Excerpt One | Excerpt Three

Sometimes, for a smart girl, she was just too stupid to live.

Fiona eased her purple Neon into the parking space behind Dan and Casey DeCristo's tiny brick house and killed the engine.

"Damn it!" she shouted, pounding her palms on the steering wheel. "Damn it, damn it! You knew if you came back to live in Larkin you were bound to run into your parents!"

On the drive from California to Kansas, Fiona had brooded over that first meeting for miles on end. What she ought to do, she'd told herself, was drive directly to her parents' house and announce that she'd come home to Larkin in disgrace. But she hadn't been brave enough to do that.

Fee thought about stopping on her way into town at the Holding Company, the stuffed animal business her mother had founded when Fee went into kindergarten. Once the women who'd been doting on Fee since she was five years old had welcomed her back, what choice would her mother have except to greet her with open arms?

Since she hadn't had the courage to do that either, Fee had been considering asking Casey invite Avery over for coffee. That way, at least, she would have been able to confront her mother for the first time in private.

Fiona hadn't dared to think what it might be like to confront her father.

She wrapped her hands around the steering wheel and shook it hard. Since she'd made this mess, she should have taken responsibility for arranging a first meeting with her parents. It might not have been comfortable, but at least it would have been on her own terms.

Instead she'd glanced up from her register at the Food-4-Less and found them staring at her from the next checkout. Her heart had leaped so hard against her breastbone Fee thought it might pop the snaps down the front on her scum-green smock.

Fee raised her fist to her chest and tried to rub away that lingering tightness.

Since her parents almost always shopped at the Food-4-Less in town, she thought she'd be safe taking a job at the store out by the highway. Yet there they'd been, right in the middle of the Sunday afternoon rush: her mother whey-faced and swaying on her feet and her father glaring as if he intended to incinerate her on the spot.

In that instant, Fee had been shocked not just at the sight of them, but by the new creases that stood out around her mother's eyes like wrinkles in a bed sheet. The open hostility in her father's face had forced her back a step, and she wondered if he was more angry with her for what she'd done, or how it had effected her mother.

It's all my fault, Fee conceded, her conscience jabbing her. She'd deliberately snatched up the chance to get away, chosen love and adventure over what she realized even then was the wiser choice. Knowing the things she and her parents had said to each other that last night and remembering the way she'd left, Fee hadn't wanted all that much contact. So she'd fallen silent, making her mother worry and her father . . .

God only knows what her father thought.

Fiona huffed out a shaky breath and scrubbed at her eyes. She climbed out of the car and darted across the backyard to the DeCristo's side door. As Fee jerked it open, Casey appeared on the landing trailed by her sturdy two-year-old son. Casey had on a frilly lavender sundress in deference to the lingering mid-September heat and had curled her hair.

Guilt prodded Fee hard. She'd forgotten she promised to babysit for Casey and Dan tonight. Now she was late and had wasted their precious time together.

"I'm sorry," she apologized hastily. "I didn't mean to hold you and Dan up."

"Not a problem," Casey assured her and gathered Derek up in her arms.

Fee followed Casey and her toddler into the hall, then headed directly for the bedroom at the back of the house. It was barely large enough to accommodate the low toddler's bed and the battered maple crib set up in the corner. Still, the creamy yellow walls and bright strip of Winnie the Pooh wallpaper that banded the waist of the room gave the place a bright, whimsical feeling.

Fee crossed to the crib and looked down at the baby asleep inside. The pink and white perfection of those tiny features caught her by surprise, just like the flood of tenderness did.

"So how are you, kid?" she whispered as she smoothed a fluff of strawberry blonde hair back from the child's flushed face. She bent nearer, breathing deep of the milk-and-baby-powder scent and was overwhelmed by possessiveness.

This was her daughter, her love, her delight—and her most terrifying responsibility. If Fiona had any second thoughts about coming back to Larkin, watching her daughter sleep silenced them.

Casey spoke from the doorway. "I just put Samantha down for her nap. Shall I pour us some coffee?"

"You're dressed to go out," Fiona hedged, not sure she wanted to talk to anyone right now.

"Dan's still in the shower," Casey answered and turned to go.

Fiona heard Casey's sandals clatter down the uncarpeted hall as she headed for the kitchen, but Fee stayed where she was, hovering over Samantha's crib a few minutes longer.

When she heard the plumbing in the upstairs bathroom yowl signaling that Dan had turned off the water, Fiona straightened. If she was going to talk to anyone about seeing her parents, Casey was the only one who'd understand.

Her coffee was poured and perfectly doctored with sugar and cream when Fee took her usual chair at the brightly painted kitchen table. She fortified herself with a good long swallow of coffee, then made her announcement.

"My parents showed up at the Food-4-Less."

"I guessed that," Casey answered glancing at Fee across the rim of her cup. "What happened?"

"I was working checkout." Fiona's belly fluttered with the memory. "When I glanced up, my mom and dad were standing at the next register."

Casey bent to where Derek was building with blocks and settled one with red roosters on the top of the tower. "What did they do when they saw you?" "We stared at each for about a week and a half," she answered. The moment spooled out before her eyes: her mother's pallor, the set of her father's jaw, the way Loretta McGee had turned and looked at her. "Then my father took Mom's arm and bustled her out of the store as if he was afraid she'd be contaminated by breathing the same air as me."

"So your mother didn't speak to you?"

"Not a word." Fee shook her head. "She was with my father."

As if that explained everything.

"Did your dad say anything?"

Fee's laugh was bitter. "My dad wouldn't give me the time of day if he were Big Ben."

"Well," Casey inclined her head. "That explains why your mom's called here four times in the last hour and a half."

"She what?" Fee's mouth went dry as the Sahara.

"I was bathing Samantha the first time she called, and since then I've let the machine pick up."

The thought of having to actually talk to her mother made Fee go cold and queasy. What in God's name could she say to her? How could she explain everything that had happened since she left Larkin or apologize for all the months of silence?

Fee sagged back into her chair and swiped at her mouth. "Maybe coming back to Larkin was a mistake. Maybe I should have tried harder to make things work in LA. I really did love Jared . . ."

"And Jared loved you," Casey assured her. "But, Fee, sometimes even people who love each other aren't meant to be together. Sometimes they find each other in the wrong place or at the wrong time."

Fee had done everything she could think of before she left LA trying to find a way to stay with Jared.

"You did your best to make things work." Casey said gently, leaning forward to lay a hand on Fee's arm. "You tried and Jared tried. But in the end, you did what you had to do. You came home for Samantha's sake." Fee hated admitting how much she needed reassurance. How could Casey be so certain that what Fee was doing was right? Did that kind of confidence came from being three years older, from being mature and settled, from having already taken on the responsibilities of a husband and child?

Or maybe that kind of certainty came from not having screwed up your life before your twenty-first birthday.

Casey gave Fee's arm a final pat, then bent to lift Derek onto her lap.

"I know it must have been was a shock seeing your parents like that, but it sounds as if it was a bigger one for them. I can hardly believe no one told them you'd come back to Larkin."

"I haven't exactly been hiding out."

But that wasn't strictly true. Fee had only seen the people she needed to see to get readmitted to the university and arrange for financial aid. She'd only talked to the grad student who'd sublet her her seedy apartment, and the manager at the Food-4-Less when she applied for her job.

"Answer the phone when your mom calls again," Casey urged her. "She needs to know you're all right. She needs to know about Samantha."

Fee nodded, more in acknowledgment than assent.

She hated having to admit how right her mother and her father had been about touring with Jared and the band. They'd tried to tell her how hard life was going to be playing one night stands. They'd warned her that leaving school was irresponsible, that it would undermine everything she'd ever wanted for herself. But midway through her junior year, she'd been restless, bored by the college routine, eager to be on her own. So she hadn't listened..

How was she going to confess the mistakes she'd made to her parents or acknowledge the consequences? She couldn't imagine how she'd ever find the courage to tell her mother about Samantha—because once she did, her mother would tell her father.

Dan DeCristo stepped into the kitchen doorway, his short, black hair gleaming wetly.

"So . . . " he said, grinning at his wife, "is my best girl ready for her big night on the town?"

It was easy to see why Casey had fallen in love with Dan. He was big and rangy and so handsome that in high school most of the girls blushed and stammered when he talked to them. He'd played center on the Larkin basketball team and had been recruited by both KU and K State, but that wasn't the life he wanted.

He'd stayed home instead, joined his family's restaurant supply company, and married Casey. Judging from the way they looked at each other after three years of marriage, Fee figured Casey and Dan were going to beat the statistics against high-school sweethearts staying together. Casey rose, plopped Derek in Fiona's lap, and turned to her husband. "Am I ready for dinner at Finelli's Pizza and a movie, you mean?"

"That's what passes for a night on the town in this burg," Dan said with a laugh. "Besides neither of us has eaten a meal that wasn't interrupted by spilled milk in weeks."

"Go," Fiona urged them and cuddled Derek in her arms.

Casey took a shawl and purse from the jumble of toys and keys and bills piled on the kitchen counter. "Derek goes to bed at eight o'clock," she said in her mom's-going-out-for-the-evening voice. "He can have animal crackers and juice before bed. But don't give him a great big glassful or we'll be changing the sheets at 2 A.M.."

"I know the drill," Fee assured her.

"You can call if you need me."

"I won't," Fee answered. "Now get out of here—and have a good time!"

Dan took his wife's hand and the smile Casey gave him in return would have lit up a coal mine.

Fiona followed them down the hall to the front of the house and stood at the screen door so Derek could wave "bye-bye" to his parents.

She and Derek had barely gotten back to the kitchen when the phone rang. The sound rippled through Fee like an electric current. She gathered the toddler more tightly in her arms and stood waiting for the answering machine to pick up the call. That took three more rings.

Fee stood motionless as her mother spoke. "Casey, hello."

The sound of her mother's voice sliced through Fiona, opening a raw, weeping wound.

"This is Avery Montgomery again."

Was there an unusual hesitancy in her mother's voice? Was it tinged with the same uncertainty and reluctance Fee was feeling?

"I—I'd appreciate it if you'd call me back as soon as you have a chance."

There was a pause, a moment when Fee could hear her mother reordering her priorities. Or maybe abandoning her pride.

"I—I saw Fee at the grocery store this afternoon," she explained, and Fee could tell by the waver in her tone that she was more upset than she wanted to let on. "I know she's back in Larkin, and I'm sure you can tell me how to get in touch with her. So would you call me, Casey, please? I need to talk to Fee. I know you understand now that you're a mother just how important that is to me."

It was a plea that would have melted Casey's heart. A plea Fiona appreciated on a level she could never have understood before. She acknowledged that her own heart would be broken if anything ever came between her and Samantha.

Fiona shifted Derek onto her hip and reached for the receiver, but before she could close her hand around it, fear froze her where she stood. What could she say to her mother, once she picked up the phone? How could she account for the life she'd lived these last eighteen months? Where would she find the words to tell her mom about Samantha?

And what would her mother say once she had?

"Well, then, Casey," Avery ended the pause that had been filled with fruitless expectation and hope. "I'll expect to hear from you tonight no matter how late it is when you get home."

Her mother broke the connection, and Fee stood for a very long time with her palm poised above the telephone. Finally, she clenched her fingers into a fist and drew it close against her body.