Free Larkspur Road by Jill Gregory Page A

daughter of Louis and Abigail Sullivan had shut herself off from every other member of her family?
    “All right, if that’s what you want, I’ll go. But this basketis staying on the porch. If you don’t want it, that’s fine—the cat will have it. Suit yourself. But call me if you need something. A ride to the doctor’s office or…anything. I’m writing my cell phone number down, and leaving it in the basket, so put it somewhere safe.”
    She might as well have been speaking to the clouds. Reaching into her purse, she dug around for a scrap of paper. She knew she had a notepad somewhere in her bag….
    There
. Ripping off a sheet of pink-and-white-striped paper, she scribbled her cell number and stuck it under the plate of chicken. She left the basket and the bakery box on the porch chair, a relic of sturdy wood and peeling blue paint.
    There was still no further sound from inside the cabin.
    “I’m going now, Aunt Winny. But you know how to reach me. And I’m not promising that I won’t be back.”
    She waited a moment, listening, but apparently her aunt had used up her maximum number of words for the day. Mia headed to the Jeep. The orange cat was hiding not five yards away. Lurking in the brush, wary, silent, and still.
    Well, at least I tried,
she told herself as she slammed the Jeep’s door.
I did my best.
    So why did she feel so guilty about leaving? It was what her aunt wanted. To be left alone. Apparently it was what she’d always wanted.
    Reminding herself that she had a runaway niece sleeping in her guest room who’d probably be starving when she woke up, Mia backed up the rough gravel drive and headed toward home.

    Winny waited until the sound of the car’s engine faded away. Then she waited some more, her back straight, pressed against the cabin door, the cane the doctor had given her gripped in one spider-veined hand. Her once plush and perfectly shaped mouth was set in a harsh line.
    She didn’t want the damned food. Didn’t need it either. Didn’t she have perfectly good soup and ham in her refrigerator? And a loaf of bread she’d baked herself yesterday morning?
    She had milk and eggs and cat food. She’d gone to Livingston only last week and stocked up.
    Besides, if she
did
need something, she’d call Abner, not that great-niece of hers. Alicia’s granddaughter.
    Not for the first time, she wondered what Alicia had told her granddaughters about her all these years. Wondered what she’d told everyone. Did everyone in Lonesome Way and their children and their children’s children know what she’d done? What they
thought
she’d done?
    Not that it mattered. She didn’t care. Not anymore. It had been more than half a century ago. She’d been ashamed then, and furious, and had wanted nothing more than to put as many miles between her and her family as possible. And now…
    Her mouth twisted into a grimace.
    Now it was much too late to ever set things right. So what difference did it make if the girl knew? Maybe she
should
know.
    Then she might stay away and not drive out here bothering people with picnic baskets and pies.
    The girl who’d come knocking on her door today was no more family to her than the cat who happened by now and then.
    She didn’t give a care about either of them.
    Or about that letter at the bottom of her dresser drawer. It had been there for the past five years now, and she hadn’t been tempted to open the seal even once.
    All it would do was stir up the hurt all over again.
    Still, something made her ease open the cabin door and limp out onto the porch with the aid of the cane. She brushed a hand over the wicker basket her great-niece had left perched on the old chair.
    Slowly tears filled her eyes.
    She shouldn’t have ever come back here. She’d left Lonesome Way once—way back when it all happened—and she should have just stayed away.
    There was no point in thinking about any of it now. Lifting the basket in one hand, she hobbled back inside. She set