Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 100853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Sarah had written to my father,
Dearest Paul, my heart breaks at our separation. I wish there was a way we could be together. It seems unfair that we should both be so unhappy, but so happy together. I can’t go on like this. I don’t want to.
There was a date at the top, the week before he disappeared. This was the woman. This was the one he’d left us for. If he was still out there, somewhere, could I find him through her? Had he married her? Grown old with her?
It occurred to me, for the thousandth time, that he hadn’t ever looked for me. Maybe he didn’t want to be found. But Harriet was dead. Who knew if he still lived? If he was well, how much time did I have left to find him?
Maybe he didn’t want to see me. But I wanted to see him, to find this man who’d left me before I was born—not to demand an explanation or unleash my anger. I wanted to look into those eyes so like mine.
And the only clue I had was Sarah.
I flipped through the rest of the letters. A photograph slipped out and landed in my lap. A woman, young and beautiful, with pale eyes, and a precisely curled sandy blonde bob that made me think of the sixties. She was lovely. Her eyes looked kind, with a spark of mischief. I turned over the photograph. At the bottom, in that same curly script, was written Sarah Elizabeth Fordham.
I didn’t recognize the name. Tucking the letters and photograph back in the envelope, I set it in my lap and pulled out my phone to see what the internet knew of Sarah Elizabeth Fordham. I scrolled through the first few results. A teenage volleyball player who’d scored the winning shot in a game—definitely not her. An obituary for a ninety-eight-year-old woman—probably not.
And then—a link to a marriage certificate from North Carolina. In 1980, Sarah Elizabeth Fordham had married Prentice Braxton Sawyer. Sawyer. The name jolted down my spine. Why did I know that name? It sparked in my brain, and I tapped the screen of my phone, flipping to my email.
The email from Janice Smith. The family in the mountains of North Carolina who were looking for a nanny. Hope and Griffen Sawyer.
My heart pounded. My breath sped up. And a few frantic searches told me it had to be a sign. I’d been waiting for direction, and now I had one.
A goal, a job, and a mystery to solve—all of them in Sawyers Bend.
Chapter Two
FORD
NOW
“Thanks, man. See ya.”
I answered with a nod as the tourist pulled the three-pint glasses into a triangle, bracing his fingers around them to carry his beers to the table.
My sister Avery worked the bar in her taproom with a wide, welcoming smile. Not me. Don’t get me wrong—I liked working Avery’s bar. I liked being out of Heartstone Manor. Finally free, or as free as it seemed I was going to get. Now that Cole Haywood, my former lawyer and the man who’d set me up to take the fall for my father’s murder, was safely in jail, I could pick up the reins of my life. The problem was that life was gone.
My brother Griffen had my former job running Sawyer Enterprises, and for so many reasons, there wasn’t a place there for me anymore. I had to do something with my life. I couldn’t spend the next few decades lurking in the family home, haunting the library, reading biography after biography of people who’d managed to do better than betray everyone who loved them in the service of ambition and ego.
I was halfway through my life, if I was lucky, and all I’d managed to do was drive away most of my family, kiss my father’s ass, and make money—a huge chunk of which had gone to paying the aforementioned attorney who’d double-crossed me. Not much of a legacy. I’d been given everything, and I’d squandered it.
So here I was, tending bar for my sister. I caught the pitying looks of the locals when they came in: the great Ford Sawyer reduced to pulling pints and making change. Oh, how I’d come down in the world. I wouldn’t lie—there were times when it grated. I was Ford Sawyer, goddammit, not an object of pity.
Except that I was.
I grabbed a damp rag and wiped the top of the bar. Maybe every once in a while I felt sorry for myself, but it never lasted long. I always ended up remembering two things. First, I deserved all of this. I wasn’t the king of the castle anymore. I never would be, because it wasn’t my castle, and I deserved far worse than the year I’d spent in prison. And second, most of the time, I liked being exactly where I was. Tending bar in my sister’s brewery, watching my brother set up the kitchen so they could combine forces, serving Finn’s amazing food with Avery’s fantastic beer. As much as a part of me yearned for the throne again, the rest of me just wanted this.