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man asked.
    “Seems it,” I said, pressing the back of my hand to my nose as I shot a despairing look at the car. “It can wait ’til morning, though. I’m only going to the Red Fox.”
    “Do you need a hand with the bag?”
    Whether it was his kindness or the fact that he reminded me of my father, the offer choked me up more. Mortified, I forced a smile, shook my head, shouldered the bag, and set off.
    Only to the Red Fox, I thought, only that far, but my heart beat faster as I crossed the grass. I had burned bridges since leaving here, the worst being the one linking me to my college roommate, Vicki Bell.
    Except she wasn’t Vicki Bell anymore. She was Vicki Bell Beaudry, owner of the Red Fox with her husband, Rob, whose family was nearly as rooted in Bell Valley as the Bell family was, hence a questionable welcome there, too.
    But I couldn’t retreat. My car had ensured that. And the Red Fox beckoned. A bona fide farmhouse, it had been moved here from the outskirts of town in the early 1900s, over time gaining wings and inching close to the woods. Like the town, where carpenters and painters commonly exchanged services for goods, the Red Fox, I guessed, had provided many a blueberry scone in exchange for the fresh yellow paint I saw now, the smart white trim, and the hand-etched sign at the head of the walk that sported a new logo in crimsonand gold. A wide cobblestone path led to the porch, which was partially hidden behind a stand of rhododendron whose buds were ready to pop.
    I had raised a foot to the bottommost step, when I was suddenly hit by fatigue. It was as if I’d been driving not for three days but for ten
years
of hours, and now that I was here, just about to let down my guard, the exhaustion beat me to it.
    If Vicki wasn’t home, I didn’t know what I’d do.
    Likewise, if she didn’t want me here.
    Taking the steps slowly, I crossed the porch, but it was a minute before I could muster the wherewithal to open the screen. When I did, a soft bell tinkled somewhere inside.
    The front hall was empty. From the threshold, it looked familiar—same furniture, same floor plan—yet different. No longer shabby, the stuffed armchairs were now a dozen shades of green. No longer old and dim, the oils on the wall were vibrant. And not only had the antique writing table been refurbished, but between a tall lamp and a vase of yellow roses, albeit discreet, stood a computer screen.
    Vicki Bell had left her mark.
    Heart pounding, I stepped inside, at which point the emotion was too much. Unable to move, even to drop my bag, I stood with my hands steepled at my mouth and my eyes awash with the greens of sea, grass, and forest, until an image intruded. Tears couldn’t hide its identity. Though Vicki was blond, we were so alike in other regards—same height, shape, New England roots—that people took us for sisters, which we might well have ended up being, had Jude not messed up.
    “Emily?” she asked, sounding shocked.
    Brokenly, because the single word said nothing of my welcome, I wailed a soft “I need you to be home.”
    After staring for another disbelieving second, she threw her arms around me. “I should absolutely not know who you are. You haven’t been here since that day with Jude, and okay, you were at my wedding,but only because it wasn’t in Bell Valley, and even then only because
he
wasn’t there. After that you stopped answering e-mail or returning phone calls, just drifted away like a stranger.” She drew back, scowling. “It’s like you dropped off the face of the earth—more like I dropped off the face of
your
earth—and I don’t want to hear about how busy you are down there in New York, because I’m busy, too, my husband’s busy, my friends are busy, we’re
all
busy, but that is not the way you treat people you love. After a while, friends think that you just don’t care—that we’re
annoying
you—so we give up—and suddenly you show up here without a word of