Small-Town Dreams and The Girl Next Door: Small-Town Dreams / The Girl Next Door

“This is all so incredible. Like a movie of the week or something.”

“No. It’s a miracle is what it is,” Irma said. “Those doctors didn’t give him a ghost of a chance to live, let alone thrive the way he has.” Irma turned back to Cassidy, her pale eyes lit with pride, though her expression was serious. “His mind’s so quick, all he has to do is read something once and he knows it. I taught school for thirty years and I never had a brighter student. And there’s nothing he can’t fix if it’s broken, either. The only two problems he’s left with are the loss of memory and the fact he just says whatever pops into his mind. Of course, there’s that sense of direction of his, too.” Irma laughed. “But who knows if he wasn’t always like that. He’s a special man, and we’re proud of him.”

Cassidy could see that they were, but wouldn’t his real family have felt the same way? Cassidy could only imagine their suffering. “Hasn’t anyone tried to find out where he belongs?”

“I’ve thought from the first that he belongs right here, but we did try. We had people from that TV mystery show come up here and take his picture and film an interview with him about nine or ten months after he came to live with us. They did a whole story on him.” She snorted in derision. “He was terribly embarrassed, and all for nothing. Nothing ever came of it. It’s like he appeared out of nowhere. I like to think that the Lord meant for us to find him and bring him into our home. And Joshua has gone on to built a satisfying life for himself in the Lord’s service.”

He seemed to have, but Cassidy couldn’t help but wonder about the people he’d spent those first twenty-five or thirty years with. She knew what their grief felt like. She remembered back to when she was eight years old. She’d awakened in a hospital to find her grandfather by her bed, telling her that her parents were dead. A wall of snow had come crashing into their vacation home while they’d sat snuggled around the fire, and had swept them from her life. The people in Joshua’s life would have felt the same tearing grief she had. That she still did feel twenty years later.

She was glad that at a time when Joshua was all alone in the world he had found the kind of unconditional love parents give. Because though Cassidy’s grandfather had raised her, she still felt she had to earn his love—one day at a time.

Chapter Four

Cassidy wandered aimlessly along the marked trail through the woods. She’d put off her walk until after lunch, having continued to help Irma in the kitchen. Taking the time to cook from scratch was something she rarely did, and she found it, and the time with Irma, strangely soothing.

Soon after sharing a noon meal with the older couple, she’d returned to her room and had fallen into a deep sleep. When she’d awakened, refreshed but no more settled, she’d set off for the walk she’d planned that morning.

After hearing about all Joshua had endured, she felt selfish and childish for dwelling on what were minor problems in her own life. She would eventually take over the presidency of Jamison Steel, so what did it really matter if she hadn’t been given the vice presidency? Why was she so unhappy and tense? She could only hope this vacation, impetuously taken, would put her disappointment and hurt into perspective.

Irma had told her the trail would lead her to the far end of Mountain View. Though she was sure there was little to see in the small town, at least it would give her the opportunity to observe the town up close and personal. She could even check to see if Earl was closer to looking at her car.

The sharp crack of a breaking branch to her left stopped Cassidy in her tracks. She moved only her head, and was left breathless by the sight of a doe standing almost as still as a statue. It stared unblinkingly at her. The only sign of life the animal revealed was a quivering muscle high on its haunch.

At that moment a powerful need to recreate the scene on paper gripped Cassidy. Her fingers fairly itched to hold a sketch pad and pencil. In her mind’s eye she could already see the finished picture. The doe would stand frozen in time, surrounded by the stark November woodlands—and fear. It would be in charcoal, she decided—a little sad and a little edgy.

But Cassidy shook her head and banished the vision. The dream. Her sudden movement freed the deer, who bounded away. And once again she said goodbye to her heart’s desire. It was not for her. She had taken a different path. One devoid of creativity and art.

For if there was one thing she did know about herself, it was that she couldn’t devote only half her soul to something that consumed her. And where art was concerned, she always reacted the same way. Whenever she picked up a pencil or a brush, the rest of the world simply faded away—ceased to exist. She became her talent. And her talent became her. It took all her energy. All her heart. And she’d learned it the hard way when she’d tried to split herself in two during college. She’d felt just that—split. Torn. After a near breakdown late in her senior year, she’d made her decision.

She had put away her youthful dreams and passion for an unstable, nearly unattainable success in art, and had marched into adulthood at her grandfather’s side, fulfilling her destiny. She was a Jamison.

She hadn’t painted since graduation. She hadn’t even let herself doodle on her ink blotter. She could not open that door again. It would be ungrateful. Grandfather was counting on her.

But then the memory of yesterday in his office pierced her thoughts. Her heart. And his betrayal made her soul cry out once again. He hadn’t seemed to need her at all when naming Jon Reed his vice president. Remembering her last angry words to the old man who’d been her anchor in life left Cassidy feeling at sea. As domineering and gruff as he was, Grandfather had truly been her port in a storm since she was six and that wall of snow had wiped out her world in one blinding minute.

She forced her mind from the painful past and the embarrassing scene at Jamison Steel. Hadn’t she already decided that it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things? Instantly, Joshua and all she’d learned about him from Irma filled her thoughts. Aside from being kind, gentle and handsome, he was a strong, courageous person, not only to have survived but to have flourished as he had. He would laugh at her whining over the loss of her dream of a fulfilling career in the art world. At least she could remember the dreams she’d put aside. As misty as her memory of her parents was, she did remember her mother’s soft voice soothing her and her father’s big strong hands holding her.

What must Joshua’s life be like? He must live only in the present. Maybe for the future, too. Because anything else would be fruitless and painful.

She recalled his low comment to Irma the day before when the older woman had noticed him stare off into space. “Just knew something I shouldn’t,” he’d muttered. Did that mean snatches of his past came back to haunt him? An ever-present reminder of all he’d lost?

Sunshine broke through the trees, and Cassidy looked up into the sun-drenched sky. She’d arrived at the end of the trail.

The first building she came to was a large, three-story, boarded-up Victorian with a half-attached, weather-beaten sign hanging from the gatepost. Swenson’s Bed and Breakfast, the faded letters declared on the sign that bobbled in the breeze. The fence the gate was attached to was a wobbly picket-type that had even less paint than it had stability.

The house fired Cassidy’s imagination, though it was every bit as weather-beaten as the sign and fence. It had once been lovely. She visualized its faded, peeling colors crisp and bright again, its windows shining in the sunlight, and the fence restored to its once stalwart position of authority. The upstairs tower room with its circle of tall windows would be unbelievably perfect as a studio. There was something about the house that struck a cord deep inside that said family and security.

“Wouldn’t you love to get your hands on the place?” Joshua asked from behind her. “I know I would.”

Cassidy whirled around. He sat in an old beat-up truck that he’d pulled to the side of the road. She smiled. “You’d get a ticket in Philadelphia for parking facing the wrong way.”

Joshua set the brake and opened the door. He chuckled. “But this is Mountain View. In a town with probably fewer than thirty cars in a ten-mile radius, with three of those in the shop, and the rest parked at job sites, it hardly matters.”

Cassidy glanced away from his charming grin and looked around town, wondering how he kept his sanity in such an isolated place. “I see your point. Do you even have a sheriff or a policeman around here?”

“The state police patrol the area. Their barracks is out on the interstate.”

So even the state police hadn’t been able to find Joshua’s origins. “Are you finished with that roof you were fixing?”

“For now, till it leaks again.”

“Why not just put on a whole new one?”

“Because they can’t afford it and they won’t accept charity. Patching is neighborly. Replacing isn’t. You see?”

Embarrassed, Cassidy nodded and turned back toward the house. She would never have thought of that. Grace and intuition must be inborn, she decided, because she didn’t see how he could have learned that kind of insight into the delicate feelings of others in only five years, especially with all the other things he’d had to relearn. Her admiration for him grew dangerously.

“Does anyone own this?” she asked to distract herself from risky thoughts of him and his apparently stellar character.

“The Swensons still own it but they don’t live here anymore. They moved to Georgia to live with their son about ten years ago. The place apparently got too much for them to handle. It’s been for sale for years, but it hasn’t sold.”

Joshua stepped by her and inside the gate. His movement set the sign swinging. “Summer people don’t usually want anything this big, and we don’t get many year-round families moving into the area,” he continued. “It’s actually pretty stable. The roof’s sound. Henry and I boarded the windows up when some summer kids thought it was funny to break them out.”

“That was kind of you.”

He shrugged. “Just being a good neighbor. I check on the place every now and again for the real estate people. That’s what I was about to do. Want to see the inside? I’m sure no one would care if you tag along.”

Cassidy stared up at the house and realized what it was that called to her. It reminded her of her home—the one in suburban Philadelphia that she’d shared with her parents until that fateful vacation when she’d lost them. She didn’t think she’d really had a home since. “I’d love to see it,” she said automatically. Then she remembered his ever-present companion. “Where’s Bear?” She really wasn’t up for another of the dog’s greetings without ample warning.

“You’re safe from his adoration for now. He’s asleep in the back of the truck. He spent the day chasing kids, rabbits and a bunch of barn cats. He’s been out like a light since I pulled away from the Wilsons’.”

Joshua stepped back, holding the gate open, and swept his arm toward the front door in a gesture that reminded her of a piece of Shakespearean stage direction. “After you, fair lady,” he said, doffing his baseball cap.

Cassidy laughed at the silly gesture, and Josh laughed, too. “Is there any furniture left?” she asked as they sauntered along the walk to the house.

“Almost all of it. Ma dusts the place up every now and again, hoping that if we keep it nice for the Swensons, it’ll sell.”

“And why don’t you dust it? Not men’s work?”

“No. She says I don’t see the dust. I think she’s being a fanatic about a few specks.” He shook his head and grinned that killer grin of his. “She says I suffer from what she calls ‘male blindness.’ Ma’s a real ego bruiser, I’ll tell you.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed how cruel she is to you.”

“Hey, she can be one tough lady,” he protested as he vaulted up the porch steps. “Don’t let that fairy-godmother face fool you.”

Cassidy was helpless to contain the giggle that bubbled up from somewhere inside her. “That’s exactly what I thought when I first met her.”

“Cinderella’s fairy godmother come to life. That’s Irma,” Josh said over his shoulder as he unlocked the door.