if she had a fortune to fight over. Just a little three-bedroom house at the far end of Peach Street that backed up to the city park. The roof was old. It didn’t leak, but it wouldn’t sell in that condition. The floor in the kitchen had a dip in the middle of it, and the furniture was over thirty years old, but right now, it appeared to be a bigger issue than watching their mother still struggling to breathe.
Marjorie had given birth to six children. The oldest, a girl named Shelly, died from asthma before she ever started school.
Four of her children, Junior, Emma, Ray, and Bridgette, who they called Birdie, were sitting with her in her room. Only Hunter, the second child and eldest son, was missing. No one knew where he was now, and all knew better than to mention his name.
Their father, Parnell Knox, died six years ago of emphysema. Marjorie always said he smoked himself to death, and while she’d never smoked a day in her life, now she was dying of lung cancer from someone else’s addiction. The diagnosis had been a shock, then she got angry. She was dying because of second-hand smoke.
* * *
Sometimes Marjorie was vaguely aware of a nurse beside the bed, and sometimes she thought she heard her children talking, and then she would drift again. She could see daylight and a doorway just up ahead and she wanted to go there. She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t leave yet. She was waiting for something. She just couldn’t remember what.
* * *
Ava Ridley was the nurse at Marjorie’s bedside. Ava had grown up with the Knox kids, because Marjorie had been her babysitter from the time she was a toddler. Her childhood dream had been to grow up and marry Hunt. But at the time he was a senior in high school, she was a freshman in the same class with his brother, Ray.
She’d spent half her life in their house, making Ray play dolls with her when they were little, and learning how to turn somersaults and outrun the boys just to keep up with them. As they grew older, they hung out together like siblings, but she’d lived for the moments when Hunt was there. At that time, he barely acknowledged her existence, but it didn’t matter. She loved enough for two.
And then something big—something horrible that no one ever talked about—happened at their house, and Hunt was gone.
After that, no one mentioned his name, so she grieved the loss of a childhood dream, grew up into a woman on a mission to take care of people, and went on to become a nurse. After a couple of years working in a hospital in Savannah, she came home to Blessings, and she’d been here ever since. Ava had cared for many people in her years of nursing, but it was bittersweet to be caring for Marjorie Knox, when she had been the one who’d cared for Ava as a child.
Ava glanced at Emma. She was Emma Lee, now. Married to a nice man named Gordon Lee. Her gaze slid to Junior, and Ray, and Birdie.
Junior was a high school dropout and divorced.
Ray worked for a roofing company, and had a girlfriend named Susie.
Bridgette, who’d been called Birdie all her life, was the baby, but she was smart and driven to succeed in life where her siblings were not. She was the bookkeeper at Truesdale’s feed and seed store, and still waiting for her own Prince Charming.
Ava thought the family looked anxious, which was normal, but they also seemed unhappy with each other, which seemed strange. However, she’d seen many different reactions from families when a loved one was passing, and had learned not to judge or assume. And even though it was no business of hers, she knew the Knox family well enough to know something was going on. Her job was to monitor Marjorie’s vitals and nothing else.
The door to Marjorie’s room was open, and the sounds out in the hall drifted in as Ava was adjusting the drip in Marjorie’s IV. So when the staccato sound of metal-tipped boots drifted inside, they all looked toward the doorway.
The stride was heavy, likely male—steady and measured, like someone who knew where he was going. The sound was growing louder, and they kept watching, curious to see who it was this time of night.
Then all of a sudden there was a man in the doorway, dressed in