The House on Honeysuckle Lane Read Free Page A

Emma needed a big dose of small town charm after the year she’d had; she had been too swamped with work even to take a brief vacation. And the breakup with Ian, and before that, the long and difficult process of coming to terms with the fact that the break had to be made had taken its toll.
    Instead of going directly to the house on Honeysuckle Lane, Emma decided to make a detour and visit one of her favorite places in Oliver’s Well, an old gristmill. Nettles Mill had been beautifully restored by the Oliver’s Well Historical Association, but back when she was young the buildings were still largely dilapidated. Emma used to ride her bicycle to the site, prop it against the remains of an old stone wall, and explore the property, losing herself in thoughts of what life must have been like for the people who had operated the huge stone grinding mechanism and who had lived in a few rough rooms attached to the mill building. Caro would have forbidden Emma to visit the old mill on her own; knowing this, Emma simply never told her mother where she was going.
    Emma pulled her car into the visitors’ parking lot and climbed out. A volunteer member of the OWHA, bright red Santa hat on her head, was leading a group of visitors out of one building and toward a structure Emma remembered from her childhood as a pile of rubble. As she stood gazing up at the water wheel by the building that housed the original millstones, she thought about the last time all three Reynolds siblings had gathered for Christmas, five years earlier. Ian had danced attendance on Caro for the two days of their visit, and had spent far more time with Daniel than Emma had. At least I had time to talk with Dad, Emma thought. And even if their conversation had been mostly about business, at least it was conversation.
    Emma felt an involuntary shiver run through her. That was all ancient history. Her mother and father were gone now. The slate was wiped clean. Strange that she would see their passing as events that finally allowed for a fresh start, but that was how it felt to Emma, like a release of sorts. In fact, since shortly after Caro’s death Emma had been feeling a stirring inside, a yearning for some essential change in her life. And she had been experiencing an emptiness that bothered her, a longing.
    A longing for home? But what did that mean? Was home really an ideal to achieve, or was it only a place to which you could return for short periods of time before your heart told you to move on? A longing for love? That’s why she had finally ended the relationship with Ian. It hadn’t been love , not the kind that could sustain and nourish a marriage over the years.
    Emma sighed and looked at her watch. With a silent good-bye to Nettles Mill, she got back into her car and continued on to the house on Honeysuckle Lane where, she knew, her brother would be anxiously awaiting her arrival.

C HAPTER 2
    A ndie Reynolds had picked up a rental car at Dulles airport for the final leg of her journey to Oliver’s Well. Andie didn’t enjoy driving. In fact, she had delayed getting her license until she was nineteen, in spite of living in a town with no public transportation. She had been perfectly happy until her father sat her down and explained that getting a driver’s license was an important milestone for every young person to achieve. “Andie,” he had said, “you’ve let it go too long already.” So, obliging person that she was, she had gotten her license. And she was a good driver, careful, attentive, and when necessary defensive. She just didn’t enjoy being behind the wheel.
    Andie, born Andrea Jane, was forty-four years old. She had always been “a bit on the heavy side”—those were her mother’s words—built more like her father than her siblings were, both of whom tended to be tall and slim like Caro Reynolds. Her hair was dark and unruly, also like Cliff’s, and rather