She sat down in the rocking chair with the kitten, and in minutes all the stress left her body. She began to hum a lullaby, and the kitten closed her eyes. This was truly the life—knowing that a little homeless kitten loved her so much it could trust her.

“Someday you’ll have a wonderful home, and the people there will pet you and play with you, but until then, we need to get your cage cleaned,” she whispered as she stood up and laid the sleeping kitten on the chair.

Someday you will have the same, the voice in her head said.

I’d be happy if I could just have a family of my very own. April sighed and then got busy taking care of the animals. But she hummed one tune after another the rest of the afternoon. The troubles she had brought to work with her disappeared one by one until, by the end of the day, she was happier than she’d ever been.

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

For a few days, Nessa put the idea that her grandmother was not perfect out of her mind and dived into finishing one quilt top and starting another. She listened to the older country-music playlist on her phone as she worked so that she wouldn’t think about what she had read in the diary. Every evening she took a walk to the waterfall and spent a couple of hours trying to make up her mind whether to go back to Turkey and teach another year or stay in Blossom. If she went back, maybe April would finally come to grips with her demons and go back to her own bedroom. Sleeping in the living room didn’t give the poor girl a bit of privacy.

She must have been trying to make up her mind once and for all the night she dreamed about that messy closet for the second time. Nanny Lucy was in her dream, telling her that answers were in the closet; then she faded away in a gray fog. The next day, when Flynn and April left for their jobs, Nessa gathered up half a dozen boxes from the garage, popped them into shape, and taped the bottoms.

“Okay, Nanny Lucy, let’s go find all the answers so you can rest in peace. If you’ve got any more secrets or anything else to keep chipping away at the pedestal that I had you on, let’s get it over with.” She sighed when she opened the door. Where to begin was the big question. Nanny Lucy had always said that everything had a place, so what had happened here? Nessa stared at the messy closet and shook her head slowly.

“Might as well drag it all out and then sift through it,” she muttered as she got started.