or help. I have to do this.”
“And what about me?” she demanded, her expression changing, with a theatrical little sniff, from demanding matriarch to beleaguered victim. “I’m just an old woman trying to hold a volatile family together. And now there’s some problem with a customer and Killian may have to go back to England. Sophie wants to take Sawyer to Vermont….”
Campbell stifled a laugh, but withholding a smile over her performance was too much to ask. “Maman,” he said, taking hold of her shoulders, “you will never be old, and the rest of you Abbotts are so tightly knit nothing will ever drive you apart. You can wear that pout all you want, but you’ll never convince anyone, certainly not me, that you’re just a poor little widow woman.”
She punched him in the arm. “You would leave China at a time when she struggles to know who she is?”
He wondered if his mother had heard anything he’d said. “She doesn’t like me. When she finds Janet, they can exchange boxes, and she might—”
Chloe’s eyes darkened. “When she read the disappointing news,” she pointed out, “she ran into your arms.”
He remembered that moment. Had, in fact, thought about it much of the night and didn’t know what to make of it.
“I was nearby.”
“She ignored me and Cordie, who were right beside her, to get to you.”
That was true. She had. When he didn’t know what to say to that, his mother took advantage of his silence and went on, “Killian and Sawyer tell me that though the two of you quarreled all the time, you managed to work well together. Like true siblings.”
“Mom, the test just proved that we’re not brother and sister. And just as she has to find her identity, I have to find mine.”
“You know you’re an Abbott.”
“I know my name, Mother. I know my parents and the whole line of my ancestry back to Thomas and Abigail who came over on the Mayflower. What I don’t know is what I’m capable of. Someone’s always trying to protect me from it, or do it for me.”
“That isn’t true! You think you haven’t contributed to a project unless you’ve done it entirely on your own. You’re just like your grandfather Marceau, who tilled fifty acres in Provence all by himself for forty years and finally died of a heart attack.”
Campbell frowned at her. “But he did it for forty years.”
“Slowly. Had he been willing to pay a little help, he’d have had more time to spend with your grandmother, more time to spend with his children.”
“Perhaps he loved all of you very much, but felt compelled to work the soil.”
The blue silk flew up again as she expressed her exasperation. “Very well. I’m through trying to persuade you. You’ll do as you wish just as you’ve always done. But mark my words—the day will come when what you want will have to come second, and with no experience at putting yourself second, you might not know what to do and lose everything.”
“Everything?” His eyebrows rose.
“A woman. Love.”
“I have a lot to do before I get serious about a woman.”
She smiled at him and shook her head at the same time, negating whatever happy message had been in the smile. “In some ways, you are the most talented of my children. Killian is brilliant in business, and Sawyer can make money dance. But you know so much about so many things, and yet you know so little about yourself.”
“That’s why I’m going away,” he said emphatically, thrilled to finally be able to make his point.
She sighed and shook her head again, as though he was a particularly thickheaded child. “You don’t even know where to find yourself.”
That cryptic message delivered, she shooed him toward the door. “Go. Cordie and Sophie and I are going shopping for wedding dresses.” At the door, she caught his arm. “You will find time to come home for your brother’s wedding?”
He remembered Sophie saying something about Labor Day nuptials. “I will.”
“Good. If all goes well, Abigail will be home for it, too. Perhaps you can stay long enough to apologize for not letting her play with your dump truck.” She pushed him out into the hall and closed the door on him.
He let his forehead fall against it. This family was hopeless. They loved you with a loyalty that was ferocious, but if you didn’t adhere completely to the family line, you were badgered until you came “to your senses.”
He headed for the stairs, intending to grab something to eat in the kitchen and head for the orchard. Maybe the physical labor of apple-picking would help clear his head.
He found Cordie and Sophie at the table in the kitchen poring over a baby-furniture catalog. Kezia stood behind them. All three looked up expectantly as he walked in.
Dressed for shopping in the city, his brothers’ ladies were quite a picture. There had always been women around the house, but with Cordie and Sophie, Shepherd’s Knoll had a whole new atmosphere, one that included feminine giggling, too-loud rhythm and blues on the sound system, and more trails of perfume.
“Did she talk you into staying?” Sophie asked hopefully.
“He has to go,” Cordie replied before he could, the words intended to convey support for his stand on self-discovery. But he knew she wanted him to stay as much as Killian did. “He needs more scope than we provide,” she went on with a graceful wave of her hand. “Life on a bigger canvas, more depth and drama…”
He crossed to the table, caught the hand with which she gestured and kissed her knuckles. “There is no more drama anywhere, Cordelia,” he said, “than that which you provide.” She’d been a model, done marketing for her father’s furniture-manufacturing company, and buying for Abbott Mills. She was red-haired and unflaggingly cheerful, and had driven Killian to distraction.
But now, with twins on the way, she and Killian were ecstatically happy.
“Why are you looking at baby furniture?” he asked, going to the refrigerator. “I thought you were wedding-dress shopping.”
“We’re going to do both.”
He wondered why China wasn’t with them. The women had done a lot together since Cordie and Killian had come home from Europe, where they’d had a second honeymoon and checked on the Abbott Mills London office.
“We invited China,” Sophie said, “but she insisted she had work to do.”
“I think she’s going to try to keep her distance until her sister comes.” Cordie weighed in with that opinion. “She thinks because she isn’t an Abbott, she’s lost the right to hang around with us. You could explain to her that that isn’t true.”
He turned away from the open refrigerator. “Why don’t you explain it to her? You’re the ones she isn’t hanging around with.”
“Whose arms did she run into when she learned
