“Are you nervous?”
Shania Stewart’s softly voiced question to her twenty-six-year-old cousin broke through the otherwise early-morning silence within their small kitchen in their newly rented house located in Forever, Texas.
Wynona Chee didn’t answer her immediately. She was tempted to nonchalantly toss her long, shining black hair over her shoulder and confidently deny the very idea of having even a drop of fear regarding whatever might lay ahead of her today.
Ahead of both of them, really.
But over the course of her young life, Wynona had gone through a great deal with Shania, more than so many women even twice their age. Always close, the cousins had suffered the loss of their parents almost simultaneously. For Wynona, it had been the death of her single mother—she had never known her father—when sickness and heartbreak had claimed her. For Shania, it had come in waves. First, her father had died when a drunk driver had hit his car, then her mother, who had by that time taken in an orphaned Wynona to live with them, had succumbed to pneumonia.
By the time Wynona was ten and Shania was eleven, they did not have a living parent between them. Instead, they faced the grim prospect of being sent off to family care where they would then be absorbed into the foster care system. The latter fact ultimately meant that they would be separated.
The immediate future that faced the two cousins had been beyond bleak at that point.
It was then that they learned the true meaning of the word hope. Their late grandmother’s sister, Great-Aunt Naomi, came swooping into their lives from Houston like an unexpected twister sweeping across the prairie.
A fiercely independent woman, Naomi Blackwell, a dedicated physician who had never married, had been notified about the cousins’ pending fate by the town’s sheriff. She immediately came and took the girls under her wing and returned with them to Houston to live with her in her oversize mansion.
Over the course of the next sixteen years, Naomi not only provided them with a home, she also made sure that they both received an excellent education. This helped guarantee that they could go on to become anything they set their minds to.
It turned out that the girls had set their minds to return to Forever and give back a little of their good fortune to the community. After a short attempt to talk the cousins out of it, Naomi gave them her blessings and sent them off.
When they finally returned to Forever, the house where they had spent their early childhood—Shania’s parents’ house—was gone, destroyed in a fire some eight years ago. Some of the ashes were still there. Consequently, when they arrived back that summer, they moved into a house in town and then set about putting their mission into motion.
Today marked the beginning of their new careers. Shania had been hired to teach physics at Forever’s high school while Wynona was taking over a position that had been vacated at the end of the school year by Ericka Hale, the woman who was retiring as Forever Elementary’s second/third grade teacher.
“A little,” Wynona finally admitted after pausing to take in a deep breath. She could feel her butterflies growing and multiplying in her stomach. “You?”
Shania smiled. As the older of the two, Shania had always felt it was up to her to set the example. But like Wynona, she couldn’t be anything but truthful. It just wasn’t in her nature.
“I’d like to say no,” she told her cousin, “but that would be a lie.” Her smile was slightly rueful. “I feel like everything inside me is vibrating to Flight of the Bumblebee.”
“Really?” Wynona asked, surprised to hear that her cousin was anything but confident. She’d always projected that sort of an image. “But you’ve always been the calm one.”
“Most of the time,” Shania admitted. “But I’m not feeling very calm right now, although I guess I did manage to fool you,” she told Wynona with a self-deprecating laugh. “Now I guess all I have to do is fool everyone else.”
“That’s easy enough,” Wynona assured her cousin. “All you have to do is channel Great-Aunt Naomi.” A fond smile curved her lips. “That woman could make a rock tremble in fear.”
Shania laughed. “She could, couldn’t she?” A wave of nostalgia came over her as she looked at her younger cousin. “Do you find yourself wishing we were back in Houston with her right now?”
“No,” Wynona said honestly. She saw that her answer surprised her cousin. “Staying with Aunt Naomi would have meant taking the easy way. I think we both know that we’re right where we’re supposed to be just as I know that Aunt Naomi is proud of us for choosing to do this.”
Shania smiled in response, nodding her head. “I think you’re right.” The young woman looked at her watch, then raised her eyes to meet Wynona’s. She took in a deep breath. “Well, Wyn, it’s almost seven. If we don’t want to be late our first day of school, we really should get going.”
Wynona nodded in agreement as she felt her butterflies go into high gear. “Okay, Shania. Let’s do this.”
Clint Washburn wiped the back of his wrist against his forehead while crouching down and holding the stallion’s hoof still with his other hand. Seven thirty in the morning and it was already getting hot.
This was fall, he thought. It shouldn’t be this hot, certainly not this early in the day. These days it felt as if things were making even less sense than usual.
A movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. Clint frowned when he saw the skinny little figure entering the corral. After closing the gate, he was walking toward him.
Ryan.
The boy wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be on his way to school by now.
Clint stopped working on the stallion’s hoof. The tiny rock or whatever had worked its way under the horseshoe, causing the animal to limp, was just going to have to wait until he sent his son on his way.
He squinted. The sun was directly behind the boy, making Ryan’s fine features as well as his expression momentarily difficult to see. Clint’s frown deepened.
“Shouldn’t you be on your way to school by now, boy?” Clint asked.
There was no warmth in his voice, only impatience.
Rather