Inglath Cooper - The Lost Daughter Of Pigeon Hollow

She flung the letter aside and leaned her head against the seat, a sudden throbbing in her left temple. Crazy. No other word for it.

She put the Wagoneer in gear and pulled back onto the road, parking in the driveway of her house a few minutes later with little memory of how she’d gotten there.

Lights were on. Thank goodness. At least Katie was here. That was the last thing she needed to deal with tonight.

She stuck her key in the lock and let herself in the front door. Sam bounded into the foyer, tail wagging hard enough to send anything in its path crashing to the floor. She leaned over, rubbed his chin, then went into the kitchen and gave him a bone-shaped cookie from the treat jar. He trotted off, tail flagpole straight.

Music erupted from upstairs, throbbing through the ceiling. The kitchen light fixture rattled in complaint. A drum solo picked up the beat of Willa’s headache.

“Katie!”

No answer. No surprise. She climbed the squeaky pine steps to her sister’s room, knocking at the closed door. When she got no response, she opened it and stuck her head inside.

Katie had her back turned. She yanked clothes from drawers, tossing them into the suitcases on her bed.

Willa put a hand to her chest, stepped into the room. “Katie.”

Her sister whirled then, the surprise on her pretty face quickly replaced by irritation. “Can’t you knock?”

“I did.” Willa’s voice was little more than a whisper.

Katie reached over and lowered the volume on the boom box quaking on her nightstand. “What?”

“I said I did. What are you doing?”

“Packing.”

“I can see that.”

Katie dropped a handful of thong underwear into the closest suitcase, not meeting Willa’s eyes. “Yeah, don’t you think it’s time we admitted this isn’t working?”

“Katie,” Willa said, throwing up her hands. “You’re sixteen. Where are you going?”

“Eddie said I can stay with him. He’s got a place with some friends.”

Willa sank down onto the bed, palms on her knees. “Don’t do this, Katie.”

Katie looked up then, her face blanked of emotion. “I’m not like you, Willa. All you care about is doing the right thing. But we have different definitions of what that is, and I’m not ever going to be like you.”

Defiance underscored each word, and Willa’s heart wilted beneath the blow. “No one’s ever asked you to, Katie. I just want you to give yourself a fair shot.”

“Maybe this is the shot I want. Eddie’s not so bad.”

Willa pressed her lips together, certain that anything negative she said against Eddie would only push Katie out the door that much faster. “Don’t you think we should talk about this?”

Katie opened a drawer, scooped up an armful of T-shirts, and hurled them at a suitcase. “There’s nothing to talk about. I’m quitting school.”

Willa put one hand to the back of her neck. “Oh, Katie, no.”

“You quit! Why is it such a crime if I do the same thing?”

“I left my last semester of college. Don’t you think that’s a little different?”

“Is it? Sometimes I wonder if you really wanted to stay here or if it was just a good place to lock yourself up.”

Willa pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose where a sudden pain had set up. “My coming back had nothing to do with that,” she said in a calm voice.

Katie reached for another shirt, tossed it in the suitcase. “You’re sure about that?”

Frustration at her sister, for her sister, churned inside her. “This isn’t about me, Katie! It’s about you. I know this may seem like what you want right now. But believe me, one day you’re going to wake up and wish you’d taken a different path.”

“You’d know about that, wouldn’t you?”

Willa flinched, the question hitting its intended mark. “I don’t regret what I’ve done.”

“But then we’re not all saints.” Katie propped her fists on her hips, her blue eyes narrowed. “I mean what about all those dreams you had? Don’t you ever wonder what kind of doctor you would have made?”

Willa wrapped her arms around her waist, anger a sudden weight on her chest. It wasn’t often that she let Katie get to her, but tonight her defenses were down. “What do you think I should have done, Katie? Left you to foster care? Pretended you weren’t my sister?”

Katie glared at her. “Yeah, maybe so. Then at least one of us would have had a chance to be happy.”

Hurt flared inside her, spread like liquid fire. There didn’t seem to be anything she could say to soften Katie’s resentment. And wasn’t that the ultimate irony? That Katie was the one harboring all the regret?

Suddenly, Willa couldn’t talk about this anymore. “You’re not going anywhere tonight, are you?”

Katie stubbed a sneakered toe against the worn rug beside her bed and shoved her hands in the pockets of her faded jeans. “No.”

Under a stifling sense of failure, Willa turned and left the room, closing the door with a satisfying thud.

Downstairs, Sam finished up the remains of his bone. At the sight of her, he stood, whined and wagged his tail. The dog was nearly human, and it wasn’t the first time Willa had glimpsed sympathy on his face. She grabbed her purse from the table in the foyer. “Come on, Sam. I could use a change of scenery.”

He was out the door in a flash, as if he, too, needed the escape.

OWEN HAD JUST LET HIMSELF into his room when his cell phone rang. His home number flashed on caller ID. He clicked on to an unusually somber Cline.

“Natalie just called,” he said. “Charles is in the hospital again.”

“What?”

“Yeah, it looks like he might have had another heart attack.”

Owen’s grip on the phone tightened. “How serious is it?”

“I’m not sure. Natalie was pretty out of it. I don’t know more than that. She asked where you were. I didn’t know what to tell her, so I just said out of town.”

He pushed a hand through his hair. “Okay. I’ll head home.”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“Drive safe.”

Owen hung up, stunned. Willa. Charles hadn’t met Willa yet. The very real possibility that he might die without doing so flooded him with a sinking sense of panic. He yanked his suitcase out of the closet, started throwing things inside.

He had to get back. And somehow, convince Willa to go with him.

WILLA DROVE, her mind going in a dozen directions.

Sam sat on the seat next to her, alternating between looking ahead and then out the window.

She followed the street through town, edging out into the county until she ended up at Judy’s. She pulled into the driveway and cut the lights. The house was small but neatly manicured, bushes trimmed. Baskets of ferns hung from the porch roof above a newly painted white railing.

Crossing her fingers that Jerry wouldn’t answer the door, Willa knocked. She waited a few moments, decided this had been a crazy idea and tripped back down the steps.

The door squeaked open. Willa turned around, and there stood Judy with a batch of pink and blue curlers in her hair, her eyes and mouth the only visible landmarks beneath a glacier of cold cream.