He studied her like she’d brought death back into his house, but she wouldn’t cower. Soon enough, this would be her home. Her parlor. Flowers in her vase picked from her future garden.
She had every right to be here.
“I’ll tell Simon you called.”
She glanced toward the front door, half expecting the junior Farrow to walk through and tell his father about their plans to marry.
“It’s an urgent matter.” She tried to keep her voice strong, but the squeak at the end gave her away.
“I’ll inform him when he returns.”
“Is he still in Cleveland?” she asked.
“I’m not certain.”
She studied the professor, trying to decide if he spoke the truth.
“Wait here,” he said, and when he returned, he held out an envelope. “Do what you must, Miss Brooks.”
She took the envelope and stared at it. How did he want her to spend this money?
Brown leaves, crisp and burnt, scattered over the sidewalk on her way back to campus. She’d hoped for answers, along with Simon’s strong arms pulling her close, promising her again that everything would be all right.
What was she supposed to do now?
When she returned to the dormitory, her roommates were still in Abnormal Psychology. They’d stopped asking about the classes she missed, turning their questions into a game. Who exactly was Izzy’ssuitor? Theywould pick up one of her Hollywood rags and read from the list of leading men—Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant. Then they’d laugh, as if she was dating an imaginary man.
But she had promised Simon that she wouldn’t tell anyone about their plans, and she never broke a promise.
Don’t want to cause a stir,he’d told her. But what a stir he’d caused with his kisses trailing all the way down to her toes. And now...
She rolled her hands over her flat stomach again. What if she really was carrying his baby?
No matter what she’d told Simon, the smallest and whitest of lies, her parents didn’t have much in the way of money. The hundred dollars, the crisp bills she’d found in the envelope, she could use. Do, like Professor Farrow had said, what needed to be done.
13:Harper
Tree swallows chattered and rustled the canopy of leaves, a glitter of blue feathers among the forest greens. After last night’s storm, branches piled against the jagged boulders on Hammer Creek, dams spilling into rapids and churning the mud, debris knotted into tree roots on the far bank.
Harper had left the truck by the gate and trekked into the forest to search for the small lake from her childhood. It had seemed so clear in her memory. The pristine water and tufts of reeds and turtles sunning on rocks. Sitting alone as a child on its banks, she’d listened to the chatter of birds and watched the clouds shape-shift into a parade.
But it was entirely possible that she’d conjured up a magical lake.Overactive.That’s what a teacher had told her mom with much disdain during Harper’s middle school years. Her imagination was getting in the way of her studies, important facts likenumbersbeing ignored.
But water, with all its possibilities, was her happy place. Imagined or real, an ocean or lake captured her mind. Calmed her when she felt stressed. Prompted her to create something new.
So much had happened since she’d last wandered these woods. In fact, it seemed like another girl had roamed here in her place. Still, there was something sweet in the remembering, especially now that her mother was gone. The lake and the woods and the afternoon she’d returned to the Suttons’ to find her mom and Marcia baking suncatchers to hang on their windows. When the sunlight hit, even though they were separated by almost three thousand miles, each woman remembered the friend she calledsister.
Her phone pinged, a text from Kelsey elbowing its way through the poor cell phone service.
Wish you were here.
Swimming and sunning in the Maldives, she would enjoy, but jealousy was all she felt at the moment, tangled up in this desperation to not only be somewhere else but to be someone else. Someone like Kelsey. All sunshine and lollipops.
Nasty stuff, the green claws of envy. She hated how it pierced her chest.
She had a beautiful home to live in this fall outside a quintessential Mayberry-like town. Quaint. Safe. Quiet. The perfect place to write a new story.
What was wrong with her? She waved her arms like she could fight off the bitterness, but all she did was scare the swallows.
