Chapter One
For Thea, the very best part of summer started the second week of June. The last day of school earned a big red heart, and meant she could start swimming and splashing around in the backyard pool, which she loved. She could ride her bike and play with her friends every day. Though they didn’t call it playing anymore. Now they hung out.
She was twelve, after all.
She liked cookouts, and long summer days, and she especially liked no homework.
But every year, just about a week after that big red heart day, she piled in the car with her mom; her dad; her little brother, Rem; and their dog, Cocoa. They started the long drive from Fredericksburg, Virginia, to Redbud Hollow, Kentucky.
Her mom grew up there but had gone off to Virginia to college, where she met John Fox on the very first day in the very first class.
And the rest, like they said—or like her dad said—was history.
They married the summer after their sophomore year, and ten months, two weeks, and three days after, she’d come along. Not quite two years later, Rem popped out.
Now her dad designed houses and her mom decorated them. Their company, Fox and Fox Homes, did just fine.
She knew stuff. Grown-ups didn’t think kids knew much of anything important, but she did. She knew her grandparents, her dad’s parents, were rich and snooty, and didn’t think much of her mom—the girl from eastern Kentucky.
But her dad’s parents lived out in San Diego, so they didn’t have to see them much. Which was more than fine with Thea. She didn’t have to hear Grandmother—that was the snooty name they had to call her—think her thoughts about how her mom laughed too loud or would never shake the Appalachian dust off her shoes.
She could hear those thoughts if she tried hard enough, and when she had to visit Grandmother, she couldn’t seem to help it.
She thought so loud.
Grandmother and Grandfather didn’t seem to care that John and Cora Fox were happy, and even successful. That they all lived in a pretty house in a nice neighborhood. That Thea and Rem (or as they insisted, Althea and Remington) did even better than okay in school.
But Grammie cared. They all talked on the phone every week on Sunday, and at Christmastime, Grammie drove up with her truck full of presents she’d made. Most of the time her uncles Waylon and Caleb came, too, so they had a big family party, and the house was all full of music and lights and the smells of baking.
That was her second favorite time of the year.
But the best time, even though they had to drive for seven whole hours, and sometimes more, came in June.
They always left bright and early, and passed the time with Road Trip Bingo. Rem usually fell asleep, and sometimes she did, too, but they always gave a hoot and holler when they crossed the line into Kentucky.
They stopped for barbecue and hush puppies—that was tradition. She’d be hungry when they did, but always wished they could just keep going, keep going and get there.
Keep going over roads that started to twist and climb, over bridges that spanned rushing rivers.
She loved watching the mountains happen, those rolls and peaks of deep green that were somehow sort of blue, too. The plateaus and ridges, the forests and streams.
And when she was in it, deep in those rolls and peaks where the road wound and wound, she knew her pretty house and really nice neighborhood in Virginia could never compare.
She wondered how her mother could leave it all, and whenever she asked, Mom always said: “I had to meet your daddy, didn’t I? Or else you wouldn’t be here asking me.”
She knew it was more. She knew her mother had wanted that pretty house and nice neighborhood. Knew, in her heart, her mother had wanted to shake that Appalachian dust off her shoes.
She didn’t say so, or else Mom would get that look in her eye. She didn’t want Thea to know things, like when Dad said: “Where the hell did I put my keys this time?”
And she knew he’d tossed them on the kitchen counter, then laid some of his paperwork over them, even though she’d been outside when he did it.
So she knew regardless of the fact that her mother loved Grammie, she wanted something more than the house in the hollow and wanted less than what she’d left behind.
She didn’t think about that now, as they skirted around the mountain town of Redbud Hollow with its climbing streets and shops like Appalachian Crafts, where Grammie sold her soaps and candles and such.
Because at last, at last, they were almost there. The sun still shined bright. Through the sunroof she watched a hawk circle. Deer walked through the woods here. Sometimes she saw deer in the neighborhood yards back home, but it wasn’t the same!
Her mom always drove the last leg of the trip, along the roads she’d once walked as a girl. And when they rounded the last curve, Thea saw the house.
Painted blue as the sky, with shutters—real ones—and the posts of the long front porch green as the hills, it sat back from the skinny, snaking road. Azaleas and mountain laurel flowed along the front. Dozens of colorful bottles hung from the branches of a redbud tree.
Thea had never seen it blooming, except in pictures, because school, but she could imagine it.
In the back there would be gardens—flowers and vegetables and herbs—and the chicken coop where Grammie’s ladies clucked and pecked. The goat named Molly had a pen, the cow called Aster had two small fields where Grammie moved her from one to the other every few months.
There was a little barn and a garden shed. A stream meandered through and slid right into the woods.
And the hills rose up, all around.
Duck and Goose, Grammie’s two coonhounds, raced around the house toward the car.
In the car, Cocoa rose up to wag and whine.
The minute Thea opened the door, Cocoa leaped over and out. The three dogs began to sniff butts to reacquaint themselves.
The door of the house opened, and Lucy Lannigan stepped out on the wide front porch.
Her hair, the true black she’d passed to her daughter and granddaughter, had a thick white streak, like a wave, from the center down to the tip on the right side. She’d passed on the lapis-blue eyes as well with their long lids.
Her height, five-ten with a willow-stem frame, had missed Cora, but from the length of Thea’s and Rem’s legs, it wouldn’t miss her grandchildren.
In her faded jeans and simple white shirt, she threw open her arms.
“How many can I hug at once? Let’s find out.”
Like Cocoa, Thea and Rem jumped out, and they ran into the open arms of the woman who smelled like bread fresh from the oven.
Lucy said, “Mmm-mmm-mmm!” as she hugged and squeezed, then managed to gather in Cora and John. “Now my heart’s full to brimming. I’ve got all the love in the world and more right here on my front porch. I hope you’re hungry, ’cause I’ve fried up enough chicken for an army after a hard battle.”
“I’m starving,” Rem told her, and brought on her rolling laugh.
“I can always count on you for that. There’s fresh lemonade for some, and some damn good apple wine for others. Your rooms are all ready if you want to stow your bags away.”
“Let’s do that.” John kissed both Lucy’s cheeks. “Then I could sure go for that apple wine.”
Copyright © 2024 by Nora Roberts
