“Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation to protect.”
For a heartbeat, then another, they held each other’s gaze.
“It’s so good to see you,” he said.
She paused, still taking him in. “The last time I saw you, you were on that truck, heading back to fight. I didn’t know if I would ever see you again.”
“I thought maybe we’d have run into one another by now, and whenwe didn’t…” He blinked, startled to feel the emotion tightening his throat. He hadn’t cried in years. “I’m so glad you made it back.”
She took a shaky breath. “Me too. And your brother? Uh—”
“John,” he said. “He’s great. And your family?”
“Good. Everyone is fine.”
“Lucky folks in this place, having you as a nurse.”
She gave a little shrug. “I discovered I wasn’t much good at not working. It’s a different pace, but I like it. What about you? Did you become an accountant, like you’d said?”
An accountant, he thought wryly, then one side of his mouth lifted. “Sort of.”
They fell silent, and while he normally didn’t mind that, this time he scrambled for something to say. He never knew the right words. Should he talk about how good she looked? How memories of her had helped him through his darkest times? That he’d been determined to live through it all on the tiniest chance that he might see her again?
Then something shifted in the air between them. All those years ago, those blue eyes had promised comfort. Help. Friendship. Now they offered something different.Hope, he realized.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” she said softly.
“Well, I had to come,” he said gently. “I owed you a dance.”
He glanced down, suddenly remembering the condition he was in, then he looked back at her. God, she was pretty. “Would you go out with me sometime? When I’m cleaned up, I mean. I’d like to take you someplace nice.”
“I thought you’d never ask.” Her smile lit up places in him that had long gone dark. “But I think we ought to put off the dancing until you heal a bit. Maybe we could start with dinner.”
“Friday? I can pick you up, if you’d like. Where do you live?” She told him the address, and his pulse picked up again. This was really happening. “I’ll be there,” he promised.
“Good. I don’t want to wait another three years.”
PART– three –
eighteenCASSIE
— Present Day —
By the time Cassie dropped the tubs of bottles off at the Maison François Baby House museum, her tears had dried. She had been hoping to sneak in and out without being seen, but she should have known. Mrs. Allen, the head curator, saw everything, and she lifted an eyebrow, seeing Cassie at work on her day off. Cassie just smiled and waved, then disappeared outside again, heading to her car. She would tell Mrs. Allen eventually, but for now, she was still feeling a bit raw after visiting the old house.
With her mind a little clearer now, she drove to her apartment building and let herself think about what had happened. As rattled as she’d felt back at the house, all her memories stirred up along with the drywall dust, she couldn’t deny that a lot about the old place still brought her comfort. From what she could see, Matthew was doing a good job, and she was glad that he seemed to care about properly restoring the place.
As for the bottles he’d found, well, those had stirred up a whole lot of questions. What were they doing there? As a child, she’d heard so manystories about the Bailey brothers from her grandmother Alice, but she had never even hinted at a secret cache of whisky. Especially one in their very own living room.
Cassie pulled open the front door of her apartment building then climbed the three stories to her bachelor apartment, her mind ticking through a mental list of the archives she wanted to access at the museum. Before she did any of that, she planned to go through her personal collection of the Bailey family history.
She dug in her bag for her key, unlocked her door, and stepped inside. Having just been in her spacious childhood home a half hour before, her little dwelling suddenly felt smaller than ever. She’d gotten the apartment a few years ago, after she turned eighteen and left foster care. The very first home of her own. She had filled it with objects that mattered to her, often perusing the local antique store for preowned items that, at one point, had meant something to someone and now called out to Cassie: a stained glass lamp and a black typewriter from the 1920s, a dark maple bookshelf from the ’40s that had required three people to carry it, and a dented brass cigarette lighter. Some might see a mishmash collection of secondhand things, but to Cassie, they were a connection to the past that brought her comfort.
Setting down her bag, she went to the bookshelf and withdrew the shallow wooden chest that her grandmother Alice had given her so long ago. At the time, she’d told Cassie the box had once belonged tohergrandmother, whose name had been Elizabeth. And since Cassie always seemed so interested in her family’s stories, Alice said she thought it should remain with her. Together, they had brought the wood back to life by oiling and buffing it, then they attached a new hinge so the matching lid would close tightly. The inside had been lined by a sheet of dark green felt. But it was what the box contained that drew Cassie to it now: the family scrapbook.
After her mother died, Cassie had been put into foster care. What little she was allowed to take with her consisted of her clothing and oneitem of her choice. She had chosen the family scrapbook. Even as a little girl, the photos and stories in that book had been important, and to her young, grieving heart, it represented everything she had lost: her father, her grandmother, her mother, and her home. Years later, Cassie had been informed by a lawyer that her grandmother’s small estate, as well as the minimal proceeds from the sale of the house and furniture, had been put into a trust for her, but until that time she’d had practically nothing of her own. That made the book matter even more.
The tattered old book had travelled with Cassie from foster home to foster home, and when she felt truly alone, which was quite often in the beginning, she would study the photos of her family in the happier years before the cancer. Then she’d turn to the intriguing black-and-white photos from generations past. The album hadn’t been in pristine shape to begin with, but Cassie had always treated it as she had the box her grandmother had given her, with the utmost respect.
