Harriet smoothed the hair off his forehead again. "You need to rest now, Daddy. I'll stay here in case you need anything."

He nodded, and Cassie leaned over to kiss him again, holding her head near his for a moment longer and feeling his breath on her cheek. "I love you, Daddy." Her voice cracked, and she bent her head close enough for his hair to rub her face.

"I love you, too."

Harriet looked at her sister. "You go get some breakfast. Aunt Lucinda is aching to see you. She's been frying up a storm all morning waiting for you to come down."

Cassie nodded. "Okay. But call me if . . . if you need anything." As she turned to go, she thought she saw the trace of a grin on her father's lips, the type he had always worn when he had a surprise for her. She turned back again, but his expression had gone slack, and his breathing held the steady rhythm of sleep.

Slowly, Cassie walked down the stairs, her stomach rumbling at the enticing aroma. As she descended, she paused at each portrait of her long-gone ancestors, naming them in her head, then stopped completely in front of the painting of old Great-great-great-grandfather Madison, who had built the home in 1848 to attract a bride. It must have worked, because the man had had four wives, who gave him a total of nine children. Cassie stared into the dark brown eyes, recalling how she used to scare her sister with stories about how those eyes would watch Harriet as she walked up the stairs. Cassie smiled, remembering how Harriet wouldn't walk up the stairs alone for years.

She reached the kitchen and paused at the familiar sight of Aunt Lucinda's back. Her father's sister had been like a mother to her, moving in when Cassie's mother got too sick to get out of bed. She had been there for all of Cassie's milestones: the birthdays, the recitals, the academic awards, and later, the tears. Aunt Lucinda now stood before the stove, her knobby shoulders more bent than Cassie remembered, wearing her standard uniform of bright red housedress and high heels. Cassie was suddenly taken back fifteen years to the morning she had last seen her aunt standing at the stove, peach oven mitt tucked under her arm as she beat biscuit batter with one hand and fried eggs with the other.

"Aunt Lucinda?"

The older woman turned, her bright red lips parted in an O. She walked toward Cassie and squeezed her tight, the familiar smells of Youth Dew bath oil and bacon grease oddly comforting.

"My goodness, Cassie. It feels good to hug you again, but you're all skin and bones. Don't they eat in New York?" Her words couldn't hide the warble of tears.

She kissed Cassie's cheek, but Cassie didn't have the heart to rub off the inevitable red mark. Just as she had as a little girl, she would wait until she was out of Aunt Lucinda's eyesight.

As Lucinda released her, Cassie noticed for the first time the two men sitting at the table. Sam had paused over a heaping plate of grits and sausage, and the man across from him sat with a baby on his lap, feeding it a bottle. Gentle slurpings filled the suddenly silent room as Cassie realized that the dreaded moment had arrived.

Aunt Lucinda squeezed her around the shoulders one more time, then nudged her forward. "You've already seen Sam, and here's Joe." She turned toward the men. "Doesn't she look fine, y'all? Just as pretty as her mother, don't y'all think?"

Cassie blushed to the roots of her hair, suddenly reduced to age twelve and the time she and Harriet had come home from school and interrupted one of Aunt Lucinda's bridge parties. All the ladies had fawned over Harriet, with her gold hair spilling over her sweater. Aunt Lucinda, striking her mother-hen pose, had stood and pushed Cassie forward, telling everyone how smart she was and how she hadn't quite grown into her looks yet. Cassie cringed at the memory.

Sam swallowed a mouthful of food. "You're right, Aunt Lucinda. She sure is. The new hairstyle threw me at first, but I would have recognized her anywhere."

She forced her gaze in Joe's direction, concentrating on the baby in his arms. It was swaddled in pink, the color setting off the baby's rosy cheeks. Slowly, Cassie raised her eyes. Her gaze swept over Joe, looking for the boy she had once loved with all her young heart and waiting for lightning to strike her, leaving nothing but the outline of ash on the ceramic tile floor of the kitchen. But nothing happened. She felt nothing. No spark, no tightening in the chest, no tingling in the belly. Joe Warner no longer made her mouth go dry. He looked like the high school football coach and science teacher he had become, complete with red marker stains on his fingers and a shirt pocket bulging with pens, pencils and the broken cord of a Bunsen burner. He was still drop-dead gorgeous, with laughing brown eyes that narrowed to slits when he smiled, but he'd lost the power to suck the air out of her lungs with just a look. He was her sister's husband, an old friend, and nothing more.

Still, the old ache, hinting of hurt and humiliation, throbbed in the back of her heart. She smiled tentatively, putting her hands in the pockets of her linen walking shorts. "Hello, Joe. It's been a while."

She became aware of Sam watching the exchange, his back rigid in his chair.

Joe stood, awkward for a moment, then smiled back. "Yeah. It sure has. How've you been?"

She took a step forward, close enough to smell the peculiar mixture of baby powder and formula. The baby's blue eyes opened wide, and then she smiled, making milk drip down her chin.

"This is Amanda," Joe said, turning so Cassie could get a better view.

Cassie stuck her finger in the baby's open fist, marveling at the tiny perfect fingers, the almost transparent nails.

Joe spoke to the baby. "This is your Aunt Cassie-the one your mommy is always talking about."

Cassie's head jerked up, her eyes meeting Joe's for the first time. Before she could call the words back, she asked, "Does she really?"

Joe nodded, almost shyly. "Every day, just about. Pictures of you and her are all over our house-even in the kids' rooms. She wanted to make sure they knew who you were." He paused for a moment, then said, "We sent you letters, at first. But . . . but they kept coming back unopened, so we stopped. But that didn't mean we stopped thinking about you or caring for you."

She swallowed, trying to think of what to say. She wanted to tell him that it was okay now, that the anger she had felt each time she marked "return to sender" on the letters no longer mattered. But the memory of her humiliation made the words stick in her throat. It had been there for fifteen years and would not be dislodged so easily.

The baby burped, spitting up over Joe's shirt and creating a needed diversion.

Sam stood, holding a chair out for her, and she sat down heavily. Aunt Lucinda came and put a plate filled with bacon, eggs, grits, and her famous buttermilk biscuits in front of her. She felt Aunt Lucinda kiss the top of her head.

"I want you to eat all of it, you hear? You're much too thin."

Cassie stabbed a slice of bacon, eyeing it speculatively. As she was about to put it into her mouth, Joe said, "You've lost weight, Cassie. A lot of weight."

She dropped the bacon back on her plate and picked up her coffee. She stared at him through the steam. "It's been fifteen years since you last saw me. Plenty of time to change."

He sat down again, putting Amanda over his shoulder, and began to pat her back. "Things change slowly here, Cassie. You won't find anything a whole lot different. Even Mr. Purdy's still the high school principal. He's probably older than dirt by now, too."

Cassie's lips turned up at the mention of Principal Purdy. "It's a good thing I left, then. Because I happen to think that change is good."

Sam scraped his chair back as he stood and picked up his plate. "Not necessarily. Especially when it means picking up strange new customs."

She knew he was referring to the incident in the upstairs hallway, and she scowled at the creases in his cheek as he walked toward the sink with his dishes. Cassie opened her mouth to say something but stopped when she spotted Harriet in the doorway. Her sister wore a peculiar expression, like a person who'd just seen a plane fall out of the sky. Cassie put down her cup quickly, the hot coffee spilling over the sides.

Her fingers grabbed at the gold chain around her neck as the air seemed to still around her, and her gaze roamed the kitchen, searching out objects, people, anything to help her remember things the way they used to be before her life changed once again. Her eyes took in the stack of newspapers in the corner, her father's gardening shoes dumped inside the back door, his glasses on the counter next to the jar of frying grease. She looked down at her feet briefly, willing herself not to cry. There would be time to cry alone later.

"Is Daddy . . . ?"

Harriet's voice was thick, filled with unshed tears. "Oh, Cassie . . ." She looked at her sister, but Cassie broke the connection by looking away, not yet wanting to share her grief with this woman who hadn't shared her life for so long.

Harriet didn't move. "It was . . . peaceful. And quick. I would have called you except that it was over so fast. He just said good-bye and . . . and went to sleep."

Joe stood and went to his wife, putting his free arm around her narrow shoulders, and kissed her on the cheek.

Cassie stood, her knees shaky. Sam watched her closely as she grabbed the back of her chair. "I want to see him."

Harriet looked at Joe and then back at Cassie. "Wait a minute. There's something else."

Cassie swayed, wishing she had somebody to hold her with compassion and understanding, to kiss her cheek. And she couldn't imagine Andrew doing either. "What is it?"

Harriet tilted her head to the side, as if trying to make her news less off-kilter. "He told me . . . he told me . . ." She looked at Joe again, as if for strength, then back at Cassie, still wearing the same odd expression.

Cassie just stared at her sister, her nerves tight. "What?"

Harriet's eyes met Cassie's, and Cassie knew. Her father would do whatever he could to make her stay in Walton. Somebody opened the back door, creating a gust of warm air, bringing in the heavy scent of the boxwoods that lined the back walk. Cassie sucked in her breath, the scent suffocating, intoxicating, painful. She wanted to put her hand over Harriet's mouth, to stop the inevitable words from coming out, but found she couldn't move. The screen door slammed shut.

Softly, Harriet said, "He's left the house to you. And everything in it."

Four.

Cassie stepped outside, carefully closing the screen door behind her so as not to attract attention. She had seen enough deviled eggs, sweet potato pie, and corn casserole to last an entire year, yet people were still arriving at the house with even more food. She wasn't sure if everybody was there to pay their respects to her father or if they were there to gawk at her and see if she had grown horns during the time she had spent away. She looked down at her black suit and saw fingerprints of powdered sugar and grease from the fried drumsticks old Mrs. Crandall had brought. Through the screen door, she spotted the woman in question hovering over the kitchen counter, arranging a tall vase of flowers. Cassie studied the pudgy fingers as they straightened long stems of gladiolas, the same fingers she remembered clutching a stick of chalk and stabbing out long-division problems in fifth grade. All of Mrs. Crandall's contemporaries called her Sweet Pea, but to Cassie's generation, she would always be Mrs. Crandall.

Cassie sighed, tired of being poked, prodded, hugged, and squeezed. Trying to brush off some of the fingerprints, she stepped off the back porch, and her high heel immediately sank into the soft red clay edging the walk. She yanked it back and began hobbling down the cement walkway, trying to dislodge the chunk of red earth clinging to her shoe. Without really knowing where she was going, she headed in the direction of the gazebo, slipping off both shoes before crossing the wide backyard. Too late, she remembered the prickers hiding in the grass and did a combination of hops, hobbles, and leaps before making it to the sanctuary of the gazebo.

She sank down on one of the built-in bench seats and lifted a foot. Dozens of miniature double-pronged hooks clung to the sole, creating small holes in her pantyhose and hurting like hell. How could she have forgotten so easily the stern warnings from her father not to go barefoot in the backyard? Cassie and Harriet had even taken turns giv-ing each other piggyback rides to the gazebo just so only one of them had to don shoes. Shoes didn't exist in the summer world of Walton's children, and Cassie had made sure she'd never go barefoot again once she'd left her father's house for good. Until now.

Staring at the bottom of her foot, stubborn tears filled her eyes. She hadn't cried when Mr. Murphy had come from the funeral home to discuss arrangements. Nor had she cried at the wake as the black-clad citizens of Walton had filed past the coffin like ants at a picnic. And she hadn't cried earlier that morning at the funeral. But now, staring at her ruined hose and the tiny prickers sticking out of her foot, she sobbed. She sobbed for the loss of her father, for his words of wisdom, for his constancy, and for the little girl at his knee she could never be again.

A heel scraped against wood, and Cassie jerked her head up. Sam Parker, wearing yet another pair of cowboy boots-these were black-stood on the top step of the gazebo, looking at her with a curious expression.

She turned away. "I'd like to be left alone right now, if you don't mind."

Ignoring her words, he sat down on the bench next to her. "Those prickers must hurt something awful, with the way you're crying. Didn't your daddy ever tell you not to go barefoot back here?" He reached for her foot and held it in his lap.

She resisted at first and then relaxed, trying to ignore the warmth of his touch through her stockings. He bent over her foot and began removing the prickers with his fingers one by one.

Cassie gave an unladylike sniff, wishing he'd stop touching her and then worrying that he would. "What is it about you that you're always there to see me do something humiliating?"

Without looking up, he said, "Crying's not humiliating. It just lets others know you're human."

Cassie wiped a drip off the end of her nose with the back of her wrist. "Do you mean there's been some discussion?"

He put one foot down and reached for the other one. "Not yet."

His gaze met hers as he grinned, and she quickly looked away, not sure why blood rushed to her face.

To distract herself, she leaned back on her hands and stared up at the ceiling, painted blue to prevent bees and birds from building their nests in what they assumed to be sky. She remembered Joe telling her that on their first summer. The summer Harriet was away at cheer-leading camp and Joe was all hers.

Cassie glanced back at Sam, realizing that he had stopped and was now just resting his hands on her legs in a casual manner, her feet draped on his lap. It felt so normal and comfortable, and definitely disconcerting. Quickly, she sat up and moved her feet to the floor.

He reached into his back pocket, pulled out a neatly pressed linen handkerchief, and handed it to her.

She stared at it for a moment but didn't touch it.

He shook it. "Your nose is dripping."

"Thank you," she said, sniffing again. She took it, dabbed her eyes, then blew her nose into the clean square of cloth.

Sam spoke softly. "I'm going to miss him, too. He was a great man."

Cassie began to sob again, and it seemed the natural thing to do for Sam to put his arm around her and pull her closer. She held the handkerchief to her face, smashing it between her nose and his chest.

Sam patted her shoulder as he spoke. "The whole town will miss him, Cassie. But one thing you should always carry with you is the fact that you and Harriet were his greatest accomplishments. Everything else he did paled in comparison to you two, and he was never ashamed to admit it."

Cassie sniffled into her handkerchief, feeling like a failure for the first time in many years. She had failed as a daughter-for not allowing her own father into her life for over a decade and pretending that monthly phone calls and yearly meetings in Atlanta were enough.

Her voice was muffled against his shirt. "He must have been a very forgiving man, too."

She felt him nod. "That he was. He hired me every summer to do his lawn, even though he could have hired somebody better and cheaper, because he knew I was saving up for college. Even wrote a letter of recommendation. And that was after I accidentally mowed over your mother's rose garden."

Cassie lifted her head for a moment. "I always thought you worked here so you could catch a glimpse of Harriet."

He looked down at her from the corner of his eye. "No. That's not the reason I came over every week to slaughter your father's lawn."

Something in his gaze made her shift and move her head off his shoulder. She slid away, embarrassed suddenly to be sitting so close, and let her gaze drift over to the house and beyond. Bulldozers rumbled in the distance where the old cotton field used to be. Her father had told her he had finally given in to a local developer and sold the land the previous year, and a small neighborhood of executive homes was being raised on the site. Gone, too, was the old stand of trees Cassie and Harriet had once called their enchanted forest, concocting visions of their future princes and the exotic lives they once expected to have.

A dark cloud hovered on the horizon, blocking the sun and dimming the light. The heavy scent of rain filled the air, making the grass smell sweeter. A crisp breeze stirred the linens Aunt Lucinda had forgotten on the back line, making them dance like ghostly apparitions tethered to the earth.

Cassie rested her elbows in her lap, her hands cradling her chin. "I ran away once-when I was thirteen. I only made it as far as the lit-tle cluster of trees that used to stand over there. I was chasing a rain-bow, and it disappeared from the sky as I walked across the lawn. I sat down on a rock and waited until my father came and got me." She paused for a moment to wipe her nose, then crumpled the hand-kerchief in her hand. "He said it was okay to be chasing the rain-bow's end as long as I always remembered where the rainbow start-ed." She dropped her forehead to her hands. "I guess I'm still trying to understand what he meant."

Sam leaned back on the bench, his elbows resting on the seat back. "I ran away once, too."

Cassie raised an eyebrow, trying to imagine the perpetually relaxed and casual Sam she knew caring enough about anything to make him run away. "You? Whatever for?"

He slid her a narrow glance. "Guilt. And unrequited love."

Cassie sat back. "Guilt, huh? There's certainly plenty of that to go around. What did you do? Break some country girl's heart?"

Sam didn't smile and stared over Cassie's head. "No. Guilty because my brother, Tom, died at the age of twelve trying to save my sorry butt from drowning."

Cassie frowned, remembering the story. She had been about four or five when it happened. Something about being told not to go swimming in the creek by himself and sneaking out to do it, anyway.

Cassie looked down at her feet. "I'm sorry."

Sam picked up a small pebble from the bench and threw it off the side of the gazebo. "Yeah, me, too. I guess if guilt can drive a man, it had a hold of me with both reins. It's what made me push myself-all through grade school, high school, and college. Then medical school." He sat back again, his forehead creased. "It never made me feel any better, but at least my parents had a child they could be proud of. It was my fault I was an only child, and I was damned determined not to be a disappointment to them."

"Is that why you came back to Walton? You could be doing so much more with your life."

He turned to face her, his eyes dark. "It's one of the reasons."

They sat in silence for a few moments before heavy drops of rain dot-ted the roof of the gazebo, and Sam and Cassie looked at each other.

Cassie stood. "Do you think we can make it back to the house in time?"

Before the words had left her mouth, they heard a shout from the house. Madison was galloping toward them, a barefoot Knoxie clinging to her back.

"Prickers!" shouted the little girl, her words nearly drowned by the sudden onslaught of rain driving against the gazebo in sheets. Madison raced across the yard and up the steps. Instinctively, Cassie took the dripping Knoxie, and the four of them huddled in the center of the small structure, their backs turned to the spraying rain sneaking in through the arched openings. Sam wrapped his arms over their shoulders, his forehead neatly pressed against Cassie's. The spray of rain chilled her skin but did nothing to alleviate the heat she felt from his touch.

Knoxie dug her head into Cassie's chest, only looking up when the rain finally sputtered to a light drizzle. Her wide green eyes moved from Cassie to Sam. "Dr. Parker, is Aunt Cassie your girlfriend?"

Without ceremony, Cassie plopped Knoxie on the ground and patted her head absently. "Of course not, Knoxie. I'm getting married-to somebody else."

Knoxie's mouth opened a little bit as her gaze continued to jump between Cassie and Sam.

"Maddie says that you and Dr. Parker-"