A Bride, A Barn, And A Baby. Nancy Robards Thompson

held up a brown paper sack.

      “Are you going to let me in? The kung pao beef is getting cold.”

      Storm clouds were rolling in and the fragrance of rain hung in the humid air.

      “You brought kung pao?” His tone was lighter.

      She nodded. “And General Tso’s chicken, fried rice and egg rolls.”

      She’d known it wouldn’t be easy getting past his front door. That was why she’d brought the food. She thrust the large brown sack at him, and he almost dropped the stack of movies. He shifted the DVDs into one hand and accepted the bag. Pushing past him, Lucy stepped onto the beige carpet into the living room of Zane’s Bridgemont Farms house and squinted into the dim light. The curtains were drawn. The only light on was the one in the kitchen. It cast enough of a golden glow to illuminate the mess in the front room. An empty pizza box, spent beer cans, a couple pairs of socks, some wadded-up jeans and a pair of mud-caked boots lying askew on the carpet. It all looked as if he had left it where he had dropped it, amid the stacks of cardboard boxes and piles of things he’d been sorting.

      “Sorry about the mess,” he mumbled as he grabbed up the jeans and socks and kicked the boots into a corner. A guy’s way of cleaning. Her brother Ethan had similar tactics before Chelsea came into his life. Now, thanks to his future wife, Ethan was not only in love, but his house was also spotless.

      “I’m still trying to figure out what to do with Mom’s things. I’ve been bringing over a few boxes at a time. There’s still so much stuff in her house—er, your family’s house.”

      “You know there’s no hurry to move her things out,” Lucy said. “We don’t have renters. You can take as long as you need. You don’t have to bring everything over here to sort it if you don’t have room for it. Just leave it at the house.”

      “Bossy.” He scowled. “I’ve got a system. It’s working fine.”

      For decades, his mom, Dorothy, had rented the small bungalow on the lower edge of the Campbells’ property. Zane and his brother, Ian, had grown up there with their mother, who’d stayed in the house long after her boys had moved out and moved on with their lives. Lucy thought she and her brothers had made it clear that Zane could take all the time he needed to get Dorothy’s things in order before he turned over the keys. That was how people treated each other in Celebration—they compromised and met each other halfway, especially in the wake of a family crisis. And Dorothy Phillips’s surrender to an aggressive form of lymphoma that had ended her life nearly as fast as the disease had appeared hadn’t been just a family crisis—it was a loss felt by the entire town. Many friends and neighbors, including Lucy, had reached out and offered to help Zane with the move out, but true to his lone-wolf ways, Zane had politely turned down the gestures of goodwill in favor of going it alone. He said he needed time to think, time to figure out what to do with the remnants of his mother’s life. Everyone had respected his wishes and left him alone. Well, everyone except for Lucy. She knew him well enough to understand that sometimes Zane’s pride kept him from asking for or accepting help. Sometimes Zane needed to be shown that his way wasn’t always the best way. Tonight was a case in point.

      “Why don’t you take your system into the kitchen and get us some plates?” Lucy said. “I’ll get the first DVD queued up and ready to play.”

      “The first one? You’re not planning on watching all of them, are you?”

      “Of course we are, that’s why I brought them.”

      “You’ll be here all night.”

      Lucy smiled and cocked a brow in the most suggestive way possible.

      He shook his head. “Don’t start with me, Campbell.” He handed her the movies and grabbed a trio of beer cans off the coffee table to clear a spot for the sack of food. She watched him disappear around the corner into the kitchen, where he rattled around for a few minutes. It sounded like he was tidying up in there, too.

      Lucy turned on a table lamp. In the light’s golden glow, she could see that the place wasn’t dirty as much as it was cluttered boxes of Dorothy’s things. What with juggling the funeral arrangements, moving his mom’s possessions to his house and his job as general manager of Bridgemont Farms, his living room looked rougher around the edges than usual. Then again, it didn’t take much to make such a small house look messy.

      A stack of boxes lined the far wall. Several small piles consisting of various household appliances and articles of clothing, shoes and accessories sat waiting on the floor. A couple of garbage bags sagged in the corner, probably filled with items that hadn’t made the cut.

      Ian had come back to Celebration for the funeral. He’d done what he could to help clear out the house while he was here, but Zane had mentioned that sifting through more than a quarter century’s worth of their mother’s life had proved too arduous a task in the days immediately after the funeral. They hadn’t even made a dent before Ian had had to leave and get back to his job in Colorado. That left Zane to finish the job and tie up all the loose ends.

      As Lucy picked up the empty pizza box and started to put it in one of the garbage bags, she spied Dorothy’s sketchbook in the trash. She set aside the box and took out the book, running her hand over its tattered and faded no-frills cover before she leafed through the pages of hand-drawn fashion illustrations.

      Lucy’s heart clenched. In her mind’s eye she could see Dorothy sitting on the house’s back porch at the patio table with a cigarette and a cup of coffee, drawing in this book. Lucy used to love to watch her. Dorothy had patiently answered Lucy’s never-ending stream of little-girl questions as the woman’s deft hands brought to life the magical vignettes. After Dorothy had made Lucy’s prom dress, Lucy had always thought of her as her very own fairy godmother.

      Why would Zane throw this away? Lucy started to call to him in the kitchen, but it dawned on her that if he’d tossed such a personal item, it had to mean that in this moment it was too painful for him to keep it. She turned a few more pages, marveling at the delicate lines and brilliant color choices, at the fabric swatches Dorothy had pinned to the pages. It might be too painful for him to hang on to the sketchbook right now, but she was sure that someday, he would be sorry he’d thrown it away.

      She’d slipped the book into her purse and had resumed her mission of tidying up the living room when Zane returned with a bottle of bourbon and two crystal highball glasses that looked out of place in his rugged bachelor digs. He balanced a ceramic cereal bowl full of ice atop the glasses. The makeshift ice bucket looked much more Zane-indigenous than the crystal barware.

      “Those are fancy,” she said, indicating the glasses.

      “They were my mom’s.”

      Even more than being her fairy godmother, Dorothy had been like a second mom to Lucy after her own mother passed when Lucy was just fourteen. Being here for Zane—looking in on him and making sure he ate something more than take-out pizza—was the least she could do to honor Dorothy’s memory. Zane was big and strong and stoic. He wouldn’t let on that he was hurting over his mom’s passing, even though undoubtedly he was. That was why Lucy hadn’t listened to him when he’d said he wasn’t in the mood for company. That was why she’d shown up uninvited and pushed her way into his house.

      “This wasn’t hers.” The ice clinked in the cereal bowl as he set it down on the table.

      “Clearly. That ice bucket has Zane Phillips written all over it.”

      “Do you like bourbon? It’s all I have right now. Bourbon or water. Or bourbon and water.”

      “Whatever you have is fine,” she said. Zane picked up the bottle and poured them each about two fingers’ worth of the amber liquid and she accepted the glass.

      “I didn’t know you were a bourbon drinker.”

      She wasn’t. She didn’t drink much and the strong taste of the liquor wasn’t her favorite, but tonight it would do.

      “There’s