“Well, maybe she’ll fall in love with Angel Falls and stay.”
Rachel was endlessly optimistic. And her dad clearly hadn’t changed his expectations about the kind of future he saw for Sara, and it wasn’t as a hometown family doctor.
“Honey, are you all set to start tomorrow?” her dad asked.
No. Absolutely not. The thought of working side by side with her dad brought on as much trepidation and dread as excitement.
She tried to channel a bit of Rachel’s optimism. “I think so, Dad.”
“How about we meet over at the office later and I’ll go over how I run the practice?”
Disappointment riffled through her. Her father had agreed to their working together to placate her need to be near Nonna. He didn’t want to hear her ideas about improving his office, of bringing it into the millennium. He didn’t want her as a partner. “Sounds great.”
“We can talk about your fellowship applications. Maybe you should go more Ivy League again, what do you think?” Sara’s heart fell. Her dad had always wanted her to be an academic, a nationally recognized expert in her field, and it didn’t seem he was going to stop pushing until she accomplished that. And at one time she’d wanted that too. The problem was, Sara wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted anymore. All she knew was she was happy to be back home and looking forward to things in a way she hadn’t in a long time, since even before the wedding disaster.
Gabby tapped their father on the shoulder. “Dad, your grandson wants a pony ride and he’s requested you be the pony. Career decisions can wait till after dinner, OK?”
When he left to do his grandfatherly duty, Rachel turned to Gabby. “How’s that boy you said you’re dating?” she asked. “I want to hear more.”
“You remember Malcolm, don’t you? From college?” Sara didn’t miss the sudden look of concern that appeared on Rachel’s face. “The hedge fund guy?”
Oh God. They all remembered Malcolm, an egomaniacal, self-absorbed guy. Even the fact that he had a job her dad approved of could not save him.
“We reconnected,” Gabby said, and her smile said it all. “He wants to take us all out to celebrate my promotion, so you’ll all get a chance to see him again next weekend.”
“Is this the guy with the Bugatti that he wrecked the same day he got it?” Rafe asked.
“That wasn’t his fault,” Gabby said. “The car was just really…fast. I’m going to check on the brownies,” she said cheerily, escaping into the kitchen.
All this and dinner hadn’t even begun yet. Yep, it was great to be home.
Just then the doorbell rang. Nonna rushed to get it, Rocket zooming at her heels. Sara followed them, just in case.
But it wasn’t Nonna who was at a loss for words when she opened the door. Standing there with an enormous package in her hands was Claire Milhouse, Tagg’s mother.
“Hello, Rose,” Claire said, smiling her practiced doctor’s wife smile. Her stylish blonde hair was perfectly in place, and she was dressed as if she’d just walked out of a Talbots window, in a cute navy sailor’s dress and pumps. Sara had not seen her for a year, this woman who had been just shy of two days from being her mother-in-law. And yet she’d not heard a word in all this time. Nada.
“Sara, you look wonderful,” Claire said, giving her an air kiss on the cheek. “Taggart told me you were back in town. How are you doing, dear?”
“She’s doing great,” Rose said. “She’s a doctor now. Going into practice right here in Angel Falls with her father.” Nonna patted Sara’s shoulder, and she shot her grandmother a grateful look.
“Is that right, dear?” Claire asked. “Taggart didn’t mention that to me.”
Sara bit back the urge to ask how Tagg was. She wondered how he’d known she was back, if he missed Sara, and if he felt any remorse at all. Not that she would take him back, of course. But still it was odd, how one day your life could be sailing along as usual, and the next, the person you’d talked to every day for ten years was simply…gone forever. Cut out like a friend on the edge of a cropped photo.
“Anyway,” Claire said pleasantly. “This box arrived from Australia. It’s a wedding gift. I thought I would bring it over so you could mail it back to whoever sent it.”
“Mail it back?” Nonna said. “That son of yours is so smart, Claire. It’s a pity you never taught him to mail a package.”
Sara took the package, but Nonna lifted it right from her hands and took it into the kitchen.
“Sorry, Claire, you’ll have to excuse Nonna,” Sara said, but didn’t really mean it. Last summer, after the wedding that wasn’t, it had taken her an entire week to ship all the gifts back. Tagg couldn’t take care of one gift? And who lived in Australia? Not anyone from her side, that was for sure.
Claire lowered her voice to a whisper. “It’s the dementia, isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Sara said. “Well, thanks for stopping. Have a nice day.”
As soon as she closed the door, Nonna was back. “That box rattles. It’s something cheap, I can tell,” she said and made a gesture as if she were dusting off her hands in good riddance. “Imagine the nerve. Asking you to return more wedding gifts after her son was the one to call the wedding off.”
“Hey, Sara,” Gabby called from the kitchen. “Could you come help?”
“Coming!” Sara called and gave Nonna a kiss on the cheek.
In the kitchen Gabby was frantically opening cabinet doors. The box that Claire had brought was sticking conspicuously out of the trash can. The dementia or not? Sara wondered. She liked to think not. At least she wouldn’t be returning anything to Australia.
“What’s going on?” Sara asked.
“I snuck some icing,” Gabby said. Nonna’s homemade brownies sat stacked on an old-fashioned milk glass cake holder, looking pretty and perfect.
“So what else is new? You’ve been doing that since you were three.”
“Sara, the icing tastes terrible. I’m no baker, but it tastes like Nonna must’ve put flour in it instead of powdered sugar.” She gestured to the bag of flour sitting next to the icing bowl. “I’m looking for the powdered sugar so we can make more really quick.”
Sara swiped her finger into the bowl and tasted it. “Oh my God,” she said, making a face.
Then she joined her sister in the search.
The powdered sugar was not in the cabinet reserved for baking supplies. They finally found it shoved on top of some canned goods in the pantry.
“Do you remember the recipe?” Gabby asked, then pulled out her phone. “We can Google it.”
“I remember it. Powdered sugar, cocoa, butter, vanilla, and a little milk.” Sara whipped up another batch while Gabby scraped all the bad stuff off each brownie. They’d just finished re-icing and restacking every brownie when Nonna walked in.
“I came in for the sauce. Oh, I thought I iced those already.”
“Gabby licked one and so we just repaired it a little,” Sara said. “Right, Gabby?”
Gabby shot Sara a dark look.
“Gabby! My goodness, dear,” Nonna said. “Poor thing, you must be starving. Dinner’s ready. Come eat some real food.” Nonna linked elbows with Gabby and tugged her toward the dining room. “Bring the sauce, Sara, sweetie. It’s time to eat.”
Sara took a deep breath. She thought about a hospitalist position in New York City she’d been offered by one of her mentors. She could’ve been very happy taking that and telling her family it was too good an offer to pass up. She could have avoided her opinionated dad and the fact that her sisters, even Gabby now, seemed settled in relationships. She’d never have had to face Colton or Tagg’s parents or even Tagg himself, or the fact that she’d never find anyone in this one-horse town.
Yet she loved Nonna fiercely. And Nonna needed her help. Her gut told her in a way she’d never experienced before that she’d made a difficult decision, but the right decision.
As she carried the old aluminum pot into the dining room she real
ized it was the first decision she’d made for herself in a very long time.
Chapter 5
It was early evening when Colton pulled up the driveway of the little pale blue cape where his grandmother and eighteen-year-old sister Hannah lived. The teenage boy he’d hired to paint the house, Aiden Cross, was still here, judging by the once-red-but-now-faded-to-rose, somewhat rusty Toyota Corolla parked in the driveway. A ladder leaned against the side of the detached garage, which Colton could see was already half-scraped. The kid was a good worker, and apparently still hard at it on a Sunday evening at seven p.m.
Colton parked his police cruiser in the driveway and walked toward the garden. On his approach, Cookie, his paternal grandmother, rose from where she was kneeling, tying up a row of tomato plants, a bright-red fisherman’s hat over her gray hair, matching red garden clogs on her feet. “Hello, sweetheart,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “I’m sorry about not fixing dinner tonight. Hannah’s in the kitchen grabbing something between her waitress shift and dance class. Did you eat?”
“Hannah and I are capable of fending for ourselves, Cook.” Cookie deserved a break after caring for him and his sister all these years, and he didn’t want her to feel guilty for going to lunch with her friends. “I grabbed a pizza with a couple of the kids at Lou’s, and there’s leftovers for Hannah if she wants them.”
Colton believed in keeping a heavy presence at Lou’s, a local pizza joint with a couple of pool and Ping-Pong tables that tended to attract a lot of teens. It was a fun place where the kids could hang out and stay out of trouble, and he wanted to keep it that way. It also happened to be where Hannah worked, so he was able to pop in and keep an eye on his little sister too. Which she didn’t much appreciate, but hey, curse of the big brother.
“You need to get off the clock some too,” Cookie said. “It’s Sunday.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Don’t tell me, young man.” She gave him a shrewd once-over, noting his ball cap, his sweaty appearance, and his grass-stained clothes. “You spent the afternoon clearing that plot of land, didn’t you?”
“I’ve got plans for it, Granny,” he said, smiling. “Besides, it’s not work. It’s…fun.”
“I wish you’d just move into our house, Colton, once I move to the condo and Hannah leaves for college,” Cookie said. “It’s a nice house, and the yard is fantastic. Isn’t that better than living in that apartment all by yourself?”
Colton had moved into his own place after he’d gotten the chief job a year ago. Not that he didn’t love Cookie and Hannah, and he did try to spend nights off with his grandmother as often as he could, but he was thirty, and he didn’t want to have to explain his comings and goings to either one of them. But even the idea of living in Cookie’s house alone didn’t appeal. The house was dated in a seventies-ranch sort of way. He didn’t mind that it needed work but the seventies vibe just wasn’t his thing. Even if the yard was great and had played host to many a ball game when he was younger.
“I’m sorry, Cookie.” They’d been through this before. The land he’d bought six months before was in the middle of town, next to the park, surrounded by woods, and it had become available when the grandchildren of an elderly couple had decided to sell off a couple of parcels of a twenty-acre allotment. The adjacent plot, which was also for sale, held a dilapidated century-old colonial that looked like something out of Hoarders. He had no use for the disaster of a house but for a guy with a job that sometimes made him feel like he was living in a fishbowl, that hidden plot of land seemed like a magic oasis. Even if it was a wild mess.
“Well, OK, but don’t say I didn’t offer,” she said.
“You’re not going to be thinking much of this place in January when you’re basking in the sun in Palm Beach while we’re up to our butts in snow here.” That was her plan. A little condo across town, snowbirding in Florida for the cold and icy months. No one deserved it more.
“So Sara Langdon’s back in town. Have you run into her yet?”
Of course it had taken Cookie about ten seconds to change the subject and mention Sara. “Sure did. She’s the one who stitched me up last night.” He stuck out his arm, which he was keeping wrapped with gauze, just like Sara had instructed him. As far as he could tell, things were healing up pretty well. Unlike their relationship, which was just as prickly as ever.
Cookie glanced at the bandage. “So did you ask her out on a date while she was stitching you up?” His grandmother would never give up on this topic. She’d always had it in her head that Sara was the one for him. He would never understand the vagaries of granny matchmaking.
“No, Grandma, I did not. That would be a little awkward, seeing as the woman can’t stand me.” He called her “Grandma” when he was a little irritated, and “Granny” as an endearment. Other than that, even though her name was Charlotte, she was Cookie. To everybody.
“Oh, pish,” Cookie said, waving a hand dismissively. “Now that she’s free of that idiot, you’ll make her see what a real man is like.”
For once he didn’t jump to defend Tagg. Which said a lot, because Tagg and his family had taken Colton under their wing when he was an unruly teenager and shown him that he could succeed despite his messed-up past. Tagg had helped him study in high school and catch up after the years when he’d lived with his mom and school had been hit or miss. His family had taken Colton places like amusement parks and on vacations that Cookie could never have afforded, plus Dr. Milhouse, Tagg’s dad, had counseled him about college and helped him apply for the police officers’ scholarship after he’d busted up his knee and his football scholarship fell through.
He’d always be grateful for all of that, even though as adults, Tagg and he lived very different lives. Besides, in the last year, Colton had truly come to believe the idiot remark was accurate. He’d only talked to Tagg a few times, and had gone out with him even less, making excuses when he could. “Thanks for the encouragement, but I’m not looking for a relationship.”
“Nonsense. Everyone’s looking for love, and you’re not immune. Sara may be a little angry right now, but you’ve got to make her understand what really happened. Sometimes it’s hard to believe people you love are dumb enough to do stupid things like that all on their own. It’s easier to blame someone else.”
“Do we really have to talk about this now?” If Sara needed to take her wrath out on Colton, so be it. It wouldn’t be the first time.
He’d been a smart-ass with a chip on his shoulder for anyone who’d had all the benefits and opportunities he’d never had. Yes, he’d called her Brain and teased her for being smart and nerdy and uncool. But once when one of his football buddies tripped her on purpose and her glasses went flying, he’d rescued them. And noticed for the first time she had the most vivid green eyes, even if she had turned as red as the town’s new fire truck when he handed her glasses back. But after she’d thanked him, in typical Sara fashion she then delivered a lecture on why he shouldn’t hang around with assholes.
That’s how it had always been with them. She’d always been able to grind down to the raw bone to irritate him. That hadn’t changed in all these years.
But she’d certainly looked good in those boxers this morning.
Cookie was still talking. “I want to see you settled. You and Sara would make such a nice couple. And I want to see great-grandchildren before I die. It’s my right as your substitute mother. And your grandmother. Double reasons to get going on that.”
Cookie had taken them in a few years after Colton’s father, a Chicago city cop, had died in a gunfight during a bank robbery when Colton was eight years old. His mom hadn’t done well without his father, going from bad job to bad job and from bad to worse men. Hannah had come along when he was twelve—they’d never known who her father was—but by then his mother was on a downward spiral. She needed a new liver after four years of pickling hers in alcohol, but despite three bouts of rehab, she couldn’t stop drinking long enough to get one.
<
br /> By the time his mother passed and Cookie brought them to Angel Falls, Colton had become his sister’s protector. He was determined to do anything to give her the future he didn’t get to pick for himself. And he was determined to give Cookie the break she’d never had because she’d spent her time raising them.
Suddenly Hannah ran out of the house, dressed in yoga pants and a T-shirt, ready for her job as an assistant dance instructor at the ballet studio downtown.
“Thanks for the eggs, Cookie,” Hannah said. “I washed up the pan. Hey, Colton, I’ll see you later if you’re around, OK? Or maybe not. A few of us are going out for pizza and a movie after class.” She gave them both quick kisses on their cheeks, then let her gaze trail to the detached garage at the side of the house. “And wow, how long’s the hottie here for?”
Colton steered her from her position staring at a shirtless Aiden’s wide, tattooed shoulders as he stood on the ladder scraping paint off the side of the garage.
“His name is Aiden,” Colton said, “and he’s earning some extra money by helping me out.” Note to self: Aiden had to put a shirt on. ASAP.
Hannah rolled her eyes in a way Colton knew only too well. As a much older sibling, he often straddled the line between big brother (which was cool) and parental figure (which was absolutely not). “I know his name, and he’s very nice, and he just graduated, just like me. Not to mention he’s gorgeous. And a bad boy, even hotter. But you must like him to bring him here to work, huh?”
“It doesn’t matter if I like him. He’s here to work and stay out of trouble. That means no fraternizing. This one’s got ‘Stay away from me’ written all over him.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted them.
“Hmm,” she said with a smile. “Intriguing.”
Then There Was You Page 5