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at first light.”
    A whole night with Harmony. If Harmony would have her.
    Janine shivered, and not from the cold this time.
    Bea started back toward the road, and Janine knew she had to return to the house. She was sorry she had left, because walking up the driveway the first time had been hard enough.
    “Hello? Are you still here?”
    Janine whirled at the sound of her daughter’s voice somewhere behind her. She started toward the sound, picking up speed as Harmony called again. “Hello!”
    “I’m right here,” Janine managed. “I’m coming.”
    She rounded the corner and saw her daughter’s familiar figure half loping toward her, the tall, slender body, the long blond hair flying out behind her. She forgot she had ever been frightened that Harmony would reject her. She forgot she’d had serious qualms about coming to Asheville, because now Rex might find their daughter. She could only think that this was her beloved child, whom she had feared she would never see again. And somehow they had been given this moment.
    “Mom!” Harmony paused a moment as if making sure she was right. Then her face lit up. “Mom! It really is you!”
    They were in each other’s arms in a moment. Janine was laughing, but she felt tears running down her cheeks, too. “Harmony. I thought...I thought—”
    “I didn’t think I would ever see you again.” Harmony held her away but gripped Janine by the shoulders. “I thought you were dead!”
    Janine had hoped Harmony wouldn’t learn about the fire, but the fear that she might hear of it had brought her to Asheville. In the end she had realized she had to prove, in person, she was still alive.
    “I’m okay. I—” There was so much. Where did she start? Janine realized she was floundering.
    “But the house burned to the ground,” Harmony said. “I just found the story on the internet. You weren’t there when it exploded?”
    “I was... I mean I wasn’t. I was there when the fire started, but I got out.”
    “Was Dad there?”
    Janine couldn’t tell from Harmony’s tone what she hoped the answer might be. “No, he was... I don’t know where your father was. Is. I don’t know a thing except that I used... Well, he didn’t come home that night. I—I’d already made plans to leave him, but not quite this soon. Things weren’t quite in—” She stopped.
    “You’d made plans?”
    “Is there somewhere we can talk? I can’t stay more than the night, but there’s so much—” Janine couldn’t seem to finish a sentence. She was drinking in her daughter’s lovely face.
    “What do you mean, you’re not staying?” Harmony tightened her grip on her mother. “Of course you’re staying. Please don’t tell me you’re going back to Kansas.”
    “No. No! It’s just—” Janine shivered.
    “I’m sorry. You’re cold. We can go up to the house.” She shook her head. “No, we’ll go to my apartment because it’ll be quieter, but I have to get Lottie first.”
    “Lottie? Is she...?” Janine’s voice trailed off. The question she’d been about to ask seemed inconceivable, but she knew so little about Harmony’s life. She knew there must be a baby, but not whether the child was a boy or a girl.
    “Lottie’s my daughter,” Harmony said, rescuing her. “Charlotte Louise, but she’s Lottie Lou or mostly just Lottie.”
    “Who’s taking care of her?”
    “Rilla has her. Rilla’s my employer. I live and work here as her assistant.”
    “It’s so beautiful. The land. The house.”
    “You look tired, Mom. Let me take that.” Harmony hooked a hand under the strap of the backpack and tested the weight. “It’s heavy.”
    “Because I have Buddy’s scrapbook inside, but it’s, it’s...” She didn’t want to explain all the details of how she’d gotten away.
    “Buddy’s scrapbook?” Harmony seemed surprised.
    “It’s all I had left of him.”
    Harmony slipped the backpack down Janine’s arm, and Janine gratefully relinquished it. With the