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CHAPTER 1

THE SMALL WHITE HOUSE at the end of Linden Lane didn’t look like the kind of place where secrets lived. But no one in the river town of Whitewater, Illinois, knew better than Deirdre McDaniel that appearances could be deceiving.

The lawn was manicured with military precision. No dandelion had dared invade from behind enemy lines—the yard of the neighbor, whose lackadaisical attitude toward weed control had been the bane of Deirdre’s father’s existence.

She wasn’t sure which would have hurt worse—seeing her childhood home down at the heels, the way vacant properties often were, or witnessing her older brother’s valiant attempt to keep the place ready for their father’s inspection when the hard truth was Captain Martin McDaniel was never coming home.

Deirdre shifted the white van into park and killed the engine. Catching the inside of her full lower lip between her teeth, a nervous tick no one else could see, she stepped out of the car, her grip tightening on the keys in her hand.

Breezes tugged chin-length wisps of unruly mahogany hair about a face too sharply drawn, with its pointed chin and high cheekbones. Eyes so intensely blue they seemed a breath away from catching fire stared at the red-painted front door. She wished there was a key somewhere among the cluster in her hand she could use to lock away her memories, but it was too late. They flooded through her, the past far more vivid than the glorious late-September day.

She could remember crushing wrinkles into her mother’s crisp cotton Easter dress as she gave Emmaline McDaniel a chocolate-bunny-smeared hug. She could smell the wood shavings on her father’s callused hands and hear herself wheedling her big brother, Cade, into letting her join the “boys only” club that had the coolest tree fort in the neighborhood.

She could see Spot, the ragged coal-black mutt she’d rescued, racing down the lane howling, the neighbor cat’s claws dug into his back, triumphant glee on its feline face. Deirdre’s father with his military bearing and loathing of weakness glowering in disgust.

If that dog was a marine we would’ve shot it by now.

But you couldn’t shoot your daughter. Not even if she did the unforgivable.

Merry Christmas everyone. I’m pregnant… That was one Christmas no McDaniel would ever forget. Seventeen years had passed since Deirdre had made that announcement, and her stomach still turned inside out whenever she thought of it. The only small mercy in the whole ordeal: her mother hadn’t been alive to hear what she’d done.

Emmaline, always the quintessential lady, would have burned with shame to see the telltale bulge of Deirdre’s belly and hear the whole town buzzing that the wild McDaniel girl had gotten what was coming to her. Maybe they were right.

Deirdre quelled the old hurt welling up inside her and walked up to the familiar front door. Her hand shook so badly it took three tries to fit the key into the lock.

You don’t have to do this. Cade’s voice echoed in her memory as she stepped inside the house. The living room stood empty except for brighter patches of paint where pictures had hung and divots in the carpet where furniture legs had left their mark. A few boxes and some rolls of bubble wrap stood neatly in a corner, Cade’s always-efficient handiwork. He would have spared her this last task, too, if Deirdre had been willing to let him.

You’ve got nothing to prove, he’d insisted with a hug.

But how could the family golden boy ever understand? She did have something to prove. To herself. And she was running out of time.

The house was for sale. She might never have another chance to make peace with the home she’d grown up in. To say goodbye to the maple tree she’d climbed down to sneak out at night, her father’s workbench, her mother’s petal-pink bedroom—a sanctuary Deirdre had rarely entered because it was tucked under the eaves.Illustrating just how big a failure Deirdre was when it came to being Emmaline McDaniel’s daughter.

It was such a simple thing to hold so much pain, just an old-fashioned cedar chest with dollops of copper trim.

“This is your hope chest,” Emmaline explained when Deirdre was still too young to be a disappointment. “My mother gave it to me, and her mother gave it to her. Someday you’ll give it to your little girl.”

“What is it hoping for?” Deirdre had asked, clambering up on top of it, the buckle on her shoe cutting a raw white scratch in the wood. Her mother’s lips had tightened in a way that would grow all too familiar as she hauled Deirdre down.

“A hope chest is a place to store dreams for when you grow up,” Emmaline had explained.

Deirdre remembered running grubby fingers over the smooth orange-streaked wood as she tried to imagine what dreams looked like. Would they pour out like the glitter she’d put on the cookie dough star she’d made for the Christmas tree? Would they float out, shimmering, and sprinkle her all over like fairy dust?

She’d been five years old when she was finally strong enough to wrestle the trunk’s lid open and saw what was in the chest.

Every object was fitted like pieces in a giant puzzle. Old-fashioned aprons and dainty white napkins with handmade lace were painstakingly starched in neat squares. A fluffy white veil and wedding dress, every fold stuffed with tissue paper so it wouldn’t crease. Silverware marched across one end of the chest in felt sleeves, and crystal vases like the ones her mother put roses in all over the house sparkled in nests of cotton batting.

Undaunted, Deirdre figured the treasure must be hidden somewhere amid all that worthless junk, like the lamp in the Aladdin story Cade had read her. If she could just find a way to unleash its magic…

One bright summer morning while her mother was tending her roses, Deirdre sneaked one of the vases from the wooden chest so she could try to pour the dream out of it. The dream she could see sparkling inside it, just out of her reach. She’d climbed up on the rocking chair by the window and stretched up on tiptoe, holding the vase as close to the sunbeam as she could, hoping to see the dream more clearly.

She could still feel the sickening sensation of wavering, losing her balance, hear the horrid smashing sound as the vase fell, striking mama’s table full of delicate ladies on the way down. Shattering crystal and china released not glistening dreams, but the hard, ugly truth that made Deirdre bleed inside the way her fingers bled when she tried to scrape up the broken glass, hide it before her mother could see.

There was no point in giving a girl like Deirdre McDaniel a hope chest. She was hopeless and not even her mother’s magic chest could change her.

“Mom? Hey, Mom?”

Deirdre nearly jumped out of her skin as her own daughter’s call yanked her back from memories imbedded like the slivers of crystal even her father hadn’t been able to remove. They would work out from beneath her skin’s surface on their own when they were good and ready, he’d promised. When it came to ignoring pain, Captain Martin McDaniel was an expert.

Deirdre braced herself as sixteen-year-old Emma burst through the door, her thick black curls tumbling halfway down her back, her heart-shaped face aglow. Love still punched Deirdre in the chest every time she looked into Emma’s dark eyes, terrifying her, amazing her. It was dangerous to love anyone so much. But Deirdre had never been able to help herself.

“How in the world did you find me here?” she asked, trying not to sound as relieved as she felt not to be alone.

“I ran across the garden to Uncle Cade’s. He guessed there was a chance you might be here at Grandpa’s house.”

“My brother the psychic.” Deirdre grimaced. “I specifically told him I was coming here and I didn’t need anyone to hold my hand. In fact, I seem to remember threatening to murder him if he came within a hundred yards of this old place. I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill him.”

Emma groaned. “Not again. Couldn’t you at least come up with something more original?”

Deirdre’s chin bumped up a notch along with her aggravation. “It’s not funny. I can do this. Alone.” Maybe so, but she couldn’t deny how grateful she was to see Emma’s earnest face. Methinks the lady doth protest too much… What was it about having a daughter in Miss Wittich’s drama class that set Shakespeare rattling around Deirdre’s head? “I’m hardly going to fall apart,” she asserted stubbornly.

Emma sobered. “Maybe you’d feel better if you did.”

“That’s your aunt Finn talking. She’s always so sure she knows me better than anyone else.”

“She’s wrong about that.” Emma regarded Deirdre with old-soul eyes so shadowed with worry that guilt twisted in Deirdre’s chest. “Nobody knows you better than I do.”

That’s exactly what Deirdre was afraid of. It kept her up late at night, pacing through the white elephant of a house she and her sister-in-law had turned into a thriving business.

March Winds…where the past comes alive.

Finn had even incorporated the Civil War–era mansion’s resident ghost into the B&B’s logo—a sketch of the distinctive tower window framing the silhouette of a little girl, a candle in her hand. A brilliant marketing tool, if only Deirdre could look at it without being carried back to when Emma was ten and so terribly alone that the ghost had been the child’s only friend. How could any mother ever forgive herself for that?

“Mom, for once this McDaniel-style mutiny isn’t anyone’s fault but mine. I have to head in to work in less than an hour and I couldn’t stand to wait until the library closed to tell you the news from school.”

It still blew Deirdre’s mind that the news from school was always good where Emma was concerned. For years the McDaniels had been Whitewater High’s personal Bad News Bears.

“Mom, you’ll never guess what Miss Wittich picked for the senior play.”

The drama teacher had kept her selection under wraps for weeks, leaving her students on tenterhooks—perfect leverage to keep restless seniors from going bonkers in class. Of course, it had also put Emma through the tortures of the damned. The girl couldn’t help but hope the fact she was the best actress Whitewater High had ever seen would win her the lead. But the rest of the students made no secret that homecoming queen, cheerleader and Emma’s longtime nemesis Brandi Bates was a shoo-in for top billing. Considering small-town politics, Deirdre was sure they were right.

“Don’t tell me. Sound of Music? Oklahoma?”

Emma had been dreading some lightweight musical ever since last year’s performance of Bye Bye Birdie. “Nope. Not a singing nun in sight.”

“If it were up to me I’d have your class do The Crucible,” Deirdre said, still stinging from the jabs Brandi and her crowd had dealt Emma over the years. “Explore the dangers of a pack of nasty girls gossiping in a small town. It might make some of those little bi—uh, witches stop and think.”

Emma gave her a quick hug. “I quit caring what they thought about me years ago.”

If only Deirdre could believe it. She could remember all too well how it felt to be different, an outsider looking in. “You know, not one of those girls is even half as wonderful as you.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not exactly an impartial judge. But Miss Wittich is and—You’re getting me all off track! I’m trying to tell you about the play. We’re doing the most brilliant, most wonderful, most amazing play ever written.” Emma paused for dramatic effect. “Romeo and Juliet!”

“Romeo and Juliet?” Deirdre gave a snort of disgust. “Is your teacher out of her mind? Stuffing hormone-crazed kids’ heads with romantic nonsense—glorifying sex, defying one’s parents and committing suicide. Teenagers generally screwing up their lives. That play should come with a warning from the surgeon general.”

“My mother, the last of the great romantics.” Emma rolled her eyes. “When was the last time you went on a date?”

“When was the last time Mel Gibson was in town? Oops, he’s married. Guess I’m out of luck. Besides, one die-hard romantic in the family is enough. You got your uncle Cade married off. Be happy with that.”

Happy? She’d never believed it possible for a McDaniel to be that happy. With his adoring wife, five-year-old twins and another baby on the way, Cade’s life was damned near perfect. At least until the patient from hell had moved into the spare bedroom. Their seventy-six-year-old father who’d broken his hip tackling some kid who’d snatched a teenage girl’s purse.

Damned embarrassing, the Captain had grumbled, to find out the kids involved were brother and sister, just horsing around. Deirdre almost managed to smile at the memory of the crotchety old buzzard blushing to the roots of his thick, iron-gray hair. And yet she couldn’t stop the ache in her chest. His injury had changed everything.

“Mom, don’t you ever get lonely?” Emma asked.

“With you around? Never.”

“But I won’t be around forever. After Christmas—”

Emma had been hovering over the mailbox for weeks now, waiting to see if she’d won early admission to the drama school she’d dreamed of since she’d gone to theater camp there last year. Truth was, Deirdre dreaded Emma leaving, yet was anxious to get her out of this dead-end town. High school and its dangers had terrified Deirdre, but Emma had a good head on her shoulders. She was way too smart to get trapped the way her mother had.

That said, maybe it still wasn’t such a bad thing that Brandi would be the one to do the whole balcony gig. “The nurse is a great character part,” Deirdre said, trying to sound sympathetic. “You’ll be brilliant.”

“I’ll be brilliant all right. But not as the nurse.” Emma shone and Deirdre’s heart tripped. “Miss Wittich says I’m the most perfect Juliet she’s seen in thirty years of teaching!”

Oh, God. A perfect Juliet? That’s exactly what Deirdre was afraid of. Emma glowed with innocent passion, stubbornly determined to race into the world with open arms, not knowing how badly life could hurt her.

“Aren’t you going to say something? Like congratulations?”

“I’m just…I thought Brandi…everyone was so sure she was going to get the lead.”

Emma grinned with pardonable triumph, considering all the times Brandi had lorded it over the less popular kids. “Man, is she ticked. Her boyfriend, Drew Lawson, is Romeo. And I get to kiss him on stage!”

Deirdre’s nerves tightened. “A little less enthusiasm, please.”

“Oh, Mom, it’s just acting. But he is gorgeous in a soulful, Orlando Bloom kind of way.”

“That’s just great.” Couldn’t Wittich have done something revolutionary? Like cast some shy, pimpled computer geek who wouldn’t make Emma’s cheeks turn pink with anticipation?

“Uncle Cade said it’s too bad Grandma isn’t around to hear my news. He says Romeo and Juliet was her very favorite play in the whole world. Is that true?”

Deirdre stifled a frown. “That sounds about right.”

Their mother had loved all that star-crossed lover junk, sobbing her way through movies like West Side Story time after time as if the tragic endings sneaked up on her totally unexpectedly to bite her in the butt.

“Mom, what was Grandma like?”

“Perfect.” The word slipped out before she could stop it. Emma shot her a puzzled frown. “I mean, she was one of those women who gardened in a house dress long after other moms had changed to jeans. She liked more…old-fashioned things. Like floppy straw hats and china teacups and frilly dresses on little girls.”

Deirdre remembered the look of horror on her mother’s face when Deirdre mutinied against Emmaline’s dress code. Deirdre had taken her mother’s sewing shears and dragged out a pair of Cade’s old jeans. Hacking the legs off so the frayed hem hit below her knee, Deirdre had threaded one of the Captain’s neckties through the belt loops, then tied it tight around her far-narrower waist. After all, she couldn’t climb up to the tree house in a stupid dress.

“Do you think Grandma Emmaline would like me?” Emma asked, a wistful light in her eyes.

“Absolutely.” Deirdre tried to ignore the twist of pain in her chest. “She would have adored having someone to share teacups and poetry with.” Maybe the fact that Deirdre had produced such a granddaughter would have redeemed her a little in her mother’s eyes.

Deirdre felt a jab of envy, reluctant to share any of Emma’s love, even in her imagination.

“Am I like her?”

“No,” Deirdre said flatly. Then more softly, “Yes. In some ways. But you’re stronger than my mother was. She always seemed as if she were waiting for something bad to happen.”

“I wish I’d gotten a chance to know her. I asked the Captain about her. His face got all stiff and sad when I mentioned her, just like yours does. But Uncle Cade said everything there is to know about Grandma is in that wooden box upstairs. There’s even a copy of Romeo and Juliet she kept from when she played Juliet in tenth grade. Uncle Cade used to read it to cheer her up when she was sad.”

She’d been sad a lot. Even boisterous Deirdre had longed to be able to comfort her. But when the melancholy had stolen over Emmaline McDaniel’s face, the last thing she wanted was Deirdre racketing around.

Can’t you ever sit still? her mother would mourn. You’re just like your father.

Not that the Captain had approved of her wild side, either.

“I’m just dying to get my hands on that play,” Emma pleaded. “Can I come with you and look for it?”

Deirdre’s jaw clenched. Score another point for Cade. He’d not only made certain Emma would check on her in the house, he’d guaranteed the kid would shadow her every step of the way to the cedar chest.

“Emma, I’d…”

Rather not let you see how much it hurts me to sort through Mom’s things, see how badly everything in the chest suits me. What a disappointment I was to a mother I never really knew…

There had been an ocean of secrets between Deirdre and her mother. Deirdre had almost lost Emma’s trust, as well. She’d deserved to. Jesus, God, how she’d deserved to. But she’d fought to mend the wounds between them, swore she would never hide things from Emma again, never keep secrets that would fester, destroy.

She’d be the worst kind of hypocrite to change the rules now.

She forced herself to smile. “If you really want to come upstairs with me, it’s fine.”

Emma gave a skip of delight. “You’re the best mom in the whole world!”

Deirdre flinched inwardly. She knew better.

Emma grabbed Deirdre’s hand the way she had every Christmas morning before they headed downstairs to see what Santa Claus had left, never disappointed even those times when the man in the red hat had to scrape the very bottom of his sack for presents.

Half dragging Deirdre, Emma rushed up the stairs to the soft pink room that had been Emmaline’s own. Not that Deirdre had entered it willingly after shattering the china ladies. The afternoon sunlight showed the dust on the top of the chest, smeared with finger marks, as if Cade hadn’t been able to resist touching it. He should take the blasted thing, Deirdre thought. For him there would be warm memories as well as pinching ones.

“Oh, Mom!” Emma enthused. “Do you know how many times I wanted to open this thing? But the Captain would never let me.”

One thing Deirdre and her father had shared was a desperate need to forget. Deirdre knelt beside the chest, sucking in a steadying breath.

“How about we open it on three?” Emma said, curling her own fingers around the edge of the wooden lid. “One, two, three.”

The hinges creaked, the sweet smell of cedar filling Deirdre’s nose as she set the length of brass into place, to hold the trunk lid open. But the scent was the only thing familiar. Deirdre frowned, puzzled. Instead of precisely folded linens and silver lined up like soldiers on parade, the trunk’s contents were a jumble as if someone had dug frantically through the contents. Atop it all lay a worn copy of Romeo and Juliet, bits of its blue cardboard cover flaking off, a smear of blue dye staining the bridal veil beneath as if it had gotten wet somehow during the years.

Emma cried out, snatching the script up, clutching it to her chest as zealously as Juliet had clutched the dagger. But it was Deirdre who felt the piercing of old pain, old grief.

“I just…I can’t believe I’m actually holding a play she loved as much as…as I love it.”

Deirdre’s throat felt so tight it hurt to squeeze words through it, but she wouldn’t have spoiled Emma’s pleasure for anything in the world. The child was far too intuitive as it was, always picking up on the hurts and secret sorrows of everyone around her. “Then keep it.”

“Uncle Cade says Grandma’s stuff is all yours. You don’t have to give this to me.”

“I want you to have it.” Maybe Emmaline McDaniel was looking down from heaven, delighted, too. Her beloved play script was going to someone who wouldn’t regard it with cynical distaste.

Reverently Emma cradled it in her hands. “Listen! I’ll read the part I used for the audition!” She started to open the script, but it fell open in the middle, a yellowed envelope seeming to mark a place. “What’s this?” Emma said, slipping the envelope free. Deirdre recognized her mother’s elegantly swirled handwriting.

“It must be a letter your grandmother wrote to somebody.”

“But it’s stamped ‘return to sender.’ I wonder why she kept it. It must have been important. This is the place she kept all her most precious stuff. Maybe it’s something wonderful! Mysterious! Like something in an old Nancy Drew book.”

“Or maybe she was reading the play and had to stop to cook dinner or answer the phone so she just stuffed a stray letter in to mark her place. Go ahead and open it. I can see the suspense is killing you. Just don’t be disappointed when it turns out to be no big deal.”

Emma folded herself down to the floor, crosslegged, and pillowed the script on her lap, carefully loosening the flap of the letter. She withdrew folded sheets of stationery embossed with a graceful bunch of lilies of the valley.

She cleared her throat, beginning in her most theatrical way.

“Dear Jimmy,

After so many years, I hardly know how to begin. Three nights ago there was a horrible accident. My daughter, Deirdre, fell off the wing of a plane in the local hangar, damaging her kidneys. She nearly died, and the doctor says it’s so serious she may need an organ donor.”

“That’s why you’ve got those scars on your back, right?” Emma glanced up at Deirdre through her lashes.

“Not one of my finer moments. I was climbing around on the plane, trying to get your uncle’s attention and—well, it was a really bad idea.” Bad? How about catastrophic? The guilt had all but destroyed Cade. She’d come out of the anesthetic to find that the bright, laughing older brother she’d adored had vanished forever.

She’d tried to prove to him she wasn’t worth all the misery in his eyes. She was so wild, so reckless, it was no one’s fault but her own when life steamrolled her.

But what the heck was Mom writing to this Jimmy guy about the accident for? One of the few things Deirdre could remember from the fog of pain that had engulfed her as she drifted in and out of consciousness was the Captain’s gruff voice, telling the doctor to cut him open right then and there, give his daughter his kidney, hell, his goddamned heart if the girl needed it.

She’d felt so loved for that short space of time. Her mother’s tear-streaked face desperate, her father so fierce, as if he could hold back death. And Cade…he’d looked as if the sky had fallen on his head. But there had never been any question her big brother loved her. She’d never doubted it for a moment, even years later when she’d gambled everything on his love, taken advantage of his generous heart.

The memory still brought tears to Deirdre’s eyes. Why hadn’t her family been able to hold on to that far-too-brief closeness? How could it have slipped away?

Emma cleared her throat, began reading.

“They tested my husband and me to see if either of us is a suitable donor. The tests showed the unthinkable. My husband can’t help my baby girl. Neither can I. There is only one person who can. Her real…”

Emma stumbled to a halt, hurt welling up as she raised her gaze to Deirdre. “I thought we told each other everything. Why didn’t you tell me you were adopted?”

“What are you talking about? I’m not.” Deirdre took the letter out of Emma’s hands, scanned to where her daughter had stopped reading. Her real father…

Deirdre reeled, struggling to grasp the unthinkable. “I didn’t know…” she breathed, her knees starting to shake. Deirdre began to scan the writing silently, but Emma put a pleading hand on her arm.

“Read it out loud. Don’t…shut me out.”

If there was any place on God’s earth Deirdre understood the pain of being shut out, it was here. Swallowing hard, she started over in a wavering voice.

“I knew in my heart God would find a way to punish me for loving you.”

Loving who? This stranger? This Jimmy?

“What happened between us fifteen years ago was wrong. My husband will never forgive me. And my son—oh, God, Jimmy, he knows all about us.”

Deirdre fought to breathe. Her mother…her mother had cheated on the Captain, gotten pregnant…

No! Icy hooks tore at Deirdre’s stomach. She wished she could shove the letter back into the chest and burn it. Wished she’d never seen the envelope tucked in the play script. Wished Emma were anywhere on earth but here, peering at her with dark, stricken eyes.

Deirdre pressed her hand to her mouth. This was impossible. She couldn’t believe it. But suddenly a life-time’s worth of pain and rejection made horrible sense.

They’d known she wasn’t a McDaniel at all! Her mother and the Captain and Cade. Did they talk about the dirty little secret when she wasn’t around? Shake their heads and say it was no wonder she’d been such a disaster as a kid? She’d been a mistake from the moment she’d been born.

She closed her eyes, remembering every time she’d found the three of them around the dinner table, whispering, going silent when she walked in the room. And yet, her parents had hurt her before, hadn’t they? It was Cade who stunned her now. Cade’s silence that cut the deepest.

“Mama?” Emma hadn’t called Deirdre that since she was so tiny Deirdre could pick her up in her arms. Deirdre struggled to control her own reaction, felt as if she were about to shatter. “Did Grandma have an affair?”

Deirdre’s head swam with betrayal. She’d been born out of some sleazy affair. No wonder the Captain couldn’t be in the same room with her for five minutes without exploding. No wonder Cade had run away to the air force and tried to leave her behind. She was the living evidence of how his mother had betrayed him. Of all the McDaniels’ secrets, Deirdre’s mere existence was the dirtiest, the ugliest.

“I’m sorry,” Emma quavered, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to…”

Dig up the rotten truth after so many lies? Emma blamed herself. Deirdre could see it in her daughter’s anguished face.

Deirdre tried to keep her voice calm, even. “You didn’t write that letter, Emma. You didn’t lie or cheat or bury things so deep I never understood…until I thought…”