by Nora Roberts
“I’d be second-rate.”
“Oh, Zane, you’re so hard on yourself.”
“I’d never be good enough, that’s just how it is. And I couldn’t take not being good enough.”
It hurt, more than he could tell her, to think of it.
“I have to put it away. I’ve thought about other things. You know they expected me to be a doctor.”
“It’s not about what they expected, ever again. It’s about what you want. And what you want, Zane, I’m going to want for you.”
“I don’t want to be a doctor. I wondered about other stuff, but nothing really hit.”
“You don’t have to decide. College is about exploration, too.”
“But I did decide. I … I want to go to law school. First you have to get the BA, and that takes like two and a half to four years, then it’s law school, and that’s another three.”
She sat back, studying him—very carefully. “You want to study law, be a lawyer?”
“Yeah.” And now that he’d said it, it was real. “I want to try. English and history are my best things, and that’s a good foundation for it. I took that political science deal, and I was okay there. UVA—University of Virginia—it’s in Charlottesville. That’s only about three hundred and fifty miles away, so I could come home for stuff. And it’s a good school for the foundation again. If I can get in.”
“You’ve spent some time on this,” she acknowledged.
“I needed to find out if I could make it work.”
“First thing.” She lifted her fingers, tapped them at her eyes. “Look right here. Is it what you want? Nothing else but that. What you want.”
Man, he loved her, because he knew, bottom line, she meant just that. What he wanted.
“It really is. I mean, it’s what I want to try. I want to be a prosecutor. I thought about cop, but it doesn’t feel right. This does.”
“Zane, this is great.” Because he looked in her eyes, he saw the glimmer of tears. “You’ll be great. A lawyer. My granddaddy was a lawyer. Town lawyer right here in Lakeview.”
“Yeah, I guess I knew. There are a lot of scholarships I can try for, and I can get a part-time job now to start saving. Then there are student loans and all that. And I can work in college. It could take seven years, then I’d have to pass the bar. Sometimes you can get a clerkship, like with a firm or a judge, and if I can work summer courses or programs, I can maybe cut it down a year. Still—”
“Let’s backtrack.” Leaning forward, she brushed at the hair he’d let grow out. Dark as her own, it curled a bit around his face, over his collar. “Are you under the impression you have to pay for your education?”
“They’re never going to turn over the college fund, and I don’t want their money, even if we could make them. I can’t take money from you. I just can’t.”
Now she sat back, crossed her arms. “You think you can stop me from helping you?”
“You help me every day.”
She uncrossed her arms, took his face in her hands. “You need to stop worrying about this. Your grandparents already intend to pay for college for you and Britt.” She shot up a finger to stop him before he could object. “That’s what family does. We didn’t tell you because it felt like pressure. What if you decided not to go to college, or take a gap year, or go to trade school? Now you’ve decided what you want. You’ll call them, tell them. And you’ll thank them.”
She sat back again. “That said, I’m not saying you shouldn’t work, pay some of your expenses. That’s responsibility. You can work for me like you did over the summer, or do something else. As long as it doesn’t interfere with school.”
“It could take seven years. It could cost—”
She tapped a finger on his lips. “Stop. It’s loving and generous of them, and that you’ll remember. They not only can afford to do it, but part of them needs to. You’ll let them, you’ll give this to them.”
Then she laughed. “Zane Walker, Es-freaking-squire. I love it!” She grabbed hold of him, hugged. “Let’s make dumplings.”
She started to jump up, wobbled, had to grip the counter as she went pale, swayed.
So Zane jumped. “Sit down. Are you okay? Jesus. Emily.”
“I’m okay, I’m okay. Just got up too fast. Woof.” She sat down, put her head between her knees.
“Something’s wrong.” He patted her back, then rushed to get her a glass of water. “You’re sick. I’ll call Lee.”
“I’m not sick.” But her voice was thin and muffled. “Just give me a second.”
He set the water down, stroked her back, her hair. “I’m calling Lee.”
“Lee already knows.”
As the bottom dropped out of his world, he started to crouch down, but she straightened up—slowly. Her color had come back—thank God. She blew out a breath, then another, picked up the water for a few sips. “Better. Okay, well, you told me your thing, so I guess now I’ll tell you mine.”
He braced himself for the worst, the very worst as she lifted the top of the laptop, woke it up. She turned the screen toward him.
“Nine weeks … Pregnant? Pregnant.”
She let out a laugh, a whole roll of happy as his gaze automatically went to her belly. “I’m not showing yet. But I’m starting to have trouble buttoning my jeans.”
“You’re pregnant.” He couldn’t quite get the concept into his head, his body.
“We were going to wait a couple more weeks to tell you and Britt, but hey, you caught me. I found out about a month before the wedding. Surprise!” That laugh rolled out again. “We were going to try, you know, never expected it would happen so fast.”
“You’re really happy.”
“Are you kidding? We’re flying! It’s been hard not to tell you—tell everyone. Friends, neighbors, total strangers. But we wanted to give you and Britt more time to settle in, school starting and all that. And to give this one a little more time to settle in, too.” She laid a hand on her belly. “I get a little light-headed—that’s normal. No morning sickness, which is nice. Are you okay with this?”
He had to sit down himself. “Britt and I can start doing more stuff. Around the house, the bungalows. And you can sit here, okay, and tell me how to make the dumplings. Just sit while I do it. That’s my cousin. You’re going to have my cousin.”
“Another normal,” she told him as tears spilled. “I got teary this morning when Lee said he’d pick up Britt after play practice.”
“You really love him.”
“I really do.”
“Lee and Dave? They’re the best men I know.”
“Oh, there I go again.” This time she dug in her pocket for a tissue. “Tell you what, before dumplings, let’s call Grams and Pop. We’ll give them a double dose of good news—yours and mine. I can have a good cry before I show you how we make dumplings in our house.”
“Good deal. Emily?” His grin stretched ear to ear. “This is really cool.”
* * *
In the spring, Emily gave birth to a healthy boy with a head of dark hair and a set of lungs that would have made Pavarotti proud. They named him Gabriel.
During that busy, blooming spring, Zane took a pretty blonde named Orchid to the prom—his romance with Ashley having faded—and had his first full-out sexual experience.
He decided sex, the real thing, ranked right up there with baseball.
Britt took on the role of Rizzo in the spring musical of Grease, fell briefly if madly in love with a gangly sophomore who handed her her first heartbreak.
Zane received his acceptance letter from UVA, breathed out in relief and trepidation.
He graduated, and though the whole ceremony seemed a blur of endings and beginnings, he found all he needed to find.
Micah, waiting for his turn to cross the stage. Dave giving Zane a fist pump. His grandparents looking misty-eyed. His sister, just grinning. Lee holding the baby so Emily could stand and cheer.
His world. His true foundation. He ha
d to build something on it that mattered.
PART TWO
HOMECOMINGS
Home is where one starts from.
—T. S. ELIOT
You don’t have to swing hard to hit a home run.
If you got the timing, it’ll go.
—YOGI BERRA
CHAPTER EIGHT
February 2019
Darby hadn’t stuck a pin in a map to choose Lakeview, North Carolina. She’d had a system.
She wanted South, but not Deep South. She wanted water, but not the ocean. No big cities, but not too rural. And she wanted to look out windows, wherever that might be, and see growing things, trees, gardens.
Eventually, she’d want to make connections, make friends, but no real rush on it.
And she wanted time. Needed time. She gave herself that—wherever she picked, she’d take at least two weeks before deciding to move on if it didn’t suit. If it did, she’d move in.
She needed a place, a purpose, something to hold her down. For too long she’d felt as weightless as a balloon, one that once untethered could just float away.
She didn’t want to float. She wanted to plant roots.
She’d studied maps, combed the internet.
North Carolina seemed to hit the marks. Good growing season, but resting time as well. And the High Country—something she’d known almost nothing about before those comb throughs—appealed.
She hadn’t thought of mountains, and she liked the idea of seeing them rising up.
Lakeview seemed to check more boxes. She’d have the water she craved, those mountains she hadn’t known she wanted, a decent-size town, and reasonable distance to good-size cities when she needed or wanted what they offered.
If it didn’t work, well, she’d move on.
With that location in mind, she studied climate charts, rainfall, growing season, native plants, spread out to businesses, activities.
Where did people shop, where did they eat, what did they do? She shifted over to hotels, motels, B and Bs, rental homes. Then struck on the web page for Walker Lakeside Bungalows.
She liked the look of Emily Walker Keller, liked reading that the bungalows and business had been in her family for three generations. And she liked the look of them. Separate, private, but not lonely or really alone. Plenty of trees. Woods really, which struck some other previously unexplored interest inside her.
She’d stuck the pin in the map at that point, took the leap of making an online reservation. A month. If the two weeks proved enough, she’d just eat the rest of the cost, move on.
An adventure, she’d told herself as she’d packed everything she had left. She’d sold or donated the rest. Traveling light, she thought, and with nothing to hold her to the house that was no longer hers—in the pretty suburb of Baltimore—she loaded her car.
She turned once to study the lovely old brick house, its gardens sleeping under a layer of fresh February snow. The new owners had given her the afternoon after the morning settlement to, well, move on, and she appreciated it.
They’d appreciate the gardens, the dance of the weeping pear’s branches when spring came. They’d mow the lawns, sit in the kitchen, sleep in the bedrooms. The house would live again.
It hadn’t in nearly a year. It had just gone to sleep. Like she had.
It deserved to hold a family again, and now that it would, she could leave it without regret.
She got in the car, put on her sunglasses against the glare of sun, turned the radio up—loud.
She moved on.
The direct route clocked in at about eight hours. Darby took a week. The journey, in her mind, was about exploration, adventure, and in no small way freedom. On the road, she could be whoever she wanted to be, go wherever the urge struck.
Time out of time, she figured, so salt and vinegar chips and a cold Coke for breakfast worked fine.
She watched snow fall outside her window in a Motel 6 in the Shenandoah Valley, wound into West Virginia because why not? Took the back roads, climbing the mountains, cruising down them again. And wound back east.
Charlottesville earned an entire day. A tour of Monticello, long browses through art galleries, and an amazing ramp risotto with a crisp pinot grigio to cap off the day.
Out of Charlottesville, the back roads took her through farmland, vineyards, small towns, past old homes and new developments. Into the tentative hints of spring, the haze of green like a promise, the air like a cautious sigh.
Because she wanted to start her day crossing into North Carolina, Darby chose a motel near the border, ate southern fried chicken in a diner served by a cheerful waitress named Mae who called her sweetie-pie.
Or sweetah-pah in her lovely accent.
Mae had a fuzzy cloud of yellow hair, bright and bold against the hint of dark roots, an ample bosom, and a smile as comforting as the mashed potatoes and gravy on Darby’s plate.
She spent the last night of her road trip listening to the couple in the next room have a whole lot of enthusiastic, vocal sex. As compared to other overheard motel sex along the route, Darby decided “Oh God, SuSIE!” and “Jack, Jack, Jack!” won top prize.
When her internal alarm woke her just before dawn, she rolled out of bed to shower. After studying her face in the mirror, she concluded that, since she’d show that face in Lakeview later in the day, some makeup wouldn’t hurt.
She pulled on jeans, a T-shirt, a hoodie, laced on her battered and beloved Wolverines, and blew a kiss to Susie and Jack as she swung her duffle over her shoulder.
She hit the vending machines for a pack of Oreos and a Coke, sat a moment watching the eastern sky wake up, flirting back the night with its pinks and roses.
She headed south, crossed into North Carolina with the sun.
Driving through the morning, she let her mind drift. Not time, not yet, to think of the practical, the what-happens-next. This still spread as the whatever, and she could take any road, still detour, still turn north, or east.
She could opt to miss a day or two of her reservation, or cancel it altogether. Destiny rested in her hands, and no one else’s.
But she wound west, saw the mountains. At first like shadows in the sun, then taking form and shape. Going with the pull, she headed toward them. Time to see, she told herself. Time to try.
Her first sight of Lakeview came with the sun, sparkling bright. Streaming down mountains, snugged into valleys, glowing on foothills. And casting diamonds on the blue lake.
Spring wasn’t ready to dance here in the High Country, but from what she could see, it had begun to tap its foot.
She wanted the town first. Scenic had big points, but for whatever to turn into the what’s-next, she needed those practicalities, a client base, a demand for her supply.
She saw quickly the lake itself held the center—and that made sense. Docks, a marina, shops catering to those who wanted the water—to sail, to swim or paddle, to perch on little strips of beach, or to fish.
Outdoorsy shops for the hiker, the sportsman. Arty shops, gift shops, restaurants, a couple of pretty hotels. Businesses, she noted, that looked as if they held their own.
People strolled the sidewalks or walked briskly. More wandered the marina docks. A few boats skimmed that blue lake.
And homes, for those who lived right in the center. More homes for those who wanted a little distance from the businesses.
Homes with yards, homes on sloping hills with shade trees and ornamental shrubs budded up and waiting, just waiting to dance into spring.
A quiet place, certainly compared to where she’d lived her life, but not sleepy. The lake, the hills, those mountains, the woods would draw tourists, and that was fine. But tourists weren’t her target.
She weaved through a development—Lakeview Terrace. Big houses, fancy houses, the biggest and fanciest of them with a clear view of the lake from generous backyards.
It held its own little park, a small playground.
She drove out, began to round the water o
n the lake road.
Houses—some from what she’d read would have started their life as summer homes. She supposed a few still lived for summer or holiday goers. And some seemed built right into the rise of hill—lots of glass to bring in the view, jagging decks for sitting out on pretty days and nights.
What she could do if let loose on those fascinating, rocky, rising grounds!
Some traffic on the road, but not thick or impatient, and that was good, too. She saw a man in a red cap fishing off the end of a dock. A pier? Was there a difference?
A woman with a baby in one of those front packs—chubby little legs dangling out. She walked a big black dog on a leash. Darby glanced back at them through her rearview mirror as the woman unclipped the leash.
The big dog streaked to the lake, leaped into the air, landed with a splash. Charmed, slowing so she could watch the dog swim like an otter, she nearly missed the sign for Walker Lakeside Bungalows reception.
The road narrowed at the turnoff, went to gravel, and the woods snuck in closer. She had a moment to think it was its own private magic land—or the classic set for slasher murders—when she came to a neat bungalow, with the Lakeside reception sign.
It had a porch with a couple of rocking chairs, a table between, a walkway through a patch of front yard that looked more like weeds than grass, but neatly mowed.
She saw lights behind the windows and a curl of smoke from the chimney.
“Here we go,” she murmured, grabbed her shoulder bag, and climbed out of the car.
She walked up the gravel path—slate, she thought, it should be slate with Irish moss growing in the joints—up to the porch, where she imagined azaleas in pink—very traditional—softening the foundation, and mixed pots flanking the doorway, with plantings to reflect the season.
She started to knock, saw the sign that read, COME RIGHT ON IN, so she did.
A woman sat at a long, glossy table working at a computer while a fire simmered in a stone hearth. She had dark hair layered nearly to her shoulders. Emily Walker Keller looked very much like the picture on the website.
