Read Once in a Blue Moon for Free Online Page B

surely there was room for one small miracle?
    When she pulled into town, she parked in the first available spot and walked the rest of the way. After strolling for several blocks along a main drag lined with shops and eateries, she located her sister’s bookshop on one of the side streets. Unlike some of the storefronts she’d passed along the way, with their cutesy signs and windows full of kitschy seaside souvenirs, it didn’t appear to cater primarily to the tourist trade. It looked like a place that sold books to people who loved to read, as warm and inviting and a bit worn as a comfortable old sofa. The weathered sign over the gabled entrance advertised it as the Blue Moon Bay Book Café. There was a wooden bench out front, flanked by flower boxes from which bright pansies peeked like smiley faces. Peering in, she saw some customers browsing the aisles while others sat at café tables in back, sipping coffee and nibbling on baked goods. Displayed in the front window was an assortment of titles recommended for Mother’s Day. Her heart constricted. For her, the holiday would be just another day without her daughter.
    Hovering outside the door, Kerrie Ann felt as if she were about to step onstage to perform a part she hadn’t rehearsed. Her heart was in her throat, her palms sweaty. Would her sister welcome her or want nothing to do with her? Or something in between—Lindsay making polite noises while counting the minutes until she left?
    Only one way to find out. She paused just long enough to take in her reflection in the door’s glass pane—pink-haired and tattooed, wearing black low-rise jeans and a pair of high-heeled boots, a red leather jacket over a knockoff Juicy Couture midi-top—before she pushed her way inside.

C HAPTER T WO

    The previous day
    “D O YOU THINK I’ll ever find her?” Lindsay mused
    “Who?” Grant replied without looking up.
    “My sister.”
    It was late afternoon, and they were seated on the balcony of his condo, overlooking the marina in Pacifica. While browsing through the Sunday paper, Lindsay had come across an article about a brother and a sister in Germany, separated as children during World War II, who’d been reunited after a span of sixty-eight years. It had given rise to the spark of hope in her own breast, never far below the surface.
    But when she’d remarked on it, Grant had only lifted his head from the sports section to murmur, “Mmm. Isn’t that something?” She might have been commenting on the weather. With a sigh of frustration, she bundled up the rest of the newspaper and tossed it aside. Why, whenever she mentioned her sister, usually in the context of some new lead—a former foster parent of Kerrie Ann’s whom she’d tracked down, or a response to a want ad she’d placed—did she get the feeling, even when he feigned interest, that Grant found the whole subject tiresome? As if she were someone in mourning who, in his view, should have moved on by now.
    She stewed a moment longer before her innate sense of fairness won out. Can I blame him? she thought. He was a lawyer; he dealt in facts. And what evidence was there to support the hope that she’d one day be reunited with Kerrie Ann? Only scraps of information that had proved useless.
    She leaned into him as they sat side-by-side on the chaise lounge. Between Grant’s busy schedule and hers, their days off didn’t often coincide, so she’d learned to savor each one as she did the all-too-rare sunny days in this part of the world. Today was a double bonus: a whole Sunday to themselves, with clear skies and temperatures that felt more like mid-June than May. Earlier in the day, they’d gone sailing with friends and were now enjoying a quiet moment alone before supper. An open bottle of pinot grigio sat on the small glass table in front of them. The sun, low in the sky, skewered by the tall masts of the sailboats moored in the marina, spilled its pinkish-gold light over the water below, turning it