The Promise of Home. Kathryn Springer

passed it, Aunt Jenna!”

       A panicked cry reminded her that going home wasn’t an option. Not for awhile, anyway.

       Jenna glanced in the rearview mirror. Once again, she experienced a jolt at the sight of the two children in the backseat.

       Silver blond hair. Delicate features. Wide blue eyes.

       Jenna had met Logan and Tori for the first time only three days ago. The children were practically strangers.

       Strangers who were the mirror image of her younger sister, Shelly, as a child.

       For a split second, Tori met Jenna’s gaze. Then she buried her face in the tattered scrap of pink flannel that doubled as a blanket.

       Jenna pressed her lips together to prevent a sigh from escaping.

      One step forward, two steps back, she reminded herself. The five-year-old girl was adjusting to the idea of having an aunt the same way Jenna was getting used to the idea of having a niece and nephew.

       “You have to turn around,” Logan insisted.

       “Are you sure?” Jenna tipped her Ray-Bans down and tried to peer through the hedge of wild sumac that bordered the road. “I don’t see anything.”

       “Uh-huh. It’s back there.” Logan, the self-appointed spokesman for the two siblings, nodded vigorously.

       Under the circumstances, Jenna was willing to give the boy the benefit of the doubt. She put the car in reverse and began to inch backwards.

       In Minneapolis, a dozen horns would have instantly chastised her for the move. But here in the north woods of Wisconsin, the only complaint Jenna heard came from a squirrel perched on a branch near the side of the road. More than likely voicing its opinion on her presence rather than her driving skills.

       She spotted a wide dirt path that could have been—if a person possessed a vivid imagination—a driveway.

       Pulling in a deep breath, Jenna gave the steering wheel a comforting pat as she turned off the road. Her back teeth rattled in time with the suspension as the vehicle bumped its way through the potholes.

       Logan leaned forward and pointed to something up ahead. “There it is.”

       Well, that explained why Jenna had driven right past it.

       She’d been looking for a house.

       The weathered structure crouched in the shadow of a stately white pine looked more like a shed. Jenna’s gaze shifted from the rusty skeleton of an old lawn mower to the faded sheets tacked up in the windows.

      Oh, Shelly.

       Why hadn’t her younger sister admitted that she needed help? Why hadn’t she accepted Jenna’s offer to move in with her after Logan was born?

       Throughout her pregnancy, Shelly had claimed that she and her musician boyfriend, Vance, planned to marry before the baby arrived. But when Jenna had visited her eighteen-year-old sister in the maternity wing of a Madison hospital, there hadn’t been a ring on Shelly’s finger. Not only that, she’d been alone. Faced with a choice, Vance had decided that a gig at a club in Dubuque was more important than being present for the birth of his child.

       Shelly had made excuses for him—the same way their mother had made excuses for their father every time he’d walked out the door.

       While Jenna was pleading with Shelly to return to Minneapolis with her, Vance had sauntered into the room. The guy might have been a mediocre guitar player, but his acting skills were nothing short of amazing. He’d apologized to Shelly for not being there and promised that she and the baby could travel with the band as their “good luck charms.”

       When Jenna had asked her sister if she was willing to sentence her child to the nomadic lifestyle they’d experienced while growing up, Vance had turned on her. Accused her of being a troublemaker. He’d convinced Shelly that Jenna was jealous of their relationship and didn’t want them to be happy.

       The stars in Shelly’s eyes had blinded her to the truth. She had embraced Vance—and turned her back on her only sister.

       Jenna hadn’t seen or heard from her again. Had no idea where Shelly was or even how she and Logan were doing.

       Until last week.

       She’d been sitting at her desk, sipping an iced vanilla latte and working on her next column for Twin City Trends, when she received a telephone call from a social worker named Grace Eversea.

       It didn’t matter how gently the young woman had tried to break the news, each piece of information had punctured a hole in Jenna’s heart.

       A house fire. Shelly in a rehab center for prescription drug abuse. Seven-year-old Logan and Tori, the niece Jenna hadn’t even known existed, in temporary foster care.

       As the children’s closest relative, Jenna had been asked if she would be willing to help. She could think of a dozen reasons why she shouldn’t get involved and only two—very small—reasons why she should.

       Forty-eight hours later, after being granted a temporary leave of absence from the magazine, Jenna had packed her bags and driven to Mirror Lake, a small town where people knew each other’s name and each other’s business.

       The kind of place she had deliberately avoided for the past ten years.

       Her plan had been to take her niece and nephew back to Minnesota. But when Jenna met with Grace Eversea, the social worker had explained it would be in Logan and Tori’s best interest to remain in familiar surroundings for the time being.

       Jenna could see the wisdom in Grace’s suggestion—especially after learning that Tori and Logan had run away when they’d heard that she was on her way to Mirror Lake to meet them.

       Jenna and the children had already spent several days at the Mirror Lake Lodge at the invitation of Abby and Quinn O’Halloran, the couple who owned the charming bed-and-breakfast, but she didn’t want to impose on the newlyweds’ hospitality any longer than necessary.

       Until Shelly returned, Jenna decided that her only option was to move into the cabin where the family had been living before the fire. She’d been assured there had been only minimal damage to the interior and the local fire chief had pronounced the structure safe and sound.

       But now, looking at the place her niece and nephew had called home, Jenna wasn’t sure she agreed with either description.

       “Are we getting out, Aunt Jenna?” Logan ventured.

       Jenna realized she hadn’t moved.

       “Of course we are.” Forcing a smile, she slid out of the driver’s seat and went around to open Tori’s door. “You’re first, Button.”

       A corner of the blanket dropped, unveiling a pair of periwinkle eyes that stared back at her with guarded apprehension.

       Jenna recognized the look of someone who no longer trusted easily, and her heart wrenched. Within the space of a few weeks the little girl had been separated from her mother and then from Kate Nichols, the foster care mother she’d become attached to, before being placed in Jenna’s care.

       “It’s okay, Tori.” Logan patted his sister’s hand and the sweetness of the gesture pierced Jenna’s soul.

       How many times had she comforted Shelly when they were growing up? Protected her from danger—both imaginary and real?

       Jenna mentally pushed the thought away. Her life was different now. She was different now.

       She reached for the buckle on the booster seat but Tori shrank back.

       “Don’t wanna get out!”

       Jenna hesitated, wondering if the little girl was remembering the night of the fire. Once again, the reality of what she’d agreed to flooded through her, eroding her confidence. She wasn’t a child psychologist. She wasn’t even the type of person that small children