“You are, aren’t you? You’re going to be a sister again because I’m going to have a baby.”

“This is wonderful, Mom,” Sadie whispered, as if she could keep their precious secret just between them, not even wanting the house to hear it. “You can marry Callum if you truly love him, but you can also raise this baby yourself. You know I’ll help you. No pressure. No history repeating itself. You’re not a scared girl of sixteen this time. You have me.”

“Oh, sweetie. You have no idea how hard it was back then and the struggles we faced, what with your father trying to finish school and working at his family’s mill to support us.”

Charlotte hugged her quickly and then moved to put the kettle on to boil before she placed the brandy back in the cupboard, taking down two teacups instead. She talked while she worked.

“I do love Callum. I’ve known that for months now.” She turned and pointed a china cup at Sadie. “I wouldn’t have gone to bed with him if I didn’t,” she said firmly. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

Sadie took a seat at the table, recognizing her mother’s need to be busy. She quickly nodded agreement as a dutiful daughter should.

“It’s just that I don’t want tohave to marry him,” Charlotte continued. “Your father loved me, Sadie. But I always felt that he could have gone on to greater things if he hadn’t had us to slow him down.”

“Dad loved running the lumber mill,” Sadie quickly interjected. “And it never stopped him from pursuing his hobby of Maine history.”

“He could have been a professor,” Charlotte countered, turning to take down the teapot.

“He could have been,” Sadie agreed. “But that would have meant leaving these woods, and you and I both know that never would have happened.”

Her mother turned to her again, her tear-swollen eyes hopeful. “Do you really think that’

s true, Sadie? That I didn’t hold Frank back?”

Unable to sit any longer, Sadie got up and went to her mother, taking the forgotten teapot from her hands and setting it on the counter with the cups. She took her mom by the shoulders and looked her square in the face.

“Dad loved you, me, Caroline, and his life here. How can you doubt that?”

Charlotte pushed the hair from her face with a trembling hand and let out a tired sigh. “I don’t. It’s just that I’m so confused right now. And scared. How am I going to tell Callum he’s fathered a child? The man’s forty-eight years old. He’ll practically be on Social Security before our kid even gets her driver’s license.”

Sadie dismissed that worry with a chuckle. “I’ll teach her to drive if Callum can’t handle the stress. It’s okay, Mom. People are having children later in life now. You won’t be the only gray-haired lady at the PTA meetings.”

“I’m going to have to tell him soon, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you’ve got to tell him. But that does not mean you have to marry him.”

It was Charlotte’s turn to laugh. “Of course I do, sweetie,” she said, patting Sadie’s cheek and then moving back to pour the boiling water into the teapot. “Callum MacKeage is one of those old-fashioned men. Once he knows I’m having a baby, he’ll probably drag me to the minister before I’ve even finished telling him.”

Charlotte shot a grin over her shoulder that said she found that idea amusing. “If he doesn’t have a heart attack first. The poor man is sohung up on proprieties. That’s why he always parks his truck down the road instead of in my driveway, so people won’t know he’s visiting me so late,” she said, waving at the window facing the street. “And he tried hard not to show it, but he was mortified that you found us together tonight.” She winked at her daughter. “And naked, at that.”

Sadie laughed. “Then he really would have keeled over if I’d arrived earlier and actually found you in bed together. And I would have, if Eric hadn’t shown up at camp.”

“Eric actually ventured into the deep woods?” Charlotte asked, tongue in cheek.

Everyone in Pine Creek knew that Eric Hellman hated the woods. And everyone thought it ironic that the man owned an outfitters store.

“He only took a few steps on actual dirt,” Sadie assured her. “And he drove like the devil to get in and out as fast as he could.”

“But why make the trip? He knows you come into town on the weekends.”

“He found an old diary that belonged to a camp cook who knew Jedediah. And he couldn’t wait for me to see it.”

“I tried calling you today,” Charlotte said, bringing the tray of tea to the table. She lifted one brow. “Did you forget to charge your cell phone again, or did you break another one?”

“I—ah—I sort of lost this one,” Sadie admitted.

Charlotte sighed into her tea on the pretense of cooling it off. She looked over the rim of her cup, and Sadie could see that her mother was trying very hard not to laugh.

“Hey. It’s physical work that I do,” Sadie defended herself. “But the cell phone’s nothing. You should have seen Eric’s face when I told him I lost the GPS at the same time.” She suddenly sobered. “I lost Dad’s camera, too, Mom.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” Charlotte quickly consoled, understanding what the loss meant to Sadie. She reached over and patted her hand. “You still have the one Frank gave you for your tenth birthday.”

“But it’s not the same. And now I don’t dare use it. I don’t want to risk losing that one, too.”

“Then I’ll buy you a new one,” Charlotte said, sitting up and smiling at her plan. “And you can have it fixed so it doesn’t make a noise when you use it.”

“Then I’ll be worried about losingyour gift.” Sadie blew into her own tea. “I’m better off just buying my own. That way, I won’t feel bad if something happens to it. I’m too damn sentimental.”

“No, sweetie. You’re too damned absentminded,” her mother said, not unkindly. “You’

re always so busy being curious about everything that you keep overlooking the details of life. And that’s why you need a husband.”

Sadie didn’t respond to that half-truth; she might need to work on getting her act together, but she sure as heck didn’t need a husband to do it for her. So, instead of arguing the point, Sadie drank the soothing chamomile tea and basked in the warmth of her mother’s kitchen.

Yes, this was why she had come home today. Charlotte’s mothering was a balm to her soul. Her mom was grounded in reality, always able to put things in the proper prospective for Sadie, always able to give Sadie the confidence she needed to continue moving forward despite the guilt she wore around her neck like a granite tombstone.

It was her fault that Caroline and her father were dead. She had caused the fire that had killed Caroline and disabled her dad to the point that he had only lived five years, until he died from a weakened heart at the young age of forty-one.

Frank Quill had returned to the burning house, and it had been Sadie, not the innocent Caroline, he had pulled from the flames.

A preventable, senseless tragedy. And not once, ever, in the eight years since had her mother or father condemned Sadie for the loss of their younger daughter. In fact, they had both gone out of their way to convince her that they cherished the one child God had left them while they mourned the one they had lost.

Sadie loved them both so much for that.

And she loved her mom’s friendship now. Charlotte Quill always met whatever life gave her head-on, since finding herself pregnant at the age of sixteen, through the tragedy eight years ago, through her husband’s death three years ago, and now as she found herself pregnant yet again.

Sadie only hoped that someday she could be half the woman Charlotte Quill was.

Because she needed very much to be the sort of big sister this unborn child could look up to.

Chapter Seven

Sadie was out of bedand halfway down the hall before she realized she should have been feeling bare feet touching the hardwood floor. She stopped in the doorway of the bathroom and stared down at the bandages covering her feet. She wiggled her toes, then shifted her weight from one foot to the other, testing for pain.