preacher’s daughter has also had men that stayed the night with her and has been drunk off her butt a few times and is still bossy,” Nessa said. “With an overbearing father, I had to learn to stand up for myself or else I would have been married for more than a decade and had a houseful of kids by now.” She stopped at the door and turned around. “April, you can help me make our grocery list. Since you don’t like to cook and wouldn’t know cinnamon from paprika, I’ll do the checking and tell you what to write down.”
“Yes, ma’am.” April snapped to attention and sharply saluted her cousin. “Thank you, ma’am, for allowing me to follow your orders.”
“And now the smart-ass that I remember comes out.” Flynn chuckled. “Where have you been hiding it?”
April dropped her hand, and the expression on her face changed from sassy to blank in a fraction of a second. “Under lots of stuff that should be forgotten. For now we’ve got things to take care of this afternoon so that we can get out here in the morning and start quilting. The shed gets pretty hot in the afternoons, so we should work when it’s at least semi-cool, in the mornings.”
Nessa could relate to what April said. So many painful memories should be forgotten, but according to some of the things she had overheard the school counselor saying, talking about them was the best way to overcome your problems.
“What if we put a window unit out there?” Flynn stopped by his truck and took a couple of suitcases from the back seat.
April did the same thing, only her things were in two white garbage bags.
Nessa went back out to her SUV, hit the button to raise the hatch, and picked up two suitcases from a stack of boxes.
“Good God!” Flynn stared at the packed SUV. “Did you bring everything you own?”
“I don’t know about Nessa, but I sure did,” April said. “This is it, lock, stock, and barrel. A car that runs off fumes and bald tires, what clothing I own, and I think there’s a bottle of water left somewhere in the back seat.”
“I came with intentions of staying at least until the end of summer,” Nessa said, “so I cleaned out my fridge and my pantry. If I stay past the end of August, I’ll have to make a trip back out to the Panhandle and get the rest of my stuff.”
She rolled the suitcases across the gravel driveway and hoisted them up the steps to the porch. Then she took them, one by one, to the bedroom that she and April had shared when she came to visit. The room looked the same—trundle bed on one wall, dresser on the other, small closet, window with lace curtains overlooking the backyard.
Nanny Lucy had told her that when her boys, Isaac and Matthew, were growing up, there had been bunk beds in the bedroom. Her daughter, Rachel, hadn’t come along until the boys were fourteen and fifteen, and her husband had already passed, so she had kept the new baby in her room until she was two years old and then moved her crib into the living room. It wasn’t until the boys had left home, at eighteen and nineteen, that Rachel had gotten her own bedroom.
Nessa pulled back the curtains, slid the window up, and propped it open with a wooden stick, probably the same one that had been used back when her father was a small boy. The fresh air blowing through the screen brought in the scent of roses with just a touch of mint mingled with it. She inhaled deeply and made a mental note to water the flower beds, and then she went back out to bring in the boxes of stuff that would go in the kitchen and pantry.
“How long will it take you to make your list?” Flynn kept arranging his tools in an old leather belt when she came through the living room.
“Maybe fifteen minutes.” Nessa looked up at the ceiling. “You do realize that it’s going to be a hot job rewiring this place.”
“I’ll sweat in a hot attic any old day rather than having to crawl under the house,” Flynn answered. “I’ve worked in extreme heat, and I don’t mind it, but I’m just a little claustrophobic.”
“Did your daddy ever put you in a closet when you disobeyed him?” Nessa remembered spending some time in the pantry with the door closed