RaeAnne Thayne - Sweet Laurel Falls

“Not a big shocker there,” Mary Ella muttered. She had a long-standing feud with Harry Lange, the wealthiest man in town, who seemed to think he owned everyone and everything in town—not just the ski resort he had developed, but everybody in Hope’s Crossing who owed a living to the tourists he had brought in to enjoy it.

“Is there anything you need from us?” Claire asked.

A little spiked cider would be a good start. “I’d like to get back to the party. You have all found time in your holiday-crazed lives for this, and I don’t want to ruin everything with more drama. Can we just forget about Jackson Lange for now?”

Everybody seemed to agree, to her great relief. Katherine Thorne asked Janie a question about one of her children who had broken an arm sledding off the hill at Miner’s Park, and the conversation turned.

She loved these women. Sometimes their idiosyncrasies and their smothering concern drove her crazy, but she didn’t know how she would have survived these past months without them. She had a feeling she would be leaning on them more than ever with this new twist on her life’s journey.

HER HOUSE WAS QUIET when she returned after the party finally wrapped up. She’d become used to it over the past few months since Sage had returned to Boulder and school. After she opened the door and found only the whoosh of the furnace, she finally admitted to herself that some part of her had been looking forward to Sage’s return to fill the empty space with sound—her endless chatter about grades and her classes and current events, the television set she always had on, usually to HGTV, her local friends who went to other schools or had stuck around town to work and who always seemed to find excuses to drop in when Sage was in town.

She was destined for another quiet night, she realized.

“Sage? Honey?” she called, but received no answer. Maura knew she was home. Her purse was hanging on the hook by the door, and her cell phone was on the console table. She walked through the house to Sage’s bedroom. The door was ajar and she rapped on it a few times softly, then pushed it open.

Sage was curled up in her bed with only her face sticking out of the cocoon of blankets. The lights of one of the little individual Christmas trees Maura had always set up in her girls’ bedrooms twinkled and glowed, sending brightly colored reflections over Sage’s face.

She rubbed a hand over her chest at the sudden ache there. She loved her daughter fiercely, had from the very first moment she’d realized she was pregnant. Yes, she had been afraid. What seventeen-year-old girl wouldn’t have been? But she had also been eager for this unexpected adventure.

Those weeks and months of her pregnancy seemed so fresh and vivid in her mind. In her head she had known that giving up the baby for adoption to a settled, established couple who loved each other deeply would have been the best thing for Sage, but she had been selfish, she supposed. She couldn’t even bear the idea of losing this part of Jack that she already loved so much.

She could also admit to herself now that, at the time, she had been so angry at her father for leaving and at Jack for repeating the pattern that she had managed to convince herself her baby didn’t need a father in her life, except to donate half the DNA. She could certainly raise this baby by herself without help from anyone.

Yeah, it had been immature and shortsighted—but then she had only been seventeen. Younger than her daughter was now.

Sage had always been a restless sleeper, even as a baby, but her exhaustion over finals must have tired her out. She didn’t move when Maura stepped forward to click off the lights on the little tree or when Maura smoothed the blankets and tucked them more securely, then walked quietly from the room.

She paused outside the next bedroom and almost didn’t go inside but finally forced herself to move. She switched on the little tree beside the empty bed and watched the colors reflected on the pale lavender walls, cheerful yellows and blues and reds and greens.

Angie, Mary Ella and Alex had insisted on coming over Thanksgiving weekend to help her put up the rest of the decorations, but she had placed this little tree here herself, as well as the little solar-powered tree on the gravesite. She had decorated it with all Layla’s favorite ornaments—little beaded snowflakes Layla had made at String Fever, a glass snowman she had received from one of her good friends, a few small, pearlescent balls that seemed to shimmer in the glow from the lights.

She hadn’t changed anything in here yet. It still looked like a fifteen-year-old girl’s room, with a couple of lava lamps, a big, plump purple beanbag where Layla had loved to study, and huge posters of bands on the wall—most notably, Pendragon, her father’s acoustic rock band. Though he was twice her age, Layla had had a bit of a crush on Chris’s drummer.

Some day she would do something with the room. Maybe turn it into a home office, since most of the bookstore paperwork she brought home ended up spread out on a desk in her bedroom.

Not yet, though. She couldn’t bring herself to change anything yet, so she left it untouched and only came in occasionally to dust.

After a few minutes of watching the lights, Maura cleared her throat and turned off the lights before she walked back into the quiet hallway.

As much as she ached with pain for Layla and the life that had been cut short by a whole chain of stupid decisions by a bunch of teenagers, Maura couldn’t stop living. She had another daughter who needed her, now more than ever.

DESPITE THE RADICAL CHANGES to the rest of the town, the Center of Hope Café had changed very little in the twenty years since Jack had been here.

That might be new wallpaper on the wall, something brighter to replace the old wood paneling he remembered, but the booths were covered in the same red vinyl and the ceiling was still the old-fashioned tin-stamped sort favored around the turn of the century.

Even the owner, Dermot Caine, still stood behind the U-shaped bar. He had to be in his mid-sixties, but he had the familiar shock of white hair he’d worn as long as Jack could remember and the same piercing blue eyes that seemed capable of ferreting out any secret.

Despite the calorie-heavy comfort food the café was famous for, Dermot had stayed in shape and looked as if he could beat any comers in an arm-wrestling contest, probably from years of working the grill.

Just now he was busy talking to a couple of guys in Stetsons. Jack looked around for Maura and Sage but couldn’t spot them. He didn’t see anyone else he recognized either. It looked as if the Center of Hope was popular with both locals and tourists, at least judging by the odd mix of high-dollar ski gear and ranch coats.

He stood waiting to be seated for just a moment before Dermot walked over, no trace of recognition in his gaze. No surprise there. Jack had been gone twenty years. He probably looked markedly different than that kid who used to come into the café to study after the library had closed for the night.

It sure as hell had beat going home.

“Hello there and welcome to the Center of Hope Café.” Dermot had a trace of Ireland in his voice. Jack could easily have pictured him running a corner pub in a little town in County Galway somewhere, surrounded by mossy-green fields and stone fences. “You’ve got a couple of choices this lovely morning. You can find yourself a vacant spot at the counter, or I can fix you up with a booth or a table. Your preference.”

“I’m actually waiting for two more. A booth would be fine.”

“I’ve got a prime spot right here by the window. Will that suit you?”