So many decisions, Nessa thought. The idea that her two cousins would even consider staying around for a little while surprised her. She had thought she was coming halfway across the state to clean out the house and maybe hunt down a teaching job near here. She’d had no idea that April or Flynn, either one, would even stick around long enough to help her clean up the place. And since, under the terms of the will, the place could never be sold, she planned to at least spend every summer in Blossom.

One thing was for sure: if Nessa had to get married to inherit the hope chest that she had coveted since she was a little girl, there was no chance. She hadn’t had much luck with the dating game—seemed like she picked losers who cheated on her. So Flynn or April could have the hope chest, even if, after the way they’d treated Nanny Lucy, neither of them deserved it or a share of the property. They’d gotten to be around Nanny Lucy more than Nessa, and neither of them appreciated what they’d had.

What makes you think you’re so high above your cousins? the annoying voice in her head asked. Sure, you might have come around a little more through the years than they did, but maybe they had their reasons not to, just like you have yours for not wanting to spend much time with your folks.

Nessa had only gotten to see their grandmother for a couple of weeks in the summers and on the occasional holiday. After they were grown, neither Flynn nor April had spent as much time with Nanny Lucy as Nessa had, and Lord only knew she hadn’t done right by her grandmother, either.

They can have the hope chest, though, if it means getting married, she vowed as she dug into her chicken-fried steak. I’ve got to figure out who I am before I can even think about a relationship.

Chapter Two

April sucked in a lungful of air and let it out slowly as she parked her twenty-year-old Chevy in the front yard of the small house where she’d been raised. Miranda Lambert’s song “The House That Built Me” was playing on the radio. One line said that if she could just touch the place, the brokenness inside her might start healing. April liked the idea, but she couldn’t count all the fears and guilt trips that had been born in that house. Like an untreated sore, they had festered and become infected years and years ago, until now they were more like a cancer. She had known down deep in her heart that the only way she would ever be cured was by coming back to the house and facing the past. Maybe then she could begin to heal the way Miranda sang about in the song.

“How can it heal me when this is the place that broke me to begin with? I guess the only way to answer that question is to give it a try.” April sighed. “Am I coming back to mend the break or to make peace with the fact that it will never heal?”

More than a dozen years ago, when she was eighteen, she’d driven away in the same car that she’d come back to Blossom in that day. The vehicle had not had as many dings in it back then, and the upholstery had been in good shape. But the car, like the owner, had been through some rough times over the years. She’d driven away with high hopes of making it big and returning to Blossom to rub Nanny Lucy’s nose in her success. All she’d done was prove her grandmother right. God only knew she wasn’t in any better shape these days than the ripped seats in her vehicle.

She could get another job and start over like she’d done so many times, but that would just start the vicious cycle all over again. She would work awhile, get involved with a sorry excuse of a man, let him take advantage of her, and lose everything. It was like alcoholism or an addiction to gambling. Each time she would tell herself she was going to get it right this time, and yet she never did. Then, after the last time around, when she was down and out, she’d seen a quote on a plaque in a convenience store: “What you call rock bottom, I call rebirth.”

If it hadn’t cost almost ten dollars, she would have bought it and laid it on her dashboard. After that, every time she thought of the plaque, she wished she had purchased it.

She opened the car door, but since the air conditioner had quit years ago, there was no difference between the inside and outside air. “You told me when I left the day after high school graduation that you hoped I would have regrets about my decision. Well, you were right, and I do, Nanny Lucy. I just hope that this is the beginning of my rebirth process. This time around I will learn to love myself and get off this roller coaster of destruction.”

The last guy she’d let into her life had yelled, “You are the problem, not me!” as he stormed out of her apartment. That probably hadn’t been true in his case, but the words had stuck in her head, and she’d realized that until she learned to love and accept herself, she was never going to be at peace.

Flynn pulled his big, shiny black truck in on one side of her car, and Nessa parked her dark-blue SUV on the other.

“First step is always the hardest.” April put her feet on the ground, and an empty potato-chip bag flew out of the car. The wind carried it across the yard to hang up in the red rosebush right beside the porch steps. She carefully picked it out of the thorns, wadded it up, and shoved it into the pocket of her faded jeans.

This is me, she thought as she waited for Nessa to unlock the door. Empty, worthless, and trashy.

Stop it! the voice in her head scolded. It’s never too late to start all over. As long as you have breath in your lungs and a brain in your head, you can take the bull by the horns, spit in his eye, and make a new and better life for yourself.

“I hope so,” she muttered.

I was right about you, but you’ve still got time to prove me wrong before you die. It was the first time she’d heard Nanny Lucy’s voice in her head, and it startled her.

A musty, closed-up smell hit April in the face when she walked into the familiar living room. Very little had changed over the past decade. The same brown-and-orange floral sofa sat against the north wall, with a log-cabin quilt hanging behind it on an oak rod. The end tables were new, but the old entertainment unit with the television in the center was still straight ahead, and two wooden rockers flanked the sofa. Nanny Lucy had told her that she had rocked all three of her children and all three of her grandchildren in the burgundy one. She seemed proud of that fact, but April would just as soon that she had never rocked April or been responsible for her raising, either one. The green rocking chair had belonged to their grandfather, who had died six months before April’s mother was born. Nanny Lucy had said that he had died without even knowing that she was expecting a third child.

Nanny Lucy was only a little older than I am right now when her husband died, leaving her pregnant with my mother, and with two teenage boys to finish raising alone. No wonder she was so short-tempered, April thought. But I’ve seen other women who survived similar situations.

Nanny Lucy had either been happy, quilting until dawn and singing hymns, or else having one of her bad days, when it seemed like she begrudged April the very air she breathed. Flynn and Nessa seldom saw her on those horrible days, but when they left, April knew that one or maybe a whole week of them was bound to come around.

Flynn stopped in the middle of the floor and then began opening windows. “I’d forgotten that there’s not an air conditioner in this place. Would it be against the rules if I bought a couple of those small ones and hung them in the windows?”

“Can’t happen,” April said. “She tried to put one in the living room before I left, and the wiring in this place wouldn’t handle it. She took it back to the store and got her money back.”