by Nora Everly
In My Heart
a sweetbriar hearts novel
Nora Everly
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Copyright © 2019 by Nora Everly
All rights reserved.
Cover Design by Julianne Burke of Heart to Cover LLC
Editor: diamondintheroughediting.com
Proofread: proofingstyle.com
For Jenna
Thank you for always encouraging me.
Contents
1. Lily
2. Lily
3. Lily
4. Lily
5. Lily
6. Lily
7. Lily
8. Lily
9. Luke
10. Lily
11. Lily
12. Lily
13. Luke
14. Lily
15. Luke
16. Lily
17. Lily
18. Lily
19. Lily
20. Lily
21. Luke
22. Lily
23. Lily
24. Lily
25. Lily
26. Lily
27. Luke
28. Lily
Epilogue
First Kiss
Sneak Peak: Heart Words
Keep in touch with Nora
About the Author
1
Lily
Every time I drove this road, it felt like I was driving straight to him, even though he was gone. Years had stacked up between us. Miles too, I assumed. I didn’t come home very often—I tried to avoid the memories this place stirred up. There was a hole in my heart that nothing could ever fill. My husband couldn’t fill it, my children can’t even fill it. Will had done his best to help me put the pieces of my life back together. I had been content with the life we’d made. But Will was dead. And I was going home to start over. I couldn’t stand to be here back then. But now, there was nowhere else for me to be.
I never thought I would lose him, but I did. I never thought I could be with anyone after him, but I was. Being a thirty-year-old widow running back to her family was never in my life plan—yet here I sat, watching the same roads I’d traveled as a kid pass by as I drove back to the beginning. Back to the past I had fought so hard to leave behind.
Funny how a three-hour trip could turn to five—time had no meaning to first graders and babies. We’d already had three pee breaks and a Happy Meal break, I was sick of changing diapers in the car, and if I had to walk around another rest stop, I would scream. “Are we there yet?” echoed in my ears and I couldn’t wait to stop driving. Dylan, my six-year-old, stirred awake in the back seat as the speed limit dropped, and I slowed down to a crawl as the highway led into town.
Sweetbriar, Oregon. The gateway to Mount Hood, population 5249. When I grew up here, the population was 5197, which meant there were about fifty-two people who didn’t yet know my business. Memories sprouted up in my head as I passed familiar sights. Some were pleasant, but most I wanted to bury again. Some things never changed, and this town was one of them. I felt like a stranger even though this used to be my home.
“Mommy, look, there is Auntie Violet’s coffee shop. Can we go in and have a smoothie and some cookies? Please, please, please. We’ve been driving forever, and my butt is so tired,” Dylan complained from the back seat.
“You know what? My butt is tired too. It’s smoothie time, bud.” I laughed as he let out a whoop.
A break was necessary before facing the rest of my family. My sister Violet was the least
intrusive of the whole lot of them—or maybe she was more subtle about it. When you grow up one of eight siblings, you learn that privacy is a luxury you will never have. Plus, my mother was the queen of all pushy, in-your-face mothers throughout the land. Luckily, my dad was mellow enough to balance us all out and keep the peace. I turned my SUV into the parking lot and pulled in to a spot right in front of Vi’s shop.
Violet spotted me from the window and rushed out, arms waving crazily in the air and her hair flying out behind her as she ran to us.
“Lily, yay! You’re finally here! Where are my babies?” She ran right past me to the back of the car and opened the door before Dylan had even unbuckled to lean in to pepper his cheeks with kisses. “Dylan, I’ve missed you, little bug.” She pulled him from the car and wrapped him up in a huge hug. “Today is snickerdoodle day, and I have a big one with your name on it. Go on inside. Grandpa is sitting on the big couch, and Finn and Nick are working at the counter.”
Dylan had a major sweet tooth; she didn’t have to tell him twice—he took off like a shot into the store with a huge smile.
“Hey, Vi,” I said as I lifted Calla from her car seat.
“Ooh, Lily! Give me that baby,” she demanded as she rushed around the car to snatch her from my arms. Violet had two kids of her own, twin sixteen-year-old boys, the previously mentioned Finn and Nick.
“Auntie Violet has presents for you, you sweet little thing,” she crooned, laughing as Calla wrapped her long wavy chocolate-brown hair into her drooly little fist and pulled. “Look how much she’s grown already. It seems like only yesterday we were in the hospital. She has her daddy’s green eyes and your red hair. I bet she’ll get your freckles too. She’s so cute I can’t stand it!” Her face turned wistful. “Before you know it, instead of pulling hair and drooling, she’ll be driving around in your car, asking for money and sneaking in after curfew.”
“I missed you, Violet,” I said, and side hugged her. Nostalgia kicked me in the gut as she wrapped an arm around my shoulder. Maybe it was good to be home.
She leaned into me and kissed my cheek with a loud smack. “You’re going to get sick of this face. We’ve all decided that you’ll work with me here in my shop until summer vacation is over and you start your job at the school. Mom will babysit.” She took in my dubious expression. “Don’t bother arguing. You need to get out of the house and get your life back, you need to be social, Lily. It will just be for a few hours in the mornings,” she informed me.
Violet’s coffee shop—simply called Violet’s—was the nexus of this town. Mornings were chaotic as everyone came here for their coffee. In the ten years since she’d bought the place, she’d turned it from an average, non-descript coffee shop into a hotbed of gossip and social activity unparalleled anywhere else in Sweetbriar. Working here would be like diving right back into being “social” on the first morning. Nope—no thanks.
I had a whole lot of brooding and being alone with my thoughts planned for this summer, and I wanted to stick to that. When school started this fall, I would take over as the librarian at Sweetbriar Grade School, the same school I attended as a child. My identical twin sister Rose taught kindergarten there—which was great—but I could already see the privacy I’d enjoyed while living out of town already start to disappear.
“What? I can’t work here. I have a baby. I’m nursing.” My argument was halfhearted because I knew it would end up being fruitless.
Her lips twisted to the side as she scoffed at my attempt at an excuse. “I know you pump too. If Calla needs you, Mom will drive her over. You need to get out of the house—you were cooped up on bed rest for months, then you were all alone living the
hermit life up in Tacoma. Calla is six months old; she’ll be fine with Mom. No lip.” She pointed at my face, and Calla grabbed her finger and giggled. “Plus, it will give us time to chat and catch up. I missed you.”
“Oh, all right.” I caved like I almost always did when it came to my family. I had missed her. Plus, she was beautiful and funny and being around her always cheered me up.
“I’m glad you stopped here first. There is something we need to tell you, and it will be easier to hear it from just me and Dad first, rather than the whole family.” She chuckled nervously.
Why did this sound so ominous?
We stepped through the entrance; I waved to Dylan, perched at one of the high tables near the counter, his face covered in chocolate frosting. I cringed as he dunked a snickerdoodle into a huge glass of chocolate milk with his whole hand. “Finn gave me a brownie and a snickerdoodle. I couldn’t decide, so he gave me both! I love it here! I’m glad we’ll be living here forever.”
I shook my head. “Dylan, your chocolate face matches your chocolate-covered eyeballs.” I always teased him about his big, brown eyes, just like his father’s eyes.
“I think he got more frosting on his face than in his mouth, Aunt Lily.” Nick laughed as I hugged him.
“Hey, Finn, come over here and hug your aunt.”
With a grin, he came out from behind the counter to give me a hug. Violet’s sons were both tall, just over six feet, with brown hair and beautiful hazel eyes just like Violet’s.
“Aunt Lily, are you getting shorter?” Finn teased and patted my head.
“Nope, I’m still a statuesque five feet and two inches. You must be getting taller. Stop growing,” I ordered and pointed up at his face. “Rose and I will be the shortest members of this family once all the kids turn into teens,” I said as I passed through the tables to the fluffy, pillow-covered purple sofa at the rear of the store and sat next to my dad. He leaned over, gave me a hug, then sat back into the corner of the couch to prop his feet on the dark wooden coffee table. Violet sat in the brown leather chair perpendicular to the couch. After exchanging a look they both stared at me.
What the heck was going on?
“She’s about to get pissed,” Violet said to my dad. They started to look nervous and I started to get worried.
“Just tell me.” I sighed and flopped back against the cushions.
After inhaling a huge breath, Violet finally started talking. “Lily, none of us told you this before you moved back because we were worried about you. The bed rest, the hard pregnancy, Will’s death. We didn’t want to cause you any more stress.” My husband, Will, had been a police officer. After pulling over to help a stranded motorist a hit-and-run driver ran Will down, killing him. The driver still hadn’t been caught. A week later I had discovered I was pregnant with Calla. To say I was “stressed” at that time was an understatement. I had spent the last almost year and a half in a state of perpetual confusion laced with grief, just putting one foot in front of the other and trying not to think too hard about anything.
“Honey, Luke is back in town. He’s here to stay.” It was my father who decided to drop the bomb rather than Violet.
Holy crap.
“What?” I breathed. “Here in Sweetbriar? Luke?” I gasped as my head turned to the door, then to the windows, stupidly looking around for a sign of him.
Lucas Michael McCabe.
I’d tried hard over the years to banish that name from my thoughts, and I’d always failed. Our mothers had been best friends. They had thought it would be fun to be pregnant at the same time. Later, they had been even more thrilled when they went into labor and gave birth on the same day: Diana to Luke, and my mom to me and Rose. After a childhood spent as inseparable best friends, we fell in love. We graduated from high school and he joined the Army while I went to college in Tacoma, near where he had been stationed. Deployments had been hard, but we loved each other, so we made it work. Until one day it stopped working—he went back to Afghanistan, and I never heard from him again. Luke was Dylan’s father. Even me being pregnant didn’t make him come back. I still couldn’t understand it. It went against everything I had ever known about him.
Dad’s voice shook me out of my memories. “He was injured and discharged from the Army. Lily, he never knew you were pregnant. The officer who was supposed to tell him died before he could give him the news. Jed told him about Dylan the second he returned to town. They came to the house and talked to me and Mom.” Jed was Luke’s grandfather and the only living family he had; it had broken his heart when Luke cut off communication. “We all decided it would be best to tell you after you got back home.”
Violet smiled softly at me. “We were afraid you wouldn’t come back if you knew, so we didn’t tell you until it was too late for you to change your mind. Don’t be mad, Lily. We all love you and wanted you here with us.” Tears shimmered in her eyes.
I stared at her, too shocked to say anything. Will and I had decided that Dylan should know who his birth father was, but Will had been his father in every other way. They had been right not to tell me. I may have chickened out and stayed in Tacoma had I known. But it was too late now, I’d already sold my house, my furniture, and quit my job. Deep down, I didn’t really want to go back—I missed my family. Still, talk about dropping a bomb on a girl.
“You should have told me. What if I drove past him or something? What if Dylan saw him out the window? He’s seen pictures, you know,” I hissed. “What were you all thinking? You know I require a lot of mental preparation before I do stuff,” I grumbled, threw myself back against the couch, and crossed my arms. I glared at Violet, but she didn’t notice. She was busy spoiling my baby. Calla would be totally rotten by the time this day was through.
“You won’t recognize him. He looks a lot different,” Violet answered distractedly, too wrapped up in Calla to pay any attention to me.
Dad reached for Calla, but Violet shook her head and turned in her chair, so he couldn’t get to her, he shrugged and laughed.
“Violet! Different? You’ve seen him?” I asked after I finally got her attention.
She looked at me for a second and waved her hand around. “I see him all the time. His office is right across the parking lot. He came to Sunday dinner a couple times with Jed. He stops here for coffee most mornings—oh, you have a day to mentally prepare for that,” she helpfully added, and I rolled my eyes at her. “He wants to talk to you and explain what happened. He wants you to forgive him.”
I was reeling, and it was only getting worse the more I heard. I closed my eyes and rested my head back against the sofa. An epic headache was imminently approaching, I needed a cookie, or a brownie, or something sweet so I could eat my feelings. I looked up in gratitude as Finn tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a scone and an iced tea.
“Sweetheart, he was devastated when he found out about Dylan,” Dad said gently and patted my knee. I looked at my dad out of the corner of my eye.
“How long has he been home? The way you are talking about this says it’s been a while,” I asked.
“Not long. He’s only been back for about three months. His injuries kept him in bed when he first got here. He stayed with Jed for about a month, but he’s living at Chuck’s place now and taking over the business. Chuck died of cancer not long after Will’s death; you already knew that.” Chuck had been Luke’s father and a total jerk. “The business” was construction, or contracting, or something like that.
“Why hasn’t he contacted me? Doesn’t he want to see Dylan?” Or me?
“Of course he does. He has PTSD. We think it’s what caused the incident in the hospital all those years ago. He decided to get his life in order before contacting you and meeting Dylan. I supported him in that decision, Lily. He was a mess when he got home,” Dad explained.
“I can understand that. I’m pretty much the walking, talking definition of a mess.” I let out a small laugh and hoped my nerves and hurt feelings were adequately hidden i
nside my lies. “It would have been terrible timing for all of us.” I sat back up and tucked my feet under me on the couch. I waved at Calla. She waved back and babbled at me.
“Mom invited him to dinner tonight, but he said that would be too much pressure for you and Dylan,” Violet informed me.
“Ya think? You guys seem to have my life all planned for me. What do I do next, Violet?” I responded in my second language, sarcasm.
“Lily, please don’t be mad. We’re just trying to help.” She glanced at me before Calla twisted and pulled her hair again, adding levity to this conversation and preventing me from losing it completely.
“I’m not mad exactly. I just forgot.” I sighed and flopped back on the couch again. “I forgot what it’s like to be here in the thick of it with all of you. I forgot what it’s like to have you all in my business every day.” God, I think I’ve had at least three mood swings since I got here. I needed to get a handle on myself.
Dad laughed. “Lily-girl, we missed you. You’ve been gone a long time, and you’ll be the focus for a while. Your mom is very excited to have the kids every morning.” He glanced over at Violet before continuing. “Uh, Ash quit the firm at Portland and works for Luke now—the kids will be at the house for Dylan to play with.”
While it was nice that Dylan would have his cousins to play with, I guess I was not supposed to mind that my big brother Asher was working for my ex-fiancé? It was not supposed to bother me that my whole entire family had forgiven Luke for disappearing without a trace and ignoring all my letters and phone calls? I shook my head. This was unbelievable.