Then she laughed. “Zane Walker, Es-freaking-squire. I love it!” She grabbed hold of him, hugged. “Let’s make dumplings.”

She started to jump up, wobbled, had to grip the counter as she went pale, swayed.

So Zane jumped. “Sit down. Are you okay? Jesus. Emily.”

“I’m okay, I’m okay. Just got up too fast. Woof.” She sat down, put her head between her knees.

“Something’s wrong.” He patted her back, then rushed to get her a glass of water. “You’re sick. I’ll call Lee.”

“I’m not sick.” But her voice was thin and muffled. “Just give me a second.”

He set the water down, stroked her back, her hair. “I’m calling Lee.”

“Lee already knows.”

As the bottom dropped out of his world, he started to crouch down, but she straightened up—slowly. Her color had come back—thank God. She blew out a breath, then another, picked up the water for a few sips. “Better. Okay, well, you told me your thing, so I guess now I’ll tell you mine.”

He braced himself for the worst, the very worst as she lifted the top of the laptop, woke it up. She turned the screen toward him.

“Nine weeks … Pregnant? Pregnant.”

She let out a laugh, a whole roll of happy as his gaze automatically went to her belly. “I’m not showing yet. But I’m starting to have trouble buttoning my jeans.”

“You’re pregnant.” He couldn’t quite get the concept into his head, his body.

“We were going to wait a couple more weeks to tell you and Britt, but hey, you caught me. I found out about a month before the wedding. Surprise!” That laugh rolled out again. “We were going to try, you know, never expected it would happen so fast.”

“You’re really happy.”

“Are you kidding? We’re flying! It’s been hard not to tell you—tell everyone. Friends, neighbors, total strangers. But we wanted to give you and Britt more time to settle in, school starting and all that. And to give this one a little more time to settle in, too.” She laid a hand on her belly. “I get a little light-headed—that’s normal. No morning sickness, which is nice. Are you okay with this?”

He had to sit down himself. “Britt and I can start doing more stuff. Around the house, the bungalows. And you can sit here, okay, and tell me how to make the dumplings. Just sit while I do it. That’s my cousin. You’re going to have my cousin.”

“Another normal,” she told him as tears spilled. “I got teary this morning when Lee said he’d pick up Britt after play practice.”

“You really love him.”

“I really do.”

“Lee and Dave? They’re the best men I know.”

“Oh, there I go again.” This time she dug in her pocket for a tissue. “Tell you what, before dumplings, let’s call Grams and Pop. We’ll give them a double dose of good news—yours and mine. I can have a good cry before I show you how we make dumplings in our house.”

“Good deal. Emily?” His grin stretched ear to ear. “This is really cool.”

* * *

In the spring, Emily gave birth to a healthy boy with a head of dark hair and a set of lungs that would have made Pavarotti proud. They named him Gabriel.

During that busy, blooming spring, Zane took a pretty blonde named Orchid to the prom—his romance with Ashley having faded—and had his first full-out sexual experience.

He decided sex, the real thing, ranked right up there with baseball.

Britt took on the role of Rizzo in the spring musical of Grease, fell briefly if madly in love with a gangly sophomore who handed her her first heartbreak.

Zane received his acceptance letter from UVA, breathed out in relief and trepidation.

He graduated, and though the whole ceremony seemed a blur of endings and beginnings, he found all he needed to find.

Micah, waiting for his turn to cross the stage. Dave giving Zane a fist pump. His grandparents looking misty-eyed. His sister, just grinning. Lee holding the baby so Emily could stand and cheer.

His world. His true foundation. He had to build something on it that mattered.

PART TWO

HOMECOMINGS

Home is where one starts from.

—T. S. ELIOT

You don’t have to swing hard to hit a home run.

If you got the timing, it’ll go.

—YOGI BERRA

CHAPTER EIGHT

February 2019

Darby hadn’t stuck a pin in a map to choose Lakeview, North Carolina. She’d had a system.

She wanted South, but not Deep South. She wanted water, but not the ocean. No big cities, but not too rural. And she wanted to look out windows, wherever that might be, and see growing things, trees, gardens.

Eventually, she’d want to make connections, make friends, but no real rush on it.

And she wanted time. Needed time. She gave herself that—wherever she picked, she’d take at least two weeks before deciding to move on if it didn’t suit. If it did, she’d move in.

She needed a place, a purpose, something to hold her down. For too long she’d felt as weightless as a balloon, one that once untethered could just float away.

She didn’t want to float. She wanted to plant roots.

She’d studied maps, combed the internet.

North Carolina seemed to hit the marks. Good growing season, but resting time as well. And the High Country—something she’d known almost nothing about before those comb throughs—appealed.

She hadn’t thought of mountains, and she liked the idea of seeing them rising up.

Lakeview seemed to check more boxes. She’d have the water she craved, those mountains she hadn’t known she wanted, a decent-size town, and reasonable distance to good-size cities when she needed or wanted what they offered.

If it didn’t work, well, she’d move on.

With that location in mind, she studied climate charts, rainfall, growing season, native plants, spread out to businesses, activities.

Where did people shop, where did they eat, what did they do? She shifted over to hotels, motels, B and Bs, rental homes. Then struck on the web page for Walker Lakeside Bungalows.

She liked the look of Emily Walker Keller, liked reading that the bungalows and business had been in her family for three generations. And she liked the look of them. Separate, private, but not lonely or really alone. Plenty of trees. Woods really, which struck some other previously unexplored interest inside her.

She’d stuck the pin in the map at that point, took the leap of making an online reservation. A month. If the two weeks proved enough, she’d just eat the rest of the cost, move on.

An adventure, she’d told herself as she’d packed everything she had left. She’d sold or donated the rest. Traveling light, she thought, and with nothing to hold her to the house that was no longer hers—in the pretty suburb of Baltimore—she loaded her car.

She turned once to study the lovely old brick house, its gardens sleeping under a layer of fresh February snow. The new owners had given her the afternoon after the morning settlement to, well, move on, and she appreciated it.

They’d appreciate the gardens, the dance of the weeping pear’s branches when spring came. They’d mow the lawns, sit in the kitchen, sleep in the bedrooms. The house would live again.

It hadn’t in nearly a year. It had just gone to sleep. Like she had.

It deserved to hold a family again, and now that it would, she could leave it without regret.

She got in the car, put on her sunglasses against the glare of sun, turned the radio up—loud.

She moved on.

The direct route clocked in at about eight hours. Darby took a week. The journey, in her mind, was about exploration, adventure, and in no small way freedom. On the road, she could be whoever she wanted to be, go wherever the urge struck.

Time out of time, she figured, so salt and vinegar chips and a cold Coke for breakfast worked fine.

She watched snow fall outside her window in a Motel 6 in the Shenandoah Valley, wound into West Virginia because why not? Took the back roads, climbing the mountains, cruising down them again. And wound back east.

Charlottesville earned an entire day. A tour of Monticello, long browses through art galleries, and an amazing ramp risotto with a crisp pinot grigio to cap off the day.

Out of Charlottesville, the back roads took her through farmland, vineyards, small towns, past old homes and new developments. Into the tentative hints of spring, the haze of green like a promise, the air like a cautious sigh.

Because she wanted to start her day crossing into North Carolina, Darby chose a motel near the border, ate southern fried chicken in a diner served by a cheerful waitress named Mae who called her sweetie-pie.

Or sweetah-pah in her lovely accent.

Mae had a fuzzy cloud of yellow hair, bright and bold against the hint of dark roots, an ample bosom, and a smile as comforting as the mashed potatoes and gravy on Darby’s plate.