Free Sister's Choice by Emilie Richards Page B

love me. I believe that’s the biggest part of it, I really do. But is there more?”
    Jamie didn’t hesitate. “Of course there is.”
    “Can you tell me?”
    “Would it help? Would you stop worrying about everything if I told you in excruciating detail?”
    Kendra considered. “I guess I don’t really know.”
    “You know I love you. You know I want to give you something wonderful. Let’s just say that the other piece of this is that I want to do something good, just because I can.”
    “You’re raising two wonderful daughters. I hope you realize how much that counts.”
    “I am doing a bang-up job of it, don’t you think?” Jamie handed her sister a cutting board. “Here you go. When you’re done with those, let’s take some tea out on the porch and admire the view. We have nine months to hash this out. Let’s not do it in one fell swoop. What else will we have to talk about in the months ahead?”
    Kendra took the cutting board, but she set it on the counter and pulled Jamie close for a quick hug.

5
    T wo years ago, when Leah Spurlock’s old dogtrot cabin still stood, Kendra Taylor had planned to build on to the structure that already existed. Leah had moved to Toms Brook and the old cabin during the Depression, and sometime soon afterward another cabin had been built beside the first one, connected by one roof and common porches. The space between them had been narrow enough to act as a wind tunnel, sucking breezes from the river and serving as a place for the household pets to sleep, hence the name.
    At first Cash, like his father, had wondered about trying to incorporate this particular piece of the past into the future. Both Rosslyns believed in historical preservation and deeply appreciated the importance of restoring Virginia’s heritage. The Valley wasn’t the same place Cash had roamed as a boy. Farms were being sold and divided, agriculture was slowly giving way to tourism and the suburbs and strip malls of Northern Virginia were encroaching. He was committed—as much as he could commit to anything—to keeping the past alive between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies.
    The Spurlock cabin hadn’t been worth a lot, either historically or structurally. Luckily there was nothing like sentiment to jump-start a project. Kendra had felt an attachment to the cabin and her husband’s past, and with some creative design ideas from her kid sister, Cash’s enthusiasm, along with his father’s, had grown. They’d found an old barn and dismantled the logs to use in the addition. A foundation was dug, a skeletal structure begun. Then a fire destroyed almost everything except the logs, which were stacked at a safe distance.
    Now, with nothing left to anchor the new house to the past, Jamie, clearly a promising architecture student, had taken on the task of drawing up plans that looked toward the future. But her efforts had turned up something unexpected. Last week, when he’d stopped by to work on the playhouse, she’d told him that, after questioning Kendra and Isaac at length and showing them plans and designs, rough sketches and sophisticated renderings, in the end, the concept they were most excited about used the same dogtrot design as Isaac’s grandmother’s cabin.
    “Some ideas just take root,” Jamie’d said, as she showed him what she’d done. “This one will not be shaken loose. I think we have to go with it.”
    And she had been so darned cute when she said it, so absorbed and serious, that right there on the spot he probably would have agreed to build the Taylors an igloo and chop the ice blocks from a glacier himself.
    Tonight his father was going to look over the finished product and give his opinion. They were on the way to Jamie’s right now, with Manning much too quiet beside him.
    “I think you’ll agree Jamie Dunkirk’s got talent,” Cash said, to break the silence. “A covered porch connects the two wings. The porch’ll have a stone fireplace for warmth on cool