A Small-Town Reunion Read Free

infinite effects created by sunlight as it played through the waves and streaks and bevels. She’d told herself stories to bring the patterns and pictures to life as they’d painted her skin in jeweled tones and pastels.
    Those windows had been her secret, silent joy. They’d kept her company and given shape to her dreams—and now two of them had been broken. It was as though pieces of her childhood had been chipped and fractured.
    “Can you come?” asked Geneva. “This morning, if possible. I’d like to get an expert opinion on how to proceed with the repairs. And, of course, I’d like you to make those repairs for me, Addie.”
    “Yes, I’ll come.” Of course she would. Her special, magic windows needed her skills.
    And Addie had always known there’d come a day she’d be forced to deal with the Chandlers.
     
    H ALF AN HOUR BEFORE she’d agreed to meet Geneva at Chandler House, Addie stared at the mirror hanging above her bathroom’s wall-mounted sink and tugged her fingers through her long, curling hair. It was a simple matter of basic grooming and good manners, she reasoned as she twisted together a few tendrils andcaught them up with two tiny, spangled shooting-star clips. Looking put together on the outside would help her feel put together on the inside—even if the butterfly horde in her stomach was flapping hard enough to propel a space shuttle into orbit.
    She wasn’t trying to impress Geneva, she told herself as she slipped thin gold hoops through her ears. Even if she’d wanted to, it was impossible to impress a woman who had more power than anyone else in town. The Chandlers had made their fortune in the timber industry and then earned several more through marriages to heiresses and investments in a number of Carnelian Cove businesses. There were few citizens of Carnelian Cove who hadn’t benefited, directly or indirectly, from the family’s employment opportunities or charity projects.
    Addie smoothed a hand over her powder-blue short-sleeved shirt and stared at the toes peeking through the ends of her sandals, wondering if another layer of lotion would pass for a pedicure, and then decided her canvas deck shoes were more appropriate for the visit.
    Her old truck sputtered and shuddered as she backed out of her alley parking spot, and its idle seemed rougher than usual as she waited to pull on to Main Street. Time for another tune-up, she thought with a sigh—and where was she going to find the cash for that?
    From her bill for the repair on Geneva’s windows, she realized. She’d ask for a deposit and use some of the funds to replace her broken supplies. Chances were she’d need those supplies to make the repairs, anyway.
    Sunlight pierced the shadows beneath the bluff’s redwood grove and flashed across the windshield asher truck groaned and complained about the climb up the winding road. She passed the crooked, scarred rhododendron that Tess at sixteen had swiped with her new roadster and remembered the way she’d screamed as the shredded purple blooms exploded in their faces. There was the turn to Danny Silva’s house—the infamous scene of the poolside party where Addie had lost her bathing suit top after a clumsy dive.
    And there, near the top of the bluff, was the entrance to the Chandler estate. It seemed days rather than years since she’d driven through these tall, wide, iron gates. Nothing had changed—the flowers and ferns spilling over the edges of fat stone urns, the lawn flowing like an emerald river from the slate-edged porches of the shingle-style house, the dramatic backdrop of tall trees and black cliffs.
    No, she thought again as she tickled her clutch through a downshift—there was one thing here that had changed. She had changed. She was no longer the daughter of the housekeeper; she was an independent businesswoman here on a job.
    She slowed as she neared a fork in the drive. One paved path led to the front of the house, swinging past the grand front porch