LITMIR.BIZ

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decorated cookies.

       Olivia, just coming out of the powder room, where she’d changed into her regulation jeans, flannel shirt and boots, helped herself to a paper bag from the decoupaged wooden paper-bag dispenser beside the back door and stuffed the pantsuit into it. “Brad was—Brad,” she said. “He loves being in the limelight.”

       Ashley went still and frowned, oddly defensive. “His heart’s in the right place,” she replied.

       Olivia went to Ashley and touched her arm. She’d removed the patchwork jacket, hanging it neatly on a gleaming brass peg by the front door as they came in, and her loose-fitting beige cashmere turtleneck made Olivia feel like a thrift-store refugee by comparison.

       “I wasn’t criticizing Brad, Ash,” she said quietly. “It’s beyond generous of him to build the shelter. We need one, and we’re lucky he’s willing to help out.”

       Ashley relaxed a little and offered a tentative smile. Looked around at her kitchen, which would have made a great set for some show on the Food Channel. “He bought this house for me, you know,” she said as the cider began to simmer in its shiny pot on the stove.

       Olivia nodded. “And it looks fabulous,” she replied. “Like always.”

       “You are planning to show up for Thanksgiving dinner out at the ranch, aren’t you?”

       “Why wouldn’t I?” Olivia asked, even as her stomach knotted. Who had invented holidays, anyway? Everything came to a screeching stop whenever there was a red-letter day on the calendar—everything except the need and sorrow that seemed to fill the world.

       “I know you don’t like family holidays,” Ashley said, pouring steaming cider into a copper serving pot and then into translucent china teacups waiting in the center of the round antique table. Olivia would have dumped it straight from the kettle, and probably spilled it all over the table and floor in the process.

       She just wasn’t domestic. All those genes had gone to Ashley.

       Her sister’s eyes went big and round and serious. “Last year you made some excuse about a cow needing an appendectomy and ducked out before I could serve the pumpkin pie.”

       Olivia sighed. Ashley had worked hard to prepare the previous year’s Thanksgiving dinner, gathering recipes for weeks ahead of time, experimenting like a chemist in search of a cure, and looked forward to hosting a houseful of congenial relatives.

       “Do cows even have appendixes?” Ashley asked.

       Olivia laughed, drew back a chair at the table and sat down. “That cider smells fabulous,” she said, in order to change the subject. “And the cookies are works of art, almost too pretty to eat. Martha Stewart would be so proud.”

       Ashley joined her at the table, but she still looked troubled. “Why do you hate holidays, Olivia?” she persisted.

       “I don’t hate holidays,” Olivia said. “It’s just that all that sentimentality—”

       “You miss Big John and Mom,” Ashley broke in quietly. “Why don’t you just admit it?”

       “We all miss Big John,” Olivia admitted. “As for Mom—well, she’s been gone a long time, Ash. A really long time. It’s not a matter of missing her, exactly.”

       “Don’t you ever wonder where she went after she left Stone Creek, if she’s happy and healthy—if she remarried and had more children?”

       “I try not to,” Olivia said honestly.

       “You have abandonment issues,” Ashley accused.

       Olivia sighed and sipped from her cup of cider. The stuff was delicious, like everything her sister cooked up.

       Ashley’s Botticelli face brightened; she’d made another of her mercurial shifts from pensive to hopeful. “Suppose we found her?” she asked on a breath. “Mom, I mean—”

       “Found her?” Olivia echoed, oddly alarmed.

       “There are all these search engines online,” Ashley enthused. “I was over at the library yesterday afternoon, and I searched Google for Mom’s name.”

      Oh. My. God, Olivia thought, feeling the color drain out of her face.

       “You used a computer?”

       Ashley nodded. “I’m thinking of getting one. Setting up a website to bring in more business for the B and B.”

       Things were changing, Olivia realized. And she hated it when things changed. Why couldn’t people leave well enough alone?

       “There are more Delia O’Ballivans out there than you would ever guess,” Ashley rushed on. “One of them must be Mom.”

       “Ash, Mom could be dead by now. Or going by a different name…”

       Ashley looked offended. “You sound like Brad and Melissa. Brad just clams up whenever I ask him about Mom—he remembers her better, since he’s older. ‘Leave it alone’ is all he ever says. And Melissa thinks she’s probably a crack addict or a hooker or something.” She let out a long, shaky breath. “I thought you missed Mom as much as I do. I really did.”

       Although Brad had never admitted it, Olivia suspected he knew more about their mother than he was telling. If he wanted Ashley and the rest of them to let the proverbial sleeping dogs lie, he probably had a good reason. Not that the decision was only his to make.

       “I miss having a mother, Ash,” Olivia said gently. “That’s different from missing Mom specifically. She left us, remember?”

       Remember? How could Ashley remember? She’d been a toddler when their mother boarded an afternoon bus out of Stone Creek and vanished into a world of strangers. She was clinging to memories she’d merely imagined, most likely. To a fantasy mother, the woman who should have been, but probably never was.

       “Well, I want to know why,” Ashley insisted, her eyes full of pain. “Maybe she regretted it. Did you ever think of that? Maybe she misses us, and wants a second chance. Maybe she expects us to reject her, so she’s afraid to get in touch.”

       “Oh, Ash,” Olivia murmured, slouching against the back of her chair. “You haven’t actually made contact, have you?”

       “No,” Ashley said, tucking a wisp of blond hair behind her right ear when it escaped from her otherwise categorically perfect French braid, “but if I find her, I’m going to invite her to Stone Creek for Christmas. If you and Brad and Melissa want to keep your distance, that’s your business.”

       Olivia’s hand shook a little as she set her cup down, causing it to rattle in its delicate saucer. “Ashley, you have a right to see Mom if you want to,” she said carefully. “But Christmas—”

       “What do you care about Christmas?” Ashley asked abruptly. “You don’t even put up a tree most years.”

       “I care about you and Melissa and Brad. If you do manage to find Mom, great. But don’t you think bringing her here at Christmas, the most emotional day of the year, before anybody has a chance to get used to the idea, would be like planting a live hand grenade in the turkey?”

       Ashley didn’t reply, and after that the conversation was stilted, to say the least. They talked about what to contribute to the Thanksgiving shindig at Brad and Meg’s place, decided on freshly baked dinner rolls for Ashley and a selection of salads from the deli for Olivia, and then Olivia left to make rounds.

       Why was she so worried? she wondered, biting down hard on her lower lip as she fired up the Suburban and headed for the first farm on her list. If she was alive, Delia had done a good job of staying under the radar all these years. She’d never written, never called, never visited. Never sent a single birthday card. And if she was dead, they’d all have to drop everything and mourn, in their various ways.

       Olivia didn’t feel ready to take that on.

      

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