Nice To Come Home To. Liz Flaherty

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

      “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