“Of course I’m sure, and from this day on, you are going to have March 30 off.” He smiled, the pain on his wrinkled face echoing hers. He reached for the wall-hung phone and called Tawny. “She’ll be here in three minutes. Won’t hurt them folks to wait a little longer.”

“Thank you, Uncle Zed.” Harper pulled off her apron and laid it on the worktable. “For everything.”

“Just wish things could’ve been different for you, child,” he said. “There she is comin’ in the front. You get on out of here before she sees them swollen eyes and all that black eye stuff on your face.”

Harper hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on her door, dragged a full bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the closet, and took a long drink right from the bottle before she ran a bathtub full of hot water. Sinking down into it, she held the bottle in one hand and took another long drink before she came up for air. It burned like hell all the way to her stomach, yet like always, it did not quite take the pain or the guilt away.

Knowing that Zed didn’t hate her and that he and Granny Annie would’ve helped her actually made it worse, so she took another drink right from the bottle. She could have had a lovely little blonde-haired daughter, just five years younger than Brook. The baby could have grown up right there on the lake, and Harper would have been there with Granny Annie all these years rather than jumping from job to job, dreading the end of March every year.

“Lord, why did I believe my mother?” she mumbled as she turned the water off with her toes and leaned back. Exhaustion, mixed with the whiskey, made her eyes heavy, and she fell asleep.

The sun was going down by the time she awoke with a nasty taste in her mouth, a half-empty bottle of Jack floating in the cold water like a ship on the ocean, and the vision of those three little girls still on her mind. She carefully picked up the bottle and set it on the floor, pulled the plug on the tub, and shivered when the cold air hit her naked, wet body. She wrapped a towel around herself and carried the bottle of whiskey with her to the bed, where she sat down and stared blankly out the window at the wooded area.

The couple who had adopted her baby named her Emma, and they’d even let Harper choose the middle name. Somewhere out there was a nine-year-old girl named Emma Joanna. And Granny never even knew about her second great-granddaughter.

She threw off the towel and dressed in a faded nightshirt and a pair of cotton underwear. Turning up the bottle again, she took a couple of gulps and then threw it across the room, shattering it on the far wall. She fell back on the bed and heartbreaking sobs racked her body as her hands went to cradle her stomach.

“I’m so sorry, Emma,” she moaned. “But I was so young and so afraid I’d be a mother like mine. You deserved more than that.”

She shut her eyes and images of the older little girl who’d come into the café flashed in her mind. Would her daughter be blowing out birthday candles right now? Did she get a bike for her ninth birthday, or better yet, a puppy? The couple lived out in the country, so maybe she already had a pet and a bike. Perhaps she got a pony for her birthday and a pair of new boots.

Harper kept her eyes closed and imagined a little blonde-haired girl giggling as she opened her birthday presents. Then someone knocked on her door and ruined the whole vision. She ignored it, and they knocked again, louder.

“Harper, please open the door,” Wyatt yelled. “Zed said you’re in there.”

“Dammit, Uncle Zed. You promised not to interfere.” She stumbled toward the door.

He didn’t break his promise. Granny Annie’s voice was in her head. Zed keeps his word. You can count on that, so don’t go blamin’ him.

Another knock and she slung open the door, hanging on to it to keep from falling through the screen and landing at Wyatt’s boots. With blurry eyes, she looked at him and could see by his expression that he was hurting.

“My friend died, Harper,” he said hoarsely. “He had another heart attack and they couldn’t revive him.”

“I gave away our daughter,” she blurted out. “Guess we’re both in pain.”

The floor kept getting closer and closer and everything was spinning out of control. She felt the heavy weight of blackness surrounding her, and then strong arms cradled her like a baby and carried her to the bed. He stretched out beside her and held her so close that she could hear his heartbeats and his quiet weeping for his friend.

“Sweet Jesus!” she slurred. “Did I say that out loud?”

The last thing she smelled as she passed out was a mixture of coffee on Wyatt’s breath, remnants of his shaving lotion—the same that he’d used when he was sixteen—and the Jack Daniel’s that was in a puddle on the floor with all the glass from the broken bottle.

When she came back to her senses again, Wyatt was propped up on an elbow and staring into her eyes. “What did you say at the door, Harper?”

“I’m sorry about your friend,” she said.

“No, that wasn’t it. You said we were both in pain and for me to come on in, but before that you said something about our daughter. Were you dreaming or just drunk?”

“All of the above,” Harper answered.

“You had a baby?”

“I did. A little girl that I gave away.”

“Why?” Wyatt asked.

“Because my mother said I couldn’t come home if I didn’t, and then I got to thinkin’ about what a horrible mother I would be. I was only sixteen and you were just a kid, too, and it didn’t seem fair to her to . . .” She stopped to catch her breath and then realized she was out of words.