“Nanny Lucy used to do this when Mama would come and get me,” she remembered, and she wondered if her grandmother had been truly sorry to see them leave—or relieved. So many secrets.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Three

Nessa thought back over the past three weeks as she ran a brush through her hair that evening. In her mind, Nanny Lucy’s place had always been the house of freedom. To April, it had been a prison. To Flynn, a place of sorrow because his mother had died while he was in Blossom. She still thought it was strange that one house could be so different for each of them. But then, Nanny Lucy hadn’t treated April the same as she had Flynn and Nessa.

“You about ready in there?” Flynn rapped on the door. “I told Jackson we’d probably be over there at six thirty.”

“Give me one more minute,” she called out. I don’t know if I’m anxious because we’re going to open the hope chest or if I’m nervous because I have to face Jackson again. I can’t avoid it, no matter what, so I might as well suck it up and get it over with.

“Ten, nine, eight,” Flynn counted down. When he got to five, she opened the door.

He used both hands in a flourishing gesture to point at the quilt hanging above the sofa. “What do you think?”

“It’s still ugly as sin”—Nessa forced a smile—“but I love it. It’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of our lives hanging up there to remind us of the summers we got to spend together. It’s kind of like a whole array of family pictures.”

Flynn and April both nodded, and then April held up the folded quilt they were taking to Jackson’s house. “Are we driving or walking?”

“We should drive this time,” Flynn answered. “We don’t know what’s in the hope chest. It could be nothing, but then it could be too much to try to carry back here.”

“We can take my vehicle,” Nessa offered. “Do either of you even want to take a guess about what’s in the hope chest?” She wanted them to talk so that it would take her mind off seeing Jackson again.

Flynn opened the door for April since she had her hands full. “Not me,” he answered. “If we hadn’t already found the stuff in the closet, I would have said pictures and important papers.”

“I just hope one of you gets married first,” April said. “I don’t want anything that’s in that old chest. I got sent to my room for a whole afternoon for just sitting on the thing one time. Nanny Lucy put high value on things, more so than people’s feelings. I’m never going to put something like a wooden box above the feelings of a person.”