Liz Flaherty - Nice To Come Home To

Luke could think of absolutely nothing to say. “Wow.” It was weak, but it was accurate.

She looked appalled. “I am so sorry. I can’t believe I just did that. People have been asking me how I’m doing ever since I got sick and I have managed to say ‘doing fine’ a gazillion times, even when I was bald and the color of cigarette ashes. I just blew that record for nobility in one short conversation and you didn’t even ask how I was.”

“You have hair and your skin’s a nice golden color, too.” Luke was laughing. He couldn’t help it. “You know, nobility’s overrated anyway. I tried that with Seth the last time he used my car. He said the only reason I let him use it was that it always came back cleaner than it left. He was pretty much right.”

She laughed, too. “I’ll remember that the next time the martyr cross gets too heavy to carry.”

“Seriously.” He caught her gaze again. And held it. He thought he might very well get lost in those ocean-colored depths. “How are you doing?”

“Seriously, doing fine. I had my two-years-after-diagnosis testing done this spring and am still clear. At least until November, when I go back into full-scale panic when they test again.”

Relief cleared the air between them. “I am so glad for that.” He reached for her hand and squeezed it, wanting to touch her and hoping it didn’t come across as creepy. She squeezed back, so it must not have. “So we can talk about important stuff then, right? Like what you think of everything we’ve done at the orchard.” He rested his forearms on the edge of the table and did his best to look macho—an automatic fail. “I am a guy, you know. My sisters say I am the master of making things all about me. I don’t want to disappoint them.”

Cass beamed, her eyes lighting. The expression opened a place in him he’d thought was permanently closed. Oh, boy. “I love the orchard, and I love everything you’ve done to it.”

Encouraged, he asked the question that had lingered uppermost in his mind since they’d toured the orchard earlier in the day. “Do you know what you’d like to do? Stay a silent partner like your mother was? Sell out? I don’t have the money, but having a financially savvy brother-in-law has ensured I have good credit.”

It was as if he’d slapped her. The light left her eyes and her beam faded to a polite smile. She started to speak, then stopped, turning her head to gaze out at the lake. Spangled with moonlight, starshine and colored lights on boats cruising the calm water, it was a good thing to look at. Calming and exhilarating at the same time.

What had he said? Whatever it was, she was neither acknowledging nor answering.

“Cass?”

“I’d like to try the coffee-shop thing. I talked to Neely at the tearoom this morning, because that would be the most direct competition, and she thought it was a good idea.” She turned back to meet his eyes again, and he thought she looked defeated. He hoped he hadn’t caused that.

“In the round barn,” she specified. “It wouldn’t need to be a big shop. Maybe ten or twelve tables. Wi-Fi. Coffee and pastries in the morning. Soup and sandwiches at lunch. Just coffee and packaged things in the evening, unless it works out really well, in which case we could continue the lunch offerings.”

He hadn’t wanted her to be defeated, to feel like a stranger in a strange land. He also hadn’t expected—or wanted, his snarky inner voice muttered—her to want to change things. She was being naïve. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t considered having a café on the premises, but it hadn’t seemed to be a viable use of resources. He’d been running the orchard for three years. She’d been at the lake for two days and had taken exactly one tour of the premises.

She also owned half the orchard. Exactly. There was no 51 percent or anything like that to give him a louder voice in negotiations. He wasn’t a proponent of loud voices anyway, but...well, he’d expected her to pick up where her mother left off. That amounted to cashing the checks, signing things that required both their names and exchanging Christmas cards.

“We could think about that,” he said slowly. “Maybe you could come up with some numbers.”

“I can do that. I’ve spent hours of many hundreds of days in coffee shops for the past fifteen years. I already know a lot and I know where to find out the rest. As far as numbers go—” she scrambled in her purse for a pen, wrote on a napkin and pushed it across the table “—I can invest that.”

* * *

“SHE’S YOUR AUNT. Why are you so nervous?” Royce scowled at the table Cass had set in the dining area of the cottage. “I thought we were the beer-and-brats segment of the family. This looks like the way Dad used to want the table set when officers came to dinner. There are too many forks and glasses.”

Cass laughed. “You’re right. Okay, let’s back it off.”

They started from scratch, using the jewel-toned placemats that had come with the house instead of the embroidered tablecloth Cass had bought at an antiques store on Main Street. They left water glasses on the table, but set wineglasses and cups and saucers out of the way on the counter. They replaced elegant tapers with squatty candles and set the autumn centerpiece back on the end table in the living room where Royce had put it when they brought it home.

Dinner was a combination of their talents. Cass had cooked a pot roast with vegetables and Royce had made a salad and deviled a pretty little platter of eggs. They’d bought dessert and dinner rolls at the Amish bakery and wine at Sycamore Hill. Cass had promised her sister she could have a glass if she wasn’t going out afterward, but a phone call from Seth Rossiter asking her to go to the late movie in Sawyer put an end to that.

Zoey was right on time. One shoe on and one shoe off, Royce opened the door. “Aunt Zoey! I’m so glad to see you!”

Cass watched the two tall, slim women she loved as they hugged each other, drew back to take a good look and hugged each other again. She was happy for Royce, she told herself, that Aunt Zoey’s love for a girl who wasn’t actually her niece was so unrestricted. She was jealous, too.

“Come here.” Zoey stretched her arm toward her. Her eyes were awash with tears, something Cass didn’t remember seeing before. Even when Marynell had died, grief had made new lines in Zoey’s face, but Cass hadn’t seen her cry. “I know we have issues, but right this minute, we don’t.”

Zoey smelled like pink Dove soap and the same kind of shampoo Cass and Royce used. Her hug, complete with strong, thin arms and a soft, wrinkled cheek against her own, made Cass know more than anything else that, at least for now, she was home.

By the time they reached the table, Zoey had handed Royce a handful of photographs. “A record of your sister’s life you can use for blackmail if the need arises.”

Cass laughed, although it took all she had not to snatch the pictures away. They were a record of a childhood she didn’t want altered by someone else’s perception. “Did Mother do that with you?”

She could have cut her tongue out as soon as the words left her mouth. She’d forgotten that Zoey had been engaged to her father first, before he’d met her younger sister. Marynell had been the first of the young, beautiful women he’d pursued and caught. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have—”

Zoey shook her head. “No, it’s all right. I wouldn’t say she blackmailed. She never had to. Marynell was so beautiful we all enabled her.” She met Cass’s eyes and grasped her hand. “It didn’t make any of us bad people.” She grinned wickedly. “Even your father.”

Royce laughed, delighted, and Cass joined her. In his own way, Ken Gentry loved his daughters, but they’d both always known where they stood in his line of priorities. Even Royce, gorgeous as she was, was a testimony to his aging. He’d been fifty-two when she was born, and inevitable queries about his “grandchild” were still hard for him to take. He was generally happier just being able to show off her pictures.