from high school, though they’d stayed in the area. It wouldn’t matter if she told Nolan; there was nothing to find there anymore.
“Fairfield. Nothing distinctive about it, not even the name.” She summoned a smile. “I learned later there are Fairfields all over the country. And, like I told Sean, it wasn’t cowboy country.”
“Fairfield.” He nodded, his gaze momentarily distant as if he was filing the name away for future reference. Then it refocused like a laser. “What happened that made your mother so bitter?”
“I’m...not altogether sure. I think—” Daddy, I’m so sorry! “—that he might have had an affair. But somehow their split involved Jason. I think he lied to cover for my father. He wouldn’t tell me.” She was talking too fast, she knew she was, but he’d never have believed a simple “I don’t know.”
“Your...loyalty to her is commendable. But do you think it’s fair that she expects you to cut your father and brother out of your life because that’s what she decided to do?” The words sounded sympathetic, but his expression didn’t match. It could only be described as calculating.
“I was always closer to her,” Allie said simply. “There was no choice for me. And my brother and I reacted differently to everything.” That was true. “He got angry and rebellious as a teenager.” Also true, so true. She had admired him for his willingness to rage aloud, something she’d been too stunned and confused to do. “He quit talking to me. Accused me of being a little Goody Two-shoes, going along with whatever Mom said.”
Until this moment, she hadn’t understood how right he was. That was what she’d always done. And she’d done it again last night—let her mother make a decision that should have been hers alone.
Except...maybe not. It was her mother a New York mob family had promised to kill, not Allie. That was something she couldn’t forget.
Nolan’s expression softened, as much as his angular face would allow. “He hurt you.”
She lifted one shoulder in an almost-apologetic shrug. “Not that much. By then I was so mad at him I didn’t care as much as I probably should have what he thought of me.” Her mouth twisted. “My family was a mess. It’s been peaceful, having only Mom and me.”
“I guess you and I have that in common, don’t we?” His eyes were warm again, not calculating at all. “We’ve run away from family.”
“Yes, except in my case I trailed along behind my mother. You had the courage to do it yourself.”
Me, I’ve never done anything but trail along behind my mother, not since they yanked me away from my life. And that, Allie supposed, summed it all up: dance was her life, and once she lost it, she’d never regained any sense of place or identity or meaning.
Except for quilting. Her head turned, and she took in the shop. The rainbow of colors, the glossy wood floors and creamy walls and the beautiful quilts hung, some for display, some for sale. The board that listed classes, the row of sewing machines in back, the long table and her quilt frame.
Yes, she did have a purpose and identity now. I am a quilt maker. But the finding of that identity had been slow. She hadn’t even fully understood until now how important it had been for her to find something that fulfilled her.
“Not courage,” Nolan denied. “I was tired of family pressure and tension, that’s all.”
“Do you have pictures of them?”
He looked surprised. “You mean in my wallet? Maybe old ones. Not my mother and father.” He shifted on his seat to pull out his wallet. After a minute of thumbing through it, he removed a tattered photo. “Man, that’s from a long time ago. Prom,” he added unnecessarily, and kept digging through a miscellany of worn receipts, business cards and who knew what.
Allie took the photo, feeling a funny cramp in her stomach at the thought that maybe he was showing her a picture of himself and his date at prom. But no. The boy in the picture definitely wasn’t Nolan. Looking closely at the girl, Allie thought she could see a resemblance to Nolan. Her bone structure was too strong for her to be called pretty. Yes, the cheekbones did have something in common with his. She had strawberry-blond hair, though, and a scattering of freckles across her nose. She was tall and skinny. Her expression suggested she wasn’t comfortable in the typical too-feminine prom dress and awkward heels, with