“Your sister got to rehearse with the cast in September,” Mom said.

“Very cool.” I frowned. “How far away is Branson?”

“Fifteen hours,” Beth said.

“You have to follow your heart,” Mom said. “No matter where it leads.”

I managed not to roll my eyes. “Right.”

Our father was the one who had pushed me in school, who had encouraged my writing, who told me there was a whole wider world out there for me. He had taught me, by example and sometimes with praise, to follow in his footsteps. To pursue my own vocation, while my mother stayed in the background. “You could always come home,” Momma said. “To save money,” after I graduated. “To figure out your next step,” when I got laid off from the paper.

She wasn’t wrong, just practical. But her constant offers of support made me feel like she was waiting for me to fail.

She raised her eyebrows at my tone. “Excuse me?”

“You never went anywhere,” I said.

“Because this is my home,” she said a little stiffly.

I felt guilty. I wasn’t trying to upset her. We’d had to leave the parsonage when Daddy enlisted. Aunt Phee had never offered to take us in at Oak Hill, the big white house that had belonged to my father’s grandparents.

And anyway, our mother wouldn’t take charity. She moved us to the farm because we had no place else to go.

“Sorry, Mom. I know you didn’t really have a choice.”

“This farm is my choice,” she said. “My heritage. I always figured that was worth preserving.”

“Okay.”

“You girls may not care about it now, but this land is your heritage, too. Sisters’ Farm.”

I gaped at her. I’d always figured the “sisters” were my mother and my unknown aunt Elizabeth, the one who died when they both were young. The one Bethie was named after.

“I care,” I protested. Our grandparents were homesteaders, small-scale farmers living off the land. Rednecks, to my friends in New York. After they died and we moved to the farm, our mother slowly built up the goat herd and started making and selling cheese. There was something cool about growing up on a farm that had been in our family for generations, that our mother owned and operated herself. I just didn’t want to actually live there.

My mother smiled wryly. “Of course you do.” She pushed to her feet, clutching the sofa arm for balance.

Anxiety spurted inside me. “Are you all right?”

“Just tired. Don’t fuss, Jo,” she said, channeling Granny.

“I’m tired, too,” Amy said. “I was up all night, packing.”

“Why? You don’t need a lot of clothes. You’re only here for a couple of days.”

“Not for here.” Amy smiled, a little smugly. “I leave for Paris on Monday.”

Right.

“You should take a nap,” our mother said.

“I will if you will,” Amy said.

That was Amy, bargaining for what she wanted. Which in this case . . . I looked at her with sudden appreciation. She was trying, in her own way, to get Momma to lie down.