Wildflowers From Winter by Katie Ganshert

Author:Katie Ganshert [Ganshert, Katie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary, Romance, Contemporary Romance
ISBN: 9780307730398
Publisher: Waterbrook Press
Published: 2011-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-ONE

Sitting on the floor of Robin’s guest bedroom, Bethany ripped open the last of her moving boxes and searched for her favorite cashmere sweater. When she didn’t find it, she pushed the box away, set her elbows on her knees, and fisted her hands through her hair. After accepting a short but civil visit from her mother on Christmas Day, followed by an unexpected but much welcomed phone call from her brother, Bethany had driven back to Chicago and spent two days packing her things, moving most to storage and stuffing a few boxes in the back of her car to take with her.

Dominic had stopped by and helped for a while. Their good-bye was awkward and anticlimactic. He said she could visit whenever she wanted, and Bethany said maybe she would come down in January, but they were empty words. They’d reached a stalemate in their three-year relationship, although neither one of them wanted to say it out loud.

So now here she was, back in Peaks, on the floor of Robin’s guest bedroom, unable to find what she was looking for. She pulled out a pair of shoes and placed them in the closet while Robin talked with someone downstairs. Bethany heard snatches of their conversation. The flood of visitors who came the week before Christmas had slowed to a steady trickle after. Mostly people from Robin’s church.

Robin endured the company, answering questions and smiling when appropriate, but Bethany doubted anything penetrated the invisible barrier of grief Micah’s death had erected. The sound of the front door opening and closing told her the visitor had left.

She plopped down on the bed and opened her laptop. Her empty inbox made her want to scream. She’d posted her résumé on every site imaginable and called architecture firms across the entire United States, only to be met by a barrage of rejection and silence. To keep her sanity, she fiddled around on AutoCAD, creating designs for art museums that would never exist and skyscrapers that didn’t need building. She changed the layout of Robin’s café so often that all the designs blended together like an indiscernible pile of mush.

Three days post-Christmas, sitting in that room folding and refolding her clothes, checking her e-mail every thirty seconds—finding nothing but spam—her sanity finally snapped. She found a phone book in the kitchen, pulled the number of a Realtor from the yellow pages, dialed, squeezed her eyes shut, and convinced herself Dan was not rolling in his grave.

Sixty minutes later, Bethany stood in front of the farmhouse and pulled at the door, but it stuck in place. She tried again, but with no luck. Her breath froze as soon as it escaped her lips, and with each inhalation, her nose hairs tingled with frost. She rubbed her gloved hands together and considered peeking under the rock near the kitchen door. Maybe Evan kept a key there.

She looked over her shoulder—nervous, jittery. She hadn’t seen or talked to Evan since his drop-in visit on Christmas Eve, when they established some unspoken truce.

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