And he was right. Days later, he showed up with flowers at her front door.
8:Harper
Catawba was so small that Harper could see glimpses of farmland on both ends of the bricked street. As she rode through town, it reminded her of a movie set—quaint, compact, and camera ready from all angles. Even the clap of hooves from horses pulling an Amish buggy seemed perfectly cued.
Her mom grew up in an orphanage near Catawba, and she’d brought Harper here twice to visit Marcia. Back when Harper was still in elementary school, when they’d been crammed with millions into the suburbs of LA.
Even though they weren’t technically related, her mom and Marcia considered themselves sisters.Heart family,her mom used to say. Since Harper had spent much of their vacations here with Brett Sutton, the only child of Gerald and Marcia, she’d decided to adopt him as a cousin.
She glanced over at Brett in the driver’s seat as he waved toward another friend.
The sky was tinted orange as if the sun was fighting against its inevitable fall, and the weight of the day tugged on Harper’s shoulders.She’d spent the night at LAX, then mulled over all that had happened at Evan’s estate during the long flight to Philadelphia. Wendi had accepted Harper’s resignation and promised to have the rest of her things boxed and waiting for her in storage. Thankfully, she didn’t see Evan or the rat pack again.
Instead of watching a movie, she’d slept the first half of the plane trip and started rereadingLavender Ridgeon the second half, every page of Via Belle’s book reminding her of her mom.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Brett said for the third time since he’d picked her up from Philly. He was six years her senior and clearly established as a professional with his gray power suit and tie. After finishing law school—at the top of his class, according to Marcia—he’d landed a junior associate position at a Philadelphia firm. “Mom thinks your visit is providential.”
She glanced over at him. “What do you think?”
“Did you know that Mom needed someone to house-sit when you called?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll go with coincidental.”
But she was with Marcia. The timing felt like something more.
Harper had talked to Marcia several times since her mom passed but hadn’t seen her in a year. After Mom died, Marcia said to call her if she ever neededanything, including a place to land, so Harper asked if she could stay for a few weeks until she found her footing again.
Turned out, Gerald and Marcia were in Florida for three months. Since Brett had a family, job, and an assortment of pets in Philadelphia, he was thrilled for her to house- and cat-sit so he didn’t have to keep making the weekly trek west to check on things.
For the first time in ages, it felt like she was exactly where she needed to be.
During their two-hour drive to Catawba, she and Brett had talked about life in California and her years of film school. Then he told herabout his twin toddlers and wife who he’d met during his judicial clerkship. His grandparents—the couple who’d adopted Marcia when she was a girl—had moved to Florida to live near the ocean. Harper understood. They hadn’t passed much water on their drive west, and she was already missing the Pacific.
“Catawba is barely a blot on the map,” Brett explained as they neared the northern edge of town. “But you can find most everything you need here or a few miles west in Lititz. If you need anything else, Lancaster is another twenty minutes south.”
“How many people live in Catawba?”
Brett waved at a woman pushing a stroller. “Around six hundred.”
“Do you know all of them?”
“Pretty much, unless they moved here since I graduated. Most of the residents are following in the footsteps of their parents and grandparents.”
Harper marveled at that. What would it be like to be known by so many people? To be welcomed whenever you returned home.
“Our house is officially outside the limits,” he said, “but I attended school with half the town.”
While she had few memories of the Sutton home, she remembered the creaky floors and spectacular garden. Most of all, she remembered that her mom had been happy there, laughing with Marcia into the night hours like they were girls.
Brett pointed at a stone building between two wooden fronts. “There’s the post office, right beside the tea shop. At the end of the street is a general market for most everything you’ll need and an Amish-run bakery with the best pastries in all of Pennsylvania.”
“What about a library?” she asked.
“You’ll have to drive the whole twelve minutes to Lititz for that,” he said. “But I’m glad to hear you still like books.”
“I live on stories.”
