. They all looked at each other.

      Emma couldn’t breathe.

      “Ruth. Ruth? Ruth!” all their voices rose at once.

      They all sprang into action. In a few ticks of the clock Claire began barking orders. “Hank, you and your dogs search outside. Emma, take the second floor and I’ll check the basement.”

      “Good plan.” Sammie Jo clapped her hands together. “That leaves the attic for me.”

      “No!” Claire’s stern decree filled the house.

      It did not slow Hank or Emma as they each headed for the foyer, Hank to take his dogs outside or Emma aimed for the stairway.

      “You are not going up to the attic, Aunt Sammie,” Claire went on.

      “Someone has to. Remember how much you girls loved it up there? It’s a kid magnet, that place, with all the stuff, that old tiny winding servant’s stairway from the kitchen all the way up to—”

      “The window!” Emma cried.

      Her mind filled with the memory of sneaking up the back staircase past the second floor where all the bedrooms were and into the attic. She and Claire used to play hide-and-seek up there, then sit for hours on the sills of the old dormer windows and gaze out on the landscape and share their dreams of flying away. Since they didn’t have screens Aunt Sammie had nailed them shut, but in later years as teens the sisters had pried at least one of them open so that they could climb out onto the roof and talk under the stars.

      “I’m starting in the attic,” Emma called over her shoulder to Claire only to round the top of the main stairway and come face-to-face with her sister, panting from having dashed up the back way.

      “I’m coming with you,” Claire said.

      “You don’t…”

      “We’ll have plenty of time to argue later.” Claire nabbed Emma’s arm. And before Emma could make it clear that she had not come to Gall Rive to stay, Claire dragged her sister toward the back stairs. “Let’s find Ruth.”

      The stairs groaned under the weight of the four sets of feet running upward. As they neared the open doorway to the attic, a soft breeze wafting from above made Emma’s heart leap into her throat. “Ruth? Ruthie, are you up there?”

      “I can see the boo-gun-veel-ya from here.” The squawk of wood against wood, window frame against window casing underscored the strange claim.

      “Ruth! Get away from that window.” Emma pushed ahead of her sister and burst into the dusty old wood-framed attic to find Ruth trying to pry the old window open more than a few inches.

      “I can see it!” Her tutu flounced as she pressed one finger to the glass and twisted her upper body around to face the doorway. “I can see the boo-gun-veel-ya from here. Can we go visit it?”

      “Visit?” Emma hurried to the window and scooped up her child. “You don’t—”

      “You think she means that great blue heron on the pond?” Claire reached their side, and pushed the window closed as she searched the landscape that included most of the bird-sanctuary property.

      But when Emma moved to take a look, her gaze fell on Hank directing his dogs here and there, calling out to Ruth with the promise of tea parties and maybe even real cake.

      “This window, in fact the whole attic, is off-limits, young lady.” Claire took the child’s chin in her hand. “I don’t care how interesting you find that crane.”

      “Crane! I can make a crane!” Ruth spun around and headed for the stairway again. “I’ll show you.”

      “Use the handrail on those steps, baby,” Emma called after her child. When Ruth singsonged back something indistinguishable, Emma turned back to the view of Hank and sighed. “Things haven’t changed around