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Chapter One

C laire stared at the ramshackle old farmhouse. In her memories, it was well taken care of—freshly painted, pristine white, with roses blooming around the bottom, vines climbing up the trellis, and more flowers hanging in glorious displays from baskets on the front porch.

In reality, the paint was chipping, the trellis was broken, weeds grew higher than flowers in the flower beds, and the baskets that hung on chains on the front porch held dried stems from last year.

They reminded her a lot of how her life felt. Funny, she’d never really related to a hanging basket before.

“Mom? Why are we just sitting here? Can we get out?” Dan, her ten-year-old, spoke from the back seat, startling her. She’d been sitting there staring. Interesting how memory had a tendency to gloss over things.

Sometimes her memories made things seem worse than they were, but most of the time, the bad faded and just the good things remained.

After a year of having her husband walk out, she remembered more of the good things than the bad. In fact, she’d taken to writing the bad things down so she could remember why she didn’t want to go back to him. The fact that he was a liar and a cheat being numbers one and two.

“Yes, you can get out. We’ll go greet Grandma first, and then we’ll carry our things in from the car. The moving van should be here tomorrow with everything else.”

She hadn’t quite had the nerve to rent a U-Haul. So their beds, their dressers, and anything else she felt she needed had been left for the movers to pack.

It had been harder than she’d thought to move out of the home she’d made with her husband and children. Much harder than she’d expected.

“Are you getting out, Mom?” Lana, her thirteen-year-old, spoke up from the back seat, with traces of fear and uncertainty in her voice.

At thirteen, she was at a delicate age—that transition between childhood and adulthood—and Claire figured there really wasn’t a worse time for a child to go through a divorce and a move, having their whole world upended the way Lana’s had been.

She figured Lana was probably going to be scarred for life, but what could Claire do about it?

She wasn’t the one who had cheated. She wasn’t the one who had left, even though she probably should have after she found out.

There had been fights and tears and therapy, and more fights and more tears and a lot more therapy, which her husband had slipped and slid his way through. He’d charmed the therapist, and Claire found out later he was having an affair with her too.

She shook those thoughts off. She could lose herself for hours ruminating about how terrible her ex had been.

All she had to do was tell people, and they would agree with her.

But it didn’t solve the problem she found herself in—alone with two children on the cusp of their teenage years and a husband who was an absolute jerk in all ways except that he did pay his child support and alimony.

She could be grateful for little things.

He’d apologized multiple times too, but that didn’t change the fact that he didn’t seem to be able to be faithful to one woman. And that was a prerequisite for them getting back together.

She’d given up on that idea.

“Yes, I’m getting out. I was just thinking about how I remember this place from when I was a little girl. There were flowers everywhere, and…it looks like Grandma ne eds some help.”

“I hope I don’t have to work in the garden,” Lana said, sounding peevish.

Funny how she could go from insecure and sounding like she needed her mother’s arm around her to sounding like the most rebellious of rebellious teenagers. She supposed that came with being thirteen.

“All right. It has been noted that Lana doesn’t want to work in the garden, even though she will be required to do whatever work is expected of her,” Claire said, trying to sound kind yet firm at the same time.

It was something she wasn’t very good at.

She was much more of a pushover than a disciplinarian.

The children had figured that out long ago, and Claire had required herself to become almost a boot camp instructor in order to get her children to do what she wanted them to do.

She couldn’t be easygoing and lackadaisical like she wanted to be, not if she expected her kids to obey.

“We don’t have to work today though, do we, Mom?” Dan whined in a tone he had perfected during the last ten years. As the youngest, he might have been a little bit spoiled, especially since his dad had always wanted a son. When Dan came along, there wasn’t anything Ted wouldn’t do for him.

Except stay faithful to his mother.

“Let’s go see Grandma, and then we’ll figure out what we’re doing for the rest of the day. But no, I don’t expect you to work today, other than to get our beds made and that type of thing. I don’t know how well she’s getting around.”

It had been a few years since she’d seen her. They talked on the phone a good bit, and her grandma had even figured out how to FaceTime, so she’d seen her, but she hadn’t really seen her move around.

After looking at the house, she wondered if her grandma had aged in the same way it had.

Or maybe her memories were just rose-tinted, the way her memories of the house were.

She’d had so many good times here, so much fun with her friends… She didn’t really want to think about that, because that brought up the tragedy she had spent her life trying to forget.

A shot of guilt went through her as she recalled that Grace had tried to call her several times. She had screened her calls, and finding out it was Grace, she’d deleted both the message and the number.

That wasn’t exactly the act of a friend. It was the act of a woman who was too much of a coward to face the past.

Still, she had enough on her plate, and she didn’t need to think about it anymore. Not now, anyway.

She closed the car door behind her and started up the walk with her kids trailing behind her, talking, asking whether they could see the lake, whether there were any animals on the farm, wanting to know where the property line was, where the beach was—all the things.

Claire hated to break it to them, but they were going to school the next day.

They’d have to wait for the weekend to properly explore.

Before that, she was going to have to show them around the property, because there were several cliffs that could be dangerous, and she wanted to make sure they knew where the boundaries were and that they needed to ask permission before going near the water.

She didn’t want another lake tragedy.

Suddenly, she wondered if this was a good idea. After all, she’d been brought up around the lake, and she knew its personality, how psychotic it could be. One minute placid and sweet, the next minute angry and vengeful. Sometimes there was no happy middle, and sometimes it changed without warning.

She had known the strict rules from the time she was small. She never went to the lake without her parents knowing where she was and never by herself.

“All right, guys, make sure you’re kind to your great-grandmother.

Remember we talked about being respectful and that she’s older and probably won’t move as fast as what you’re used to.

” Ted’s parents hadn’t been a big part of their lives, but they were young, energetic, always doing something.

They’d gone on several ski trips and Caribbean vacations together.

That was probably why Ted didn’t have a problem paying the child support and alimony—his parents paid for him.

Regardless, her mother wasn’t nearly as athletically inclined, not to mention she lived in New Mexico and they barely saw her.

Grandma was her grandmother, her children’s great-grandmother, and her kids weren’t used to being around anyone as old as she was .

Hopefully she hadn’t aged as much as the rest of the house.

She knocked on the door and then opened it.

“Hello? Grandma?”

“Oh!” a voice from the kitchen said. “Are you here? Was that today?”

Claire’s heart sank. Grandma wasn’t even expecting them? But she’d called her last night and texted this morning.

“Yeah, it was today. Did you not get my text this morning?” She knew she had gotten it, because Grandma had replied.

“I did. But… I guess I forgot.”

Her grandma came out of the kitchen, leaning on a cane and walking slowly.

Definitely a difference from her childhood, when Grandma had been smiling and, if not energetic, at least happy.

There had been a cheerfulness about her that had seemed to settle over the entire farm.

Of course, since those days, Grandma had lost her husband and had a son die of cancer—Claire’s uncle.

Of course, Grandma had been touched by the tragedy that had happened in Claire’s youth as well.

“Children, say hi to your great-grandmother,” Claire prompted her kids.

She wanted them to love her grandma as much as she did, and she supposed that meant she needed to back off, but she appreciated her grandma allowing them to move in, and she wanted to make sure they were as kind to her as they could be.

She didn’t think her grandma would ever kick them out, not for anything, but she didn’t want to take that chance either.

Her kids dutifully went up and gave lackluster “Hi, Grandma”s as they hugged her.

Claire swooped in afterward and gave her grandma a real, honest-to-goodness, I’m-so-happy-to-see-you hug.

She truly was. It was good to be back in Raspberry Ridge, good to be back in the old farmhouse that seemed so familiar and loving, even if it had been touched by time.

It still brought her back to her youth, when life was carefree and happy. For the most part.

“I’ll have to put something together for supper. Don’t know why I thought you were coming tomorrow. You’re right, I saw your text today.”