“So why did you come back?” he asked. “At Christmas, too. There must be a hundred better places to spend the holidays.”
She launched into a story about her cousin Olivia’s bridal quilt, her own desire to get away for a while and work on her part of it in peace, and a desire to see if she might find some baby quilts or clothing of Eric’s in the Grants’ attic.
She finished up on that note. “If I was going to do this, I wanted to do it right. I thought the quilt would be that much more special if we had some of Eric’s childhood quilted into it, too. Lydia says there are boxes in their attic I can go through. Once I’m settled I’m supposed to call her about a key. Then I’ll go through them until I find what I’m looking for.”
“I have the key. I look after the Grants’ house, too.”
Jo leaned back. “Well, you’re a busy boy, aren’t you? Nothing to do in the vineyard this time of year?”
“I have a bargain with the owners. For a nominal fee I watch their houses in winter, and in the fall they come to my place and pick grapes. We make quite a party out of it.”
“You don’t have machines for that?”
“We harvest the juice grapes by machine, but these are more fragile. Vignoles grapes for wine.”
“I always loved seeing all those acres of grapes.”
“And eating them. The summer we met.”
She had been smiling, but that died now. “You know, Pacific time or not, I really am wiped.”
He had been dismissed, so he stood. “The snow’s going to continue through the night. You have some staples in the pantry, a little flour, sugar, salt, that sort of thing, along with some canned soup. But not a lot else. It might be some time before you can shop. I’d ration.”
“Uncle Albert said somebody plows the driveway after it snows.”
“That would be me. But not until the snow stops long enough for it to make sense.”
She uncurled her legs and gracefully rose to follow him to the door. “Thank you for the fire and coffee.” She stuck out her hand.
Surprised, he took it, but the contact was brief. “What are old friends for?”
“I guess we were friends, weren’t we?”
“Maybe we can be again.”
When she didn’t respond he smiled, as if the lack didn’t matter, as if friendship went without saying when, of course, it was probably impossible.
More things left unsaid, their mutual talent.
“Be sure to close the doors on the fireplace before you go to bed,” he said. “The chimney’s just been cleaned, so it’s safe enough, but that’s a hot fire. You don’t want any sparks popping into the room.”
“Thanks, I have a fireplace in my condo.”
“Then you’re an expert.”
She tilted her head. “At lots of things. I’ve been taking care of myself for a very long time.” She paused. “But thank you for taking care of me tonight. I’m not sure where I would be right now if you hadn’t come along.”
He considered those parting words on his way home. She had been talking about tonight and where she would have been without his help. But Jo was a survivor. She would have found a way to keep from freezing even if she’d been forced to dig out the whole driveway to get back on the road.
Now he wondered where she would be if he had never come along at all, if he had never met her the summer she turned sixteen, if they hadn’t made a thousand plans together, all canceled summarily four years later. Had she stopped trusting men after that? Was that why she’d never married? Had she stopped coming to Hollymeade because she had been afraid of running into him? How many choices had she made that stemmed from their past?
How many had he made?
He found himself at the Grants’ house instead of his own. It was more than six miles from Ryan Vineyards, so he hadn’t simply made a wrong turn. No, the wrong turn had come a long time ago. Now there was no telling where this one might lead.
He jumped down and went through his ring of keys on the way to the front door. Inside he took the steps upstairs and then those to the attic two at a time. The Grant house wasn’t as large or lovely as Hollymeade, but it was a pretty Colonial with banks of windows looking over the water and decks all around, well cared for and loved.
Unlike Hollymeade this house wasn’t heated in the winter, and right now the inside temperature was as cold as the outside. He kept his gloves on until he had reached his destination, a pile of boxes in the front. He knew right where they were because he had helped Eric’s father move them to this spot. He’d been impressed at how carefully each one had been labeled, in case the contents were ever needed again.
He spotted the one he was looking for and began to stack the rest along the side until he could get to it.
“Eric’s baby things.” He grimaced at the label and shook his head, but not at the words, at himself for thinking this was a good idea.
He almost left it where it was, but in the end, he carried it across the attic to a pile of boxes that hadn’t yet been sorted, a pile Lydia Grant was probably making her way through each summer.
When he left the house, the box with Eric’s baby things was stored in the very back of the Grants’ attic, six down on an unmarked pile, the label turned toward the wall. It was the least likely place anyone would look for it.
It might buy him the time he needed to get to know Jo again.
CHAPTER THREE
HOLLYMEADE STILL LOOKED much the same. After a breakfast of cold cereal Jo wandered the rooms, a cup of tea from the only tea bag in the house warming her hands. Some things had changed, though. The walls in the living area were a different color now, a silvery sage, and the sofas were new. The armchairs, though? Those she remembered from afternoons curled up with Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree or Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, even if the chairs now wore slipcovers.
The kitchen had newer appliances, and someone must have decided that updated laminate countertops were a worthwhile investment. But the pot rack with its copper-bottomed saucepans still hung near the stove. And while the curtains had to be new, they mimicked the ones she remembered, gauzy white and tied back to let in the light.
She was home.
Outside the snow continued, and now it was nearly as high as the windows. Of course there must have been snow on the ground already. Western New York was famous for the stuff. Jo couldn’t believe she had gambled on reaching the grocery store today. But there would be no road trip, not until the skies cleared. While she was still in bed she’d heard a plow on the main road, but she doubted it was easy to travel.
Before breakfast she had inventoried the pantry shelves, hoping Brody had exaggerated, but embellishing wasn’t his style. She could heat a can of chicken noodle soup for lunch, snack
