Three Days on Mimosa Lane (A Seasons of the Heart Novel) Read online

  ALSO BY ANNA DESTEFANO

  CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE

  Christmas on Mimosa Lane (A Seasons of the Heart Novel)

  A Sweetbrook Family (previously available as A Family for Daniel)

  All-American Father

  The Perfect Daughter (Daughter Series)

  The Prodigal’s Return

  The Runaway Daughter (Daughter Series)

  A Family for Daniel

  The Unknown Daughter (Daughter Series)

  SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY

  Secret Legacy

  Dark Legacy

  ROMANTIC SUSPENSE

  Her Forgotten Betrayal

  The Firefighter’s Secret Baby (Atlanta Heroes series)

  To Save a Family (Atlanta Heroes series)

  To Protect the Child (Atlanta Heroes series)

  Because of a Boy (Atlanta Heroes series)

  NOVELLAS/ANTHOLOGIES

  “Weekend Meltdown” in Winter Heat

  “Baby Steps” in Mother of the Year

  A Small-Town Sheriff (Daughter Series)

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2013 Anna DeStefano

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake Romance

  PO Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13: 9781477807330

  ISBN-10: 1477807330

  To families and survivors and heroes of all ages.

  You inspire me beyond words.

  May your dreams bloom into vivid reality.

  Contents

  DAY ONE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  DAY TWO

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  DAY THREE

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Preview: Love on Mimosa Lane

  DAY ONE

  Chapter One

  January 14, 2013

  On a scale from nervous to freaked out, Samantha Perry had been having a silent meltdown all weekend. Somewhere during the night, she’d risen from beside her sleeping husband, showered and dressed, and bundled into the lightweight coat that only a few North Georgia months required each year. Then, heading downstairs and through her cozy kitchen’s French doors, she’d escaped into the peace of being outside.

  She’d been night walking ever since.

  It was nearly dawn now in her winter world. Yet midnight felt closer than morning. And amidst what would be a flowering garden in a few months, she was wandering the edges of her community’s park. It was just another day, like any other in suburban Atlanta, full of harmless moments that would carelessly string themselves together. She’d soon be getting her family ready for their Mimosa Lane Monday. Life was good. Nothing was amiss. It should be so easy to believe that nothing bad could happen in this silent, nurturing place, even as her nerves rattled onward and her mind braced for an invisible collision.

  Outdoors, distanced from the memories that had spoiled her sleep, she longed to believe that today of all days she wouldn’t crawl back beneath the covers and disappoint her family by not coming out again until tomorrow. Or the next day. Or even the day after that. Maybe not until spring. Sam was tired of the drama. They all were. It had been an exhausting twelve years of ups and downs and never moving forward, and she refused to let today be about hiding. Her boys and her husband would see that she was finally well. She would see.

  Chandlerville had been her home for more than a decade. It was past time for her to begin living the kind of life she and Brian had transplanted here to build. Their two boys were getting older, their young worlds expanding. If Sam didn’t tunnel out of the protective cocoon her endlessly patient husband had helped her construct on their secluded cul-de-sac, she’d miss even more of the precious growing-up moments that had passed her by already.

  With waning moonlight illuminating her path, she retraced her steps, leaving the park and its playground behind and returning to her own pampered gardens. Sunrise silvered the distant horizon, promising every bright, hopeful thing she craved. She took the turn where the lane curved into a cluster of homes owned by her family and cul-de-sac neighbors. Kneeling beside the bed of sleeping bulbs she’d planted around her mailbox, she brushed away leaves that had tumbled into the yard from the oaks next door.

  Sulky pansies rimmed the bed, shifting in breezy shadow. Their tattered blooms were flags of hope that the colder weather wouldn’t last forever. Smiling, Sam headed around the house until she reached her roses. Delicate and regal, they inspired her like nothing else she grew. Not that she was anyone’s idea of a master gardener. Friends who’d known her before she’d moved here would have been shocked to learn that she no longer killed everything she planted. She had at first, when she’d taken up the solitary pastime as she and Brian awaited the arrival of their secondborn. Over the years gardening had become a much-needed escape, and it was the roses that had first befriended her.

  They spent most of their lives as prickly, ruthlessly pruned vines twisting around the wooden trellis Brian had built—a jumble of leaves and thorns, little more than overgrown weeds. But when it was a rose’s turn to thrive, its beauty reigned supreme. Sam’s bloomed twice a year, including in January. She cradled one of the hearty flowers. It was a splash of deep crimson, a promise against her palm that Sam could handle heading back inside in a few minutes. That she could handle anything, as long as she kept growing and thriving and leaning on the unconditional support of her family.

  Being indoors made her feel trapped sometimes, even in her own home. And there’d be kids and teachers swarming around her later at school. She’d want to run. Literally. But when the panic came, today she would stay. Today was the fresh start she and the people she loved deserved.

  Her and Brian’s long-ago move from Manhattan was supposed to have been their do-over. Her husband’s bright blue eyes and devilish grin flashed through her mind. She felt again the exhilaration of being in his arms last night, and practically every night of their fifteen-year marriage. She thought of each thumbs-up of encouragement he’d given her since she’d decided this New Year’s Eve to make today happen. He’d been so proud that she felt strong enough to try again.

  She thought of Cade, her eldest son who’d barely been a toddler when they’d first arrived on Mimosa Lane, and his surprise that she wouldn’t simply be sending in her gourmet brownies to Chandler Elementary’s PTA bake sale. She was delivering them herself, and staying to sell them to his classmates. Today Cade would see that she was there for him. Her sixth grader wouldn’t head to junior high school next year without her ever having made it through a single school function.

  Thank goodness their school district was pilot-testing a “shorter” middle school model, where
kids stayed in elementary for an extra year, with junior high truncated into two years spent on the high school campus. Without the extra time, Cade would have already graduated from Chandler, and likely wouldn’t have wanted Sam volunteering at the high school at all, even if she’d been up to it.

  Cade.

  Her sensitive boy.

  Her writer.

  He felt everything and watched every move people made. And more than anyone else, he watched Sam, forever aware and worried and waiting for her to need him and his dad’s help in desperate ways that no mother should.

  “Mom?” a young voice asked, making her jump, though she shouldn’t have been surprised to find him waiting on the patio.

  She turned slowly. Her smile was a believable, motherly façade.

  “Hey, buddy,” she said to her eleven-year-old, who was blond and blue-eyed and already lanky, just like his father. Cade was sprawled in the wooden swing next to the house. “What are you doing up this early?”

  “Couldn’t sleep. I figured I’d wait for you to come back.”

  She woke up halfway through most nights, and everyone in the house knew that outside felt better than inside when she couldn’t shut her thoughts off. So they left her to her wandering when she needed to, as if it were no big deal. But Cade always seemed to sense when she was having a particularly difficult time.

  She sat on the swing’s dark green cushions and curled him into the half hug that he still let her steal every now and again. All-out smothering mothering was no longer cool with her almost teenager, even at home. And on the few occasions when she went along as the boys and Brian did things with friends and neighbors, Cade insisted on an affection-free zone in the community.

  He was such a big guy. Soon he might shy away completely from even these private moments. The little-boy things she and Brian had treasured with him were fading so fast, making room for who he’d become.

  “Are you going to be okay?” he asked.

  “Sure.” It wasn’t a lie. She couldn’t, she absolutely wouldn’t, disappoint him and Brian and her youngest, Joshua, again.

  “I know you’re scared.” Cade scooted to the other side of his cushion. “I mean, I don’t know, but…”

  She reached for his hand. His skin was ice cold, even though he was wearing his navy blue winter coat over his flannel pajamas. She mentally clunked herself upside the head for dragging him out of bed. It was ludicrous, getting everyone this wound up about something so simple.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish…”

  An awkward silence joined them on the swing.

  “You don’t have to talk about it,” Cade said. “I know you and Dad don’t like to, you know… remember what happened. It doesn’t bother me. Being around a lot of people bugs you. It’s no big deal. You don’t have to come today. Not if you don’t want to.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Honey, I want to be there for you and Joshua today more than I’ve wanted anything in a long time. I promise you,” she insisted, even though she was a teacher who was terrified of being anywhere near a school. “Everything will be better after today. You’ll see.”

  Cade nodded, but she could tell he wasn’t convinced. The sun’s first rays topped the ridge of pines at the back of their property. She stood and took a bracing breath.

  “Want some breakfast?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  He smiled his dad’s smile. Her boys loved breakfast almost as much as Sam loved making it for them. Cade headed inside in front of her.

  “Get your brother up,” she called. “Take turns in the shower while I get things started.”

  This wasn’t just another morning. It was going to be, hands down, the second-hardest school day of her life. But on this beautiful winter morning her family had the chance to bloom into something it had never been. Something she’d never been in her sons’ lives—easy, open, and no longer afraid.

  And that was exactly what she intended to become for them, whatever that took.

  “Big day!” Brian Perry bounded down the back stairs to the kitchen, where his boys were munching on amazing-smelling muffins.

  Orange juice sat before them on the granite island, in a pitcher and poured into two glasses. Sam would have freshly squeezed it, just as she’d have baked the pastry from scratch and set out the place mats she’d sewn herself. As difficult as this morning was, nurturing their boys came as second nature to her as breathing. A man couldn’t ask for a better mother for his children.

  The day-to-day details and demands of home took a lot out of his wife, energy she often didn’t have to spare, though she’d once been able to outwork, outthink, and out party him. But time with their boys in the mornings and afternoons—cooking for them and talking with them and working one-on-one with them on their schoolwork—never slipped down Sam’s priority list.

  “Everyone sleep well?” Brian asked.

  Cade shrugged and kept eating.

  Brian knew his oldest was stressing about today. He also knew Cade didn’t want to talk about it. He just wanted this latest attempt by Sam to be a normal mom to end differently from all the rest. It was what they all wanted. And things had been going so well, Brian wasn’t about to rock the boat.

  Sam’s improvement since the holidays had had a remarkable effect on their family. Particularly Cade, who was laughing louder with his friends and bickering with his brother more and good-naturedly harassing Sam most afternoons when Brian walked through the door at the end of a mind-numbing workday. All typical kid stuff, and in their house typical was like ice cream on a blistering summer day.

  But over the weekend Sam’s fraying nerves had strained everyone’s excitement. She hadn’t withdrawn completely, the way she would have in the past. But Brian could sense his eldest bracing for another disappointment. That morning, when Brian hadn’t found his wife sleeping beside him, he’d checked Cade’s room next, discovered his son’s bed empty, and had walked to the window at the end of the second floor to find Sam and Cade talking on the patio below. And even if Brian hadn’t made out their conversation, his son had sounded worried.

  “I always sleep good,” Joshua chirped. Only eight and oblivious still to the ever-present tension in the house, he gave Brian a Perry family thumbs-up.

  His red hair, so dark it was nearly brown, just like his mother’s, curled in every possible direction, still wet from his shower. His crumb-covered smile spotlighted a gaping hole where his two front teeth used to be. In between bites of muffin, Joshua was tinkering with whatever LEGO creation he’d gone to bed building the night before.

  Joshie, as Cade had dubbed him the week Joshua was born, was the family’s happy center. Nothing fazed him. He was the ever-calm reminder that Sam and Brian’s life in Chandlerville was a charmed one. As long as there was a new LEGO project to work on, there couldn’t be too terribly much wrong with their youngest’s world.

  “Spaceship?” Brian asked, fingering whatever Joshua was building from the pieces perpetually strewn about his room.

  “Transformer,” Cade said for his brother, because Joshua was only halfway through chewing another mouthful of breakfast. “At least it’s a Transformer until it comes out wrong and he says it’s something else, so he doesn’t look like a dork.”

  Joshua poked Cade with his elbow.

  Cade downed a gulp of orange juice, ignoring him.

  Chuckling, Brian headed for the coffeemaker. An oversize yellow Post-it note was stuck to the counter. Flowering loops and swirls of cursive writing smiled up to him from its surface.

  Big day!

  You’re my HERO for putting up with me all weekend. Feeling much better.

  Outside in the garden for just a few.

  Love you like dark chocolate, S.

  Sam and her garden. Her passion for chocolate so dark it was bitter. Her notes. It was endless, the list of things about her that still intrigued him.

  His wife was both frailer and stronger than anyone he knew. Even when things were at their w
orst, she kept going. She never gave up, not completely. He’d married a crusader who’d longed to save the world one student at a time. And fifteen years later, he knew he’d only scratched the surface of what made her so remarkable. She was a survivor, tested and proven and unstoppable. Between the two of them, she was the hero. He’d never been more proud of her.

  The back door swung open. A blast of frigid air sailed in along with the love of Brian’s life: an auburn-haired, petite beauty with cornflower-blue eyes and a heart of gold. Sam’s smile was instantaneous when she saw him, which took some of the sting out of waking up and finding her gone.

  Their passion last night had rocked him. That had never changed for them. And it seemed to have steadied her, after she’d spent most of yesterday scattered and unable to sit still for more than a few minutes at a time. She’d fallen asleep in his arms, her long, soft hair covering his chest. Yet those perfect moments of closeness hadn’t been enough to keep her with him.

  She rushed to Brian now, smelling of shampoo, toothpaste, outdoors, and spices. Her lips clung to their kiss a little longer than normal, desperate, as if she still doubted that he’d always, always be waiting for her to find her way back to him.

  “Apricots and cardamom?” he teased. She had no shame when it came to mixing and matching spices to create the homemade things she fed him and the boys.

  “Apples and ginger.” Her laughter at his gentle ribbing felt like old times—before the tragedy that had ripped away at so much of what they’d dreamed would be theirs.

  He tucked his nose behind his wife’s ear and breathed deeply, knowing he’d scatter goose bumps all over her body. He touched the tip of his tongue to the sweetest spot on earth, just beneath her earlobe, and gave himself permission to dabble, ruthlessly staying focused on now.

  “You smell good enough to eat,” he whispered. Even though their boys were watching, he nibbled a path down her neck and fantasized about carting her back to bed, the way he would have if they were still young and living in their one-room, fourth-story walk-up in New York.

  Joshua groaned, clicking LEGOs either onto or off of his toy. “Get a room, you two.”