So many decisions, Nessa thought. The idea that her two cousins would even consider staying around for a little while surprised her. She had thought she was coming halfway across the state to clean out the house and maybe hunt down a teaching job near here. She’d had no idea that April or Flynn, either one, would even stick around long enough to help her clean up the place. And since, under the terms of the will, the place could never be sold, she planned to at least spend every summer in Blossom.

One thing was for sure: if Nessa had to get married to inherit the hope chest that she had coveted since she was a little girl, there was no chance. She hadn’t had much luck with the dating game—seemed like she picked losers who cheated on her. So Flynn or April could have the hope chest, even if, after the way they’d treated Nanny Lucy, neither of them deserved it or a share of the property. They’d gotten to be around Nanny Lucy more than Nessa, and neither of them appreciated what they’d had.

What makes you think you’re so high above your cousins? the annoying voice in her head asked. Sure, you might have come around a little more through the years than they did, but maybe they had their reasons not to, just like you have yours for not wanting to spend much time with your folks.

Nessa had only gotten to see their grandmother for a couple of weeks in the summers and on the occasional holiday. After they were grown, neither Flynn nor April had spent as much time with Nanny Lucy as Nessa had, and Lord only knew she hadn’t done right by her grandmother, either.

They can have the hope chest, though, if it means getting married, she vowed as she dug into her chicken-fried steak. I’ve got to figure out who I am before I can even think about a relationship.

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

April sucked in a lungful of air and let it out slowly as she parked her twenty-year-old Chevy in the front yard of the small house where she’d been raised. Miranda Lambert’s song “The House That Built Me” was playing on the radio. One line said that if she could just touch the place, the brokenness inside her might start healing. April liked the idea, but she couldn’t count all the fears and guilt trips that had been born in that house. Like an untreated sore, they had festered and become infected years and years ago, until now they were more like a cancer. She had known down deep in her heart that the only way she would ever be cured was by coming back to the house and facing the past. Maybe then she could begin to heal the way Miranda sang about in the song.