Nice To Come Home To. Liz Flaherty
a room and a bathroom with your mother and lived to tell the story. Any more questions?”
“Are you sure?”
“More than sure.”
It was already a sunny day, but Luke thought it had gotten brighter within the last few minutes. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Maybe a coffee shop would be a good idea.”
* * *
IT HAD BEEN a busy, busy day. When they’d gotten home from the orchard, accompanied by a pizza and two milkshakes, Cass had to convince Royce they couldn’t move into the farmhouse that very minute. After supper, she spent an hour trying to decide what to do with her apartment in Sacramento.
When Royce Skyped with her mother that evening, Lieutenant Colonel Gentry asked to talk to Cass.
“Is it okay,” asked Cass, “that we’re staying here?”
“More than okay.” Damaris bit her lip, and Cass thought she looked tired. “Your dad probably won’t come there. I think that’s a good thing for both of you.”
“I think so, too.” Cass hesitated, frowning at her favorite stepmother’s flickering image. “Damaris? You doing all right?”
“Yeah.” The other woman’s face cleared. “Not a good place or a good time. I’m so grateful to you for keeping Royce. It’s still okay...you know, if anything happens—you’ll still keep her?”
Alarm shivered up Cass’s spine. “I’ll always keep her,” she said, her tone as level as she could make it, “but nothing’s going to happen to you. You survived life with Major Gentry, sir, remember?”
They all joked about it, even the two stepmothers Cass hadn’t bonded with, that they’d escaped unscathed from life with her father. They used to say that when he’d read Pat Conroy’s The Great Santini, he’d thought it was an instruction manual.
“You’re right. Nothing’s going to happen. Except we both know something might. I’ve always heard about the lake. From you. From your mother. Even from your aunt Zoey when Marynell was ill. I like the idea of Royce being there and of her being with you.” She smiled. “Are you giving up your apartment?”
“I’m trying to decide.”
“Let me help with that.” Damaris leaned closer, and it was as if she was reaching through the screen of Cass’s laptop computer. “Let it go. Hire someone to pack it up and ship it to you. You’re home now. Plan on staying there.”
Where shivers had been, Cass thought maybe some steel was working its way up her spine. Home. “I think you’re right.”
“I need to go. Give my girl a hug for me. I love you, stepgirl.”
Cass went still. Damaris called her that sometimes and, occasionally, she added a casual “love ya” at the end of their conversations, but not like this. Never like this.
“Damaris?”
“Got to go.”
“Okay.” She shook off the wave of foreboding. “Love you, too, Colonel.”
After Royce went to bed, Cass poured herself a glass of wine and sat at the table in front of her computer. She hadn’t been very productive since they’d gotten to the lake, something nearly unheard of—one of the things Cassandra G. Porter’s readers counted on was that she would have a new mystery on the shelves every June and every December. That meant writing a certain amount every day. She still wrote every day, but the word count had taken a serious road trip to the wayside.
She’d finished a book while she was taking chemo. “It’s not my best,” she qualified when she sent its file to her editor, “but it was my best at the time.” Lucy Garten, the sleuth who was the protagonist in the series, had developed breast cancer and gone through treatment as Cass did, solving The Case of Daisy’s Ashes while she was bald, grouchy and nauseated.
Damaris had been her beta reader, proofreading as she went. It had cemented a bond born from the tenuous threads of their step-relationship.
To date, it was her bestselling book. Clutching that success close was what had given her the courage to come back to the lake, but now she needed to stay successful.
The thought made her grin at herself. It also led to getting several pages done by the time the wine bottle was empty and her eyelids were drooping. Before she went to bed, she walked down to the lake, looking out over its surface. The moon was waning, but still lent its light to the ruffly little waves that slapped the shore. She thought of the look on Damaris’s face, of Royce’s almost palpable excitement when it was decided they would stay in Miniagua, of the warmth of Zoey’s jubilant hug.
She thought of Luke Rossiter and of what tables and chairs she’d find for the coffee shop and wondered if she was insane for wanting to be a barista. You’re a writer, for heaven’s sake, and you can finally almost make a living at it. But the round barn at the orchard had called out to a part of her she’d been holding back since she left the lake, the part that didn’t want to be alone. As much as she loved writing and the solitude that went along with it, she needed something that would force her away from that aloneness.
And she loved coffee shops. What more reason did she need?
Back in the cottage, she went to bed, thinking again of Damaris’s tired face. And then, before sleep overtook her, of Luke Rossiter’s smiling one.
* * *
“TELL ME AGAIN why we can’t just have the coffee shop in the center corridor of the barn. It’s plenty big enough and access is right there from both entrances. That leaves the side areas for offices or even other little shops if this thing takes off.” Luke looked both tired and impatient. And on the edge of angry.
Cass wasn’t good at standing her ground—it wasn’t something that had ever worked particularly well for her. But... “Because the coziness factor would be gone. It would never be quiet or intimate or conducive to working.” She had said all this. She knew she had. Who knew that under that straight, silky hair of his, Luke Rossiter had such a thick head?
“Working? I thought it was for coffee. If people want to work, they should rent their own office space—maybe in the side rooms of the round barn.”
“How did you get through college without studying in coffee shops?” she demanded.
“Easy. I studied in the student union or even occasionally—call me crazy—in the library. I thought a coffee shop was for drinking coffee.” He grinned, but it wasn’t his usual funny, endearing expression. It was more like a smirk.
“It is. And for visiting, studying and working. It’s a great place for parents to recharge after a day with kids. For artists to sketch and writers to write. Even for music. Open mic nights or karaoke.”
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