Sarah had heard enough.

“You are such a … dunderhead! I’m done here,” she shouted at Luke as he took a breath before his next tirade.

Luke took a step back. “Dunderhead?”

Sarah spun around and tromped back down the hill toward her friends. She realized the children were staring at them, cramming popcorn in their mouths faster than they could chew.

She had never been this angry at another human being in her life, and she didn’t like it. It burned like battery acid in her stomach. She didn’t know how Luke dealt with the seemingly perpetual anger he harbored. Was it like this for him all the time? Was this what he meant when he said anger was eating at him? That’s what it felt like to her.

Suddenly, she realized she was empathizing with him. Now she knew his kind of anger. She understood precisely what Luke was experiencing… .

Dear Reader,

The inspiration for my Shores of Indian Lake series came right out of my own life when I returned to my hometown after thirty-five years of living in big cities like New Orleans, Houston, Los Angeles and Scottsdale, Arizona.

It has been a revelation to me that the lives of those in small towns are filled with just as much pathos, romance, chaos and eternal struggle as people in glamorous cities.

Love Shadows and the characters in it, Sarah and Luke, sprang to life from my own grief after losing my darling sister, Nancy, to cancer only four years ago. Sarah and Luke must deal with so many emotions after the death of a loved one. They both discover that coming back to life is a road embedded with razor-sharp impediments, but that ultimately, life is meant to be filled with joy and happiness. It is the human condition to want and need love. For Sarah and Luke, personal illumination is primary. Only after they come to terms with their own demons can they surrender to each other.

The Shores of Indian Lake is filled with endearing, haunting and oftentimes seemingly eccentric characters who will steal your heart. The next book in the series features Sarah’s best friend Maddie Strong, who is faced with impossible choices of her own career dream-making when her first love, Nate Barzonni, returns to Indian Lake in pursuit of his fast-track goal of becoming head of cardiology at a major Chicago hospital and finds himself face-to-face with the one woman he’d left brokenhearted … and very angry.

I would love to hear from you and what kind of story you would like to read about along the Shores of Indian Lake. You can write to me at cdlanigan@aol.com and visit my website at www.catherinelanigan.com. I’m on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, as well.

Catherine

Love Shadows

Catherine Lanigan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CATHERINE LANIGAN knew she was born to storytelling at a very young age when she told stories to her younger brothers and sister to entertain them. After years of encouragement from family and high school teachers, Catherine was shocked and brokenhearted when her freshman creative writing college professor told her that “she had no writing talent whatsoever” and that she “would never earn a dime as a writer.” He promised her that he would be her “crutches” and get her through his demanding class with a B grade so as not to destroy her grade point average too much, if Catherine would promise never to write again. Catherine assumed he was the voice of authority and gave in to the bargain. For fourteen years she didn’t write, until she was encouraged by a television journalist to give her dream a shot. She wrote a six-hundred-page historical romantic spy-thriller set in World War I. The journalist sent the manuscript to his agent, who then garnered bids from two publishers. That was nearly forty published novels, nonfiction books and anthologies ago.

This book is dedicated to my sweet, much-loved sister, Nancy Jean Lanigan Porter, who died May 7, 2009; to my mother, Dorothy Lanigan, who died June 12, 2011; and to my loving husband, Jed Nolan, who held my hand through all of the shadows that descended upon us and who will always hold my heart.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER ONE

SPRING EXPLODED OUTSIDE Sarah’s kitchen window as pink crab-apple blossoms unfurled their petals along a crooked branch. A thick, undulating bed of apricot and orange Parrot tulips swayed in the early-morning breeze and nuzzled against thick masses of purple Muscari. The newly mowed lawn was a lush carpet of a green so rich it did not look real. A midnight rain had gently showered the forsythia and bejeweled an intricate spiderweb that connected two rosebushes near Sarah’s back door. Rose-gold dawn rays, like the fingers of a divine hand, touched every tree, house and object in Indian Lake with the promise of a new day.

“What a beautiful morning.” Sarah sighed after she breathed in the fragrance of lilacs from the open window. “This was Mother’s favorite time of year.” Sarah smiled wistfully. A now-familiar pang in her heart—though not as painful as her sorrow had been two months ago when her mother died of cancer—plucked at the open wounds in her psyche.

The grandfather clock in the hall chimed the hour. Sarah used to love the burled walnut clock her father had given to her mother on their fifth wedding anniversary, but now its sound was that of an echoing gong throughout the very empty house. Sarah’s father had died three years ago and now her mother was dead, too.

Two years ago, Sarah had given up a very successful career as a commercial interior design architect in Indianapolis when she had learned of her mother, Ann Marie’s, diagnosis. Sarah knew she’d have to return home, so she applied for and landed a job in Indian Lake at Environ-Tech Design Studios, owned and run by Charmaine Chalmers. The job had been perfect for Sarah’s needs in that when Sarah had to take her mother to chemotherapy or stay at home during Ann Marie’s last four months and work at her drafting table in her father’s study, Charmaine had graciously given her the time off, though she continued to work on her designs from home.

Sarah’s move back to Indian Lake also contributed to the eventual breakup with her high school sweetheart, James Stanwyck, an investment banker whose fast-track career was stuck in warp speed. Sarah had not realized how unfulfilling her relationship with James had been until she’d moved back to Indian Lake. They’d dated during high school, college and grad school, and once they’d both begun their careers, their romance had languished until Sarah realized she couldn’t breathe. It was Sarah who put an end to them. James moved to Chicago, which was only an hour away from Indian Lake, but after sending him a thank-you note for the flowers he sent for her mother’s funeral, Sarah had not communicated with him. James had been equally silent.

It didn’t take long after her breakup to realize she didn’t miss James. She recognized that their long-term romance had been habit more than love, or even like. She wished him well, but he seldom entered her thoughts. That was why she found it odd that she ruminated on him today.

You’re just lonely, Sarah! she scolded herself, grabbing a bag of salad out of the refrigerator. She stopped midmotion as the fridge door slowly closed. Her stomach roiled as if she was hungry, but she’d just consumed a power bar and slugged back a few sips of coffee. The churning she felt was the same reaction her body always foisted upon her when she was assaulted with the truth.

Since Ann Marie died, Sarah had come to the awareness that she had a fear of being alone. All her life, Sarah had family she lived with and friends she filled her afternoons and evenings with. Even her romance with James, to a great degree, was a convenience for her. She told herself that her life was just ducky. Dandy. Because she had somebody. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t the right guy for her. It mattered that they were a couple. These past months, her loneliness had grown longer, darker and more infinite, like a great yawning abyss that frightened and immobilized her. Though she had many friends in town and most she’d known since high school or even longer, she now had new friendships with her coworkers. It was easy to convince herself that her life was functioning properly.

“I don’t have time for all that today,” she shot back at her reflection in the small, gold-framed mirror on the wall.

Sarah shoved her emotions back into her mental hiding place and put the salad in her insulated lunch sack. On the kitchen table sat her purse, cell phone, car keys and her battered leather portfolio containing the blueprints and very detailed architectural drawings for the renovation of a strip center on the north side of Indian Lake. Sarah had worked painstakingly on this project, pushing herself nearly to the point of exhaustion with late nights at her drafting table. She should have been excited about this morning’s presentation to Charmaine, but she wasn’t.

She was worried.

Charmaine was an architect and interior designer whose perfectionist and exacting, creative eye saw shadows and light in spaces that most of her competition routinely missed. Charmaine saw potential for greatness everywhere she went. Broken houses, dilapidated commercial centers and desecrated public buildings were her favorite challenge because she believed she could fix anything. Sarah had never met anyone like Charmaine. Even when Sarah was in college at Indiana University, her design and art professors had not exhibited the kind of peerless inventiveness and vision Charmaine possessed. Sarah could only hope to be half the artist and designer that Charmaine was.

Sarah had just taken a huge gulp of her coffee when the telephone rang. She checked the caller ID and smiled.

“Hello, Mrs. Beabots. How are you this morning?” she asked cheerily of her octogenarian next-door neighbor.

“Fine. Fine, dearie, but you better corral that dog of yours.”

Sarah instantly looked over to Beauregard’s breakfast bowl and saw that it was still full. Her one-hundred-and-twenty-seven pound golden retriever had not touched a bite, which was very unusual. Frowning, she glanced at the back door. It was still open halfway, just as it was each morning when she let the dog out to do his business. Beauregard always let himself back in, finished off his breakfast and then plopped himself down on his green-and-blue-plaid doggie bed.

Sarah looked at the empty bed. “What about Beau?” she asked, going to the door and opening it all the way.

“I’m looking at him from my bedroom window,” Mrs. Beabots continued, “and he’s digging a hole at your back fence. From the looks of it, pumpkin, he’ll hit Shanghai in less than an hour.”

“He’s doing what?” Sarah went to the back porch, leaned over the railing and nearly dropped the cordless phone. “I’ll call you back, Mrs. Beabots. And thanks.”

“Anytime, pumpkin,” she said and hung up.

Sarah nearly flew down the back porch steps and across the lawn. “Beauregard Jensen! What are you doing?”

Clumps of mud and dirt sailed into the air and dappled Beauregard’s copper and golden fur in a crazy quilt pattern.

Sarah raced up to the golden retriever, still yelling his name, but he paid no attention. If anything, he dug harder and faster.

A dollop of mud went slinging through Beauregard’s hind legs and smacked Sarah in the forehead.

“Beau! Stop it, this instant!” she shouted, wiping the mud off her face.

Beauregard kept digging. He splattered Sarah’s freshly dry-cleaned camel-and-black silk suit. Sarah dodged the mud rain and went around to the left of the dog and tried to grab his collar and pull him out of the deep hole he’d dug. Though she tried to steady herself in her tan pumps, she slipped on the grass, which she’d been far too prideful about, and fell rump-side down. She knew she should change out of her business suit in order to avoid serious damage to her clothes, but she’d be late for work if she didn’t get Beau out of the hole and back into the house.

“Of all the days in my entire career, did you have to choose today to act like a dog?”

Beauregard paid no attention to her and kept flinging dirt.

“What are you doing? And why are you doing this?” she asked, frustration spiking the edges of her words. Another clump of dirt hit her on the cheek.

“That’s it!” Sarah pulled with all her might and hoisted Beauregard out of the hole and away from the fence.

Beau snarled at Sarah.

She snarled back.

Beau glanced back at the hole and Sarah knew he was thinking about defying her, just like a misbehaving child. “Don’t even think about it, Beauregard Jensen. Just look at you! You’ve made a terrible mess of yourself. It will take me hours to clean you up and I have to be at work.”

Dragging Beau behind her, which was a serious feat of strength and adrenaline, Sarah trudged toward the driveway. “You have to have a bath and there’s no time left. It’s off to the groomers for you!” Sarah pulled on Beau’s collar again, but the dog had relented to his fate and now walked, head forlornly hung, next to his master and supposed superior creature.

Sarah ordered Beauregard to sit on the driveway next to her Envoy as she went to the garage, got an old plastic tarp and draped it across the passenger’s seat. She stood aside as Beauregard jumped into the SUV.

“The tarp will hopefully keep my car clean, but believe me, it’s going to take professional fumigation to get your dirty dog smell out of here!” Sarah slammed the car door.

She went back to the kitchen, grabbed her purse, portfolio and lunch and locked the house.

As she walked around the flagstone path to the front yard, she saw Mrs. Beabots standing on the front sidewalk, hand up to her forehead to shade her eyes from the brilliant morning sun. “Showed him whose boss, din’t cha?” Mrs. Beabots asked.

Sarah had lived on Maple Avenue all her life, and for as long as she could remember, Mrs. Beabots had not only lived next door, but she had also felt that whatever was happening in the Jensen household was her prerogative to know. Mrs. Beabots was not a gossip, and blessedly, she didn’t share the information. She simply believed she could not help the ones she loved if she didn’t know their business.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Beabots never understood that Sarah despised being late to work—or late to anything, for that matter. Mrs. Beabots loved to talk. Talking helped whittle away the hours of her very lonely life.

“I have to get Beau down to Puppies and Paws and then I have to be at work...”

“I know, dearie. I know. You gotta run.”

“I do,” Sarah said, sliding into the car.

“When you get home tonight, I can help you fill that hole back up. Perfect place for a start of my peonies,” Mrs. Beabots offered.

“I just don’t know what possessed him to dig like that,” Sarah said. “Beau has never been a digger.”

Mrs. Beabots turned her thin face toward Sarah’s backyard. “Could have been the fact that last night when Beau came home with that dead squirrel, you tossed it over the fence into the old Samuels’ yard.”

Sarah shuddered as she remembered when she’d let Beau out just before her bedtime. She had been preoccupied with her presentation and last-minute adjustments to her drawings, and hadn’t realized Beau was taking an abnormal amount of time outside. As always, she’d left the kitchen door half-open, and when he came in and pushed it open all the way with his snout, Sarah had turned around in time to see a dead squirrel, stiff with rigor mortis, clamped between Beau’s jaws. Off her chair in a shot, she whisked a kitchen towel off the countertop, threw it over Beauregard’s face and wrenched the squirrel from the dog. She shrouded the dead animal in the towel and immediately went out to the backyard. It was a new moon, black-as-pitch night, but Sarah knew exactly how many paces it was to the north side of her yard, where a six-foot high, white-wood fence separated her property from the Samuels’ estate. With one mighty swing of her right arm, she heaved the dead squirrel over the fence.

Turning around, she found Beau standing directly behind her. If she hadn’t heard his loud panting first, she would have fallen over him.

“Don’t ever do that again, Beauregard Jensen,” she warned with a wag of her finger and a steep arch to her eyebrow. Not that he could see her expression in the dark.

Sarah grabbed his collar and yanked him toward the house. She remembered now that on the way back, Beauregard had paused and looked back at the fence. It wasn’t until she shouted his name and gave his collar another tug that he followed her obediently.

Sarah knew now that Beauregard had started plotting his strategy for retrieval at that very moment. She wondered if he’d thought about it all night.

Sarah looked back at Mrs. Beabots, who was patiently holding her arms at her sides, the skirt of her black-and-white-polka-dot dress fluttering around her legs. “That house has been vacant for two years. I didn’t think anyone would mind,” Sarah said glumly.

“You shoulda buried the squirrel out of Beau’s sight.”

“Why?” Sara asked.

“Because, pumpkin. That critter was his prize. Dog’s always gonna go for his prize. He’s a retriever.” Mrs. Beabots smiled her thin smile and nodded.

Sarah watched after the little bird of a woman who’d always been not only observant but wise, and somehow invariably managed to make certain she had the last word.

* * *

LUKE BOSWORTH WAS lost in thought as he drove his children—Annie, his eight-year-old, freckle-faced, redheaded daughter, and his six-year-old son, Timmy, with the bright blue eyes—to school.

“Can we go all the way down Maple Avenue, Dad?” Annie asked.

“Why?”

Annie looked out the window and gazed at the majestic, hundred-year-old sugar maples for which the street was named. “I love it. It’s so beautiful this time of year, with all the tulips blossoming. My favorites are the pink ones.”

Timmy gave her a dismissive wave of his hand. “Aw, Annie. All the tulips on Maple Avenue are pink.”

“I know.”

“It’s okay,” Timmy said, sitting up straighter as they turned off Main Street and onto Maple. “I like all the big houses. I bet the people who live here are really rich.”

Luke heard his children’s chatter as if their words were being spoken under water. They were playing one of their favorite games, where they picked out the “happiest” house.

He barely glanced at the tall “Painted Ladies,” the historic Victorian houses painted in pinks, purples, yellows and bright greens. These houses were painted in bright colors during the era when heavy smoke billowed out of the factories in Chicago and steel mills in Gary. The prevailing winds coated the huge homes in Indian Lake with soot, and the bright colors became subtle from grime and pollution.

He frowned and rubbed his aching forehead as they drove past a three-story Italian stucco house with French doors and huge windows.

“That’s my favorite,” Annie said, pointing at the windows. “Do you like it, Dad?

Luke wasn’t exactly paying attention, so he grumbled, “Hmm.” He continued diving deeper into the sea of thoughts about his wife, Jenny.

It had been two years, three months and six days since Jenny died, and Luke felt as if he’d died with her.

The autumn when he and Jenny had first discovered Indian Lake on a weekend trip from their home near Chicago, Jenny had walked up and down Maple Avenue pretending she was house shopping. She chose over half a dozen houses that she liked. She would have loved to raise their children in one of these fine, old homes.

But that was then, Luke thought as he glanced back at the Italian stucco house. Whoever these people are, they’re better off than I am.

Luke worked as a construction supervisor at a midsize company in town. For four years, since their move to Indian Lake, Luke had been making good money. Because Luke was a former Navy SEAL, with more than one decoration for valor in combat in Iraq, Jenny had urged him to apply for the GI Bill loan to go after an architect’s degree at Indiana University-Purdue in Fort Wayne. All their plans were dashed in a single day when Jenny got sick. Very sick.

The doctors told Luke and Jenny that the tumor in her brain was malignant. Inoperable. Terminal. The words still sounded like shotgun blasts. Each time he thought about that day, those words, Luke’s head jerked back from the onslaught.

The doctors gave Jenny four months to live. Neither he nor Jenny believed them. They fought back with chemotherapy. They enrolled in an experimental program that administered a new drug right to the brain. It didn’t work. Jenny lived six months. She had bought two more months than the doctors had predicted, but their prognosis was still the same. Jenny’s time with Luke was flat-out too short.

It was entirely his fault that Jenny died. If he’d been wealthy, he could have flown her to Europe, where doctors were open to alternative treatments for brain tumors. He should have insisted on seeing an herbalist and nutritionist who might have bought them another six months or a year to find a cure. But the cancer overtook Jenny with a vengeance until it finally took her away from him.

Luke had been more than angry at the universe since that day in the hospital when he yelled and sobbed and shouted at the nurses to leave him alone with Jenny’s body. He’d held her for hours, watching her turn gray in his arms. He’d been inconsolable. He still was.

He went through his days in a fog, unable to think or respond to his own children. There were times he wished he and Jenny had never had kids. They were always coaxing him back to the present, to the place he wanted to deny. As long as he lived inside his memories of Jenny and the magical love and life they’d shared, he believed he would be saved. She was his savior and his lifeline to sanity. Luke was as helpless and hopeless without Jenny as he’d been two years, three months and six days ago.

Even now, he could hear Annie’s voice, prying its way into his inner sanctum of memories, but he didn’t know what she was saying. He should pay better attention, but when he did, a burning in his gut ignited and visions of Jenny beckoned him back to the peaceful past.

“Did you say something, Annie?” Luke finally mumbled.

Annie’s face was pressed against the glass. “Yeah,” she said with a whisper of reverence in her voice. “That’s the house I want.”

“Me, too,” Timmy chimed, looking at his father’s mournful expression in the rearview mirror. It was like always. His father wasn’t listening to them. Half the time when he did listen, he just growled at them.

Nothing had been good for any of them since Mom had died. Timmy watched out the back window as they drove past the stucco house. I wish we could live in that exact house someday.

Timmy realized he’d been making a lot of wishes lately. He wanted a big golden retriever and he wanted a home where everyone hugged each other a lot and always smiled and never frowned as if something was wrong. Timmy didn’t think such things were impossible.

That’s what wishes are for, aren’t they? Timmy thought. To make dreams come true.

CHAPTER TWO

LUKE PARKED HIS Ford F-150 smack dab in front of Cupcakes and Coffee Café and turned off the engine. “I’m going to get a quick cup of coffee,” he said, turning to his children.

“Okay, Dad,” Annie said, unbuckling her seat belt.

“Whoa! Where do you think you’re going?” Luke asked sternly, throwing his hand over the buckle.

Annie’s eyes flew open with her customary dramatic flair. “To see the puppies. The only thing good about this whole day is that we are going to see the puppies. Right now,” she said in that intractable tone that revealed conviction without disrespect. “If we have to go to boring school all day, then we can at least see the puppies.”

Luke chewed his bottom lip thoughtfully and rubbed his scruffy, unshaven cheek.

“Please, Dad,” Timmy said earnestly.

Peering at both his children, Luke wished he didn’t see so much eagerness in their eyes. It dumbfounded him that dogs could mean so much to them. He’d told them a hundred times that they could not afford a dog. Luke was overwhelmed with all the medical bills that had piled up in the wake of Jenny’s illness and death. Luke didn’t see how he’d get them paid off even if he had a decade to do so. To make matters worse, both Luke and his boss, Jerry Mason, were very concerned about the slowdown in the construction sector. Jerry had laid off all his full-time crews and used them only on an “as-needed basis.”

Luke was the only employee left on salary, and his paycheck had gotten smaller. Still, Luke was lucky to have a full-time job. In order to make up the difference, Luke had been looking for weekend work and had cut back on extra household expenses. One of the first luxuries to be eliminated was cable and DSL. In order to use the internet to search want ads, he’d resorted to visiting the public library. So far, he’d come up empty.

Somehow, Luke had managed to keep the family afloat over the past year, even with the cutback at work. Although there was some equity in the house that would relieve most, but not all, of Jenny’s medical bills, Luke knew that if he were to sell the house, it would be like burying Jenny all over again. He couldn’t go through that kind of pain ever again. It was hard enough to live in the hollow space he called his “life” as it was. He had left the house Jenny had turned into a home for them all just as it was on the day of her death. Her clothes were still in the closet, her sweater hung over the back of the kitchen chair and the kids knew never to move it. The house was a time warp, and inside its walls, Luke could pretend that Jenny was alive.

Luke was right, he believed, to deny the kids a dog. A dog required shots and veterinarian visits. They got sick just like kids. There were bills for the groomer. Special diet foods. He knew from his friends and coworkers that owning a dog was as costly as a child, minus the education.

Scratch that. I forgot obedience school.

“You can go look as long as you remember that I’m not buying a dog.”

“We know, Dad,” Annie answered.

“Annie, you hold Timmy’s hand. Don’t go anywhere else. I’ll only be a sec.”

“Dad,” Annie said, “we just want to see the puppies. We don’t want to run away.”

Luke opened the truck door and hauled Timmy out of his car seat, which Timmy despised because it made him feel like a little kid. At least twice a week, Luke caught Timmy weighing himself, hoping he would finally pass the legal forty-pound mark so he could use an “adult” seat belt and not be treated like the little kid he was.

Annie took Timmy’s hand, and together they walked up to the bay window of Puppies and Paws, where three two-month-old golden retriever puppies played with each other. They tumbled over stuffed animals and scooted dangerously close to their water bowls, but never splashed a single drop out of the metal containers.

“I like the white one,” Annie said. “I think I’ll call her Snowball.”

“That’s a stupid name for a dog,” Timmy replied, placing his nose so close to the glass he mushed the end. “These are the best pups Grandy ever made.”

“Grandy doesn’t make the puppies, she just breeds them. There’s a difference,” Annie said, though she wasn’t quite sure why she was right. Annie just remembered that several years ago, when her mother was alive, they had come to Puppies and Paws and her mother had told her Grandy was a dog breeder.

Puppies and Paws was the best place in all of Indian Lake as far as Annie and Timmy were concerned. Grandy Ipson always had the cutest and cuddliest puppies in the window, and no matter if it was raining or snowing, there was always a new little fellow for them to watch while their dad went next door for his coffee.

“I like the red one,” Timmy said. “I’d call him Copper. That’s the right kind of name for a great dog like he’s going to grow up to be.”

Annie smiled at her little brother and slid her arm over his shoulder. She knew Timmy wanted a dog really bad.

Annie looked at the longing in Timmy’s eyes. The little red puppy was now licking the glass that Timmy had pressed his face against. The past two years had been very sad for all of them after her mother had died. Annie had often cried herself to sleep, but Timmy had started spending a lot of time by himself. Often, she saw him sitting alone on the back steps of their house, just staring off into the distance. Annie wasn’t sure if he was missing their mother or if it was because their father didn’t spend time with them like he used to. She knew she couldn’t say or do much to make up for their mother being gone, but if she could get a dog for Timmy, maybe then the heavy sadness they all felt might go away.

Right then and there, Annie promised herself that she would find a way to convince their father that dogs could be cheap.

* * *

“A DOLLAR TWENTY-FIVE? Since when?” Luke asked Maddie Strong as she handed him the paper cup of robust black coffee. “It’s always been a dollar.”

Maddie swept a palm over her short, streaked, blond hair, put her hand on her hip and leveled her sparkling green eyes at Luke. “My profit margin decreased when the property taxes went up. Heating bill is through the roof. Water jumped, too. Not to mention there was some drought in Colombia and the coffee beans are sky high. That about cover it for ya, Luke?”

Luke sucked in his cheeks to keep his laughter at bay. “Your face is red, Maddie.”

“Gets that way when I’m riled up.”

“Sorry I said anything,” he apologized, taking a sip. He smiled. “Man, that’s good.”

Maddie’s grin broke free across her face. “I aim to please.”

“You want to take a cupcake to your kids?” She leaned a bit closer and whispered so the other customers wouldn’t hear her. “Half price.”

Luke was tempted as he glanced along the back bar where Maddie kept the instruments of her creative culinary genius. Maddie had invented “Iced-to-Order” cupcakes, an Indian Lake sensation that made Cupcakes and Coffee Café a hot tourist spot all through the summer and fall.

There were six kinds of cakes today, including French vanilla, double Dutch fudge, strawberry, lemon, carrot and red velvet. Once a patron chose the cupcake base she wanted, Maddie added one of nearly a dozen different kinds of icing piped out of thick pastry tubes that hung from a gleaming stainless-steel rack along the back counter. There was chocolate ganache, vanilla butter cream, boiled white non-fat icing, cooked white flour icing, whipped cream icing, Italian wedding cake icing, lemon butter icing and strawberry almond. Luke’s mouth watered just looking at the chalkboard list of options. If he had the money, he would buy a dozen cupcakes for him and the kids. “Thanks for offering, Maddie, but the kids are on their way to school and my wife told me it’s bad for them to have sugar in the morning.”

“Good advice.”

“Maybe for a special occasion I could take you up on that offer.”

“Sure,” Maddie said.

Luke handed Maddie a single dollar bill and counted out two dimes and a nickel. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“You take care, Luke.”

“You, too, Maddie,” he said.

As Luke was coming out of Cupcakes and Coffee Café, a late-model, fire-engine red GMC Envoy screamed up to the curb and parked abruptly. Sitting shotgun was the biggest, dirtiest, happiest golden retriever Luke had ever seen.

The driver’s door flew open, and as a young blonde woman stepped out, the dog leaped over the driver’s seat and sprang onto the sidewalk.

“Look at that!” Timmy shouted with glee and pointed at the dog. Just as he raised his hand, the dog whirled his head around to see Timmy. Smiling ear to ear, if that was possible for a dog, the retriever shot over to Timmy and stood on his hind legs, placing two filthy, muddy paws on Timmy’s freshly laundered and pressed white uniform shirt.

“My God, get your dog away from my son!” Luke shouted as he rushed toward Timmy.

“Beauregard!” the woman yelled, but the dog paid no attention to her. Instead, he licked Timmy’s cheek with a long and very slobbery dog kiss.

Timmy giggled and turned his face away, only to be licked on the other cheek. “Hey, he likes me!” Timmy said, putting his arms around the dog’s chest and nearly hugging him.

Annie, not to be left out of the fun, sidled up to Timmy and stuck her face close to Beauregard’s. She, too, got a wet kiss.

Beauregard lifted a muddy paw and put it around Annie’s shoulder as if they were long-lost friends sharing a hug.

“What a great dog!” Annie exclaimed.

“Get your filthy dog off my kids, lady!” Luke bellowed as he rushed toward the scene. “I was up till midnight washing and ironing their clothes!”

* * *

SARAH FOUGHT TO grab Beau’s leash, but the man’s anger was so intense that her hands were shaking. He stomped toward her as she continued to fumble and jerk at Beau’s leash, but the dog simply would not take his paws off the two little kids.

“Lady, do something! Doesn’t your stupid dog understand commands?”

“Yes, he does,” she bit back finally, clutching at Beauregard’s collar.

The kids had their hands on Beau’s paws and were holding him in place as if they weren’t about to let them go.

The little red-haired girl looked up at Sarah with such longing in her eyes that Sarah squinted at her, wondering what kind of game these kids were playing.

“I’m so sorry,” Sarah said to the very angry father. His face was red and he looked as if he could bite her head off in one quick motion.

“Just get him off,” Luke roared.

“Beau, down. Now!” she ordered her very happy golden retriever.

“That dog should be locked up,” the tall, dark-haired man snarled at her as he tried to wipe mud off the little boy’s shirt.

“I’m so very sorry. Beauregard never does anything like this. I don’t understand what got into him.”

“I don’t need your life story. Your apology is not going to clean up my children. Now, if you want to miraculously launder their clothes so they can go to school, then I accept your apology.”

“I’ll pay.” She swallowed hard, feeling the heat of his temper bore into her from his narrowed blue eyes. “For their cleaning, I mean. Whatever it costs. I’ll even replace their uniforms, if necessary.”

The man crouched down as he wiped at the mud on the little girl’s shirt, but he only made it worse. Now the streak of mud went up over her shoulder and onto her sleeve. The girl frowned at him, but she didn’t say anything.

Sarah noticed the boy was still petting Beau’s head, seemingly unaffected by his father’s anger—as if he were used to this kind of outburst. Beau jumped up on the little boy again and the boy squealed in delight.

Sarah had to smile. “He really likes you,” she said.

“Oh, for cripe’s sake,” Luke rumbled. “Control your dog. Haven’t you heard of obedience school?”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Not good enough,” Luke bit back.

Anger and frustration uncoiled down Sarah’s spine. She hated being angry. Negative feelings served no purpose whatsoever. As far as Sarah was concerned, they caused illness and wrong-thinking. The fact that this man was upset was understandable. If she were the children’s mother she would be furious, as well. She cared that her dog was the cause of the problem, but she didn’t have time for any of this. Not today.

“I told you. Send me the cleaning bill and I’ll take care of everything.”

“Yeah, right,” the man shot back.

“I’m sorry. So very sorry,” she said again, just as Grandy opened the door.

“What’s all the ruckus out here?” the stick-thin woman wearing a rubber apron asked. “Oh,” she said, looking at the mud-covered golden retriever, “It’s you, Beau.” Grandy stepped aside just as Beauregard charged past her and dragged Sarah, still teetering in her high heels, toward the shop.

Luke looked at the puppy-shop owner and pointed accusingly at Sarah. “Because of that woman’s rudeness, I have to take my kids home so they can change, which will make them late for school and me late to work.” Luke didn’t notice Timmy’s beaming smile.

Annie was keenly aware of her father’s fury. She looked at Timmy’s happy face and nudged him with her elbow. “Cut it out,” she whispered.

Timmy squeezed his mouth into a pucker and hung his head.

“People like that shouldn’t be allowed to own a dog if they can’t control them,” Luke said, looking at Timmy and Annie. He snapped his fingers. “In the truck. Now. March!”

“It’s okay, Dad,” Timmy said, climbing into the truck. “The mud will dry.”

“And I’ll explain everything to his teacher,” Annie offered. “It was just an accident.”

Annie buckled herself in and smiled winningly at her father.

Luke growled under his breath, banged the steering wheel with his fist and stifled a string of curses that threatened to explode from his mouth. He turned on the ignition and said, “This is precisely the kind of thing that confirms my feelings about dogs and kids.”

“What’s that?” Annie asked.

“The two don’t mix.”

Timmy looked back at the puppies in the window. The little one he’d liked so much was standing on his hind legs with his paws on the windowpane, watching them leave. Timmy felt as if a heavy stone was sinking in his chest. He just knew that little fellow would be a beautiful, great big dog someday like Beauregard, and when he was all grown up, he was going to have a dog just like that.

* * *

LUKE DROPPED THE children off at St. Mark’s School, kissed them each goodbye and waited until they were in the building before leaving.

He drove back up Maple Avenue and then across Main Street and headed north toward the construction office where he worked.

It wasn’t until he was on Indian Lake Drive, which rimmed the north shore of Indian Lake, that he realized his eyes were filled with tears. He pinched them away with his thumb and forefinger. He guessed he was so used to tears now that when they came, he was numb to their presence.

He pulled into the gravel drive of the metal-sided and tin-roofed construction office. Luke threw back the last gulp of his coffee.

Getting out of the truck, he didn’t notice the enormous flowering crab-apple tree he’d parked beneath, nor the blanket of pink petals under his truck’s tires. He didn’t notice the warm spring breeze or the scent of purple French lilacs that formed a screen along the chain-link fence that separated the parking lot from the lumberyard next door.

Luke didn’t notice much of any of the beauty around him. All he knew was that he had to face another day of his life without his wife and without the only love he would ever know.

CHAPTER THREE

AFTER MAKING CERTAIN that Beauregard was settled in Grandy’s competent and loving hands, Sarah drove toward her office, which sat on a hill across Indian Lake Drive, offering a spectacular view of the lake.

As much as she needed to rehearse her presentation to Charmaine, Sarah’s thoughts tripped back to her encounter with the sharp-tempered, currish man she’d met that morning.

Granted, Beau had ruined his kids’ clothes, but that wasn’t cause enough for him to be so uncivil toward her. She was at fault for not controlling the normally well-behaved Beau, but today he’d been anything but her respectful, intelligent canine companion.

She had to admit Beau’s friendly nature had probably ruined the man’s morning as much as it had hers.

Can’t say that I blame the guy for being angry. But why would he be up late at night doing laundry?

Sarah stopped at the light on Willow Lane and tapped her fingernail against the steering wheel. Then she smacked her forehead. He’s a single dad! Divorced. That’s it.

The light changed.

His wife probably left him because he clearly doesn’t like dogs, not to mention that he’s a snarling grouch. What kind of person doesn’t like dogs? Sarah chewed her lip and watched the light turn green. She depressed the gas pedal. Certainly not any kind of person I would want to know.

As she made her way through town, she looked up at the flowering white almond trees lining both sides of Main Street and thought of her mother.

It was impossible for any of the townsfolk not to think of Ann Marie Jensen when they looked at the beautification projects around Indian Lake. In the past twenty-five years, Ann Marie had been almost solely responsible for the changes that gave Indian Lake its charming, nearly enchanting present look. She’d spent twenty years as a member of the Zoning and Planning Commission, during which time she’d instituted the Downtown Beautification Committee. In the early 1980s, the nostalgia for the forties and fifties that had accompanied the soda fountains, drive-in root beer stands, bike shops, record stores where customers listened to their 45s before they bought them, knitting shops and ladies’ glove shops had died. Factory jobs moved overseas, and Indian Lake manufacturing companies shut down. Younger people moved away. Neglect and disuse settled in. The town looked sad, lonely and unwanted, which it was.

Then Ann Marie moved to town, the new bride of Paul Jensen. She was more than a spark of creativity and new life. She was the firestorm Indian Lake needed to ignite the enthusiasm the town fathers had lost and nearly forgotten. She prodded, cajoled and reasoned with politicians and officials until she got the green light she wanted on whichever beautification project she felt the town could not last another day without. “No” was a concept she did not understand. Rarely did Ann Marie reject anyone or any request made of her. She worked long hours—too long, in many cases—for her town and her church. She loved both with all her being.

Ultimately, Sarah believed, her mother’s passion for Indian Lake led to her death.

Ann Marie was so used to working hard and sustaining her energy over long periods of time that she seldom slept. The doctors said her lack of rest led to a suppressed immune system. It was Sarah’s belief that the decades of putting her family and community ahead of her own health contributed to the cancer that took her life.

Sarah glanced over at the new bay window on Bechinski’s Pharmacy, another of her mother’s creative suggestions to one of the town retailers. The storefront, with its new, red, wooden door, floated in front of her on a sea of tears.

Exhaling the lump in her throat, she wiped her cheeks.

“Looks great,” she said aloud and gave a little wave.

Everything along Main Street looked amazing, thanks to Ann Marie.

One of the reasons tourists flooded to the area in summer and on warm, golden autumn weekends was that time seemed to stand still in Indian Lake. Down Maple Avenue, where Sarah lived, people still sat in wicker rocking chairs on the front porches of their elegant Victorian and Edwardian-style homes in the summer and waved to people as they drove or walked past. They took time to speak to their neighbors as they went in and out of their homes in the winter. They shoveled each other’s walks, and they brought a fresh-baked pie when someone died. They cut flowers out of their gardens for each other when news of an illness traveled through the neighborhood grapevine—which was usually perpetuated by Helen Knowland or, to a lesser extent, Mrs. Beabots. Indian Lake was a place where people cared about each other. Sometimes, that caring morphed into being a busybody, but such extravagances of eccentricity were forgiven by the locals. Outsiders or those new to the area didn’t understand. They never would, either. That was why they remained outsiders. It took heart to be a part of Indian Lake, and a great deal of courage, determination and persistence. Sarah knew her mother was Indian Lake at its best.

* * *

SARAH PARKED HER car in her assigned space, gathered her portfolio and purse and exited the car. She went around to the front of the building and entered through the double glass doors.

Just walking into the reception area of Environ-Tech Design still gave her chills of pride after almost two years. Charmaine Chalmers had carefully laid out the space with the expertise of one of the most illustrious Black Hat Feng Shui Masters in Chicago. The serenity and peace that clients felt walking in the doors was planned, purposeful and dramatic. It was a breath of urban class in a small town, and Sarah loved it. The walls were painted a burned taupe with glistening white crown molding and trim. The floor was bamboo hardwood covered with ancient Persian rugs in muted browns, reds and golds that looked as if they had been dragged through the Sahara to gain their patina. Tall African jars held white bird-of-paradise stalks that Sarah knew attracted aphids like crazy, but Charmaine spritzed the leaves with soapy water and wiped them down one by one on Saturday nights when she had nowhere else to go.

The conversation area was centered with an ink-black mahogany coffee table that glistened like glass and had never once been allowed to display the first fingerprint or speck of dust. The front-desk receptionist, Lou Ann Hamilton, made certain that Charmaine’s specially manufactured and painstakingly imported Samoan table was pristine at all times.

The Asian-inspired seating was actually Italian in design and constructed south of Milan, but no one in the office was allowed to give out the name of Charmaine’s highly talented, grossly underpaid furniture designer. Charles Vesa was fifty years old, divorced, and other than when he wandered into the Environ-Tech offices unannounced with rolls of design paper under his arm, few people ever saw the man. When Charles showed up, Charmaine always dropped everything she was doing, sat in her conference room and studied his drawings as if they were bits of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Sarah went into her cubby-hole-size office, which was only slightly larger than the other offices up and down the hallway. The building, built before the First World War, still had interior doors with walnut bottoms and frosted, “pebbled” glass on the upper half of the door. No one could see in or out. It seemed rather odd to Sarah that, despite Charmaine’s intense desire to create a Feng Shui atmosphere in the front of the office and the conference room, the rest of the building felt like the back rooms of an old county recorder’s office. The offices were certainly not conducive to creative thought.

Sarah went to her frosted, double-hung window and lifted the sash. A warm, fresh breeze with a hint of lilacs drifted past the sill. She inhaled deeply and sighed.

Just then, her phone rang. She looked at the blinking light. It was Lou Ann at the front desk.

“This is Sarah.”

“Charmaine wants to see you in the conference room. Do you want some coffee?” Lou Ann asked sweetly, with a hint of the Southern accent she’d brought with her when she and her husband moved here from Tennessee.

“Sounds lovely,” Sarah replied. “I’ll be there.”

Sarah hung up, looked down at her portfolio and crossed her fingers for luck. Mom, I know you’re up there pulling for me. You, too, Daddy. If this goes right today, I could finally get a promotion.

She looked around her office and grimaced. Okay. That’s not likely. But, she thought, sticking her finger in the air with a bit of anticipation, landing the client myself would be a huge feather in my cap.

With one last glance heavenward, Sarah picked up her portfolio and left her office.

* * *

CHARMAINE CHALMERS WORE a spring-green, silk sweater set with light beige crepe slacks and low-heeled, leopard-print designer pumps. Today, her jewelry was simple, for Charmaine— a pure gold, diamond-studded chain around her neck and chocolate diamond hoop earrings. She wore no wedding rings, having never been married, and had a man’s alligator-banded antique Hamilton watch on her wrist.

No one knew where the watch came from, but Sarah guessed it had belonged to Charmaine’s wealthy Miracle Mile entrepreneur father who disinherited his daughter over thirty years ago when she moved to Indian Lake to strike out on her own.

Sarah’s eyes squinted together as she watched her boss peer over her drawings for far too long before sharing her assessment.

Charmaine was the kind of person who, if she liked something, would be instantaneously effusive.

There was nothing coming out of Charmaine’s mouth this morning that remotely resembled pleasure—or even mild acceptance.

“You don’t like it,” Sarah said. If she stated the obvious, maybe the rejection wouldn’t cut so deeply.

She was wrong.

“I don’t,” Charmaine said too bluntly and too quickly. “The reception area is the focal point of all our commercial designs. This is the first impression customers or patients receive. Look here. The counter is much too angular. We have always prided ourselves on our Feng Shui design, and I see none of that here. The client expressly requested that this back wall be a lighted glass block, not this bank of file cabinets and shelves. Also, your color boards don’t have the spark I’ve come to expect from you. Where’s your inventiveness?”

Sarah looked at her color boards with their earth tones of tan, brown, camel and brick. Charmaine picked up a swatch of Aztec sun-gold brocade with turquoise and jet beads and tossed it over the color board. The other colors instantly came to life and radiated energy.

Sarah smiled. Then sighed. “I see what you mean.”

Charmaine’s expertly made-up eyes glistened with a sheen that Sarah suddenly realized were tears. “I don’t know how to say this, Sarah.”

Sarah thought she’d quick-frozen her emotions when her mother died two months ago. She was wrong.

Loss and grief had no boundaries.

They just kept rolling on with a vengeance, unmindful of the human hearts in their path.

“Say...what?”

Charmaine exhaled a long, yogalike breath. She folded her hands in front of her, on top of Sarah’s drawings. “I want you to know that I hold you and your talent in deep regard. I couldn’t love you more if you were my own daughter. Nevertheless, we have to face something here, Sarah...”

“Which is?” Sarah could barely swallow. She looked down at her drawings and for the first time saw them for what they were. Mediocre. She cringed. She felt as small as the tiniest spec in the universe.

“These past months have been difficult for you. No, its more than that. They have been hell. First your father died two years ago, then your mother got sick. You’ve been her support all this time. I don’t know how you’ve managed to do it, quite frankly.”

Sarah couldn’t take her eyes off her drawings. “Apparently, I haven’t done it.”

Charmaine reached out and touched Sarah’s hand. “Yes. You have. You do so much. But this—” she swept her hand over the papers “—this just isn’t your best work.”

“It isn’t,” Sarah said flatly. She supposed despair would set in later, but for now, she looked up at Charmaine. “You’re absolutely right. It’s not coming together for me.”

Charmaine moved a bit closer to Sarah. “I want you to listen to me. Don’t say anything until I’m finished.”

“Okay,” Sarah replied, her mouth going dry.

“I want you to take a leave of absence. Take a couple of months off.”

“What? Now? I can’t leave now.” A burning sob grabbed Sarah by the throat. Without her work, she would be nothing. Without a project to wrestle with the grief she felt every waking minute of the day, she knew beyond a doubt she would go insane. She was at Charmaine’s mercy more than she’d realized. She couldn’t imagine not coming to this office every morning and seeing the rest of the staff. The idea was ludicrous. She wanted this job. She needed her work. “You don’t understand, Charmaine.”

“Yes, I do,” Charmaine said softly. “I’m not firing you. On the contrary. I think you have more talent than anyone I’ve ever met. Given a bit more flair, you could be me.” Charmaine tried to laugh, but Sarah’s face was stone.

“Okay,” Charmaine continued. “Let me tell you a story. A long time ago, I was lost. Truly lost. I had no one. My family had turned their backs on me. I’d lost the one person I thought I loved, but he didn’t love me back. I lost my job in Chicago and I thought the world had come to an end. Then I spent a month—maybe more than a month—walking the beach here at Indian Lake. I stood on the shore of Lake Michigan at the beach in New Buffalo and looked across at the Chicago skyline and asked myself what I wanted. Not what my parents wanted for me, which was to live in a mansion on the North Shore and join the Yacht Club and the Sheridan Golf Club. They wanted me to marry an heir to an even bigger fortune than theirs. But I would have been miserable. That’s when I decided to pursue my design business right here in this little town. I didn’t know anyone except old Hop at the Phillips gas station, who filled my red Mustang tank every Saturday morning. I had to start over. I had to make my own life. And I’ve never regretted it.”

“And you think that’s what I need to do? Maybe move away from here?”

“I think you need to decide a lot of things, and that’s one of them. No one can go anywhere around here and not see your mother’s stamp. Heck, it’s her red velvet cake recipe that Maddie Strong uses at her cupcake shop, for heaven’s sake.”

“I forgot that.”

“See what I mean?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Sarah. These are big shoes to fill, and you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. You could...”

“Go back to Indianapolis?”

“Well...” Charmaine shrugged. “You were well on your way to an excellent future with Harper Architectural Design when you came here. Maybe you would be happier in a big city.” Charmaine touched her gold Cross pen. “Maybe you’re only grieving right now. Maybe that’s all it is. But I want you to have the opportunity that I had, Sarah. I want to give you the time you need to discover yourself.”

“Myself,” Sarah repeated, wondering what that meant, exactly.

“You are your own self. Not Ann Marie. Not Paul Jensen. Not even your Aunt Emily. You are you.”

Sarah felt a pang a grief shoot through her and it terrified her. “Can I come by and see you? I mean...just to talk?”

“Of course, my dear. I’m not abandoning you. I promise. I just think you need this...time.”

Sarah steadied her eyes on her boss. “But you don’t want me to work...on this?” Sarah pointed at her drawings.

“No. I’m giving it to Susie. She’ll take over.”

A knife whipped across the universe from some dark, wicked place and cut a deep, permanent slit in Sarah’s heart. “I see.”

Charmaine’s eyes were intractable and purposeful.

Sarah knew instantly that the conversation was over, so she placed a smile on her lips and rose from the chair. “Thank you, Charmaine. I appreciate your candor and...support.” Sarah held out her hand for her boss to shake.

Charmaine did not leave her chair as she held out her hand and shook Sarah’s firmly. “You’re welcome.”

Sarah left the room and did not realize how great her shock was until long after she had gathered her purse and belongings from her desk, gone to her car and turned on the engine. She drove out of the parking lot and got as far as the county courthouse, where she looked at the clock tower and saw that it was not even ten in the morning.

She pulled her car into an empty parking lot across from the Book Nook and Java Stop. Her hands were shaking as she turned off the engine and covered her face. She cried into her hands so that they could keep her sobs from escaping the car.

What will I do for the rest of the day?

She looked at the clock tower and saw the minute hand advance a single notch.

What will I do with the rest of my life?

CHAPTER FOUR

SARAH TURNED THE hundred-year-old doorbell crank in the middle of Mrs. Beabots’s heavy wooden door, making an odd, sour, tinny sound. Sarah remembered this particular bell being one of her favorite sounds when she was little. Back then, Mrs. Beabots always baked fresh peanut butter cookies for her. The second the cookies were out of the oven, Mrs. Beabots would call her mother and ask her to send Sarah over immediately to enjoy the warm cookies with the cold milk she had delivered to her front door. Sarah had many memories of Mrs. Beabots, and they were all good.

“Is that you, pumpkin?” Mrs. Beabots asked as she slowly approached the front door, peeking through a smooth section of leaded and beveled glass in an intricate Victorian pattern.

“It’s me,” Sarah answered. “Are you ready?”

The door swung open with a bit more force and movement than Sarah would have expected.

“I am. I don’t like to keep Father Michael waiting on my account.”

Sarah bit her lip to keep from smiling. She knew that their priest was a real stickler for starting Sunday services on time. He didn’t wait for anyone.

“Oh,” Mrs. Beabots said and stuck her arthritic forefinger in the air. “My pocketbook.” She turned around and walked over to a marble-topped Victorian entry table where she’d left her purse next to a tall crystal vase filled with white and purple lilacs. The flowers’ scent wafted over to Sarah.

“Your lilacs are marvelously fragrant this year, Mrs. Beabots.”

“Cow pucky.” Mrs. Beabots smiled as she exited the house and locked the front door behind her. “Got it from Angelo Barzonni. He’s got plenty on his farm. Manure always makes flowers more fragrant.”

“You hate to drive. Please tell me you did not drive out to the Barzonnis’.”

Mrs. Beabots took Sarah’s arm with her left hand and held on to the black, wrought-iron railing on her cement steps with her right. “Good heavens, Sarah, I wouldn’t do that. Angelo had one of the boys deliver it.”

Sarah exhaled and dismissed the frightening vision of her less-than-five-foot-tall neighbor behind the wheel of her old Cadillac. It was easily the size of a U.S. Navy destroyer. “The next time you need something like that, I’ll be more than happy to pick it up for you.”

“Oh, you have enough to do, what with your job and all. I see how late your lights are burning, and I know you’re working. Aren’t you?”

Not anymore, Sarah thought, but didn’t want to get into the subject of her forced unemployment. This was Sunday, and she wanted to enjoy the sunshine and the beautiful day. “And just how would you know how late I’m up, if you’re sound asleep like you should be?”

A warm gust shot across their path as they walked north on Maple Avenue toward St. Mark’s. Mrs. Beabots reached up to hold her black straw hat on her blue-rinsed white hair. “I should have used my hat pin,” she mumbled.

Sarah chuckled to herself. No one on earth still used a hat pin but Mrs. Beabots. Every Friday morning at eight-thirty, Mrs. Beabots had a standing appointment with the hairdresser to have her chin-length white hair washed, colored with blue-rinse, set on rollers and dried under the drier. It was eight blocks to Curls and Combs and no matter what the weather, rain or snow, Mrs. Beabots made the trek—even if she had to dress in rain gear and galoshes.

Sarah had given up trying to drive Mrs. Beabots to the grocery store, hairdresser or the post office. Mrs. Beabots was a walker. In her younger years, she used to ride a bike all over town and even out to the farms to buy whatever vegetables were in season. However, at seventy, Mrs. Beabots was told she had osteoporosis. She was warned that, should she ever take a spill on her bike, her injuries could be serious. Mrs. Beabots chose right then and there to walk. She bought a rolling grocery cart and hauled it up and down Main Street. What she couldn’t carry home, she had delivered.

“You look very pretty today, Mrs. Beabots,” Sarah said with a smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this dress.”

“It’s new. I got it at the Goodwill for a dollar. My guess is that the pink rosebuds and apple-green buttons aren’t quite the cup of tea for today’s fashionable types. But it suits me just fine. One should always wear flowered dresses in the spring and summer.” Mrs. Beabots nodded, more to herself than to Sarah. She glanced over at Sarah’s ice-blue silk skirt and double-breasted jacket. “You look lovely, as well, dearie,” she said.

“Thanks.”

Mrs. Beabots looked up at Sarah’s face, frowned and then focused her eyes on the sidewalk.

“What’s wrong?”

“Well, if you must know, I don’t much like your lipstick shade.”

“My what?” Sarah touched her finger to her lips reflexively.

“Well, maybe that isn’t it, after all,” Mrs. Beabots retracted.

“It’s not the lipstick?”

“It’s you, dearie. I’m very worried about you.”

“Why?”

“You’re too young to look...well, careworn.”

“I look...” Sarah felt the prick of tears at the corners of her eyes. She had no idea her sorrows and fears were this evident.

Mrs. Beabots had always possessed a certain crafty wile. As sweet as she’d always been to Sarah, loving her like a grandmother, she had no qualms about delivering a sucker punch when she felt it necessary.

Sarah was silent.

Mrs. Beabots squeezed her arm. “I think you should take a vacation,” she said with conviction. “Always does a body good to get away from the office. Mr. Beabots often said those very words to me.”

Sarah rolled her eyes heavenward. “How did you know?”

“Know what, dearie?” Mrs. Beabots stopped dead in her tracks, and with more strength than Sarah believed the elderly woman to have, she yanked back on Sarah’s arm, causing her to stumble a bit. “You aren’t sick, are you? Real sick? Not like your mother, are you?” Mrs. Beabots asked, fear flinging itself through her words.

Sarah patted her hand reassuringly. “No. No, I’m not sick at all. But something did happen on Friday that I haven’t told you.” Sarah paused and glanced up to see that they were nearly on the steps of St. Mark’s Church. “Apparently, my boss seems to feel the same way you do.”

“She fired you?”

“No, but she did give me a forced leave of absence. Essentially, I don’t have a job for the summer.” Sarah didn’t feel the tear escape her eye until it slid off the edge of her jaw. “I have no place to go every day. I won’t see my coworkers or have lunch with them. They’ll be too busy. But I won’t be busy, and I have to stay busy.”

“Why?”

The tear was joined by a legion of the same. “Because then I’ll have to listen to the emptiness in the house. Then I’ll have to think about the fact that I’m all alone.”

Mrs. Beabots patted Sarah’s hand. “No, you aren’t, dear. You have me. You have lots of friends in Indian Lake. Don’t forget your aunt Emily and uncle George are here. They’re your family. You should talk to Emily. She’s always got good advice.”

“You think I need advice?”

“I think you need time to sort it all out. Sometimes, pumpkin, we all need to step back and think about what it is that we really want for ourselves.”

Sarah wiped her tears away as they started into the church. “Okay, I’ll think about it.”

Mrs. Beabots squeezed Sarah’s arm again as they entered the nave. Lowering her voice, she said, “And get a new lipstick.”

* * *

ONCE INSIDE ST. MARK’S, Sarah sat up front on purpose. As Mrs. Beabots had once pointed out, no one likes to sit in the front of the church. Therefore, the seat pads in the front pews were used less than those in the back, and were still firm and thick with plush foam and down. Sitting on the green, tufted cushion, Sarah had to agree with Mrs. Beabots.

Sarah found her mind wandering during Father Michael’s sermon, and for the first time since she’d moved back to Indian Lake from Indianapolis, she realized that Father Michael’s voice did not sound as strong and as vibrant as she remembered. Cocking her head and peering at his face, she saw none of the passion radiating from his eyes that he’d once had.

He coughed several times during his delivery and faltered with his words. Then it hit her. He was sick. She truly hoped it wasn’t anything serious.

Father Michael was saying something about not being afraid. Reflecting on her personal life, she realized with a shock that she was deeply afraid. She had no job, at least for the moment, and the idea of her life without her work was absolutely unacceptable. She didn’t know how to be on vacation, as Mrs. Beabots put it.

I can’t vacate my life!

Her job as her mother’s caregiver was over, and that meant there was no need to rush home at night after work. There was no one else to cook for or clean up after. There was only her laundry to do and a few dishes to wash. The garden still needed tending, but other than Beauregard, there was nothing that needed her.

And no one.

I have no husband. Not even a boyfriend. No children. There’s no one to need me, want me or love me.

She looked down at her folded hands and realized they were shaking. Perhaps Mrs. Beabots was right after all, as she usually was. Sarah was careworn.

Dwelling on her problems caused her to slip into deeper despondency. Sarah had always prided herself on her cheery, happy nature. She’d never been depressed that she could remember. Not even after her breakup with James. Yet here she was, feeling unnaturally sorry for herself.

With her mind wandering, Sarah looked around at her old church, which had been built just after the First World War. It was odd how the windows didn’t let in the same sunlight they had when she was a child. The floors and carpets were dull and worn. The plaster on the ceiling was chipped and cracked. The paint on the walls was a murky brown that did little to uplift anyone’s spirits. She couldn’t help but wonder when or how it had fallen into such disrepair. If the plaster was cracked, what condition was the roof in? Did the brick need tuck-pointing? Her architecturally oriented mind went to work.

As the sermon ended, Sarah noticed how few people were in attendance. She especially noticed the fact that most of the congregation was nearing old age, and there were fewer than two dozen children present.

Sarah wasn’t sure if the summer season had brought on this decline in patronage, or if she just hadn’t been paying attention all these weeks and months while her mind had been focused on her mother. She guessed the latter.

Sarah flipped her bulletin over and read the back for announcements. She noticed that the Indian Lake Hospital was sponsoring a free bereavement group on Wednesday nights. The sessions were to last six weeks and were being held in a meeting room at the Indian Lake Public Library. As if a trigger had gone off in her head, Sarah realized the time had come for her to seek professional help. She would go to the counseling sessions and maybe she would find her answers.

In the meantime, she didn’t think she could face her empty house all evening. As she and Mrs. Beabots walked out of the church, Sarah asked her friend, “Would you like to come to dinner tonight?”

Mrs. Beabots smiled knowingly. “I’ll make my sugar pie. It’s your aunt Emily’s favorite. I assume you are inviting your Aunt Emily and Uncle George. And Maddie has always been like a sister to you.”

“It’s not a family party without Maddie. I’ll call her.”

“Doing for others is always the best medicine, pumpkin.”

CHAPTER FIVE

LUKE HELD TIMMY’S hand as they stood with Annie on the dock of Redbeard’s Marina, talking to Redmond Wilkerson Taylor Jr., most commonly referred to around town as Captain Redbeard. Well over six-feet six inches tall, Red was a huge man with a barrel chest and hard-as-a-rock barrel belly. He’d tied a leather strip around his full head of flowing red hair—streaked with natural gray “highlights,” now that he’d crossed the sixty-five-year marker—to keep it from flying in his face as he sped around Indian Lake in one of the many fiberglass ski boats he rented to tourists and residents by the day or week.

“You sure you don’t want to try your hand at waterskiing?” Red asked Luke, squinting his China-blue eyes nearly shut. Red had a craggy face, made rugged from long days in the sun and smiling a great deal. His teeth were even, and as white as the brilliant, puffy clouds above.

“No, thanks, Red,” Luke replied. “The kids are a bit young for skis. Besides, skiing is an expensive sport. They just wanted to be on the lake today.”

“Purdy day for it.” Red laughed as he often did, with an unmistakable explosion of good-heartedness bursting from his mouth.

Annie smiled widely. “That’s what I said to Dad. The whole summer will be over before we know it.”

Red laughed again. “Well, little missy, since school isn’t even out yet, you have plenty of time left.”

“I don’t want to miss a single second,” she replied with a wistful sigh. “I just love the water.”

Luke touched the top of Annie’s head lovingly. “Yes, you do, don’t you?”

“I wish I could be here every day,” Annie gushed as she clasped her hands together then dropped them in front of her, striking a rapturous pose.

“You can.”

“Excuse me?” Luke cocked his head as he peered at Red.

“I run a summer camp for the kids in town. Five days a week, and the city underwrites most of the cost. I’ve been doing it for years now. The working parents love it. The kids are outside most of the day. They learn swimming, lifesaving, boating, sailing, knot tying, even flag signals. And some things I learned in the rivers in ’Nam.”

“Marines?”

“Navy. I was a chief petty officer.”

“Not a captain, then?”

Red shook his head. “That’s just a nickname. One of my buddies called me that and it stuck.”

“I like the sound of this camp. Being a former navy man myself, I want the kids to not just like the water, but to respect it and know how to navigate it.”

Timmy was listening intently to the conversation between the grown-ups. He looked up at his father and asked, “You mean we don’t have to go to the Lollipop Day Care Center this summer?”

Luke shot a pleading glance at Red. “You got room for two more?”

“Happens I do.” Red chuckled.

Annie nearly jumped out of her pink flip-flops. “Yes!”

Luke stuck out his hand to shake Red’s. “Then we have a deal.”

“We do. And for today,” Red said, bending over and picking up two oars. “I’ll give you Number Six. It’s the blue rowboat at the end of the dock.”

“How much do I owe you?” Luke said, reaching for his wallet.

Red looked at the sun and then back at Luke. “A dollar.”

“What?”

“Dollar. Looks like high noon. All rowboats rent for a dollar an hour after noontime.”

Luke shook his head and took out a single bill. He saw Red glance at his wallet. Not that there was much there to look at.

“Nice doin’ bidness with ya.” Red saluted Luke.

“Where are the life jackets?” Luke asked.

“In the boat. I had Willie put in two children’s and one adult. No alcohol on the lake,” Red warned.

“We just brought juice boxes,” Timmy said.

“Best you stay around the shoreline so you’re out of the way of the ski boats. Their wakes will knock you out of the boat. Some of the drivers are plumb crazy and don’t know their safety rules.”

“Gotcha,” Luke said.

Red looked down at Timmy. “Have a good time out there, young man. Ask your dad to tell you the Legend of Indian Lake while you’re on the water. That’s always fun.”

“What legend?” Luke asked.

“Of Indian Lake,” Red replied, looking at Luke as if he was nuts.

“I don’t know that one,” Luke said.

Red squinted his eyes again. “You’re not from around here, are ya?”

“No. We moved here from Chicago just after Timmy was born. My wife didn’t want to raise kids in the city. We came here near Halloween that year, and she fell in love with the town. She passed away two years ago.”

Red nodded solemnly. “Sorry for your loss.”

Timmy pulled on Red’s khaki shorts. “What about the legend?”

“Well, son, a long time ago when all this—” he swept his arm over the lake, pine trees and shore “—was Pottawatomi Indian land, the Jesuit priests came from France to convert the Indians. One winter there was an outbreak of influenza or measles or smallpox—one of those deadly diseases. Anyway, the Indian medicine man had done all he could, and still, the villagers were dying by the dozens. Then Father Pierre, who had just arrived at the fur trader’s outpost about two miles from here, heard about the Indians dying. He walked in a blizzard across the frozen lake to get to their village.” Red pointed to the far side of the lake to a grove of trees and the dozen log cabins that comprised Tall Pines Lodges of Indian Lake.

“Well, sir, it seems Father Pierre went to the village and prayed over those folks somethin’ fierce. They say he fasted and abstained for three days and three nights. He carried with him a special cross that had been in his family for a hundred years. They say he touched each of those sick Indians on the forehead with his cross and prayed over them. On the fourth day, they were miraculously cured. When he was walking back across the lake, the ice broke and swallowed him up, cross and all.”

“Yeah?” Timmy asked with wide, captivated eyes.

“Some folks say Father Pierre’s sacrifice has blessed Indian Lake. From then on, during the worst storms and the most unimaginable disasters, people swear they have seen the image of Father Pierre and his cross. And then, everything gets better.”

“What do you think?” Annie asked.

Red laughed. “It’s all hooey to me. There’s no magic in that lake. Probably never was a Father Pierre, neither. It’s just a great story to tell around a campfire.”

“What does the cross look like?” Timmy asked quickly, not to be thrown off track.

“Some said it was just wooden. Others said they saw a gold cross studded with jewels. I say it’s just make-believe, anyway.”

Luke held out his hand. “Thanks for the boat, Captain Redbeard.”

“You’re welcome.”

Luke picked up a zippered insulated bag that held bologna sandwiches and juice boxes for the kids that Annie had put together for them. It was only an hour they bought out on the lake, but it would be good for all of them, he thought. Since Jenny died, Annie had grown up overnight, taking on household chores, preparing lunches and taking care of Luke and Timmy.

Luke grabbed the life jackets out of the rowboat and helped Timmy put his on, then tightened the belt on Annie’s jacket. He untied the lines and climbed into the boat, helping both of his children get seated before taking up the oars.

As he rowed around the shoreline, Annie took out two slices of stale bread, tore them into small pieces and showed Timmy how to feed the ducks that had flocked around the tall cattails and grasses at the north end of the lake.

Luke listened to his children laughing and watched enormous white clouds scud across the azure sky. It was a perfect day.

It was the kind of day that should have made his heart sing.

Luke felt that familiar lump in his throat that had been born in the deepest recesses of his soul. For two years he’d been angry with God and the universe and everything that was holy.

He thought it ironic that Red told them an Indian Lake tale that had nothing to do with reality and everything to do with belief.

Belief in what?

Luke had no faith. He lost it somewhere between chemotherapy treatments and Jenny’s grave. Luke didn’t believe in magical, healing crosses or legends—or much of anything.

“Dad.”

Luke heard Annie’s voice roll toward him from some distant place. “What?”

“You said you would teach us how to row.”

“Right. Okay, today is just basics.”

Luke held out the oar and showed Annie and Timmy how to hold the handle and keep a firm grip. He placed Timmy on his lap and held a single oar with his son so that Timmy could get a feel for the weight and length of the oar. Together, they worked the left oar, while Annie sat next to Luke and worked the right. They didn’t go very far, and only skimmed the edge of the lake through patches of water lilies, but Luke found himself laughing with his children.

When their hour was up, Luke rowed them swiftly toward the marina. Annie, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun with her hand, looked up at her father.

“We should come to the lake every day, Dad.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’re happy on the lake.”

“I am?”

“Yes. You even laughed with us. So if the water makes you happy, we need to be here more and less at home.”

“Now that you’ll be here every day with Red, maybe we can make that happen,” he said.

Annie smiled at Luke, but he pretended to be concentrating on his rowing. Once again, Luke realized he wasn’t being the father to his kids that he’d been when Jenny was alive. He remembered laughing and horsing around with them every day. He’d often commented that their house was filled with happiness.

Guilt pressed its iron grip into his shoulders— it had become a familiar pain. Before Jenny died, Luke had been an exemplary father. Now he didn’t come close to making the grade.

He’d been blaming the universe for all his anguishes, but his apparent failure as a father was his own fault.

By the time they reached the shore and tied the boat to the dock, Luke’s anger at himself seared his insides like a brand. He didn’t know how much longer he could endure this kind of torture. And he didn’t have a single clue how to deal with it.

CHAPTER SIX

MONDAY MORNING AT the construction trailer brought the usual phone calls from disgruntled customers and demanding suppliers who wanted to be paid. Luke had already been to a small residential jobsite and briefed the crew on their jobs for the morning until his return at noon. At the moment, he was on the phone with the manager of the lumber company who had been shorting them on the deliveries for the past month.

“I’m telling you, the four-by-eights are not here and neither are the two nail guns I ordered. And you never replaced the missing joists from last week. So what’s the deal? Your warehouseman can’t count? Does he need glasses? ’Cause if he does, I’ll personally buy him a pair so we can get this right! Now what are you going to do for me, Mick?”

Just then, Jerry walked into the trailer. Out of the corner of his eye, Luke could see him reacting to the last blast of angry words Luke was firing into the phone. The argument ended with Luke spewing a string of expletives and cutting off his conversation in midsentence.

Luke stared at Jerry’s pursed mouth and troubled expression. “What?”

“You get what you wanted from them?”

“Not yet.”

“Surprise.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You need to work on your people skills, my man. That, and you need to cool off.”

Luke swiped his face with his palm. He was surprised when it came away with sweat. “Guess I got worked up.”

“Worked up?” Jerry harrumphed, went over to the coffeemaker and poured them both a mug of black coffee. “We need to talk.”

Luke’s eyes nailed Jerry’s. “You firing me?” Luke’s hand shook when he took the mug from his boss.

“No.” Jerry leaned against the blueprint table and hoisted one leg over the edge. “This,” Jerry said, nodding toward the phone, “isn’t about some missing boards.” Luke opened his mouth to make a retort, but Jerry held up his hand. “I’ll take care of the lumber company. Or the thief in our own midst, if that’s the case. But right now, you need to talk to me.”

Luke lowered his gaze to the muddy wood floor and was struck by the fact that this company had become more than just a paycheck to him. His work was physical, creative and demanding, and it had kept him from losing his mind over the past two years.

“I don’t know what to do, Jerry. I should have pulled out of this by now. I shouldn’t be feeling this God-awful ripping and shredding I seem to go through every single freaking day,” he said, punching himself in the stomach. “And it’s gotten worse in the past six months or so. I think about Jenny all the time. All the time.”

“I know,” Jerry said, looking down into his mug.

“I’m hurting my kids,” Luke continued. “Half the time I don’t even know they’re around. The other half, I’m barking at them, criticizing them for stupid little things they did or didn’t do. They’re just kids, for cripes’ sake. It’s gotten so bad that they’re changing their behavior because of my outbursts. They hang their heads a lot and don’t look at me. I see Annie giving Timmy hand signals not to talk about certain things when she thinks the subject will upset me. Annie’s built this tent in her room out of blankets and chairs and whatnot, where she goes and hides when I get angry or talk about the bills. God. The bills.” Luke raked his hair. “You can’t imagine how tough it is to make ends meet.”

Jerry stood up, put his coffee mug down and reached into his back pocket for his wallet. From underneath his driver’s license, he pulled out a crumpled business card. “I’ve been saving this for you for two years. I knew eventually this moment would come. When you would need help, I mean.”

Luke took the card and read it. He burst into sarcastic laughter. “A shrink? I just told you I can’t afford peanut butter! Forget it.”

“Margot is a friend of my wife’s. She runs a free bereavement counseling group on Wednesday nights. I can get all the details for you. It’s not as good as a one-on-one, but that can be expensive.”

“Free, huh?”

“You’ll like Margot. She’s brilliant and compassionate.”

Luke looked down at the card. “I’ll think about it.”

Jerry picked up his coffee. “Luke. You can’t go on like you’ve been. I’ve had complaints from some of the guys in the crews about your drill-sergeant tactics with them. Something has to change, Luke. You have to change. This is eating you up.”

Luke’s eyes bored straight into Jerry’s face. “You’re right. That’s exactly how I feel. Physically sick inside.” He looked at the card. “I’ll give her a call.”

Jerry walked over to the desk and lifted the receiver, shoving it toward Luke. “Good idea.”

* * *

SARAH ARRIVED AT the cheery meeting room in the library, carrying a dozen cupcakes from Maddie Strong’s café. She met Margot Benner, the counselor who would be leading the bereavement group, a bright, happy-looking woman in her mid-fifties with streaked, blond hair that she wore in a French braid.

“Thank you for the cupcakes, Sarah,” Margot said, motioning toward a refreshment table under a bank of huge windows that looked out onto the library’s lushly planted gardens. “I provide coffee and tea for everyone, but this is a real treat.”

“Maddie makes the best,” Sarah replied with a smile.

There were eight folding chairs arranged in a circle. Each held a blue folder with reading materials and book lists. All books, of course, were available in the library.

Within minutes, five people came into the room and introduced themselves to Sarah and Margot. Alice Crane was in her mid-forties and had lost her fiancé in a car accident one week before their wedding. That had been a year ago, Alice explained.

Pete Grobowski’s wife died of a heart attack a month ago. She was sixty-three, he said. Robert Bell had been the caregiver for his father through six long years of Alzheimer’s disease. Julie and Mary Patton had lost their mother on Christmas Day. Sarah conversed easily with all the people in the group, and as far as she could see, they all appeared to be coping fairly well with their losses. Or they’re darn good actors, she thought.

Just as everyone was sitting down, the meeting room door opened abruptly. A tall, lean, young man with broad shoulders and thick, dark, brown hair entered the room. He wore a faded blue-and-white-striped, button-down shirt that he’d tucked into his worn-looking jeans. He barely looked at anyone, and went straight to a chair directly opposite Sarah and sat down. He folded his hands and stared down at them.

Sarah recognized him immediately as the angry man with the two children at Puppies and Paws. She was curious as to why he was there. Perhaps he’d lost one of his parents, just as she had. He looked awfully morose, with no greeting smile for the others. She wondered if she looked like that to her friends. If she did, there was no wonder they were worried about her.

The man kept folding his hands one over the other as if he couldn’t get it right. Then he clasped them to his thighs and looked up at the people in the room. For the first time, Sarah noticed that he was rather good-looking, with brilliant blue eyes that shot right through her as if he were a hawk seeking out prey. She wondered if he recognized her.

Then he looked back down at his hands, which were pressed deeply into his legs as if he were holding himself to the spot. She wondered if he was angry again.

Margot walked to the center of the circle and introduced herself formally to the group, explaining that she was a psychiatrist who had been practicing privately for over twenty years.

“I conduct these bereavement groups once each quarter, free of charge, because I had a death in my own life that was so traumatic for me, so depressing, that I withdrew from my family,” Margot told them. “Frankly, I withdrew from everything. I sat in a rocking chair and stared out a window for over half a year. I went through my days in a fog. I couldn’t hear what people said to me and most of the time I didn’t acknowledge their presence. If it hadn’t been for a friend who happened to be a counselor, who dragged me back to reality, I never would have pulled out of it.”

Margot instructed everyone to introduce themselves to the group and mention only their relationship to the person they had lost.

Alice Crane went first. Sarah was next, and explained that her mother had recently died of cancer. Sarah hadn’t finished her sentence when she heard a derisive snort from across the room.

Luke lifted his head. “Sorry.” He dropped his head once more and then shook it. He stood immediately. “Sorry. I can’t do this. My coming here was my friend’s idea. This kind of thing isn’t going to help me.”

Before Luke could leave, Margot rose and placed her hand on Luke’s forearm. “What was her name?”

Luke fixed his eyes on Margot’s face as he replied with a quaking voice, “Jenny.”

He’d said the woman’s name with so much awe and love, Sarah knew instantly that he wasn’t divorced, as she’d surmised earlier. He was a widower.

“What’s your name?” Margot asked.

“Luke Bosworth,” he answered carefully.

Sarah noticed that he held his hands in tightly clenched fists at his sides as if he was struggling to control himself from hitting something. Or someone. And when he returned answers to Margot, the words were pelted through clenched teeth. She glanced around the room and noticed that no one else was as angry as Luke. They look depressed and sad, possibly even in denial, but not raging like he was.

“How long has Jenny been gone?” Margot inquired directly, but softly.

“Two years, four months and five days.” He ground out the words.

“And to you it seems like yesterday?”

“Like it was this morning. She was just...here,” he replied, his voice trembling with emotion.

Sarah thought she saw a glint of tears in his eyes.

“Tell me about her, Luke,” Margot urged.

He smiled slightly and Sarah was struck at how much that tiny bit of a smile lit his face. As he talked about Jenny, his face became nearly rapturous. He’d gone from anger to joy so quickly, Sarah wondered if such an emotional bounce was healthy. But as Luke kept talking, Sarah realized she’d never seen anyone so completely and utterly in love as this man was with his dead wife.

Luke’s memories of Jenny filled the room as he expounded upon his wife’s talents, her kindness and unconditional love for him and their children. He held the rest of the group’s complete attention while he spoke. “Jenny did just about everything. She insisted the kids and I eat healthy food. She grew all kinds of vegetables and herbs in her garden, then all summer and fall she’d freeze and can things. She made applesauce.” He laughed to himself. “I was never sure it saved any money, all that work she did, but it tasted wonderful. We never had boxes of any kind of cookies or snacks. Jenny baked cookies and made granola. She sewed, too. She made clothes for the kids and all kinds of stuff for the house. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and find her sewing some kind of surprise for Annie. Doll clothes. A new dress. Secretly, I wondered if she was a magician. She seemed to make beautiful things out of junk and milk pods and pinecones.”

“She had vision,” Sarah blurted out before she realized she was going to speak.

Luke looked at her and gave her a soft smile of understanding. “Yes, she did. Thank you for saying that.”

Sarah could only nod, she was so struck by the sincerity in his voice. She found it odd that this same guy could be hostile one minute and tame the next. To her, he was like Jekyll and Hyde. Which one was the real Luke Bosworth?

Margot’s eyes tracked from Sarah to Luke. “Jenny sounds like an amazing person,” Margot said. “No wonder you miss her so much.”

Luke’s eyes turned stormy, as if Margot had just doused him with ice water. The blue turned to gray, and his face lost all the softness Sarah had seen while he spoke about Jenny. Luke didn’t say anything for a long moment, his eyes surveying the room and the other faces looking back at him—some commiserating, some staring blankly.

Then, as if he’d made a decision, Luke inhaled deeply, expanding his lungs with courage or conviction—Sarah couldn’t tell which. He clamped his lips shut, as if to stop the flow of words and memories. “Jenny should still be here. It was too soon for her to die. That’s what I can’t stomach.” He slammed his palm on his thigh.

Sarah pressed her body back in her chair when she felt his next tirade coming on. She couldn’t imagine having to live with someone so volatile. Sarah had always been uncomfortable with anger. To her recollection, her parents had never displayed anger at each other. They had always had “discussions” and they “worked out their differences.” She’d experienced anger at flat tires, impossible government websites and inept retail clerks, but she’d never given or received Luke’s kind of intense, blistering anger.

Margot’s gentle voice interrupted Sarah’s thoughts.

“Anger,” Margot said, “is one of the five steps of grief, Luke. It’s natural. Understandable. Expected. It just happens to be the step you’re stuck on—for the moment. In addition, you’re feeling rejected by God.”

“How do you know that?” He growled.

“You show it in your every gesture. My guess is that you think God took Jenny, but he didn’t take you. You were left here to fend for yourself with your two kids. So you feel rejected.”

Luke nodded once, abruptly and affirmatively, but he didn’t respond.

“This rejection you feel is a place for us to start, Luke,” Margot offered.

Sarah sat up straight when she heard Margot talking about rejection. As she repeated the word in her mind, it was as if a blaring alarm had gone off.

Rejection.

Was that what she was experiencing? Sarah had always had a problem with rejection—or so her mother had told her. Ann Marie often warned her that she was getting overly anxious about her schoolwork, to the point of being a perfectionist. Sarah had been terrified of getting a bad grade. She didn’t want to be rejected.

When she broke up with James, she did the breaking up part so she wouldn’t be rejected by him. Yet James had rejected her many times—all in subtle ways, tiny snippets of rejection and dismissal telling her she wasn’t good enough for him or his wealthy friends.

Sarah had been dealt a double blow of rejection. Her mother was dead and she’d been left to fend for herself. And she’d just been suspended from her job.

Rejection number two.

Sarah sank a bit lower in her chair, wondering if she should extend herself to these strangers. Would this emotional gamble be worth it? She wished she could hide.

Isn’t that what I’ve been doing? Hiding my fears and probably a good amount of my own anger?

No, Sarah thought. I can’t bail. I came here to get better. I came here to make my life the best it can be and not live in the past. I want my future to be a good one. I want so much for myself. I’ll stay.

Sarah watched Margot as she struggled to pry information out of Luke, but he wasn’t having it. He was in bad shape, Sarah thought. She was grieving for her parent. Her loss was a normal part of life that most people knew they’d have to confront one day. But Luke’s situation was very different. He couldn’t have been much older than her, and yet he had already lost the love of his life. They’d barely had a chance to start their life together, and his wife was gone. Sarah hadn’t even thought about a family of her own until just recently, and she wasn’t even close to finding her soul mate. Her world had been all about her mother. Yet here was Luke, nearly paralyzed by his emotions. Sarah almost wished she was the counselor with all that training behind her so that she could say the right thing to him. All she could do was remain silent and listen.

Margot was urging Luke to tell her about his children, but he looked flustered and tongue-tied. Sarah couldn’t tell if he was still angry or just upset with this dreadful process of spilling his guts.

“Tell me about them,” Margot asked politely.

“Nah, I don’t think so,” Luke said flatly as if he’d finally controlled his rage. He nodded his head and pursed his lips as if he’d been in conversation with himself. “I was right about what I said before. My coming here was a mistake.”

Luke stood suddenly, spun on the heel of his work boots and stalked out of the room in four long strides. The door slammed hard behind him, the sound echoing against the walls, rattling the windows.

No one said a word for a very long moment.

Sarah sat up straight. “Do you think he’ll come back, Margot?”

Margot turned around and faced her. “I don’t know.”

Sarah looked past Margot at the closed door. Of all the things she remembered about Luke that evening, the soft, grateful smile he’d given her stood out the most. She’d seen past his anger at that instant, and she felt as if she had helped him, even if it had been in a very slight, tenuous way. “I hope he does. He needs us.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

SARAH TOOK BEAU out for his morning constitutional down Maple Avenue, where they both enjoyed the last of the spring tulips. Sarah noticed the spikes of peonies shooting up through the ground. The walk took an extra-long time, as Sarah allowed Beau to sniff all he wanted.

Sarah hadn’t been able to get Luke Bosworth out of her mind. She’d never met anyone so tortured. Her heart went out to him because he seemed to be clueless as to how to react to those around him. He was deeply within himself, yet when he spoke about Jenny, he allowed everyone in session access to his innermost fears. Sarah was drawn to his tenderness and depth of compassion. He was an enigma of anger and gentleness. She was already looking forward to the next meeting, when she would hopefully see Luke again and learn more about him.

She was almost embarrassed to be asking for any help at all from Margot, when Luke clearly needed all her guidance and then some. Sarah guessed, from his worn work boots and his jeans and faded shirt, that he hadn’t bought any new clothes for himself since his wife died. She remembered him making an offhand comment about medical bills and she could well understand his situation.

Her mother and father had purchased expensive but excellent health insurance a decade ago when Sarah had left for college. Sarah thought it was ridiculous, but Ann Marie had insisted, saying they weren’t interested in trips to foreign countries or expensive jewelry or things anymore. They wanted to provide Sarah with the education she needed to pursue her dreams, and they wanted to cover themselves in case of disaster. They did precisely that. Ann Marie left only a few thousand dollars in medical bills, and in addition, her mother had prepaid her own funeral and cremation. Sarah had none of the financial problems that she was now realizing a great many people were forced to deal with along with loss and grief.

Sarah hadn’t realized that she and Beau had been walking for nearly an hour. When they walked past Mrs. Beabots’s house, Sarah could hear her television was turned up, and she could smell the apples, cinnamon and butter that told her Mrs. Beabots had been baking...again.

As Sarah came up the sidewalk to her house, she noticed someone was sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs on her front porch.

As she approached, the person stood up.

“Miss Milse!” Sarah said with a smile.

The woman, in her mid-sixties, stood nearly six feet tall and was over two hundred pounds of pure-bred German muscle. She wore a very dated, cotton floral house dress with a blindingly white, ruffled apron. The short sleeves revealed upper arms the size of Virginia hams that looked as if she could rip up each floorboard for cleaning and easily pound them back into place.

Her steel-gray hair was pulled so tightly on her scalp and twisted into such a severe topknot that Sarah worried the woman would get a headache.

“I come to clean,” Miss Milse announced in her accented, guttural voice as Sarah mounted the porch steps.

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