“It’s still a crazy notion,” Isaac said. “Are you planning to spend the whole summer there? Your mother and I are taking a church group to Israel right after Independence Day. We’ve got one place left in the package deal, and we would like it if you would go with us.”

Who dropped out, and do you have to fill the quota to get the deal? she wondered as she shook her head. “Sorry, Daddy, but I am going to spend the summer here. I may even fire up Nanny Lucy’s quilting business. If it does well, I may quit my job in Turkey,” she said, and she waited for his reaction.

She could almost hear him trying to get words to come out of his mouth. “I love to quilt,” she added. “It makes a song in my heart and peace in my soul.”

“That’s got to be the most insane notion I’ve ever heard!” He yelled so loud that she held the phone out from her ear. “But then I’m not surprised. Every time you went to Blossom, you came home bewitched. It’s that house. It’s got a hold on you.”

Nessa wasn’t a bit surprised. Isaac always raised his voice when he was angry or trying to make someone agree with his viewpoint. “Maybe you should bring your Bible and perform an exorcism over the house.”

“You should have been born to Matthew instead of me.” Isaac’s voice dropped to a whisper, like it did when he was about to explode.

“You were the one that said the house was possessed and had a hold on me.” Nessa knew she should hold her tongue, but she didn’t have the power to shut her mouth. “If it’s all that bad, then why did you want it for a church retreat? Who knows what might have happened to the VIP folks if you’d brought them here? The house might have bewitched them all, and they could have left your church, moved to Blossom, and started growing turnips down by the waterfall.”

“I’m not listening to your sass,” Isaac said, and he ended the call.

Nessa rolled her eyes toward the sky. “Thank you, Nanny Lucy, for giving me a healthy dose of sass. I must learn to use it more often than I already do.” She stood up, picked up the litter in one hand and the pan in the other, and went into the house, but her hands were shaking. Her father would have considered her smart-ass remarks blasphemous. She’d put her foot down before and told him that she wouldn’t marry right out of high school, but she had not talked to him in that tone of voice in a very long time—maybe not since then.

“Y’all ready for breakfast?” she called out. “I’m thinking french toast and bacon. And where does this pan go, April?”