“You’re not the only one who didn’t have a perfect life, girl. It’s a wonder that I ever got to come spend time here with you and Nanny Lucy,” Nessa said as she started outside. “Daddy used my time here as a disciplining tool, and believe me, I was not a perfect child.”

“Did you have to eat your carrots to get to come to Blossom?” April did a head wiggle when she smarted off.

“I wish that’s all it was.” Nessa didn’t even try to smile. “But it was more like ‘Vanessa, if you don’t say your prayers for at least thirty minutes, you don’t get to go to Blossom this summer.’ Or from Mama it was, ‘Nessa, if I catch you wearing makeup again, you won’t be visiting your Nanny Lucy this summer. Jesus says I have to love Mother Lucy, but she’s a bad influence on you, and I don’t love that.’ Carrots had nothing to do with the way things were done in the Reverend Isaac O’Riley’s house.”

“I had no idea.” April followed her out of the shed. “I figured that since you had parents, both of you were so much better off than I was.”

“I thought that since you got to live with Nanny Lucy, you were so much better off than me or Flynn.” Nessa closed the door behind her. She had brought her own baggage to Blossom with her, but somehow her problems seemed minor compared to what she could see in her two cousins. “What about you, Flynn?”

“I’m not ready to talk about the past, but I would rather have lived here, no matter how tough it was, than live with my dad,” Flynn said.

Strange that they all had different views of their grandmother. To April she had been a reluctant parent. To Flynn she’d been a wonderful grandmother whom he would have chosen to live with over his father. To Nessa she’d been an escape from an ultra-religious household for a couple of weeks every summer.

Flynn finally broke the silence when they reached the porch. “Let’s all load up and go to Paris to stock the place with food. I’ll drive. We can start on the quilt tomorrow.”

“First we make a list.” Nessa was good at making lists and organizing everything from her desk drawer to her time. “It won’t take but a few minutes. Flynn, you can make one, too, of everything you need for rewiring. April and I can go to the grocery store, and you can go to the hardware store.”

Flynn glanced over at April. “Guess you can take the teacher out of the classroom, but you can’t take the bossy out of the teacher.”