To Catch A Wife. Lee Mckenzie

       CHAPTER ONE

      EMILY FINNEGAN SETTLED onto the middle stool at the big kitchen island, sliding comfortably into her place as the middle sister. No matter what was wrong with the world—floods, famines, personal freak-outs—here in the heart of the Finnegan family farmhouse, everything felt right.

      Her younger sister, CJ—Cassie Jo as their father affectionately called her—sat on the stool to Emily’s right. CJ was dressed for the stables in dark jeans and a faded denim work shirt, her long blond hair pulled back in a high ponytail.

      Across the gleaming white Formica countertop, Annie, eldest of the three sisters, stood with carafe in hand. “Coffee?” She angled the pot over Emily’s mug. If the kitchen was the heart of the home, then Annie was the life force that kept it beating.

      “Sure. Oh, wait. No.” Emily hastily withdrew her cup. “Only if it’s decaf.”

      CJ clapped a hand to Emily’s forehead.

      Emily ducked away from it. “What are you doing?”

      “Checking to see if you’re running a fever. Since when do you drink decaf?”

      A good question for which Emily didn’t have a good answer. Yet. “I haven’t been sleeping well, so I thought I’d cut back on caffeine, see if that makes a difference.” Only partly true, but at least it wasn’t a lie.

      “It’s ten-thirty in the morning,” CJ said.

      Emily shrugged.

      “Not a problem,” Annie said. “I’ll make a fresh pot of decaf. It’ll be ready in a few minutes.” She looked amazing in a slouchy yellow pullover and crisp white slacks. Given everything she would have accomplished since getting up before sunrise—gathering eggs from the chicken coop, making breakfast, vacuuming, laundry—Emily had no idea how Annie kept herself looking fresh as a summer daisy.

      While her older sister turned to the coffeemaker, Emily tried to ignore her younger sister’s scrutiny. Ever since CJ had been little, she’d had a talent for sniffing secrets and wheedling information out of the secret keeper.

      “You’re being weird,” CJ said.

      “I’m always weird.”

      “Weirder than usual.”

      “Don’t bug your sister.” Annie, ever the mom, filled CJ’s mug, then her own.

      The coffee smelled like a little piece of heaven to Emily. How would she make it through nine whole months without coffee? Although, if the secret thing that had been keeping her up at night turned out to be true, it was now closer to seven months.

      Annie set the carafe on the counter next to a basket of muffins. “These are blueberry,” she said. “They should still be warm. I baked the oatmeal-raisin cookies yesterday. I had to send something for the school bake sale, so I made extra.”

      “Mmm. Yummy,” CJ said, biting into a cookie. “What are you raising money for this time?”

      “A field trip to the geology museum in Madison. Isaac is over-the-moon excited because they’re going to see ‘real’ dinosaurs.”

      “He knows they’re just a bunch of bones, right?”

      “He does. He also knows the scientific name of almost every dinosaur that ever existed, how big it was, whether it ate meat or plants. Thanks to the set of books you gave him for Christmas, Em, dinosaurs are a very big deal for my little boy.”

      “Pun intended?” CJ quipped.

      Annie grinned. “Of course.” She poured Emily a mug of decaf coffee. “You seem awfully quiet this morning.”

      “I’m always quiet.”

      “Okay, quieter than usual.”

      Emily shrugged. She didn’t like to keep things from her sisters—hated it, actually—but there was no point in saying anything about this particular thing until she knew for sure. If it turned out to be a false alarm, then they’d be none the wiser.

      Time to change the subject. “Where is my favorite dinosaur-obsessed nephew this morning?”

      “Dad drove him into town to shop for a birthday present for his friend Matthew. The party’s this afternoon. They’ll be home for lunch, and then Dad will run him back to town for the party. I’d take him myself, but I have a guest checking into the B & B this afternoon, and I need to be here when she arrives.”

      “Where’s she coming from?” CJ asked.

      “Chicago.”

      “Will she want a trail ride? Maybe a riding lesson or two?”

      “I don’t know. She booked online and didn’t request it, but I’ll be sure to ask when she checks in.”

      While her sisters discussed the anticipated guest and what her needs might be, Emily’s thoughts drifted, as they often did when the three of them were together in the kitchen, in search of one of her few and fleeting memories of their mother. Few because Emily had barely been four years old the last time they’d seen Scarlett Finnegan, and fleeting because that’s what twenty-five-year-old memories tended to be.

      What came to mind was an image of her four-year-old self sitting on the lap of a gaunt-looking woman with dark, soulful eyes and long chestnut hair the same color as Emily’s. Her sisters were blue-eyed blondes like their father, but she had taken after their mother. As always, the memory was tinged bittersweet. Was it real? Or was she simply conjuring the moment that had been captured in the framed photograph on her dresser? She would never be sure. The picture had been taken in this kitchen on Emily’s fourth birthday, only a few weeks before her mother had gone away.

      The kitchen island hadn’t existed in those days. She and her mother had been sitting at the long butcher-block table