by Sharon Sala
Hope laughed. “Honey, we’ve been trying to marry Duke off ever since I came into this family, and for the most part, he wasn’t having any of it. I’m so happy for the both of you that I’d do it twice just to see him smile. He is so in love with you, and that’s the way life is supposed to be.”
Cathy sighed. “Thank you, just the same. I’ve never known anyone so entrenched in family and taking care of people as he is. I think he’s perfect. He wanted to have it here, and all I want is for him to be happy, so that’s how this happened.”
“And it’s all good. Mercy and Lon just drove up. Go find Jack for me and tell him I need the ham out of the oven.”
* * *
The day was like Thanksgiving with them, except for ham instead of turkey. Her mama’s sweet potato casserole went perfect with the ham. They opened presents after dinner.
Bath salts for soaking for Hope and Mercy. Leather gloves for Lon and Jack, and a dark-blue pullover sweater for Duke that was just a shade or two darker than his eyes.
Cathy’s presents from Hope and Jack were things they knew she liked from when she’d stayed with them. Thick warm socks and a soft throw. And then she opened her present from Duke.
“It’s hard to think of what to buy for the woman who just bought half the town,” Duke said, which made everyone laugh.
Cathy grinned, and then she opened the box, only to find a smaller box inside and then a smaller box inside that. She was laughing when she got down to the last one, and then she opened it to find a necklace.
The chain was white gold and the pendant hanging from it was an obelisk-shaped gemstone of greenish-lavender. It had been years since she’d seen this, but she immediately knew what it was.
“Oh, Duke, is this—”
“Alaskan jade. I know it’s the state gem of Alaska, and I wanted to give you something from where you began.”
She threw her arms around him in front of everyone and burst into tears.
“Oh lord, please don’t cry. You’ll make me cry, too.”
“Put it on me, please,” she said, and so he did.
After that, he caught her rubbing the jade countless times, and could only imagine what memories it evoked.
The day ended with football and leftovers, and it was getting late when Cathy finally left, with a promise to let Duke know when she got home.
She called him the moment she drove into Blessings.
“I’m here. Going to swing by the Bottoms just to see the lights inside the houses and rest easy knowing no one is cold or hungry there today.”
“Blessings to you, my little Christmas angel. I’ll pick you up tomorrow to go get your dress.”
“No, you don’t need to,” Cathy said. “I’m going straight there and straight home, and I have to face that alone.”
“Oh Jesus, Cathy. You know that’s gonna freak me out.”
“Then you have to get over being afraid for me, because I can’t live thinking each day could be my last.”
She heard him sigh.
“Deal,” he finally said. “Same rules. Call me.”
“Deal,” Cathy said. “Love you.”
Then she turned and drove across the old track bed, thinking what a difference the view was from here now. It felt good to know she’d helped fix this. But instead of driving through the streets as she’d planned, she turned around and went home.
* * *
Getting her wedding dress was a breeze. She was in and out of the city and driving back into Blessings before noon.
“I’m home,” she said, when she called in.
“So am I,” Duke said, which made her smile. “It’s not long now, baby. Laurel Lorde and her crew are out here cleaning our new home, and I want to see you so bad.”
“Come over tonight. We’ll make love and make sundaes.”
“I can’t stay. We’re working cattle early tomorrow.”
“That’s okay. We’re on the downhill slide of my house/your house life.”
“Then I’ll see you later.”
He made good on his promise, and took her to bed within moments of walking in the door.
A couple of hours later they were in the kitchen, revisiting the sundaes-for-supper routine, and when Duke left, he tasted the butterscotch from her kiss all the way home.
* * *
At 5:00 p.m. New Year’s Eve, the preacher who’d married Jack and Hope drove up in his car and hurried inside the house. The cars already parked outside the two-story farmhouse marked the guests who had already arrived.
Cathy was upstairs in the guest room getting dressed, and Duke was in the bedroom next door doing the same. He could hear the rumble of voices next door, and then every so often the soft sound of Cathy’s laugh.
“Thank you, God, for this woman,” he said, and then sat down on the side of the bed and waited.
He knew guests were arriving, but he didn’t want to go visit. He just wanted to hear his woman say “I do.”
Some of them were people Cathy had yet to meet—families who had been neighbors of the Talbots for two generations and who had shared troubles and joys together. The few who’d come from Blessings were at Cathy’s request.
But it was the arrival of the preacher that signaled the beginning.
Jack flew up the stairs to get Duke, as Hope was zipping up the back of Cathy’s dress.
“You’re beautiful, girl,” Hope said. “I’m going to leave you alone now to tell Cathy Terry goodbye. When you walk out of this house tonight, you will be a Talbot woman…and you are a perfect example of who they were. Welcome to the family, sister. I love you. When you hear the music, it will be time to come down the stairs.”
She gave Cathy a quick kiss on the cheek, and then left her alone.
Cathy turned to face herself in the full-length mirror and then shivered.
The jade necklace Duke had given her rested in the valley between her breasts—a beautiful contrast to her winter-white dress. Whisper-soft cashmere clung to her curves all the way to her hips, then flared the rest of the way to the floor. The mandarin collar tucked beneath her chin was stark against the red curls on her shoulders, and the long sleeves all the way to her wrists had tiny bands of the best artificial ermine money could buy.
She’d let her curls fall free. No more binding…no more boundaries. The tiny sprig of green in her hair was from a pine bough, and her bouquet was holly bush, with the red holly berries and a single strand of long red velvet ribbon holding it together. She looked at herself one last time—the white for snow…the pine for the trees in which she’d lived…the fur they’d worn to stay warm in harsh winters…and red, the color of the blood often shed in a beautiful but unforgiving land—then closed her eyes and saw Alaska.
Full circle, Mama. I’ve come full circle.
Then she heard music and took a slow, deep breath.
The music from “A Thousand Years” led her out the door and all the way to the head of the stairs. “A Thousand Years,” because that’s how long it had felt before this man found her to love.
When she paused to look down, it reminded her of the moment she’d first looked down into the Bottoms…and the possibilities of change just waiting for her.
Then she saw Duke and started down the stairs toward him without looking away, drawn by the love in his eyes and the fact that he didn’t look like he was breathing. She needed to correct that as soon as possible, and had to make herself walk when she wanted to run.
The rest of the night was pure magic.
All Duke remembered was the Christmas angel at the top of the stairs, and then finally hearing her say “I do.”
Once the preacher announced that they were married, Duke felt complete. He’d waited all his life for this moment, and she’d been worth the wait.
Pictures were taken, but Duke and Cathy never knew it. T
hey had eyes only for each other and shared the traditional bites of wedding cake.
The guests were still there when Duke and Cathy slipped out, her still in her wedding dress, and him still in his suit and boots.
The bags they’d packed were in his truck, and when he drove away from the farm that night, it felt right. The road that led around the section line to get to their new home was dark except for the headlights and a sliver of new moon.
When they pulled up to their home, all the lights inside the home were on, as well as the light on the porch—a welcome beacon.
Cathy was trembling. She’d come such a long way from the little girl from Alaska. Lost for a long time in the desert world of sand and sin…to running for her life, straight into this man’s arms.
“Wait here a sec,” Duke said. He got out and took their bags to the porch and set them inside the door, then ran back to the truck and opened her door.
Before she could get out, he lifted her out of the truck seat into his arms.
“This is how we met, and this is how we start again,” he said, then carried her up the steps, pausing only at the threshold to brush a kiss across her mouth. “Welcome home, Mrs. Talbot.”
And then he carried her inside.
* * *
Blessings was ringing in the new year when a man on a motorcycle rolled into town. He paused beneath a streetlight and looked up at the Christmas wreath above his head, and then accelerated up the street, all the way to the Blessings Bed and Breakfast.
It had been a long damn ride to get here, and he needed sleep before he could face what he’d come here to do.
Sharon Sala welcomes you back to Blessings, Georgia, with
Somebody to Love
Available February 2021
From Sourcebooks Casablanca
Chapter 1
Hunter Knox had never planned on coming back to Blessings, so the fact that he was riding up Main Street in the middle of the night was typical of his life. Nothing had ever gone according to plan.
It was just after midnight when he pulled his Harley up beneath a streetlight, letting it idle as he flipped up the visor on his helmet and glanced at the Christmas wreath hanging from the pole.
From the sounds going off in town, a lot of people were ringing in the New Year. He could hear fireworks and church bells and someone off in the distance shouting “Happy New Year.”
Hunt wasn’t looking forward to this visit, and he’d planned to get some sleep first, but he couldn’t. Too much time had passed already, and there was someone he needed to see before it was too late. So his reservation at Blessings Bed and Breakfast, and the bed with his name on it, were going to have to wait. He flipped the visor back down, put the bike into gear, and rode up Main Street, watching for the turn that would take him to the hospital.
* * *
The Knox family had just ushered in the New Year in total silence—eyeing each other from their seats in their mother’s hospital room—already wondering about the disposition of the family home before their mother, Marjorie, had yet to take her last breath.
It wasn’t as if she had a fortune to fight over. Just a little three-bedroom house at the far end of Peach Street that backed up to the city park. The roof was old. It didn’t leak, but it wouldn’t sell in that condition. The floor in the kitchen had a dip in the middle of it, and the furniture was over thirty years old, but right now, it appeared to be a bigger issue than watching their mother still struggling to breathe.
Marjorie had given birth to six children. The oldest, a girl named Shelly, died from asthma before she ever started school.
Four of her children, Junior, Emma, Ray, and Bridgette, who they called Birdie, were sitting with her in her room. Only Hunter, the second child and eldest son, was missing. No one knew where he was now, and all knew better than to mention his name.
Their father, Parnell Knox, died six years ago of emphysema. Marjorie always said he smoked himself to death, and while she’d never smoked a day in her life, now she was dying of lung cancer from someone else’s addiction. The diagnosis had been a shock, then she got angry. She was dying because of second-hand smoke.
* * *
Sometimes Marjorie was vaguely aware of a nurse beside the bed, and sometimes she thought she heard her children talking, and then she would drift again. She could see daylight and a doorway just up ahead and she wanted to go there. She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t leave yet. She was waiting for something. She just couldn’t remember what.
* * *
Ava Ridley was the nurse at Marjorie’s bedside. Ava had grown up with the Knox kids, because Marjorie had been her babysitter from the time she was a toddler. Her childhood dream had been to grow up and marry Hunt. But at the time he was a senior in high school, she was a freshman in the same class with his brother, Ray.
She’d spent half her life in their house, making Ray play dolls with her when they were little, and learning how to turn somersaults and outrun the boys just to keep up with them. As they grew older, they hung out together like siblings, but she’d lived for the moments when Hunt was there. At that time, he barely acknowledged her existence, but it didn’t matter. She loved enough for two.
And then something big—something horrible that no one ever talked about—happened at their house, and Hunt was gone.
After that, no one mentioned his name, so she grieved the loss of a childhood dream, grew up into a woman on a mission to take care of people, and went on to become a nurse. After a couple of years working in a hospital in Savannah, she came home to Blessings, and she’d been here ever since. Ava had cared for many people in her years of nursing, but it was bittersweet to be caring for Marjorie Knox, when she had been the one who’d cared for Ava as a child.
Ava glanced at Emma. She was Emma Lee, now. Married to a nice man named Gordon Lee. Her gaze slid to Junior, and Ray, and Birdie.
Junior was a high school dropout and divorced.
Ray worked for a roofing company, and had a girlfriend named Susie.
Bridgette, who’d been called Birdie all her life, was the baby, but she was smart and driven to succeed in life where her siblings were not. She was the bookkeeper at Truesdale’s feed and seed store, and still waiting for her own Prince Charming.
Ava thought the family looked anxious, which was normal, but they also seemed unhappy with each other, which seemed strange. However, she’d seen many different reactions from families when a loved one was passing, and had learned not to judge or assume. And even though it was no business of hers, she knew the Knox family well enough to know something was going on. Her job was to monitor Marjorie’s vitals and nothing else.
The door to Marjorie’s room was open, and the sounds out in the hall drifted in as Ava was adjusting the drip in Marjorie’s IV. So when the staccato sound of metal-tipped boots drifted inside, they all looked toward the doorway.
The stride was heavy, likely male—steady and measured, like someone who knew where he was going. The sound was growing louder, and they kept watching, curious to see who it was this time of night.
Then all of a sudden there was a man in the doorway, dressed in biker leather and carrying a helmet. He glanced at them without acknowledgment, then went straight to the bed where Marjorie was lying.
Ava’s heart began to pound. Hunt Knox had just walked in, and the years since she’d seen him last had been more than kind. His face was leaner, his features sharper. He was taller, and more muscular, and his dark hair was longer, hanging over the collar of his leather jacket, but his eyes were still piercing—and unbelievably blue.
She forgot what she was doing and stared as he approached. It took her a few seconds to realize he didn’t recognize her.
“Ma’am. I’m Hunt Knox, her oldest son. Is she conscious?”
“Not ma’am, Hunt. It’s me, Ava Ridley. And to answer your question, she’s
in and out of consciousness. You can talk to her if you want.”
Hunt’s eyes widened. He was trying to see the young girl he remembered in this pretty woman’s soft voice and dark eyes.
“Sorry. You grew up some. I wouldn’t have recognized you,” Hunt said. “Is she in pain?”
“Doctor is managing that for her,” Ava said.
When his four siblings finally came out of their shock, Junior stood up.
“Where did you come from? How did you know?” he asked.
Hunt turned, staring until they ducked their heads and looked away, then shifted focus back to his mother. She had wasted away to nothing but skin and bones. Disease did that to a body. He put his helmet aside and reached for her hand.
“Mom...it’s me, Hunt. I came home, just like you asked.” He waited, and just when he thought she was too far gone to hear, he felt her squeeze his fingers. Relief swept through him. He wasn’t too late after all. “I’m sorry it took so long for your message to reach me, but I’m here now.”
Her eyes opened. He knew she recognized him. Her lips were moving, but she didn’t have enough lung capacity to breathe and talk at the same time.
Finally, she got out one word.
“Sorry,” and then, “love.”
Everything within him was shattering, but it didn’t show. He’d as soon shoot himself before he’d reveal weakness.
“It’s okay, Mom. I love you, too. I made you a promise and I’ll keep it. I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. I was out of the state for a while, and didn’t get your last letter until I got back, but I’m here now and I’ll take care of everything you wanted.”
Marjorie’s eyelids fluttered.
Hunt waited.
His siblings stood and moved around the bed, waiting. They hadn’t seen her respond to anything in days, and all of a sudden, she was conscious. Then her lips parted.
They leaned closer, not wanting to miss a moment of her last words.
Then she said, “Hunt.”
“I’m here, Mom. I’m right here,” Hunt said, and gently squeezed her hand. “I’ll do what you asked.”