Emerald Windows Read Online Free

Mary’s.
    If he’d only known what those windows might cost her.
    She pulled into the driveway of her family home and sat for a moment, staring at the little house in which she had spent a happy childhood, before she’d known what cruel games adulthood played on people. What would her parents say, now that the black sheep of the family was back in town? Would they count the days until she left, fearing that the longer she stayed, the more gossip she would provoke? And when they learned she would be working with Nick…
    She reeled the thought back in and told herself just to face what came and not to dwell on the unknown. Slaps in the face were easier to endure when they came as a surprise, she told herself. Dread and anticipation were wasted energy. She knew firsthand.
    Brooke grabbed her suitcase from the back seat and got out of the car. For a moment, she peered up at the small house that clearly represented the Martins’ modest status, but revealed theirstoic pride in what little they had. The house was freshly painted in blue, though it had been white the last time she’d seen it. And they had changed the color of the front door. A large awning hung over the picture window, a new addition in the last few years. Funny that her parents had never mentioned it when they’d visited her in Columbia—but then, it was such a little thing…not the kind of thing families talked about when they got together only once or twice each year.
    Brooke went up the steps to the porch, set her suitcase down and shook her key chain around until her old house key was in her hand. It jammed in the knob, as if it didn’t fit, and she stepped back, frowning.
    The door opened from the inside, and her mother smiled at her, as she had when Brooke was a little girl—before she had become the family albatross. Alice Martin’s expression gave Brooke’s heart a nostalgic twist, making her ache for the simple childhood days when her parents’ approval was so easily earned. For a moment, as Brooke smiled at her mother, who still wore her hair in the same frosted bob she’d worn for fifteen years, she wondered whether it could be possible that things hadn’t changed that much, after all. “Brooke, we’ve been waiting for hours. Where have you been?”
    “I got tied up.” Brooke hugged her mother and stepped over the threshold, dropping her keys back into her purse. “The key…it didn’t fit…”
    “We had the locks changed a few years ago,” her mother explained, taking her suitcase out of her hand and setting it against the wall. “Roxy lost her purse, and we were afraid whoever found it would break in.” Her mother saw the distraught look on her daughter’s face and gently touched Brooke’s hair. “I’m sorry, honey. It never occurred to me to tell you. It’s been so long since you were here. I guess I thought you’d never come through that door again.”
    Brooke sighed, and her gaze panned the living room. Her mother had covered the warped hardwood floors with an inexpensive wall-to-wall carpet, and new furniture filled the room.The old recliner she remembered with its split seams where the stuffing oozed out was gone, as was the old couch with the leg that fell off if you sat on the wrong end. The unfamiliarity and newness made her want to step back outside and focus on her mother’s face a little longer. “Everything looks…different,” she whispered.
    Her mother took her hand and drew her toward the kitchen. “Don’t look so surprised, Brooke. When you decide to stay away for seven years, you have to expect a few changes.”
    Brooke rallied and forced a smile, determined not to reveal how difficult this homecoming was. Maybe she should have come home a few days earlier, allowing more time to break the proverbial ice and put the past behind her. But somehow, before today, she hadn’t been able to do it.
    The swinging door to the kitchen burst open, and her father hurried out, his leather-tanned face sporting the