Ruth didn’t like driving at night or in snow or rain—a definite inconvenience when one chose to make a home in the high country of the Rockies. If she had to go somewhere during stormy weather, she inevitably would call Claire for a ride.
“Are you sure?” Claire heard the note of hesitation in her mother’s voice and mentally breathed a sigh of relief.
“Positive. I’ll be perfectly fine. I’ve got Chester to keep me company and enough leftovers in the house to last me until July.”
Ruth waffled for a few more moments before she finally caved. “All right. Because I guess you don’t want my company, I’ll stay put.”
Claire refused to feel even a twinge of guilt for the slightly hurt note in her mother’s voice.
“But call me if you change your mind and decide you want me there.”
“I will. Thanks, Mom. Good night.”
Her mother hung up and Claire closed her eyes and leaned her head against the couch, just relishing the silence, broken only by Chester’s snores on the floor beside the couch.
Dealing with her mother always exhausted her. Sometimes she was deeply jealous of the easy, comfortable relationship Alex and her sisters had with Mary Ella. Claire wanted that, too, but it seemed like every interaction with her mother ended in weary frustration that Ruth could be so needy and demanding.
Ruth hadn’t always been like that. Before her father’s scandalous death, Claire remembered her mother as a strong, funny, independent woman. Someone very much like Katherine Thorne.
When Claire was eight or nine, her mother had been the PTA president during a tumultuous time when some in Hope’s Crossing had been trying to gather support to build a new elementary school. Claire had vivid memories of her mother speaking out with vigor and eloquent prose about the importance of educating young minds in a safe, clean environment.
The memory always made her sad because of the stark contrast between that capable woman and what her mother had become later.
Claire sighed, reaching for the rolling office chair she had found much more convenient than the wheelchair she’d brought home from the hospital. She transferred to it and scooted with her healing sprained ankle into the kitchen, where she opened the refrigerator and scanned the contents for something appealing to warm for her dinner. She finally settled on some of the sinfully divine cream of potato soup Dermot Caine had brought over from the diner a few days earlier—perfect for a cold, stormy night.
She dished some into a bowl, grateful the children hadn’t unloaded the dishwasher before they left or she would have had a struggle trying to reach the plates and bowls in the upper cupboard.
As she waited for the soup to warm in the microwave, her thoughts returned to her mother.
She could pinpoint exactly the moment Ruth had changed. April twentieth, twenty-four years ago, 11:42 p.m. She had been twelve years old, her brother eight, the same ages her kids were now. The night had been rainy, like this one. She remembered she had been sleeping when something awakened her. The doorbell, she realized later. Claire had blinked awake and lain there in bed, listening to the branches of the big elm click against the window in the swirling wind and wondering who could be ringing the doorbell so late and if her father would be angry with them because he always rose early for work.
And then she’d heard her mother cry out, a desperate, horrified kind of sound. With a sudden knot of apprehension in her stomach, Claire had opened her door fully and sidled out to the landing, looking down through the bars.
She had recognized the longtime police chief, Dean Coleman, but had been able to hear only bits of his hushed conversation.
Dead. Both shot. Jealous husband. I’m sorry, Ruth.
Everything changed in that moment. Gossip roared faster than a wind-stirred fire. Even though the adults in her life had tried to keep it from her and her brother, their children heard and absorbed snippets about the scandal and a few of them had delighted in whispering about it loud enough so they knew that Claire would overhear.
Her father—the man she had adored, president of the biggest bank in town, a leader of church and community—had been having a torrid affair with a cocktail waitress at the Dirty Dog, the sleazy bar outside of town.
Apparently the woman had a jealous husband, a biker thug by the name of Calvin Waters. When he came home early one night, he caught them in bed together. In a drunken rage, he shot them both with a sawed-off shotgun before turning the gun on himself.
The scandal had exploded in Hope’s Crossing. She could still remember those awful days as she had endured stares and whispers and hadn’t known what to do with all the anger and shame inside her—or with the grief for her lost innocence.
Claire and her brother had endured those first difficult months by keeping a few friends close and basically sticking their heads down and plowing through.