And Ava. Lord, Ava. Who was fifteen, volatile and reminded Marianne way too much of herself at that age.
They needed to talk about it. They needed to figure out how to take care of them, and not just everyone else. Mac’s death had shaken the foundation of the family. Mac was one of Jackson’s best friends, not just a brother-in-law. He had been family to Marianne. Ava and Hunter had adored him. And in the months since, they’d tried so hard to keep up normalcy for Riley and Hazel while also trying tobe there. Not just pretend it hadn’t happened. Not just pretend it was all fine.
There was so much stuff out there, beyond their bedroom door. So much life. So much worry. But in Jackson she’d always found... Peace. Calm.
There were years of her life that were just... A blur. But she remembered the day she first met him. The day she first saw his face. It had all come into focus.
And here, in this room, it was just the two of them, and it was like that first day.
Like everything made sense.
“I love you, you know,” she said. “I think I forgot to say it today. The store gets really busy and we get really busy and...”
“I know,” he said, kissing her. “I don’t forget you love me.”
“Thank you.”
His smile turned wicked, and she really did love it when he was wicked. That he still could be, even after all this time. “You could keep thanking me verbally or...”
She gave him her own wicked smile right back. “My pleasure.”
5
1917—The new bridge will connect the orchards with the town and bear more weight than the previous bridges. After a vote at the town hall meeting, Sentinel Bridge is the agreed upon name.
RUBY
Courtesy of her jet lag, Ruby was up and ready to investigate the cottage by six o’clock the next morning. But she had to wait until she was reasonably sure that Dahlia was up.
She peered out the window and looked across the field, and it didn’t seem like her sister’s car was parked in front of the little cottage. Dahlia had always been an early riser.
The keys were hung up on the peg by the door, and she put on a pair of hunter green rubber boots beneath her dress, ready to cross the great, murky fields that stood between her and the dwelling.
She slipped a long woolen cardigan on over the dress and wrapped it tightly around her body as she walked out of the house and down the front steps, across the driveway to the first, weed-filled field that stood between her and the dwelling. The sky was washed in pink, the edges of the clouds rimmed with bright gold from the rising sun. The trees, which were beginning to turn on autumn’s red tide, looked like they were on fire now, as the morning took hold of the scenery with not a blooming gentleness, but a gong, declaring sunlight over the sleeping world, demanding wakefulness.
She picked through the weeds, grimacing as the taller shoots went up beneath her dress and scraped the sides of her thighs. The air was sharp, and if she took it in too deep, it sliced at her throat. And all the same, she found it deeply comforting to be here on a morning like this. A morning that reminded her of walking to school as a child.
A morning that reminded her of home.
Of seasons past and all things familiar. Of those foundational years that had built her into who she was. And it made the back of her neck as prickly as her eyes, that thought.
The field gave way to a forest, and the cottage was settled beneath the trees there. It was like walking back into the night. The sun couldn’t penetrate the immensity of the pines. The soft, rich soil was carpeted with moss and ferns.
At the back, her father had added an A-frame. There were windows all over, and she noticed that a velvet green moss had grown thick on the roof, just as it had everywhere else around. She stuck the key into the door and turned the lock, making her way inside.
It was desperately cute and quaint, and she had always loved it, from the moment her father fixed it up, and was entranced by the idea of staying in it. And with Dahlia, just like when they were kids. And they’d stayed up late talking about their desperate romantic fantasies and their plans for the future.
Dahlia wanted to write articles. For all her sister sometimes seemed stoic and hard to reach when they talked, when she wrote she poured her soul out. When they were kids, Dahlia had written breathless romances—in the vein of Jane Austen, of course, but always with a suggestive scene of the hero and heroine disappearing behind closed doors.
Ruby had loved them.
Ruby had loved that time in their lives. The idea of living in it again made her feel... Just so very good.
There was a little bookshelf in the entry, built-in, stacked with Dahlia’s books, and Ruby had a feeling there was going to be a tussle over shelf space. That was predominantly what she had shipped back to the States, in a flat rate box, because it was cheaper than paying the exorbitant airline fees for anything that heavy.
And Ruby was nothing if not a book pack rat.
There were two very small bedrooms, and one had the door firmly shut, the other opened. Ruby pushed the door open. The room was sparse and clearly not Dahlia’s. There was a small twin bed pressed against a wall of windows that backed the woods.