Chapter Three
Linnea locked the door of the center behind her, after triple-checking that the alarm had been set. Her mind hadn’t exactly been focused on work over the last thirty minutes.
Of all the cider stores in Marietta, he had to walk into mine.
It was most unfair. Nat Hathaway hadn’t changed at all in the last decade. Still tall and lean, the same blond hair flopping boyishly over his forehead, the same laughing blue eyes, the same wicked smile. Once that smile had been the only thing that had ever deviated Linnea from her duty. Not that she had ever let anyone know it. Fooling herself that if they kept their relationship secret she somehow maintained some control. Over her life, over her feelings for him.
Of course she had been fooling herself. Nat had set the pattern. After all, the next blond, handsome guy she’d fallen for she’d ending up marrying. “Damn you, Logan,” she whispered, looking over at the Copper Mountain. “It’s Thanksgiving. You should be here.” But there was little heat in her words, not anymore. Just weary acceptance. Each holiday, each special day was a little easier once they were no longer the first without him. She could barely remember Thanksgiving two years ago, still numb with early widowhood, surrounded by Logan’s grieving family, his absence the ghost at the feast.
It was such a cliché that time healed. But it was a cliché for a reason. She still missed Logan, of course she did, wished he could be there to watch their daughters grow up, to share the burdens of parenting and adulthood, but she no longer felt his absence so acutely, her grief was no longer constantly with her, especially now she was back in Marietta, a place where her memories of him were few and far between. Another point in Marietta’s favor.
It was a short walk, through the perfectly straight rows of fruit trees, to her parents’ house right on the edge of the orchard. Linnea paused as she reached the small arched bridge which ran over the shallow stream separating the house and yard from the orchard. She’d never expected to live in this house again and yet somehow it had never stopped being home. Painted white with a deep veranda running right round the house, a swing hanging from the old apple tree in the garden, a small wooden house perched high in the same tree, it had been a picture-perfect place to grow up in. Now it was a picture-perfect home for her girls to grow up in.
Linnea crossed over the bridge and followed the path around the house to the back. She clambered up the steps and unlatched the back door which led into the laundry and general store room. “Hello,” she called and waited for the return greetings.
No answer.
Slipping her shoes off, she crossed the room and entered the kitchen. Nothing about the homely kitchen had changed since she’d left for Yale. The same cream wooden cabinets, the same tiled floor, the same blinds at the window. Only the photos had changed; once the memo boards had been filled with pictures of Linnea. Linnea in her graduation gown, in her band uniform, her track uniform, at the piano. Always achieving, always smiling. A few photos of the three of them, Vika and Andreas’s Swedish roots clear in their clean-cut blond looks, Linnea shorter, darker. She’d never minded being adopted, she had just wished so many times it wasn’t so obvious.
Now the photos were a mixture of the girls’ baby photos, more recent pictures, her wedding photo. She always got a jolt when she saw it, she was so young, not even twenty. So unformed.
This was the first Thanksgiving she had spent in Marietta since she was eighteen. Then the kitchen would have been full of the rich smells of roasting turkey, fried yams and baking pies, the house filled with the chattering of various Olsens and Wallins, her mother’s family. But at some point in the last decade her father had started to open the store on Thanksgiving morning and her parents had accepted invitations to other people’s houses for Thanksgiving. The old guilt pulsed away. Linnea had always spent Thanksgiving with Logan’s family in their mansion by the Connecticut River. Spent Christmas there too, only returning to Marietta for a week every summer. It hadn’t been enough. All Vika had wanted was a large family to take care of, but it had never happened. They just had Linnea, and she had to make sure she was enough, that she filled the void.
As if Linnea’s thoughts summoned her, Vika walked into the kitchen, a smile broadening her high-cheekboned face as she caught sight of her daughter. “Linnea, darling, you’re back. How was it?” Vika Olsen had been fond of her son-in-law, and truly heartbroken at the tragedy that had befallen her daughter and granddaughters, but she couldn’t hide her happiness that her only daughter had finally returned home, her granddaughters were now in the same house, that she saw them daily not just a couple of times a year.
“Hi, Mom.” Linnea walked over to her mother and leaned against her, inhaling that coming-home scent; cinnamon and sugar and the fresh citrusy scent of her mother’s shampoo. As always, she had to reach up, as if she were still a little girl, Vika Olsen was a slim, statuesque five eleven; at barely five four Linnea was a good half a foot shorter than her mother. Their height wasn’t the only difference. Vika’s golden hair had faded to a stylish ash blonde, still straight and fine, cut in a becomingly sleek bob, her eyes were as piercing and blue as ever. Everyone agreed that Vika Olsen was a fine-looking woman; as a small child, Linnea had always felt their physical difference keenly, her own dark eyes and hair, her olive skin marking her as different. The visual proof that she didn’t quite belong, no matter how many times they told her how special she was, that she was their chosen one.
If she’d looked more like her adoptive parents, would she have felt less of a pressure to excel at everything? Less of a need to prove herself worthy? A need she had never quite shaken. “Good, I think. I won’t know the year on year figures until the weekend, but it seemed busy. How’s Dad?”
Vika sighed. “Refusing to rest, so I took him and the girls over to Pernilla’s early. I thought if he could sit in the den with Nils and watch the game he wouldn’t be fretting about not being at the store to help you.”
“Why didn’t you stay? You could have messaged me to meet you there?”
“I didn’t want you to have to drive yourself over on your own. Besides, you might want a glass of wine or two, in which case we only need one car. You deserve to relax after all the work you’ve put in this week.”
Linnea squeezed her mother gratefully. “Thank you, but I agreed to go over to the Crooked Corner open house later so I’ll hold back on the wine. You and Dad are very welcome too,” she added.
“Your dad won’t admit it, but he’ll be tired after dinner. Give my regards to Patty and Priscilla and tell them thanks, but not this year. Did they invite you when they collected their cider? It’s very kind of them.”
“Lacey asked me, she and her dad came to buy trees. Nat came in to the store to get the cider,” she added in as off-hand a voice as she could manage, sure her voice betrayed her.
“Nat Hathaway is in town?”
Linnea affected not to notice the sharp glance her mother shot her way. Vika had always suspected there was more to Linnea and Nat’s friendship than Linnea had ever let on.
“It is Thanksgiving, even travelers wind up home at this time of year. Okay. Let me get changed and I’ll be right with you. We don’t want hold Pernilla up, and you know she won’t start without us.” Linnea had no idea why her cheeks were hot, her stomach squirming, just like when she was a child and caught up in some mischief.
All she knew was that she didn’t want to discuss Nat with her mother, or to admit to herself just how discombobulated she felt knowing he was back in town.
At least it wasn’t for long. The longest Nat had ever spent in one place was right here in Marietta when he had lived with his great-aunts at Crooked Corner for senior year, but even then his blue eyes had been fixed firmly on the horizon. That was why she had kept her heart in check back then, not allowing herself to fall too hard for the boy with the guitar and the huge ambition.
Now he had achieved that ambition, he still belonged out on the open road—and her priorities were right here in Marietta.