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For Barbi Callahan Burris
and
Catherine Janelle Barbee
for brave love and courageous hearts
Acknowledgments
This novel was inspired by a true story that happened in my family, and most directly to my middle sister, Barbi Callahan Burris. I am forever grateful for her courageous decision and eventually for her brave willingness to share her story not only with me, but also with the rest of the world. Although this is not her True-Life story (that is hers to tell), I could not have written this fictionalized version without her open honesty.
And to Catherine Janelle Barbee and her mother, Colleen, her father, Chris, and her brothers Christopher and Connor, who have opened their lives and hearts and home to me, I am grateful beyond measure.
Any essence of courage, heartbreak, healing, and redemption in this novel would be absent without Barbi and Catherine’s willingness to share their memories, fears, and stories.
I want to thank so many others who have contributed to this novel’s ultimate storyline:
—To John Cohen and Brenda Loringer of Wingate Wilderness: You changed our lives and I hope I’ve offered some lasting tribute to your incredible work.
—To Jeannie Callahan Cunnion (and her beautiful family—Mike, Cal, Brennan, and Owen) for her adoption advocacy and eye for detail. I could not have written sections of this book without your expertise.
—To my editor, Brenda Copeland, who came into my life at the right moment for the right story. I am deeply thankful for your patience and finesse with words and editing.
—Always to my agent, Kimberly Whalen, for still, all these years later, collaborating with me and with my stories.
—To those who read the novel early and offered insight, input, and kind words: Jaquelyn Mitchard, Mary Alice Monroe, Dorothea Benton Frank, and Joshilyn Jackson.
—To my newfound dear friends in Birmingham, Alabama, who sustained me during this move to a foreign city while I was in the middle of writing another novel: Cleo O’Neal, Kate Philips, Lanier Isom, Kerry Madden, Michael Morris, Cate Sommer, and all those in Mountain Brook who brought me cookies, cakes, and flowers to welcome me here. This city has also welcomed me, and I hope I’ve done it some justice by showing off its prettiest parts in this story.
—To my warm and wonderful readers, who have followed me since the beginning and push me to continue (special shout-out to Ashley Gross): Your words of encouragement allow me to write mine.
—To my long-lasting and true friends from Auburn to Atlanta to Birmingham, who encourage and listen and mostly make me laugh, you know who you are and how deeply I love you.
—To the librarians, booksellers, St. Martin’s sales reps, booklovers, and bookstore owners who put my books on the shelves and nominate them for awards and talk about them to readers, I am profoundly humbled and grateful.
—To the most innovative, kind, and creative publishing group at St. Martin’s Press: Sally Richardson, Matthew Shear, Matthew Baldacci, John Dodes, Brenda Copeland, Stephen Lee, Lisa Senz, Sarah Goldstein, Lauren Hesse, Laura Chasen, Paul Hochman, and the women at Wunderkind PR, Tanya Farrell and Elena Stokes, I am blessed to have all of you on my team.
—To Cammy Hebert and the fairytale design group at Show Me Your MuMu—an inspiration.
—And where would I be without Brooke Wahl? Without her, I’d be buried under a pile of paper, notes, and lists. Brooke, I am so glad you came into both Meagan’s and my life.
—To a young woman who has encouraged me from the very beginning and is my daughter-from-another-mother, Tara Mahoney, I love you.
—To my sisters-in-law, Anna Henry and Serena Henry: If I could have chosen you, I would have chosen you. I love you so very much for not only listening and brainstorming and caring about my work, but also for being the lovely souls that you are to me.
—To all the nieces and nephews—Kirk, Sofia, Colin, Gavin, Cal, Brennan, Owen, Sadie, and Stella—my life is full of laughter because of you.
—To my parents, Bonnie and George Callahan, whose love is unending.
—To my family, of course, because without them there would be nothing else—Pat, Meagan, Thomas, and Rusk Henry.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Prologue
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
A Reading Group Guide
Dear Reader
Also by Patti Callahan Henry
About the Author
Copyright
The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
— G. K. CHESTERTON
prologue
BLUFFTON, SOUTH CAROLINA
1988
March twentieth was full of First Things, and to thirteen-year-old Katie Vaughn it was the day that started all the other days in her life, the beginning of everything that might come after.
It was midday, recess, when Katie hung upside down on the monkey bars. A net of freckles covered her pale face and her copper hair dipped into a puddle—a disgusting soup made of mud and the lime-green slime of newly mowed grass. But it didn’t bother Katie. She knew how to hang upside down, swing up to grab the bar, and do a full loop before landing five feet out from the bars on the solid earth below her feet. Katie was showing off and she knew she was, but if you know how to do something better than anyone else, Mom had told her, you should be doing it.
That day—that first day of spring—no one else would go near the monkey bars what with the slimy puddles, but Katie’s skill had no match at Wesley Prep. She did her loop and then landed on the grass, smiling in that way of the humble when Jack Adams turned to smile at her, and damn if that wasn’t when she felt her feet slip across the unstable ground. Losing balance, she landed with splayed legs, her hair spread like seaweed in the mud.
“Shit.”
Sometimes kids say what they feel instead of what they’re told is proper, and this was one of those unfortunate times for Katie Vaughn. The word was out of her mouth before she even knew it. This was the first time she’d ever cursed, and the word felt like biting into a lemon with the quick stab of bitter juice. It tasted good until she looked up and saw the principal looking down at her and frowning.
“Young lady, did you curse on my school grounds?” Mr. Proctor asked.
Katie looked him directly in the eyes. She’d already done one bad thing, and wasn’t set to lie about it. “Yes, Sir,” she said.
“Follow me. We’ll call your mother,” he said, pronouncing the words as if a period existed
behind each one. He walked away, obviously expecting her to follow.
Katie glanced at Jack and shrugged her muddy shoulders; she could have sworn he was laughing.
After she’d been sent home to “clean her clothes and her mouth,” Katie sat in the alcove of her bedroom window until evening. A small room with a single white-painted iron bed, this was Katie’s hideaway. Wallpaper made of climbing pink roses filled the room like a false and always blooming garden. The dark wood hand-me-down furniture had all been painted a shade of pale pink, meant to match the rose wallpaper but missing its mark completely. Which was maybe what had happened when she’d tried to impress Jack and instead fallen into the mud: an absolute miss.
She still sat at the window waiting, although she didn’t know what she was waiting for, until Jack threw acorns skyward to ping against the glass pane.
Katie opened the window. “Hey,” she called out, swinging the pane out on its rusty hinges.
“Come out,” he said, glancing around like a boy who is afraid he’ll get caught. “Or are you grounded?”
“I’m not grounded,” she said. “My mom knows that sometimes the right word is just the right word.”
He laughed and threw a pinecone toward the back yard. He was a boy accustomed to having something to throw at all times. “Well, come on out.”
Yes, this was what she’d been waiting for—to walk under the moon with Jack Adams.
Every night Katie checked on the moon to make sure it still hung by the invisible forces above, as if the moon could be anywhere else but the sky. She always wanted to know that Luna followed her as her grandfather had told her it did. It hadn’t disappointed her yet.
Spring in Bluffton, South Carolina, was thick and swollen with possibility and, running outside, Katie felt the earth in her body. She and Jack walked down the stone pathway that led to the May River—her river—a flowing body of water so wide and rich that Katie believed the world must have been born in its basin. Scientists were wrong about where the world started because her river was the original Garden of Eden. Jack took her hand, winding his fingers through hers like the kudzu that twined over her front porch lattice.
They sat on a shattered oak log, quiet until Jack spoke. “I can’t believe you aren’t grounded. I mean, my dad would have made me pick out my belt if I’d been caught by mean Mr. Proctor like that.”
“Well, you’re a boy and you can’t say that around girls, but the best I can figure is that it matters more why you say something than if you say it. If I’d have said that to my stupid little sisters or the teacher, I’d have been locked in my room for a week, but I said it because I fell and landed almost inside the earth.”
Jack laughed. “I love the way you say things. You’re funny, Katie.”
And then he did the one thing, the only thing, she’d ever wanted him to do—he kissed her right there under a half moon next to her favorite river. It was a quick kiss, his lips brushing hers and releasing before she could fully kiss him in return. He turned away. “Guess I should’ve asked first,” he said.
“Ask me now.”
He looked at her and smiled. That kiss—the second one—was even better than the first. Katie considered it the real first kiss because it lasted long enough for her to taste the lemonade on his lips.
They sat in silence, crickets singing their praises, or so Katie believed.
Jack dug his forefinger into a hole of the log, plucking out dirt and flicking it onto the ground. “So, you’re my girlfriend now, right?”
Katie stared at Jack with what she hoped was an adorable wide-eyed look. “Of course.”
“You know, today is the first day of spring,” Jack said. “And my crazy mother believes that anything you promise on the first day of spring is a promise you can never, ever break.”
“I didn’t promise anything today,” Katie said. “So nothing to break … yet.”
“Me neither.”
“Well, I better get home for dinner or I will be grounded,” Katie said.
They walked hand in hand to the fork in the path. One way led to his house, the other to hers. Jack glanced toward Katie’s unseen house as if Katie’s mom and dad had seen what happened on the riverbank.
“I can make it home from here,” Katie said, knowing she didn’t yet want to go home.
“You sure?” he asked.
“Yep,” she answered, and then kissed him quickly, and crooked so their front teeth clacked together. She ran up the path and when she knew he could no longer see her, Katie stopped and took a hard right to her favorite willow tree—the one with a trunk as thick as three men, the tree she hid under and in. Her fortress. Flopping down on the ground under the willow’s guardian limbs, Katie spoke out loud. “Today I said my first curse word. Today was my first kiss. Today is the first day of spring, and now my first promise: I will never, ever love anyone but Jonathon Gray Adams—my Jack.”
Some people wish upon stars, others on birthday candles, but Katie Vaughn made a promise under a half moon and in that moment, nothing felt more important than this vow made on the first day of spring—one that couldn’t and wouldn’t be broken.
And when the night is new
I’ll be looking at the moon
But I’ll be seeing you.
SAMMY FAIN AND IRVING KAHAL, 1938
one
BLUFFTON, SOUTH CAROLINA
2010
The unopened letter perched on the side table like a single wing about to take flight. Katie Vaughn—who at thirty-five went by Kate—wanted to open the letter, but waited.
For Kate, the first day of spring held more than blooming daffodils. It was still a day of firsts. Kate had a ritual, a sacred ritual. She made sure that she did something she’d never done before, something that would count as new on the first day of spring. Six years ago she’d opened her boutique. The year before that she ran a marathon with her sister. Of course there was that trip to Charleston with Norah. Then four years ago the midnight swim in the darkest water with Rowan, the first time he’d visited her in South Carolina. It didn’t matter what she did or said or saw as long as it hadn’t been done, or said, or seen before.
This year, Kate’s parents, Nicole and Stuart, would meet Rowan’s parents for the first time. After four years of dating, Kate and Rowan had finally found a day and time when both sets of parents were not only willing, but also able, to meet. They’d tried this before, but someone always had a reason for backing out: a cancelled flight, a threatening hurricane, a bout of the flu or, mostly, overwhelming job responsibilities. Holidays had become a source of agony—who would get Kate and Rowan?
Kate wasn’t sure she was ready for this meeting, but as she knew: Life moved ahead without her permission.
And yes, it was time. Four years of dating and the parents should meet. Or so she was told.
The door buzzer forced its cracked sound into her loft, and her mom’s voice came through the intercom. “Buzz me up, darling.”
Kate’s loft was on the second floor of a historic brick building above the boutique she owned. Her living space ran the length and breadth of the building and overlooked an oak-lined street front bordering the lush Broad River.
When the elevator doors opened, Kate’s mom, Nicole, appeared with a cigarette balanced delicately between her fingers, like a gymnast on a balance beam.
“Mom,” Kate held her nose in disgust. “Not in here. Seriously.”
“Oh, darling,” Mom came close and kissed Kate’s cheek with the cigarette held up and out. Nicole ambled to the kitchen sink, taking one long draw before turning on the faucet to douse the embers, then tossing the offending cigarette into the trash.
She wore a pair of white linen pants and a pastel button-down—an outfit she wore almost every day with the shirt changing shades until Labor Day, when she donned khakis or pressed denim. (Never jeans, she’d said. Only boys wear jeans; girls wear denim.) Her copper hair was cut short and tossed with gel in a style Kate knew was supposed to look cas
ual, but looked messy. “I was downstairs shopping in your store for something to wear tonight, and thought I’d come up and say hello.”
“Did you find anything?” Kate asked, already knowing the answer.
“Oh, I tried. But you have such trendy things and it’s all so expensive. I couldn’t afford it even if I liked it.”
“Well, then it’s a good thing you don’t like any of it. I know you have something in that closet of yours. It’s not like this is some fancy dinner.”
“But I want to make a good impression.” Nicole glanced at the unopened letter, tapping her finger on its edge. “Also, I wanted to check on you because I know what today is and I know it’s … hard.”
Yes, everyone fumbled to find the just-right word for what the day was and what the day meant, and hard was as good a description as any other. Kate smiled. “Thanks, Mom. Really, it’s okay this year.”
“Ah,” she said. “Love will do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make everything better.”
Kate laughed. “You’re funny. I’ve never said I’m in love.”
“Well, dear Lord, you’ve been dating him for four years and I can see it. And you’ve never asked us to meet anyone’s parents. It’s time, sweet pea. It is time to fall madly and terribly in love.”
Kate stood. “Tara and Molly are going to be downstairs any minute and I’ve got ten million things to do before tonight, so hug me, then go home and pick out an outfit, okay?”
They talked for a few minutes about times and logistics for the evening. Even as Kate promised that her parents didn’t need to do anything but show up, Nicole won out with her insistence that she would bring an appetizer and her husband’s favorite whiskey in case Rowan was out.
“Dad can live without his whiskey for one night.”
“Maybe one night,” Nicole said, “but not tonight.” She hugged her daughter. A dark smudge of lipstick was smeared across Nicole’s front tooth, and Kate made a brushing motion with her finger across her own teeth.
Nicole reached up and wiped the lipstick off her teeth without a word: mother-daughter silent language.
And Then I Found You Page 1
