Free One Summer by Karen Robards Page B

ever done her. Becky had been the one who had gone to every dance and party, staying out late with one boy after another and coming home drunk on more than one occasion, to their mother’s dismay. Quieter and less popular than her younger sister, Rachel had been content to spend her nights at home with a book. “You’ll dream your life away!” Elisabeth had warned her, but at the time Rachel had had no suspicion that her mother’s words might actually prove true.
    When the time had come, Rachel had gone away to college, though not too far away. Her good grades had enabled her to get into Vanderbilt, which was about a three-hour drive from Tylerville. But Nashville, where Vandy was located, was light years away from Tylerville inoutlook and opportunity. Nashville had excited her, and she had been a little sorry to return home upon graduation, teaching certificate in hand, to take on the job of educating Tylerville’s youth. Not that she meant to remain a high school teacher forever. She had been absolutely sure that life had something wonderful in store for her.
    Then had come that fateful summer—the long, smoldering summer of eleven years ago, when there must have been some sort of astrological cataclysm to cause so many disastrous events. She had returned to Vandy to take some graduate courses, with the thought that she might get her master’s degree at some point in the future. One afternoon she had been walking along a brick path that cut across campus with her head in the clouds as usual. She’d been mentally composing a poem for her writing class assignment when a runner had knelt in front of her to tie his shoe. She hadn’t noticed, of course, and had tripped over him and fallen headlong. He had picked her up, full of apologies, and she had been instantly smitten with his dark good looks. For the rest of the summer they’d been inseparable. Rachel had fallen in love. She’d been so happy when she’d brought him home to meet her family. They had talked of marriage, and she had expected to make the engagement official during that summer’s-end visit.
    But Michael had taken one look at lovely, vivacious Becky and tumbled head over heels. Rachel could do nothing but watch with growing agony as the only man she had ever loved was charmed effortlessly away. Not that Becky had meant to hurt her. Rachel knew that. It was just that Becky, being Becky, had never considered the matter from Rachel’s point of view. Like her older sister, Becky had fallen madly in love with Michael on sight. They had been engaged within a month, married within three. Rachel had stepped aside with outward grace, even acting as Becky’s maid of honor. But had it not been for the distraction of Marybeth Edwards’s murder at about thesame time, Rachel thought she might have died from the agony of losing her boyfriend to her sister.
    To make things worse, Michael took Becky back to Vandy with him to finish out his third year of law school.
    Rachel had never been able to face Nashville again.
    So she had stayed home, to the delight of her parents, who had dreaded the thought of losing both daughters at once. It had been a temporary thing, she had thought, maybe a year at most, to give her time to recover her balance. She had gone back to teaching at the high school, and gradually, as months passed, the worst of the pain had gone away. She dedicated herself to her job and her students and waited for the shining bright excitement that had died with Michael’s defection to return to her life.
    Only it never had. Then her father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and any thought she might have harbored about escaping Tylerville had been put on hold. With Becky married and gone and her mother distraught at the fate facing her husband, she’d been truly needed. Too, she had wanted to spend every available minute with her father while she still could. But sometimes she felt that life was passing her by while she waited for him to die.
    And