Woodrose Mountain. RaeAnne Thayne

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       “Is that good for now?” he asked after a few more tastes. “I can give you more when we get home.”

       “Yeah,” she answered, smiling again, and his heart ached with love for her. He hated that it had taken a tragic accident stunning the entire town to remind him how much.

       “Everything okay?” his mother asked when they were once more heading up the causeway toward his neighborhood above the main section of town.

       “Why wouldn’t it be?” He focused on the drive instead of the jumble of emotions he didn’t know what to do with. Anger at Charlie, love for his daughter, fury at this whole damn situation.

       “You seem tense.”

       In the rearview mirror, he could see Taryn gazing out the window, not paying attention to their conversation, so he decided to tell his mother the truth.

       “Charlie Beaumont was behind me in line at the shave-ice stand.” He pitched his voice low.

       Katherine didn’t seem to think this was all that earthshaking an event. “What did you do?”

       “He’s still in one piece, if that’s what you’re asking.”

       His mother’s smile had a bittersweet edge. “Glad to hear it. I think enough people have suffered from one boy’s foolish mistakes, don’t you?”

       Except Charlie. The kid hadn’t suffered one damn bit. By one of those weird quirks of physics and sheer stupid luck, he’d emerged from the accident completely unscathed—and Brodie was quite sure one part of him would never be content until the kid paid somehow for all the lives he’d ruined.

      * * *

      SHE COULD BE SWITZERLAND.

       Think the Matterhorn, lederhosen, those ten-foot-long trumpety thingies.

       Above all, neutrality.

       Evie stood inside the sprawling Thorne home, wondering at the delay. Katherine had texted her thirty minutes earlier to say they were arriving in Hope’s Crossing. They should have been here fifteen minutes ago but maybe they stopped somewhere along the route to enjoy the outpouring of support from the town.

       She wasn’t sure how word had trickled out but by now everybody seemed to know. Maybe the Chamber of Commerce had started a phone tree or something, because nearly every store in town had some kind of sign in the window or on their marquee and it seemed everyone who came into the store wanted to talk about Taryn’s homecoming.

       Evie only hoped Brodie would take that support in the light it was intended, as a manifestation of the good wishes of people in town and not as some expression of pity. Somehow she doubted the latter would sit well with him.

       “Can I get you something to drink while we wait? A soda or some tea?” Mrs. Olafson, Brodie’s scarily efficient housekeeper, hovered in the doorway. She was squat and apple-cheeked and had seemed stern at first glance. A bit on the terrifying side, actually, but Evie could see by her frequent glances down the driveway that the housekeeper was eagerly anticipating Taryn’s return.

       “I’m great,” she said, her tone gentle. “Why don’t you sit down and wait for her with me?”

       “I couldn’t. I should be working on the salad for dinner.”

       “Dinner is still a few hours away. Please. Sit.”

       Mrs. Olafson looked reluctant but she finally perched on the edge of the teak bench beside the front door.

       “How long have you worked for the Thornes?” Evie asked. She had seen the older woman around town but their circles hadn’t really connected before and she had yet to take the chance to get to know her. They would be working in close proximity the next few weeks. No harm in trying to be friendly and learn more about Mrs. Olafson, other than that she rarely smiled and always pulled her hair into a rather severe steel-gray bun at the base of her neck that made Evie think of her elementary school lunch ladies or perhaps the stereotypical warden at a women’s prison.

       “Almost five years. My husband was a chef and Mr. Thorne hired him to work one of his restaurants up at the ski resorts.”

       “Oh, is that where you learned to cook so well?”

       “I taught him everything he knew,” the other woman said, the first hint of a smile Evie had seen just barely lifting the corners of her mouth. It faded quickly. “We moved from our home in Minneapolis just six weeks before he was diagnosed with liver cancer.”

       “Oh. I’m so sorry.”

       The other woman shrugged. “I thought for sure Mr. Thorne would fire him but he didn’t. He continued to give him a paycheck even when he couldn’t work anymore. After David died, Mr. Thorne asked if I would like to come to work for him, helping him with the house and with Taryn. I’ve been here ever since.” She fidgeted with her apron, her pale blue eyes darting to the driveway again. “He’s a very good man, Mr. Thorne. Though I’ve always been a good cook, I had no real job experience at all. I married young and all I’d ever done was be a mother to my boys, who are both in college now. Mr. Thorne didn’t care about that. He hired me anyway.”

       She should never have asked. Evie fidgeted. She didn’t want to hear these glowing words of praise for Brodie. It made him seem kind and generous, not the stiff, unpleasant man she’d always thought him to be.

       “It seems to me a lifetime of taking care of your family made you eminently qualified to handle things here. If those delicious smells coming from the kitchen are any indication, I’m sure you do your job exceptionally well.”

       The woman seemed to warm a little, some of the reserve in her expression thawing. “I try. I don’t have any experience with therapy either but if you need my help with Taryn in any way, I can always offer an extra set of hands.”

       “Thank you. I might take you up on that.”

       She knew Brodie had hired personal nurses to be help with Taryn’s medical needs, but the plan for now was for Evie to work with the girl on an intensive physical therapy program six hours a day, between the hours of ten and four, until Brodie could find someone to replace her. In addition, an occupational therapist who had worked with Taryn at the rehab facility would come to the house three times a week for two hours at a time. Evie would reinforce the skills she was working on during her own time with Taryn on the other days.

       Only a few weeks. She could handle this, she reminded herself.

       She had dreamed of her adopted daughter the night before, of Cassie’s sweet smile and loving heart and endless eagerness to please.

       They had been lying in the hammock under the trees behind her bungalow in Topanga Canyon, telling stories and humming silly little tunes and listening to the creek murmuring by and the wind in the trees. Cassie had been laughing and joyful, just as Evie remembered her—and then she had awakened to the grim awareness that her daughter was gone.

       It had been nearly two years since she died and the grief still seemed so much a part of Evie, despite the peace she had found in Hope’s Crossing. The raw pain of it had eased over the last year during her time here and she had begun to think that perhaps she was finally growing a СКАЧАТЬ