“Well, then,” Annie said with a tender smile, “welcome home.”
Chapter 4
Idon’t know anything about fate. Or destiny.
I only know that life had been going okay, and the future seemed pretty solid. Until, in a heartbeat, everything changed.
And though it’s too late to undo what’s been done, if I don’t do something now, I’ll wind up with nothing but doubts about how things would have been, could have been different, if only I’d had the courage to act. If only I’d had the courage to try and make things right.
So I’m going to do it.
And I’m excited as hell.
I don’t know yet how to make it happen. Or when. But I’ll do it. Because this is not a coincidence. This is my chance.
And the little baby will finally be where she belongs.
Chapter 5
By the time they were back on Chappy, Annie felt as if she were the one who was exhausted. Throughout the drive, she’d kept flashing back to the first time she’d seen Francine. It had been at the Holiday Fair, and a young woman with sad, soulful dark eyes approached Annie’s table of handcrafted soaps. She was carrying a woven basket; at the time, Annie didn’t notice that a baby—Bella—was inside. Nor could she have guessed that, days later, the baby would be left on her doorstep. Or that Francine and Bella would become so important to her.
Francine had been through so much anguish and sorrow. And now that her life seemed to be on a happy, positive track, Annie was determined to be supportive and reassuring. To make certain Francine knew that she and Bella were protected. And loved.
With sunset and twilight long gone, the sky was pitch dark as expected, what with winter looming and the fact that the island wasn’t known for its streetlights.
Taylor’s—andKevin’s, Annie had to keep reminding herself—Cape-style house was tucked away, as houses there tended to be; it was off a bumpy, unlit dirt road, down an equally bumpy, unlit dirt driveway, which was lined on both sides with tall pine trees that cast dancing shadows as Annie’s headlights bounced past them. When she at last pulled up to the house, she was surprised to see a light in the kitchen window. Maybe Taylor had left it on for safety, though Chappy had fewer interlopers than streetlights.
But just as Annie started to open the car door, the figure of a man walked out the back door and stood stock-still on the deck. He was tall and bulky; from where Annie was sitting, she couldn’t tell if his size was due to muscle or fat. Both his hands were crammed into the pockets of what looked like saggy jeans; the kitchen light behind him silhouetted his large frame and camouflaged his features.
“Either of you know this guy?” she asked her passengers.
Francine shook her head.
Jonas put his window down a few inches. “Never seen him before.”
Annie unbuckled her seat belt and opened the door. “Wait here,” she instructed her passengers, as if she were her fiancé and not merely a civilian with an unfortunate tendency to find trouble.
“Excuse me, but who are you?” Annie asked as she stood by the Jeep and purposely didn’t approach him.
“Bigger question,” a gruff voice replied. “Who the hell are you?”
She wondered if she might be in the wrong place. But the garage was in the back and the flower beds were in need of tending, and it looked like Jonas’s car was there as well, right where he had left it before they’d driven Francine’s to Minnesota. So yes, Annie thought. This was the place.
Jonas began to get out of the Jeep, but Annie motioned to him to stay inside. She didn’t want him leaving Bella or attempting anything heroic with Francine still in the front.
“I’m Annie Sutton,” she said. “My brother, Kevin MacNeish, lives here.”
The gruff voice snorted. “Lady, I don’t know who he is, either, but this is not his house.” He pulled his hands out of his pockets and folded his arms. In the process, he shifted enough so that Annie could see past him into a sliver of the kitchen. The cabinets were pale blue . . . exactly as Kevin had painted them when he’d moved in with Taylor at the end of last summer.
Of course this was the right house, she thought. For starters, Jonas had lived there a while now. Surely he would have known if Annie had turned into the wrong driveway.
“If this isn’t Kevin and Taylor’s place, then whose is it?”
“I didn’t say Taylor doesn’t live here.”
“Well, my brother, Kevin, is married to her. So who are you?” It had begun to feel like a childish game.
“Rex.”
