Nessa didn’t want Jackson to feel like she was stalking him, so she didn’t go to the falls but headed out through the path in the woods to a place she had gone to when she was a kid. Nanny Lucy had told her that the big oak tree that lay across the path had been struck by lightning when Isaac and Matthew were just toddlers, and that the two of them had played king of the mountain on it when they were little boys. Nessa had been fourteen when Nanny Lucy pointed the log out to her, and it had been hard even at that time for her to imagine that her overbearing father had ever been a child, much less a baby. Now, after the way the two men had acted when they’d both shown up at the house, it was doubly hard to imagine them ever playing together.

When she got to the old tree, she sat down on the ground and leaned against the bark. She and her cousins had been more than two-thirds of the way across the quilt when they quit that morning. Soon it would be done, and then they’d know what was in the hope chest, but it mattered less and less to her each day. If it was more money, that was fine, but none of them really needed it now. April and Flynn had jobs, and Nessa would hopefully be selling quilts come fall.

Her phone rang, and when she fished it out of her hip pocket, her father’s name popped up. “Hello, Daddy, how are things in Canyon?”

“Busy,” he answered. “We’re finalizing our plans to go to Israel, and I’m giving you one last chance to join us. That house will be there when you get back. If y’all haven’t gotten it squared away by now, then it can wait for your fall break from school. By then, Flynn and April will have given up on it anyway, and you’ll have to maintain the old place.”

Just like Isaac O’Riley to make judgments like that, she thought.

“April has a part-time job that is turning into a full-time one as soon as we finish with the quilt. Nanny Lucy pieced it together with scraps of clothing she made for us when we visited her, so it’s been like going back in time and remembering the good times.” Nessa tried to change the subject.

“If there’s money in that hope chest, April will be gone the next day, and Flynn won’t be far behind her. You can mark my words on that,” Isaac said.

“Flynn is working with Jackson Devereaux, our next-door neighbor, in his woodworking business, so he’s probably going to stick around, like April does. I’ve had two dates with Jackson,” she said, hoping to force actual steam out of her father’s ears.