by Nora Roberts
She’d known the trails and the streams, the swimming holes and the places where the black bear lumbered along. She’d walked with her brothers, with Emma Kate, on hot summer days into town to buy Cokes at the general store, or to her grandmother’s salon to beg for spending money.
She’d known places to sit and look out at forever. How the whippoorwill sounded when dusk fell in clouds of soft, soft gray after the sun died red behind the peaks.
She’d know it again, she thought. All of it. And more important, her daughter would know it. She’d know the giddy feeling of warm grass under her feet, or cold creek water lapping her ankles.
“Please, Mama, please! Can we be there?”
“We’re really close now. See that house there? I knew a girl who lived there. Her name was Lorilee, and her mama, Miz Maybeline, worked for Granny. She still does, and I think Granny told me Lorilee works for her, too. And see, just up ahead, that fork in the road?”
“You eat with a fork.”
“That’s right.” Almost as impatient as her daughter, Shelby laughed. “But it also means a split in the road—where you can go one way or the other? If we went to the right—the hand you color with? If we went that way, we’d be in Rendezvous Ridge in a spit. But we go left . . .”
Her own excitement rising, Shelby took the left fork—a little faster than maybe she should. “And we’re heading home.”
“Gamma’s house.”
“That’s right.”
A few houses, some of them new since she’d left, scattered around—and the road still winding and rising.
Emma Kate’s house, with a big truck in the drive that had The Fix-It Guys painted on the side.
And there it was. Home.
Cars and trucks everywhere, she noted. Packed in the drive, ranged on the side of the road. Kids running around the front yard and dogs with them. And the spring flowers her parents tended like babies already a show at the hem of the pretty two-story house. The cedar shakes gleamed in the sun, and the pink dogwood her mother prized bloomed as pretty as Easter morning.
A banner hung between the front-porch posts.
WELCOME HOME, SHELBY AND CALLIE ROSE!
She might have laid her head on the steering wheel and wept in sheer gratitude, but Callie bounced in her car seat.
“Out! Out! Hurry, Mama.”
She saw another sign propped on a sawhorse right in front of the house.
RESERVED FOR SHELBY
As she let out a laugh, two of the boys spotted her van, ran over cheering.
“We’ll move it, Shelby!”
Her uncle Grady’s boys, who looked to have sprung up another six inches since she’d seen them at Christmas.
“Somebody having a party?” she called out.
“It’s for you. Hey, Callie, hey.” The older of the two—Macon—tapped on Callie’s window.
“Whozat, Mama? Who?”
“That’s your cousin Macon.”
“Cousin Macon!” Callie waved both hands. “Hi, hi!”
She eased the van off the road, and with intense relief, turned off the ignition. “We’re here, Callie. At last.”
“Out, out, out.”
“I’m working on it.”
Before she could get around the van, kids swarming her, to open the side door, her mother came running.
Nearly six feet, Ada Mae had long legs to cover the ground from house to van. Her yellow sundress billowed around those legs, set off her crown of red hair.
Before Shelby could take a breath she was caught in a bear hug and surrounded by the scent of L’Air du Temps, her mother’s signature perfume.
“Here you are! Here’s my girls! My God, Shelby Anne, you’re skinny as a snake. We’re going to fix that. For goodness’ sake, you kids give us some room here. Look at you, just look!” She cupped Shelby’s face, tilted it up. “Everything’s going to be just fine,” she said when Shelby’s eyes teared. “Don’t you go running your mascara. It’s all fine now. How do you get this door open?”
Shelby pulled the handle so the side door slid open.
“Gamma! Gamma!” Callie reached out, arms stretched. “Out, out!”
“I’m going to get you out of there. How the hell do you get her out of there? Oh, just look at you!” Ada Mae covered Callie’s face with kisses as Shelby released the harness, the seat belt. “You’re pretty as a sunbeam in May. And what a pretty dress, too. Oh, give your Gamma a big hug.”
In her yellow sling-back heels, Ada Mae turned circles in the road while Callie clung to her like a burr.
“We’re all over the place.” Tears slid down Ada Mae’s cheeks as she circled.
“Don’t cry, Gamma.”
“That’s just joy spilling out, and good thing I’ve got waterproof mascara. We’re out here, in the house, out the backyard where they’ve got the big grill going already. We’ve got food to feed the army we are, and some champagne, too, to celebrate.”
With Callie on her hip, Ada Mae pulled Shelby in for a three-generation hug. “Welcome home, baby.”
“Thank you, Mama, more than I can say.”
“Let’s get you inside, get you some sweet tea. The moving van was here not two hours ago.”
“Already?”
“Carted everything right up to Callie’s room. We’ve got it all made up so sweet and pretty. Your room’s right next to your mama’s,” she said as they walked to the house. “I put you in Clay’s old room, Shelby, as it’s bigger than the one you had. It’s been fresh painted, and we got a new mattress. The old was worn out. Callie’s in Forrest’s old room, so you know you’ll share that bath between them. We got some nice new towels in there for you. Got them from your granny’s spa, so they’re nice.”
Shelby would’ve said she shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble, but if Ada Mae wasn’t fussing, she wasn’t breathing.
“Gilly baked a cake, all fancy. She’s about ready to pop, but that girl can bake like Betty Crocker.”
Her brother Clay came out. He’d gotten his parents’ height, and their father’s coloring with his dark hair and eyes. Grinning, he plucked Shelby off her feet, spun her like a top.
“About time you got here,” he murmured in her ear.
“Soon as I could.”
“Give her over,” he ordered his mother, and snatched Callie. “Hey there, sunshine. Remember me?”
“Unca Clay.”
“Girls always remember the handsome ones. Let’s go find some trouble.”
“If anybody can,” Ada Mae said, and wrapped an arm around Shelby’s waist. “You need a cold drink and a chair.”
“I feel like I’ve been sitting for days, but I’d take the cold drink.”
Family spread around the house so there were more hugs and welcomes, more yet when they reached the kitchen. Gilly—and she did look ready to pop—stood with a boy just a year younger than Callie on her hip.
“I’ve got him.” Clay transferred his son, Jackson, to his other hip. “Got me a set now.” He took off running out the back door, letting out a war hoop that had both kids squealing.
“Born to be a daddy. And a good thing,” Ada Mae added, giving Gilly’s belly a gentle pat. “You get off your feet now.”
“I’m feeling fine. Even better now.” She wrapped her arms around Shelby, swayed with the hug. “It’s so good to see you. We’ve got pitchers of tea outside, and plenty of beer. And four bottles of champagne—your mama has decreed it’s for the ladies only, as none of the men here can appreciate it.”
“Sounds about right. I’ll start with the tea.” Shelby hadn’t caught her breath, not yet, but decided she’d catch it later. “Gilly, you just look wonderful.”
Hair as sunny as Clay’s was dark, slicked back in a pretty tail to leave her face—round with pregnancy—unframed. Eyes of cornflower blue sparkled.
“Really wonderful. Are you doing good?”
“I’m doing great. Five weeks and two days to go.”
Shelby made her way outside, ont
o the wide back porch, looking over the big backyard with its vegetable patch already sprouting, kids clambering over a swing set, a grill smoking, picnic tables lined up like soldiers with balloons tied to chairs.
Her father stood at the grill—the general—in one of his silly aprons. This one suggested you kiss his grits.
She was in his arms in seconds. She wouldn’t break down, she told herself. She just wouldn’t spoil it. “Hey, Daddy.”
“Hey, Shelby.”
He bent from his six feet, two inches, kissed the top of her head. Handsome and fit, a marathon runner for pleasure, a country doctor by trade, he held her close.
“You’re too thin.”
“Mama said she’d fix that.”
“Then she will.” He drew her back. “The doctor says food, drink, plenty of sleep and pampering. That’ll be twenty dollars.”
“Put it on my bill.”
“That’s what they all say. Go, get that drink. I’ve got ribs to finish.”
As she stepped back, she was caught in a round-the-back bear hug. She recognized the wonderful prickle of whiskers, wriggled around and hugged. “Grandpa.”
“I was just saying to Vi the other day, ‘Vi, something’s missing around here. Can’t quite put my finger on it.’ Now I got it. It was you.”
She reached up, rubbed her palm over the stone-gray whiskers, looked up into his merry blue eyes. “I’m glad you found me.” She laid her head against his barrel of a chest. “It looks like a carnival here. Everything full of fun and color.”
“It’s time you came back to the carnival. You fixing to stay?”
“Jack,” Clayton muttered.
“I’ve been ordered not to ask questions.” Those merry eyes could turn pugnacious in a finger snap—and did. “But I’m damned if I won’t ask my own granddaughter if she’s fixing to stay home this time.”
“It’s all right, Daddy, and yeah, I’m fixing to stay.”
“Good. Now Vi’s giving me the hard eye ’cause I’m keeping you from her. At your six,” he said, and turned her around.
There she was, Viola MacNee Donahue, in a bright blue dress, her Titan hair in a sassy curling wedge, big movie star sunglasses tipped down her nose, and her eyes bold and blue over them.
She didn’t look like anyone’s granny, Shelby thought, but called out to her as she flew over the lawn.
“Granny.”
Viola dropped her hands from her hips, threw out her arms.
“About damn time, but I guess you saved the best for last.”
“Granny. You’re so beautiful.”
“Aren’t you lucky to look just like me? Or like I did some forty years back. It’s the MacNee blood, and good skin care. That little angel of yours has the same.”
Shelby turned her head, smiled as she saw Callie with cousins, rolling on the grass with a couple of young dogs. “She’s my heart and soul.”
“I know it.”
“I should’ve—”
“Should’ves are a waste. We’re going to take a little walk,” she said when Shelby’s eyes filled. “Take a look at your daddy’s vegetable patch. Best tomatoes in the Ridge. You put the worry aside now. Just put it aside.”
“There’s too much of it, Granny. More than I can say right now.”
“Worry doesn’t get things done, it just gives a woman lines in her face. So you put the worry aside. What needs doing will get done. You’re not alone now, Shelby.”
“I . . . forgot what it feels like not to be, so all this seems like a dream.”
“This is what’s real and always has been. Come here, darling, hold on awhile.” She drew Shelby close, rubbed her back. “You’re home now.”
Shelby looked out at the mountains, smoked with clouds, so strong, so enduring, so true.
She was home now.
5
Somebody brought out her grandfather’s banjo, and in short order her uncle Grady’s wife, Rosalee, had a fiddle, her brother Clay his guitar. They wanted bluegrass, the music of the mountains. Those high bright notes, the close harmony of strings plucked and sawed stirred memories in her, lit a light inside her. A kind of birth.
Here were her beginnings, in the music and the mountains, in the green and the gatherings.
Family, friends, neighbors swarmed the picnic tables. She watched her cousins dancing on the lawn, her mother in her yellow heels swinging little Jackson to the rhythm. And there, her father with Callie in his lap having what appeared to be a very serious conversation while they ate potato salad and barbecued ribs.
Her grandmother’s laugh carried over the music as Viola sat cross-legged on the lawn, sipping champagne and grinning up at Gilly.
Her mother’s younger sister Wynonna kept a hawk eye on her youngest girl, who seemed joined at the hip with a skinny guy in torn-up jeans her aunt referred to as “that Hallister boy.”
As her cousin Lark was sixteen and as curvy as a mountain road, Shelby figured the hawk eye was warranted.
People kept pushing food on her, so she ate because she felt her mother’s own hawk eye on her. She drank champagne even though it made her think of Richard.
And she sang because her grandfather asked her to. “Cotton-Eyed Joe” and “Salty Dog,” “Lonesome Road Blues” and “Lost John.” The lyrics came back to her like yesterday, and the simple fun of it, singing out in the yard, letting the music rise toward the big sunstruck blue bowl of the sky, soothed her battered heart.
She’d let this go, she thought, let all of it go for a man she’d never really known and a life she knew had been false from the first to the last.
Wasn’t it a miracle that what was real and true was here waiting for her?
When she could get away, she slipped into the house, wandered upstairs. Her heart just flooded when she stepped into Callie’s room.
Petal-pink walls and fussy white curtains framing the window that looked out on the backyard, and the mountains beyond it. All the pretty white furniture, and the bed with its pink-and-white canopy all set up. They’d even arranged some of the dolls and toys and books on the white bookcase, tucked some of the stuffed animals on the bed.
Maybe the room was half the size of the one in the big house, but it looked just exactly right. She moved through the Jack and Jill bathroom—sparkling, as her mother would have it no other way—and into what had been her brother’s room. What was her room now.
Her old iron bed where she’d slept and dreamed through childhood faced the window, just as it had in the room down the hall. As she’d liked it best so she could wake to the mountains. A simple white duvet covered it now, but Ada Mae being Ada Mae had set pillows in lace-edged shams against the iron headboard, and more in shades of green and blue mounded with them. A throw—blues and greens again—crocheted by her great-grandmother, lay folded at the foot.
The walls were a warm smoky green, like the mountains. Two watercolors—her cousin Jesslyn’s work—graced them. Soft dreamy colors, a spring meadow, a greening forest at dawn. A vase of white tulips—her favorite—sat on her old dresser, along with the picture in its silver frame of her holding Callie at eight weeks.
They’d brought her suitcases up. She hadn’t asked—hadn’t had to. The boxes, well, they were probably already stacked in the garage waiting for her to figure out what to do with the things she’d felt obliged to keep from a life that no longer seemed her own.
Overcome, she sat on the side of the bed. She could hear the