Nice to Come Home To

by Liz Flaherty

*

  “SHE’S YOUR AUNT. Why are you so nervous?” Royce scowled at the table Cass had set in the dining area of the cottage. “I thought we were the beer-and-brats segment of the family. This looks like the way Dad used to want the table set when officers came to dinner. There are too many forks and glasses.”

  Cass laughed. “You’re right. Okay, let’s back it off.”

  They started from scratch, using the jewel-toned placemats that had come with the house instead of the embroidered tablecloth Cass had bought at an antiques store on Main Street. They left water glasses on the table, but set wineglasses and cups and saucers out of the way on the counter. They replaced elegant tapers with squatty candles and set the autumn centerpiece back on the end table in the living room where Royce had put it when they brought it home.

  Dinner was a combination of their talents. Cass had cooked a pot roast with vegetables and Royce had made a salad and deviled a pretty little platter of eggs. They’d bought dessert and dinner rolls at the Amish bakery and wine at Sycamore Hill. Cass had promised her sister she could have a glass if she wasn’t going out afterward, but a phone call from Seth Rossiter asking her to go to the late movie in Sawyer put an end to that.

  Zoey was right on time. One shoe on and one shoe off, Royce opened the door. “Aunt Zoey! I’m so glad to see you!”

  Cass watched the two tall, slim women she loved as they hugged each other, drew back to take a good look and hugged each other again. She was happy for Royce, she told herself, that Aunt Zoey’s love for a girl who wasn’t actually her niece was so unrestricted. She was jealous, too.

  “Come here.” Zoey stretched her arm toward her. Her eyes were awash with tears, something Cass didn’t remember seeing before. Even when Marynell had died, grief had made new lines in Zoey’s face, but Cass hadn’t seen her cry. “I know we have issues, but right this minute, we don’t.”

  Zoey smelled like pink Dove soap and the same kind of shampoo Cass and Royce used. Her hug, complete with strong, thin arms and a soft, wrinkled cheek against her own, made Cass know more than anything else that, at least for now, she was home.

  By the time they reached the table, Zoey had handed Royce a handful of photographs. “A record of your sister’s life you can use for blackmail if the need arises.”

  Cass laughed, although it took all she had not to snatch the pictures away. They were a record of a childhood she didn’t want altered by someone else’s perception. “Did Mother do that with you?”

  She could have cut her tongue out as soon as the words left her mouth. She’d forgotten that Zoey had been engaged to her father first, before he’d met her younger sister. Marynell had been the first of the young, beautiful women he’d pursued and caught. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have—”

  Zoey shook her head. “No, it’s all right. I wouldn’t say she blackmailed. She never had to. Marynell was so beautiful we all enabled her.” She met Cass’s eyes and grasped her hand. “It didn’t make any of us bad people.” She grinned wickedly. “Even your father.”

  Royce laughed, delighted, and Cass joined her. In his own way, Ken Gentry loved his daughters, but they’d both always known where they stood in his line of priorities. Even Royce, gorgeous as she was, was a testimony to his aging. He’d been fifty-two when she was born, and inevitable queries about his “grandchild” were still hard for him to take. He was generally happier just being able to show off her pictures.

  “Everyone has weaknesses,” Zoey concluded, “and mine combined with your parents’ created quite a cluster of pain and sorrow.”

  Seth came as they were finishing dessert, and Cass excused her sister from cleanup duty. Before the cottage’s front door closed behind the young couple, awkwardness slipped inside.

  “I should go.” Zoey pushed back from the table. “Let me help with the dishes.”

  Cass almost let her leave. That was how she’d spent most of her life, wasn’t it, walking the long way around to avoid being hurt more than necessary? She’d learned to live without her beloved aunt’s emotional support. Why take a chance of regaining it only to lose it once more?

  Because she was thirty-five, not sixteen, that was why. Because she had a little sister she needed to set an example for. Because there were steps out of loneliness and she was ready to take a big one.

  “No,” she said. “Please.” She stood up. “Will you make coffee while I clear the table? Or would you rather have more wine?”

  “Coffee would be good.”

  “Yours always was, even when it was half cream and two-thirds refined sugar. Did Nana know you gave it to me like that?”

  Zoey chuckled. “I doubt it. It didn’t seem to have taken, though—you’ve been thin as a rail your whole life.”

  When the coffee was done and they were once more sitting across from each other at the table, Cass revealed, “I got chunky in high school, when we were in Korea. Dad found a doctor who put me on a program that un-chunked me in a matter of months. I took pills that were illegal here, but that was during the Barbie-stepmother time and she used them all the time. We both survived and I stayed thin until after I was married.”

  “You gained weight then? It’s hard to imagine.”

  “Some. Enough to make Tony panic. So I became an exercise and fasting addict. I couldn’t stop losing weight when I was ready to and it scared me to death. My metabolism was so messed up, and it pretty much stayed that way until I got the breast cancer diagnosis.” Cass smiled, although the gesture cost her—there was nothing funny in the memories. “So now I’m your basic slug. I walk for exercise, but I do it better if there’s ice cream at the end of it.”

  Zoey laughed, a big sound that filled Cass’s heart and gave buoyancy to her own chuckle. “I’m with you, sweetheart.” The older woman sipped from the coffee in front of her, then leaned her forearms on the table and met Cass’s eyes. “Where did you go, Cassandra? Did you really believe I didn’t want you here? That I ever didn’t want you at all? That the people at the lake didn’t want you? Gianna Gallagher used to ask me, but I never said where you were, just that you were all right even though I was never really sure you really were.”

  “Mother could be pretty convincing. You know that. It wasn’t until she got sick that she admitted she’d made most of it up, that you’d only been concerned about me staying with Nana and Grandpa because they weren’t all that well. I should have talked to you then.” Marynell had made other confessions, too, all in one long, pain-ridden night. She’d asked her daughter’s forgiveness and Cass had given it.

  She hadn’t meant the words of forgiveness, but she’d said what a dying woman needed to hear. Six months and change later, she thought she’d done the right thing, but a pardoning heart had come harder than the words had.

  “Will you forgive me?” she asked. “For believing her and for not making it right even when I knew better?”

  “Oh, honey.” Zoey got up, came around the table and drew Cass out of the chair and into her arms. “Marynell was who she was and she couldn’t help that. We all fell prey to her at one time or another. Let’s just concentrate on not losing each other again. What do you say?”

  “I’d like that a lot.”

  When they were seated again, their cups refilled and second servings of dessert on plates in front of them, Zoey said, “What do you think of Luke?”

  “He must be a good businessman. The orchard looks great.”

  She thought more than that, of course. Noticed more. Thought about him before she fell asleep in one of the cottage’s two little bedrooms. She knew he had beautiful, sun-streaked dark brown hair and thickly lashed eyes the color of milk chocolate. That he would probably be a little taller than she was even if she was wearing heels. That he was built really nicely but not as if it was on purpose—it was more like the muscles were a by-product of pruning and picking apples. That his voice warmed places in her that hadn’t known warmth in a long time. Maybe ever.

  She took a deep breath. “I su
ggested a coffee shop on the premises, in the round barn. I don’t think he likes the idea.”

  Zoey shrugged. “Convince him, if it’s something you’d like to do that you think would be successful, but remember that he’s run the place by himself for several years. As long as your mother got her checks, she never offered any input. I’m sure Luke expected the same thing from you.” She smiled, her eyes twinkling. “I’ll be so delighted to see him be wrong.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HE WASN’T READY to give in on the coffee shop idea, but Luke had to admit he liked having an active partner in the orchard. For one thing, she didn’t mind climbing trees and she was—for someone he thought was on the skinny side of slim—strong enough to fill the bag over her shoulder as full as her sister did. It was the busiest time of year at the orchard and she pitched in wherever help was needed. She was great in the retail store and on the sorting machine—not so good when it came to making the orchard’s signature dumplings.

  “It skipped a generation. That’s all I can figure,” Cass said, laughing, when Zoey and Luke looked at her first attempt with something like horror.

  She often joined him and Zoey at the farmhouse for coffee in the morning. This became an increasingly pleasurable point during the day, since Zoey seemed to be on a one-woman crusade to fatten up her niece. Not wanting to make anyone feel uncomfortable about eating in front of him, Luke filled his plate and joined them at the table. They brainstormed about the orchard, about the Miniagua Lakers football team, about the coffee shop.

  The daggone coffee shop.

  She was serious about it. She’d even hauled him over to Peru on Monday morning to a place there called Aroma, where he drank two cups and got one to go of something really strong and good. She’d had something girly. Then, just when he’d built up a good argument, she’d taken him to a chain coffee place in Kokomo and another local one that sat just off campus at a nearby university. He’d eaten pastries at that one, and they hadn’t been as good as the ones from the Amish bakery, but Cass had shown him how popular they were and gotten off-the-top-of-her-head numbers from the barista about what their revenue was on a fairly slow weekday.

  He was running out of arguments.

  On Friday, Cass texted and said she couldn’t make breakfast and Royce called Seth and said she’d be late at the orchard. Neither of them offered an explanation. Zoey came to the apple barn, looking fretful, and stood at the sorter for a while. Sort of helping.

  “What are you doing here?” Luke asked bluntly, dumping a box of Galas onto the conveyor. “Not that you’re not welcome—you most certainly are—but you don’t generally hang out in the barn. You go up to the store and the apple dumpling assembly.”

  “Luke, what if they’re getting ready to go home? Royce needs to start school, so even though they planned to stay two weeks, they might not. It’s a long, hard drive.”

  She literally wrung her hands, and Luke wanted to wring Cass’s neck. She’d had no business getting her aunt’s hopes up that she might stay at Miniagua if her intent all the time was to hightail it back to the West Coast. While he was relieved in a way not to have to come up with more reasons not to open a coffee shop in the round barn, he was seriously ticked that she would get everyone all excited and then just take off, even though from everything he’d heard that seemed to be her modus operandi.

  Her friends from the wreck had stood by her since she’d come back. All the ones who were local had met at Gianna Gallagher’s on Tuesday night. “Not to ask questions,” Gianna had said, “but to welcome you home.”

  Cass had cried when she’d talked about it at breakfast. Not the boo-hoo kind that Rachel had made into an art form when she was in high school, but silent, heartfelt weeping that she apologized for.

  He knew all the other survivors of the wreck, what they’d been through and how they’d come out on the other side. Having her come back only to leave again would be like a slap in the face to them as much as it was to Zoey.

  And to him. Daggone it. He didn’t want to take her likely desertion personally, but he did. They were getting to be friends, weren’t they? And he liked her. He thought she was pretty hot, too, but that was incidental and not to be acted on—she had way too much baggage going on and he just wasn’t going there. Not with her. Not with anyone.

  “There’s nothing we can do either way,” he told Zoey. “You’re reestablishing a relationship with her and she’s not going to let that slide any more than you are.” I hope. “She has to consider Royce, too. Don’t forget, I’ve got that running back out there with me for the whole freakin’ school year because of a consideration like that.” He didn’t feel like defending her, not at all, but he owed her that one as one custodial sibling to another.

  “I know, but it would be so nice for Royce to go here this year while her mother’s gone. It was great for Cass regardless of how things ended up. I believe that with all my heart.”

  It was Zoey’s heart he was worried about. As far as he knew, she was healthy, but that heart was big and pretty wide open—he hated to see it get broken.

  “Well, come on into the store. I’ll buy you some coffee and a dumpling.” He stepped away from the sorter and waited for her to join him.

  They were at the open doors of the barn when Cass’s red SUV pulled into the parking lot, spitting some gravel when she stopped a little more suddenly than she maybe should have. That was explained when Royce got out of the driver’s side and took off running toward the trees where Seth and the others were picking. She had papers flapping in her hand, and she didn’t bother closing the door.

  Cass got out of the other side, moving more slowly but with a certain buoyancy in her step that made Luke’s heartbeat go skippy for a couple of beats. She walked around to close the other door, then approached where Luke and Zoey waited. “Sorry to miss this morning.” She hugged Zoey and smiled at Luke. He couldn’t see her eyes behind the sunglasses she wore, but he’d have bet they were smiling, too.

  They didn’t ask her the circumstances of her absence. She was a grown-up and he knew Zoey didn’t want to push her away. Luke didn’t, either, but he was still in the stage of maybe they’d be friends and maybe not; trying to bring her closer might scare her off completely.

  She spoke before he could. “I have had no coffee. Can we get some?”

  They went into the store, waving at the woman behind the counter, and back to the self-serve coffee station. Cass had replaced the foam cups with promotional cups from all over Miniagua and Sawyer. He didn’t know how she’d found time to collect them, but they were nice for customers and the environment, and the coffee sure tasted better out of them.

  “Royce and I talked a lot last night,” she said when they’d gone back outside and taken seats at one of the patio tables on the wide porch. “I said we needed to leave by Wednesday of next week in order to get her into school for the second week. Not being there the first week is fine, not so much another one. She misses her friends, misses the shopping and looks forward to the advanced placement curriculum and getting into Berkeley. She has mentioned a minimum of seven hundred times that there’s nothing to do here. I thought, other than her no longer seeing your ‘seriously hot’ younger brother and my ‘seriously cool’ aunt every day, that Royce was ready to go home.” She cleared her throat and took a long drink of coffee. “I was wrong.”

  “Oh.” Zoey clasped her hands in anticipation, and Luke almost did. What was wrong with him anyway? Any minute now, he’d be telling her he thought the coffee shop was a fine idea. And it wasn’t. For heaven’s sake, it just so was not.

  “Yes.” Cass sounded gleeful, and Luke caught a glimpse and a sound-bite of the girl she must have been when she’d spent her junior year here. “Even though she wants to return to California when her mother comes home, she’d really like to try school here and she’d like to spend quality time—yes, she actually used that term—with Aunt Zoey and…yeah, she wouldn’t mind seeing Seth occasionally, too.” Cass bounc
ed—literally—in her seat. “Where is that boy? I need to find him and kiss his face.”

  “So, you’re staying.” He couldn’t be wrong if he stated the obvious, could he? And he wasn’t going to think about her kissing Seth’s face. Or anyone else’s.

  “Yes. At least until Royce’s mother gets home, and longer if I can find a place to live and settle in. We enrolled Royce in school this morning and have spent the last thirty minutes discussing the fact that she doesn’t have a single thing to wear, which means spending a whole day and a bunch of money in Kokomo.” Her brows knit into a slight frown. “It shouldn’t be a problem finding a house to rent, with the lake season ending, should it?”

  “No.” Zoey sounded frantic. “No.” She pointed in the vague direction of the farmhouse. “Twelve rooms, Cass, and four of them are upstairs bedrooms. You and Royce wouldn’t even have to share a bath because there are two of them up there. It’ll be yours someday anyway, so move in now. Make it your home.”

  “Aunt Zoey.” Cass pinned her gaze to her aunt. “How long has it been since you’ve lived with a sixteen-year-old? It’s not for the faint of heart.”

  Zoey laughed, that big, full sound that delighted everyone within hearing. “I shared a room and a bathroom with your mother and lived to tell the story. Any more questions?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “More than sure.”

  It was already a sunny day, but Luke thought it had gotten brighter within the last few minutes. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Maybe a coffee shop would be a good idea.”

  *

  IT HAD BEEN a busy, busy day. When they’d gotten home from the orchard, accompanied by a pizza and two milkshakes, Cass had to convince Royce they couldn’t move into the farmhouse that very minute. After supper, she spent an hour trying to decide what to do with her apartment in Sacramento.

  When Royce Skyped with her mother that evening, Lieutenant Colonel Gentry asked to talk to Cass.

  “Is it okay,” asked Cass, “that we’re staying here?”