Just the same, Clare had never once coaxed her to come back and had never offered a mother’s absolution for what had happened. This hurt Kelsey but she struggled to be realistic. How could she expect her mother to be stronger than herself? Kelsey never broached the idea of returning either. And when they did on rare occasions speak of the accident, they still fed off each other’s guilt. Having lost Kelsey’s father, Paul, to a brain aneurism when Kelsey was nearly ten, they both fully understood the gaping hole that death left in a family.
On the other hand, they’d always been a team because of his death, keeping the café up and running together. Kelsey missed the close bond they’d once shared and wanted it back.
Later that evening, back at her dinky downtown condo on Monroe Avenue, Kelsey sat at the table in her nook with her new set of colored pens and an assortment of stationery. Also in front of her was the acceptance form from the reunion flyer, filled out and clipped along the dotted line.
With a flourish she stuffed the form, a cheery note and a check for the fifty-dollar fee into an envelope addressed to the reunion coordinator, her closest childhood friend, Sarah Yates. Done! No turning back now. She was homeward bound.
Marta’s efforts had given her the final nudge she’d needed. The past decade in Philadelphia had indeed been a disappointment, nothing like her original dreams of teaching alongside Sarah at the local elementary school, then marriage and kids. Her inability to rise above those old hometown hurts had kept her emotionally frozen.
Perhaps the only way to move forward was to first take the trip back.
On many levels the very idea was scary, preposterous. Would anyone welcome her? To make this work, she had to believe they would. That even if they couldn’t forget what had happened, they’d be willing to forgive.
Then with any luck, maybe she could finally forgive herself.
She needed to let her mother know. Although it seemed most reasonable just to call, Kelsey knew that if she detected the tiniest bit of hesitation in Clare’s tone, she’d chicken out.
Picking up a pen with cheery orange ink, she held it over some bright floral-bordered paper, rehearsing aloud what she’d write.
“Dear Mom. It’s been awhile since you’ve visited Pennsylvania. Too long, really. Seems about time I came back to Wisconsin.
“Dear Mom, Guess what? Wonderful news. I’m coming home.”
With a sigh, she set pen to paper. “Dear Mom, Just want to prepare you. I’m returning home for the reunion….”
Chapter Two
Sheriff Ethan Taggert was still at the station when the emergency call came in from the Cutler mansion, so he responded in the squad car. With siren blaring and roof bar lights flashing, he tore down Cutler Trail doing close to eighty.
The trail had been named 150 years ago, when Thomas Cutler had bought a thousand acres along what had amounted to a bumpy narrow ditch. He’d built a house, made the ditch a road and started up a newspaper. The newspaper was the start of an empire that had soon grown to include several local businesses, including the bank, and had made the family a fortune.
Thomas Cutler had wasted no time advertising far and wide that Maple Junction, Wisconsin, was a quaint dairy town worth visiting by horseless carriage. There was toboggan racing in the winter, maple-syrup tapping in the spring, strawberry picking in the summer, and the corn harvest in the autumn, and each had spawned its own festival, not to mention a county fair and several horse shows.
And all were reported in the daily paper, the Cutler Express.
All looked quiet as Ethan wheeled through the estate’s huge steel gates and up the sweeping paved drive. The windows of the sprawling stone mansion were alight, glowing on all three levels.
He desperately hoped Lewis hadn’t had another heart attack….
Lewis had become a second father to Ethan ever since, as four-year-olds, he and Lewis’s son Bradley had enjoyed a weekly wrestle under the willow trees outside church each Sunday. With parents too busy with chores and errands, young kids in the small rural community didn’t get to play together too often, so he’d started to really look forward to Sundays.
In due time, after Ethan had mastered tying his own shoes, his mother had started to drop him off at the mansion for play dates. The boys had spent their time kicking a soccer ball, digging holes in search of treasure and wading through swampland to catch toads, all fuelled by piles of sandwiches.
Ethan’s bond with the Cutlers had only strengthened with time. Ethan’s dad traveled selling insurance, so it was Lewis who’d supported the boys at school, taken them to professional sporting events and had been on hand for nearly every milestone in their lives. Lewis had loved to push envelopes and pull strings for them. Some of that push-pull still went on. While Ethan was more than confident in his role as sheriff, it was Lewis who’d helped swing his election last year.
A uniformed maid pulled open the heavy front door before Ethan could get his hand around the brass handle. It was the eldest Parker daughter, Carol, who’d dropped out of UW–Madison in midterm to rethink her future. Ethan had dated her on occasion and had found her a bit boring. Just the same, he hoped they would always be friends. She was just the friend he needed tonight. Carol had been working for the Cutlers for four months and knew enough about household politics to clue him in.
“Faster than a speeding bullet tonight, aren’t ya?” she greeted coyly.
Brushing by her, Ethan hurried into the dim cavernous foyer, glancing up the wide staircase. “Where is he, Carol? Up with the doc?”
“Nope. Right in there.” She calmly tipped her curly orange head left, toward the study.
“Did he collapse? What happened?”
Carol reached to stroke some short brown strands of hair from his forehead in a gesture he thought far too intimate. “I’m not sure.”
He gave her shoulders a mild shake, hoping to rattle her composure. “Did anybody call an ambulance?”
Slowly and with a mysterious smile that seemed to suggest she was enjoying his touch, she replied, “Nobody else was called. You’re all he wants.”
Confused, Ethan strode off through the walnut door into the spacious den he knew was Lewis Cutler’s comfort room. It was where he came to plot, relax, dream. And brood. Ethan suspected the latter was true tonight as he found Lewis seated in his favorite leather recliner, accepting a snifter of brandy from his wife, Bailey. Judging by the filmy glass and Cutler’s equally filmy eyes, it was likely a refill.
“Finally, Ethan!”
Ethan was a bit startled to discover a fully functioning Lewis. Carol’s lack of urgency was suddenly more understandable.
“What exactly is the matter here, Lew?”
Lewis leaned forward in his chair. “Have you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“The news. The horrible news.”
Ethan appealed to Bailey. In her blue satin lounging pajamas, a paperback and eyeglasses clutched in one hand, she appeared to have been abruptly summoned, too. Now, unseen by Lewis, whose blood pressure could stand nothing but her utter faith and devotion, she stared off into space with strained patience.
“Leave us, Bailey,” Lewis directed, a bit more gently. “You needn’t be concerned with this.”
Bailey hated the dismissal. She frowned and opened her mouth, but then as was expected, closed it again. Holding herself like a model, she exited obediently and Ethan was struck, not for the first time, how beautiful the fiftyish platinum blonde was. Their son Brad had favored her and had