Page 164

He finished off his coffee, rinsed out his mug.

“Okay, gang, we’re going for a ride.”

Knowing cats, he picked Pye up in case she decided to make herself scarce, because cat.

Outside, the dogs jumped—or in Yoda’s case, more clambered—into the back seat of his truck. The cat settled down to curl in the front. He glanced back, saw the shadow move in the library window.

He thought, what the hell, and waved.

He half hoped the window would open, that Clover would once again lean out. But the answering wave struck him as too hesitant and shy for Clover.

As he drove away, the manor fell silent, like a breath caught and held.

Then, from the Gold Room, came a peal of wild, triumphant laughter.

Chapter Twenty-two

As she hit Boston traffic, Sonya adjusted her mindset and her behind-the-wheel strategy.

And added that to her list of reasons she didn’t miss the city where she’d been born and raised as much as she’d expected to.

Oh, there were things she missed, she admitted. Her mother hit number one with no competition. But she missed the Charles River, the botanical gardens, the Boston Common. No more impulse attendance at Fenway, or trips to her favorite restaurants, cafés, and shopping haunts.

But not, excepting her mother, as much as she’d expected when she’d made the trip in reverse in the deep freeze of winter.

She’d always loved the house where she’d grown up, and every memory inside it. She’d loved her condo, her neighborhood, but she’d always considered that a temporary stopping point on the way to finding her forever home.

But being back, she realized Boston had been another stopping point. An important one, a foundational one, but she’d moved on from it.

And didn’t regret it.

“How does it feel?” she asked Cleo.

“Like we’re visitors. Just the way I feel when I go back to Lafayette. I loved it there, I loved it here. But now? A visitor. You?”

“I wondered, and maybe I worried and that’s why I haven’t comeback until now. But I feel just the same way. If all this hadn’t happened, I think I’d have been happy here. But it did, and now I wouldn’t.”

She handled the traffic—it had been a few months, but she’d had years of practice—and finally slipped out of it and into the leafy neighborhood of her childhood.

Dogwoods bloomed, tulips popped, pink blossoms dressed ornamental cherry trees.

“We’ll see this at home in another week or two,” Cleo predicted.

At home, Sonya thought, in the manor by the sea.

Yes, they were visitors here now.

But there was the sweet, two-story house where she’d grown up, with the red maple leafing out in the little front yard, and her mother’s car in the drive.

That would be, always, home, too.

“I told her she didn’t have to take the day off.”

“And you thought she wouldn’t?”

Sonya shook her head as she pulled in behind her mother’s car. “I knew she would. I’m so glad she did.”

Even as she said it, Winter rushed out of the house.