CHAPTER 1
CASSIE
Cassie Davis stared at the pink and white test stick, surprisingly calm considering her entire world could change in a matter of minutes. Three minutes, to be exact.
“Cass, you ready?” Eliza Parker called from the other side of the bathroom door. “The meeting’s already started.”
“Almost.” Cassie glanced at her phone balancing precariously on the narrow edge of the porcelain sink. According to the timer, only forty-five seconds had passed since she’d placed the cap back over the absorbent tip of the pregnancy test. How was that possible? It felt like a lifetime ago.
“Are you okay?” Eliza’s concern carried through the thin crack in the doorframe. “You’ve been in there for ages.”
“I’m fine. Be right there.” She stuffed her phone and the test stick in the pockets of her long, lightweight cardigan and flicked on the faucet to wash her hands.
In hindsight, she shouldn’t have taken the test at work. While The Calendar Café—a bakery and coffee shop combo she co-owned with Eliza—often felt like home since they spent so much time there, it afforded little privacy. And yet, after days spent avoiding the inevitable, too fearful of the potential outcome, she suddenly needed to learn her fate, to the point of anxious distraction. How would she be able to restrain her burning curiosity until after tonight’s gathering?
The tiny strip of plastic scorched a hole in her pocket as they closed the café and headed across the town square toward the meeting hall. Cassie barely noticed the pleasant evening breeze that smelled faintly of apple blossoms or the way the setting sun painted the Western-style storefronts in a soft pinkish hue. Normally, she’d savor every sweetly scented breath, soaking in each nuanced detail that made Poppy Creek the most magical town she’d ever known—a town she’d gratefully called home for the last two and a half years.
But tonight, she couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the impending test results. It felt as though a switch had been flipped in her brain, jerking her thoughts from dogged denial to a single-minded desperation. When she’d missed her period last month, she’d brushed it off. With her irregular cycle, missing one period here or there wasn’t uncommon. But missing two periods in a row? That was difficult to ignore. So, that afternoon, she’d waited to take her break until Sally Hooper—an infamously unobservant cashier at Mac’s Mercantile who hadn’t even noticed when her husband bought all the supplies for her own surprise birthday party—came in for her shift. In a town like Poppy Creek, you could never be too careful. If anyone witnessed her purchase a pregnancy test, the news would make it to Luke before the three-minute timer had a chance to chime.
Luke…
The tangled knot in Cassie’s stomach tightened as she and Eliza climbed the creaky wooden steps leading into the large one-room meeting hall. Her husband, Luke Davis, waved at them from the back row of folding chairs where he’d saved them a seat.
His warm hazel eyes shimmered with affection as he met her gaze then crinkled around the edges when he smiled. Her breath stalled somewhere in her throat, too feeble to handle the way his entire face lit up with delight
at the mere sight of her. They were approaching two years of marriage, and he still looked at her with the same adoring disbelief, as if he couldn’t believe his good fortune.
To be honest, she was the one who felt lucky. She’d never met a man like Luke, so strong, steadfast, and selfless. So full of love. He would make the most incredible father.
Guilt pricked her heart as she followed Eliza to their seats, the pregnancy test jostling in her pocket with each step. If the results were positive, Luke would be overjoyed. Like most married couples, they’d talked about having kids before, and Luke couldn’t wait to be a dad. She’d tried to match his enthusiasm, hoping, praying her heart would change. How could she admit the idea of motherhood filled her with an intense, all-consuming fear that she wouldn’t be good enough? That she’d be just as unqualified for the role as her own mother, and her mother before her?
When it came to maternal bloodlines, the Hayward women had a less-than-stellar gene pool. Her mother and grandmother had a horrible falling out shortly after her grandfather’s death, which resulted in her mother skipping town at eighteen, with an infant Cassie in tow, never to speak to her grandmother again. Cassie’s earliest memories were of dingy motel rooms and even worse apartments, and a parent who was rarely sober and barely keeping it together. If it wasn’t for her mother’s beguiling beauty and infectious charm—which inspired benevolence in both men and women alike—she wasn’t sure how they would’ve survived.
As for her grandmother, Cassie had mixed feelings. Without Edith Hayward and the unusual terms of her will, Cassie never would’ve moved to Poppy Creek and met Luke, plus so many others she now considered family. Inheriting her grandmother’s cottage had been the lifeline she’d needed, and she couldn’t be more grateful. And yet, why hadn’t her grandmother reached out to them before her death? Would their lives have turned out differently if she’d tried to make amends sooner? Cassie couldn’t help mourning all the lost years… all the what-ifs.
Mayor Burns shot her and Eliza a look of annoyance as they settled in their seats, but he didn’t miss a beat of his monologue. He gave the same one every year before the big Founders Day Festival, extolling the three main families
who established the town of Poppy Creek in the 1800s: the Haskets, the Cunninghams, and the Burnses. As the legend goes, they’d come in search of gold but found a new, better way of life. They’d built a legacy. One that he still carries on to this day, et cetera, et cetera, and so on.
While Cassie could appreciate his familial pride, the tales grew more outlandish with each retelling, and his constant grandstanding wore on her nerves. After all, it wasn’t as if he’d personally saved the town from drought, famine, and forest fires.
Nevertheless, Founders Day—which was a bit of a misnomer since the festival actually lasted three days—was an annual highlight. Under normal circumstances, she’d hang on every detail of this year’s celebration with eager anticipation. But her thoughts kept drifting to the item in her pocket.
“Lastly,” Mayor Burns said loudly, yanking her attention to where he stood at the podium. His thick, dark hair glistened in the overhead light, the not-so-subtle sheen a clear sign he needed to cut back on the pomade. “I have an update on the library. As you know, the property has been in my family for generations, and I’ve been leasing it back to the town for a price that’s more than magnanimous.” He paused as if he expected praise or applause, then cleared his throat and continued. “But I’ve recently received a generous offer from a well-reputed developer. They plan to convert the building into a one-stop shop for affordable consumer goods, and I think it’s in the town’s best interest to accept.”
Cassie stiffened, the life-altering pregnancy test momentarily forgotten as the room erupted in cries of protest.
“People, people, please calm down.” Burns rapped his gavel against the podium a few more times than necessary, as if the action brought him personal satisfaction. “Change is hard, but it’s time we think about our future. Forward progress is the bedrock of a town’s survival.”
“But what about the library?” Beverly Barrie, the head librarian for several decades, asked in a voice fraught with apprehension.
Her husband, Frank, squeezed her shoulder in a show of support.
“I’m sure we can find a suitable location to relocate the library,” Burns said with an air of
indifference. “Besides, aren’t people reading more e-books these days, anyway? We can simply move the library online.”
Beverly gasped in horror, her hand flying to the vintage cameo at her throat. More outraged murmurs rippled throughout the room.
Cassie’s stomach clenched at the collective aura of alarm. Mayor Burns couldn’t seriously be considering selling a historic piece of the town to a faceless corporation, could he?
“What about preserving the town’s heritage?” Frank narrowed his bushy, silver-speckled eyebrows at Burns, his gray eyes darkening with displeasure as if a storm brewed just beneath the surface. “You let in one money-grubbing muckety-muck, you might as well turn Main Street into a strip mall.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Barrie,” Burns purred with practiced patience, “I hope you trust me more than that.”
“Not even as far as I can throw you,” Frank muttered under his breath.
Cassie hid a smile. Just a few short years ago, Frank would’ve been the last person to champion their bucolic way of life. An infamous recluse, he rarely left his house, let alone frequented the quaint mom-and-pop shops lining the four cobblestoned streets framing the town square. Now, despite his somewhat crusty and cantankerous exterior, he’d become a beloved member of the community. And although he was old enough to be her grandfather, he’d become the father figure she’d never had.
A sudden surge of emotion swelled in her chest at the thought. She’d never met the man who bore her DNA. She didn’t even know his name. Despite her many attempts to learn more about him, her mother had doggedly kept his identity a secret, for reasons she wouldn’t divulge. A microscopic seed of resentment burrowed in Cassie’s heart. What would she say to her own son or daughter one day when they asked about their family tree?
“The fact is,” Burns said in an authoritative tone, tearing Cassie from her melancholy musings, “the library can’t keep up with its lease payments, and I’ve been lenient for as long as I can. If it’s not this developer, it will be
someone else. I, for one, want to see Poppy Creek grow and thrive, not shrivel into a ghost town like so many others before us.”
A somber hush settled over the room as his ominous words sank in, permeating the air with a thick haze of hopelessness.
There had to be something they could do. Cassie couldn’t bear the thought of Poppy Creek changing, possibly losing its very essence, purely for the sake of perceived progress. ...
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