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“No. Don’t even finish that sentence.” She pulled up short and spun on her heel.
“Give a guy a heads-up before you up and change course like that, will you?” Hank managed to stop just inches shy of slamming into her. He held his arms out and his hands up like a man trying to avoid brushing against a live electrical fence as he muttered, “Heads-up, right. Look who I’m talking to.”
She tipped her chin up and narrowed her eyes. “If that’s a veiled reference to our breakup, Hank, it needs to be very clear that you are the one that changed the course of our relationship. You are the one who waited until the night before our wedding to tell me that you did not want to have children.”
“Really, Em? You want to launch into this now?” He retreated a step, his hands still up.
“I was actually sort of proud of myself for having held off this long,” she shot back. Before she could even take another breath, she cringed inwardly. She had made so many strides in life to keep her wild, impulsive tendencies under control, but standing back in this home of her childhood, after just a few minutes gazing into Hank Corsaut’s eyes, and she was blurting out things like that. She pressed her lips together.
Another step back and Hank dropped his hands to his sides.
“I’m sorry.” Emma hung her head, humbled by her own overreaction. “I probably made a big mistake even coming back here. I thought I’d find answers, that the path I need to take would become more clear with distance from my real life but—”
“Emma! My sweet, sweet, baby girl!” Sammie Jo appeared in the doorway from the foyer to the living room.
There was no evidence of a health problem in the rosy color of her cheeks. Her once strawberry blond hair, now streaked heavily with white, hung in a long thick braid over one shoulder. She had tucked her turquoise jeans into her high-top tennis shoes. Despite Ruth whirling about on tiptoe, her tutu bouncing and the dogs winding around Sammie’s every lumbering, labored footstep, she entered the room like a diva commandeering the stage.
When all eyes focused on her, she threw her arms open wide, sending her hand-beaded dangly earrings swinging. “Look at you, all dressed up in that fabulous little black dress and…is that a diamond bracelet? Tr?s chic! But your hair…”
“Note she’s not surprised at what I’m wearing, just that my hair is mussed up a little.” Emma went to her aunt, her arms open wide to wrap her in a hug.
“A little? Emma, honey, a little mussed up is what my hair was when I did a nosedive into the bougainvilleas.” Sammie Jo enveloped her in two tanned, freckled arms.
Emma sank into warmth and the wonderful generosity of her aunt’s unwavering love. This, she realized, was why she had come. She had been stressed, afraid and even in the middle of a crowded restaurant with a man who promised her everything any girl could ever want, she felt alone. Here, in this house, in the arms of the woman who had raised her when her mother died, all of that melted away. She was loved. And more than a bit curious. “You fell into the bougainvilleas?”
“Not on purpose, sugar. I was having a heart attack!”
Emma pulled away, her own heart racing. She twisted her neck to give Hank a scolding look. “You said it wasn’t a heart attack.”
“Oh, now, calm down, Emma, honey.” Her aunt gave her one more brief hug before releasing her, stepping away and starting to pick her way over the tangle of dogs and Ruth. “It wasn’t really a heart attack and I didn’t actually fall into the bougainvilleas.”
“I caught her.” Hank leaned against the doorway, his arms folded.
“You make a habit of hanging around waiting for Newberrys to keel over?” Emma managed to keep her anxiety over her aunt’s precarious health from making that sound like an accusation.
“I’ve just been telling everyone I had a near heart attack and fell into the bougainvilleas because it’s so much more interesting a story than a medication mix-up inducing an episode that caused my heart to stop for maybe two, three seconds which wouldn’t even have rated a call to the doctor if the town vet had minded his own business.”
“You make yourself my business, woman, whether I like it or not.” Hank shook his head.
“Boo-gun-veel-yas,” Ruth sounded out slowly at first then began to spin around, repeating it faster and faster like the beat of a song that she alone could hear. “Boo-gun-veel-yas, boo-gun-veel-yas.”
“That must have been awful for you, Aunt Sammie.” Emma went to her aunt’s side and took her by the arm. Sammie Jo nodded toward the couch and they headed that way, a bit more slowly than her aunt’s usual speed.
“It was awful,” Sammie agreed in her rich Louisiana accent. “And I would have been alone. Of course, God would have been with me—is with me, always—but I had my cell phone on me when I first started feeling poorly so I made a call and this one here—” she pointed to Hank in the same antagonistic attitude he’d been giving her but couldn’t keep it up as she smiled, touched her fingers to her lips then blew a kiss to the man as she said “—came running.”
Emma met Hank’s gaze again, and again found herself overwhelmed by the sense that he could help her find order where now she mostly knew turmoil.
“The pair of them insisted I keep that phone near me and charged up at all times.” Sammie Jo reached out to grab Hank by the arm as they passed him and her strong, slender fingers curled in a squeeze of obvious gratitude. “Of course, now that you’ve come here to stay, that won’t be such a worry.”
“Stay?” Emma halted beside the couch and it seemed that for a split second everything around her blurred into slow motion, much as it had just before she fell asleep on her feet earlier. Only this time, it wasn’t weariness that had her mind and heart out of sync with her surroundings. She had come to Gall Rive to test her wings, not to reestablish her roots. “Aunt Sammie, I didn’t come home. I came back. There’s a difference. I didn’t come to stay.”
“Like a bird who strays from his nest is a man who strays from his home.” Sammie Jo dropped into the corner seat of the couch and motioned for Ruth to come sit beside her.
“What is that supposed to mean, Aunt Sammie?” Emma kept her tone sincere but she folded her arms for good measure. She knew her aunt too well to take anything at face value. The woman might be small and openhearted, but she was scrappy and used to getting her own way. Emma had stayed away for years to avoid her wishes and Sammie Jo’s from clashing. “If it was a jab, you know I won’t be guilted into staying here. And if it was just a flip remark, well, I won’t be cajoled into it, either.”
“Neither flip nor jab. It’s from the Bible,” Sammie said without looking at her niece.
“Proverbs, I think.” Hank strode to the end table, picked up the large black leather Bible and thumbed through a few pages, then dragged the tip of his finger down one page. “Yep. Proverbs 27:7–9. ‘He who is full loathes honey, but to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet. Like a bird that strays from its nest is a man who strays from his home. Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart and the pleasantness of one’s friend springs from his earnest counsel.’”
He closed the Bible, laid it down and looked up to find Emma and her aunt staring at him.
“What?” He strode back across the room and looked down at Emma. “I teach Sunday school.”
“To children?” She hadn’t intended for that to sound so hopeful.
“To young adults,” he said.
“Still…” She couldn’t help smiling up at him. It was none of her business, of course, but the idea that this new Hank, actually this older Hank, was comfortable not just having a tea party with Ruth but taking a spiritual leadership role with people younger than himself made her heart cheerful.
“So, there you go.” Sammie Jo struggled to wrangle Ruth up into her lap.
The child wriggled free, protesting with a sound that spoke about her opinion of being held down more than a whole paragraph worth of eloquent vocabulary could. She made a spiral, went up on her toes and ran around the room repeating softly, “Boo-gun-veel-yas.”
Emma did not have the luxury of grunts and temper fits to try to communicate her frustration to her aunt. So she went to the couch, settled on the arm next to Sammie Jo and asked without anger or malice, “There I go where? Unless you mean there I go back to Atlanta in a few days, I have no idea what you mean by that remark.”
One of the dogs whimpered and raised his nose.
Hank turned toward the front house.
A creak came from the general direction of the kitchen.
“It’s okay, boy,” Hank said, scratching the larger of the two dogs behind the ear. “Just a kid looking for pink cake.”
Emma exhaled then looped one arm around her aunt’s slender shoulders. “So, to get back to the topic at hand, if there is anything you want me to know, Aunt Sammie, you are going to have to come right out and tell me.”
Sammie Jo put her hand on Emma’s knee and gave it a waggle. “What I am trying to tell you, child, is that just like the birds of the trees and the beasts of the fields—”
A car door slammed.
Sammie Jo startled.
Both dogs woofed.
Hank quieted them with a hand signal.
Too bad Emma didn’t have something similar for her aunt. Sammie Jo lunged forward, using the arm of the chair and the leg of her niece to push herself to her feet.
She looked to the right, then to the left, then right at Emma. “Hide me! It’s your sister!”
“Hide you…from Claire?” Emma stood partly to steady Sammie Jo and partly to try to get a glimpse at the front door through the foyer beyond the far end of the room. “You mean she didn’t bring you out here?”
Sammie Jo started to move toward the kitchen. “Did you see her bring me here?”
Emma gave Hank a helpless look as she side shuffled along, trying stay beside her aunt but keep the front door in her line of vision. “It’s Claire. I assumed she was sitting out in the car running the world via her smartphone and satellites.”
Sammie Jo paused in her slow progress long enough to bark out a resounding, “Ha! Good one, honey.”
“I’m not laughing.” Hank came up behind them and put one hand on Emma’s back and one hand on her aunt’s. “But then, I’ve wanted to hide from your sister a time or two myself.”
Emma did laugh. It felt good to have someone to help her deal with her family, almost as good as it felt to have Hank so near, the warmth of his hand sinking into the tense muscles between her world-weary shoulders.
“Hold it right there, Aunt Sammie.” Claire Newberry burst through the door. “The doctor released you into my care and my care doesn’t reach past the edge of… Emma?”
They had the same parents. The same upbringing. The same blue-green eyes and dark brown unruly hair. They had the same skin tone. Same height. Same bright intellect. Same faith. Same family frustrations. Same inability to fully forgive themselves for not being better able to love each other unconditionally.
Beyond that, they had nothing in common.
“Hello, Claire.” She turned to face her sister.
“Why are you here?” Claire sighed. Dressed for the season in a denim skirt and white cotton shirt, both pressed and perfect, the older Newberry practically glided over the old floor as she came into the room. “I told you in my phone message that you didn’t have to come.”
“I haven’t heard your message, Claire,” Emma said softly as she helped their aunt sit down again.
Claire was at their aunt’s side now, too, helping the woman who kept trying to bat away both of their well-meaning attempts. “I told you Aunt Sammie was fine.”
“I’m sure you did.” Emma clenched her jaw. Claire was too busy talking to hear a word Emma said. “But it didn’t even occur to me she might not be fine when I started out last night.”
“C’mon, y’all.” Hank employed the same tone he had used to calm his dogs earlier.
Both sisters glared at him. Not the effect he had hoped for, she figured.
“I suppose, being a nurse you thought you’d be the best one to see to her recovery.” She tugged at Sammie’s arm. “Right?”
“No. No. Absolutely not.” Emma eased her aunt’s body away from Claire’s grasp. “Listen to me, Claire.”
“Girls!” Sammie put both hands up.
Hank leaned in, his hands extended. “Maybe you should just let your aunt—”
“No, you listen to me.” Claire’s gentle tugging turned to an insistent yank. “I have everything under control here. You did not have to come out here to save the day and by the looks of it straight from some fancy dinner with that doctor of yours.”
“Girls?” Sammie wormed her arms from their hands and stepped away from them, her face colored with concern.
“Doctor?” Hank froze, his hand still out. He didn’t take his eyes off Emma. “You have a doctor that you dress like that for?”
Defensiveness laced with a hint of delight coiled in Emma’s chest to think that who she kept company with might matter to Hank. She opened her mouth to try to explain her situation, then closed it again.
“She has it all.” Claire batted Emma’s hand away from reaching for Sammie Jo again. “She knows it all, apparently, and can do it all. She can be a professional, a caregiver and a mom.”
“Girls…please.” Sammie Jo took a step away.
“Me? I know it all? I can do it all?” Emma pushed away Claire’s hands, which had been batting away Emma’s hands. They became a tangle of fingers and hands each trying to shove the other aside. “Don’t you have that backward? You’re the one everyone counts on. I’m the flighty one, the impulsive one, the—”
“Girls! Hush!” Sammie spun around and faced the both of them. “I have a question for you that’s more important than any of this petty sibling bickering.”
“What?” Both girls asked at once, unable to pull their hands apart quickly enough.
Sammie put her hand on her hip and narrowed one eye. “Where is Ruth?”
For a fraction of a second everything went still. There was no chatter or foot stomping from Ruth. They all looked at each other.
Emma couldn’t breathe.
“Ruth. Ruth? Ruth!” all their voices rose at once.
They all sprang into action. In a few ticks of the clock Claire began barking orders. “Hank, you and your dogs search outside. Emma, take the second floor and I’ll check the basement.”
“Good plan.” Sammie Jo clapped her hands together. “That leaves the attic for me.”
“No!” Claire’s stern decree filled the house.
It did not slow Hank or Emma as they each headed for the foyer, Hank to take his dogs outside or Emma aimed for the stairway.
“You are not going up to the attic, Aunt Sammie,” Claire went on.
“Someone has to. Remember how much you girls loved it up there? It’s a kid magnet, that place, with all the stuff, that old tiny winding servant’s stairway from the kitchen all the way up to—”
“The window!” Emma cried.
Her mind filled with the memory of sneaking up the back staircase past the second floor where all the bedrooms were and into the attic. She and Claire used to play hide-and-seek up there, then sit for hours on the sills of the old dormer windows and gaze out on the landscape and share their dreams of flying away. Since they didn’t have screens Aunt Sammie had nailed them shut, but in later years as teens the sisters had pried at least one of them open so that they could climb out onto the roof and talk under the stars.
“I’m starting in the attic,” Emma called over her shoulder to Claire only to round the top of the main stairway and come face-to-face with her sister, panting from having dashed up the back way.
“I’m coming with you,” Claire said.
“You don’t…”
“We’ll have plenty of time to argue later.” Claire nabbed Emma’s arm. And before Emma could make it clear that she had not come to Gall Rive to stay, Claire dragged her sister toward the back stairs. “Let’s find Ruth.”
The stairs groaned under the weight of the four sets of feet running upward. As they neared the open doorway to the attic, a soft breeze wafting from above made Emma’s heart leap into her throat. “Ruth? Ruthie, are you up there?”
“I can see the boo-gun-veel-ya from here.” The squawk of wood against wood, window frame against window casing underscored the strange claim.
“Ruth! Get away from that window.” Emma pushed ahead of her sister and burst into the dusty old wood-framed attic to find Ruth trying to pry the old window open more than a few inches.
“I can see it!” Her tutu flounced as she pressed one finger to the glass and twisted her upper body around to face the doorway. “I can see the boo-gun-veel-ya from here. Can we go visit it?”
“Visit?” Emma hurried to the window and scooped up her child. “You don’t—”
