Linda Miller - Big Sky Country

“But you still think I shouldn’t have come here,” she said, her voice small and uncommonly shaky.

Kendra reached out and touched Joslyn’s arm. “Most folks around here understand that you didn’t have anything to do with the scam,” she said. “For pity’s sake, you were just a kid. But some are still carrying a grudge. They might say things, do things—”

Joslyn closed her eyes tightly for a moment, then resolutely opened them again. Nodded her understanding.

She was doing what she knew she had to do, even if she couldn’t precisely explain the reasons, but one thing was definite: it wasn’t going to be easy.

CHAPTER TWO

ONCE KENDRA HAD GONE, Joslyn showered, pulled on jeans and a short-sleeved cotton top, white with tiny green flowers, slid her feet into her favorite pair of sandals and got to work.

She unpacked the two large suitcases she’d brought from Phoenix and put away her limited clothing supply, then rolled up the sleeping bag and looked around for a place to store it. This was a challenge, since space was at a real premium in the guesthouse, but, with some effort, she managed to stuff the unwieldy bundle under the bathroom cabinet. Next, she helped herself to a set of time-softened sheets that still smelled faintly of fresh air and sunshine and hastily made up the bed.

Riding a swell of ambition, Joslyn set her high-powered laptop on the small desk in front of the living-room window, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to fire it up and log on. She’d worked too many eighteen-hour days designing and redesigning software, marketing the innovative game she’d developed and patented and finally selling the whole enterprise to a multinational corporation for big bucks.

She’d been a very rich woman—for about five minutes. Now she had a secondhand car, enough money in the bank to cover a year’s living expenses—if she was frugal—and, for the first time since she was seventeen, some peace of mind.

Arriving in Parable by night had been one thing, though, and venturing out in broad daylight, where she was bound to run into the locals, was another. Still, she needed groceries, since she’d only bought nonperishables the day before, and she had promised Kendra she’d stop by at the office and keep an eye out for drop-ins.

Plus, she reminded herself stalwartly, she hadn’t come back to Parable to hide.

The reasons for her return were far from concrete, as many times as she’d rolled the whole situation through the cogs and gears of her brain. Obviously, she wanted to make things right with the people her stepfather had cheated. At the same time, she knew she wasn’t responsible for another person’s actions.

So why had she come back? Why had she sacrificed so much, giving up a good job, selling the company she’d built by working nights and weekends, forsaking her luxury condo and her dream car?

The only answer Joslyn could have given, at that moment or any other, was that something—her overdeveloped conscience?—had driven her back. The compulsion to return had been cosmic in scope, as impossible to ignore as a tsunami or an earthquake.

The mandate, it seemed to her, had arisen from some secret part of her soul, pushing her to take the next step and then the next, operating almost entirely on faith.

It was like walking a tightrope blindfolded. There was no turning back, and if she didn’t keep moving, she was sure to lose her balance and fall.

Joslyn sighed and headed for the door, moving resolutely.

Visiting Kendra’s office meant going inside the main house, of course—and she knew she’d be beset by all sorts of memories as soon as she set foot over the threshold—but there was something to be said for just getting things like this over with. Kendra lived on the second floor and ran her real-estate firm out of the huge living room, where, as of Monday morning, Joslyn would be working full-time.

Might as well bite the bullet and brave the first and inevitably emotional reentry while she had some privacy. After sucking in a deep breath and squaring her shoulders, Joslyn crossed the wide lawn where flowers of all sorts and shades and fragrances rioted all around her, climbed the wooden steps to the enclosed sunporch and reached for the handle of the screen door. Locked.

Joslyn sighed, recalling Kendra’s remarks about Parable having its share of petty crime these days. Evidently, her friend practiced what she preached, but, since she hadn’t offered a key, the front door was probably open.

Joslyn descended the steps and followed the familiar flagstone path around to the side of the house, running parallel to the glittering white driveway with its layers of limestone gravel.

The front yard, like the back, nearly overflowed with flowers, and Joslyn heard the somnambulant buzz of bees and the busy chirping of birds as she paused to look around. For a moment, she felt like Dorothy in the movie version of The Wizard of Oz, thrust with tornado force from a black-and-white world into a breathtakingly colorful one.

Except for a tasteful wooden sign suspended from a wrought-iron post by brass chain—Shepherd Real Estate, Locally Owned—everything looked the same as it had when she lived there.

Four Georgian pillars supported an extension of the roof, and the windows, mullioned glass salvaged from some country house in England in the aftermath of World War II, shone in the sunlight like so many diamond-shaped mirrors. The front doors were mahogany, hand-carved with leaves and birds and unicorns and all manner of ornate curlicues. A heavy brass knocker in the shape of a lion’s head added to the grandeur of it all.

After steeling herself for another emotional jolt, Joslyn tried the knob. It turned.

Joslyn pushed open the door and moved into the shadowy coolness of the massive foyer. Soaring two stories high, the entryway echoed with the ponderous ticking of the oversized grandfather clock dominating the inside wall.

Multicolored light spilled through stained-glass skylights, and two grand staircases stood on either side, sweeping upwards to the second floor. The one on the left opened on to the side of the house where her room—more of a suite, really—had been, along with spacious quarters for guests and a private sitting room with its own fireplace. The master suite, with its decadent bath, an honest-to-goodness ballroom, and a sizable library occupied the opposite side of the structure.

Joslyn took a step toward the stairs, like someone hypnotized, but stopped herself before she could go any farther.

This wasn’t her home anymore. It was Kendra’s, she reminded herself silently.

Yes, Kendra was her friend—probably her best friend—but that didn’t mean Joslyn could go poking around in the old house, looking behind doors to see what had—and hadn’t—changed in the years since her departure.

She peeked into the living room—Elliott had always referred to it as “the parlor”—and saw that Kendra had made good use of the space. There were two desks, both antiques, both equipped with computers and modern phones. The bookshelves on either side of the gray-white marble fireplace were stuffed with manuals but otherwise tidy.

The elegant round table in the center of it all sported a sparkling cut-glass bowl with an exquisite pink orchid floating inside.

Joslyn blinked, and, for the merest fraction of a second, the room was the way she remembered it—cheerfully cluttered, with the bookshelves spilling paperbacks and hardcovers and DVDs, and two huge sofas, upholstered in beige corduroy, flanking the hearth. The TV was blaring, newspapers and magazines littered the floor, and Spunky, the cocker spaniel, barked joyfully, as if to welcome her back after a long absence.