The Road Home

by Susan Crandall

Genres: Small Town & Rural; Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Susan Crandall takes you back to Glens Crossing with a story of heartbreak and forgiveness, of finding your way to the home of your heart. Lily Holt's life is falling apart. Her marriage is over. Her ex-husband is in alcohol rehab. Her teenage son, Riley, is out of control. Looking for a new start and stability for her son, she reluctantly returns to her childhood home, a town she'd left without reservation fourteen years before. But Riley is quickly in trouble again. And Lily's problems mulitply ten-fold when Clay Winters, her frist love and first heartbreak, is thrust back into her -- and her son's -- lives. Will the painful secrets of the past bring her downfall or her salvation?

Release date: August 21, 2008

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 404

Sample

There were things in this world that just didn’t make sense. Like how it was just fine and dandy for eleven-year-old Lily Boudreau
to walk around in the family’s apartment over the Crossing House Tavern, do her homework over the beer cooler, cook dinner
over the jukebox and even go to bed right over the pool table in the back, but it was against the law for her to set foot
on the first floor. They had moved to this apartment shortly after Lily’s mom left to start a new life, so Dad could take
care of them while he worked. He was the owner and tended bar, but she couldn’t even go down and kiss him goodnight. If she
had something to tell him during working hours, she had to call him on the phone. Like he worked miles away instead of right
beneath her feet.


As her dad got ready to go down to work, she flopped on the couch next to him, grumbling once again about that stupid law.
“Why can’t we just ignore it? Who would know?”


Dad looked at her with his do-we-have-to-do-this-again? face. “We might think it’s silly, but it’s still the law.” He paused,
right where he always did, and rubbed his hand over his face—like he always did. “It wouldn’t be right to just follow the laws we like—you can’t just pick and choose. What if
someone thought it wasn’t fair that they couldn’t drive when they were three sheets to the wind? Just think of the things
that could happen.”


Well, that didn’t seem nearly the same at all. Lily knew her dad never let anyone leave the Crossing House after they’d had
too much to drink. He’d call Mr. Mills’s cab company to take them home. Oh, they did think it was a stupid law then—she’d heard them cuss a blue streak at her dad. Their drunk tongues had a hard time getting
the words out, but their loud voices made up for that. It was always the same. “Benny,” they’d say, “give me my goddamn keys!” And she’d hear a pause during which her dad must have been talking. “I ain’t too drunk! Just look at my hands—steady as a rock!”

“But that law makes sense,” Lily said. She’d seen the accident out on the curve on Quarry Road. The one everybody still talked
about in real quiet voices. The one that killed two little kids and their mom.


Dad ruffled her hair. “Just the same, it’s all in the way a person looks at it. A law’s a law. Like it or not. So”—he kissed
her on the forehead—“you just pick up that phone and call if you need anything.” Then he put on his white apron and headed
downstairs. She heard him call back over his shoulder, “Don’t forget your homework.”


“Better be hunting down Luke if you’re worried about somebody’s homework!” Her older brother was in serious danger of repeating
eighth grade—all because of math. Well, English and social studies were pretty iffy, too. Tomorrow was D-day. She laughed;
that was a good one! Luke’d be lucky if it was D-day and not F-day.


Dad’s laugh echoed up the stairwell that led to the bar’s kitchen. Then she heard him holler hello to Henry Calverson, the cook. He had to holler, because Henry was about as close
to deaf as a person could be and still hear a freight train pass through his living room.


“Evenin’, Benny. Kiddos okay?” Henry asked—well, shouted—his usual question.

The comforting sounds of business getting under way downstairs drifted up to the apartment. Once the bar started to fill up,
Dad would shut the door at the bottom of the staircase. Until then, Lily went about getting dinner ready for Luke and their
little sister, Molly, listening to Henry sing too loud and way off-key.


She liked to hear Henry sing.

As she set the macaroni and cheese on the table, her mind hurried on toward evening. She and Luke had serious business to
attend to.


It was twilight when she finally locked the door behind them and they headed down the outside stairs. Instead of taking the
road, they slipped down to Blackwater Creek and followed it to the dam. On the other side of the tall spillway was Forrester
Lake, which, up until a handful of Chicago people bought up all the land on the far side, had been Forrester Reservoir. Funny
how money can change everything, even the name of a body of water.


It was dark enough in the woods that they needed their flashlights. As Lily started to switch hers on, Luke put a hand out
to stop her. “If you’re right,” he whispered, “we don’t want to let anyone know we’re coming,”


It was still spring, so the water was high enough to roll over the spillway, creating a noise that sounded a little bit like
rain falling on leaves—enough noise to mask their movements. “I’m right. Somebody’s been here.”


They moved toward the rocky limestone outcropping a few yards to the left of the creek bed, not far from the bottom of the
dam.


From the first day she and Luke had stumbled upon it, Lily had loved the place—which is exactly what they called it, only
with capital letters. The Place. It was nice to slip into the cool shadows of the overhanging rock and sit on the logs they’d
dragged there for seats. She liked the way everything sounded more clear in the deep ravine—the birds, the trickle of the
water over the stones in the creek bed, the rustle of a rabbit in the brush, the sharp chatter of an angry squirrel.


It was when she’d come earlier today that she’d found it. A cigarette butt. Evidence that someone had invaded their private
hideout.


They ducked behind a large honeysuckle bush, still unable to see anyone. Night had fallen and The Place had a host of its
own shadows.


Suddenly a match flared under the outcropping. Two boys sat on the logs, lighting cigarettes. One was tall and skinny, about
Luke’s size. The other one was a little bigger—broader.


“Well, shit,” Luke whispered. “At least they’re kids.”

Lily didn’t know if that made it better or not. Adults might be here a couple of times, then forget about it. Kids—well, they’d
probably fight for it.


Lily leaned close to her brother’s ear. “What are we going to do?”

Luke smiled; his teeth shone blue in the darkness. She recognized the smile. It was a declaration of war. Lily felt a thrill
go through her. She didn’t normally like to fight, but when someone takes something that’s yours—you just have no choice.


She said, “Shouldn’t we try asking them to leave first?”

Ignoring her, he shot to his feet, crashing loudly through the bushes and snapping his flashlight on. He held it at shoulder
height and shone it right in the faces of the two boys.


“Hey!” Luke could have a really deep voice when he worked at it. “You kids!” He was working at it.

Immediately the two glowing ends of the cigarettes disappeared.

Luke kept the boys blinded with his flashlight.

“We weren’t doing anything, Officer.”

Lily crouched lower and stifled her laughter with her hand. They thought Luke was the sheriff!

“Where you boys from?” Luke had to keep his sentences short. He couldn’t use the deep voice for too long at a stretch without
it cracking on him.


The skinny one with the light hair said, “Cottage over on Mill Run Road.”

Cottage? Those places on Mill Run Road were bigger than most of the houses in town. And what were these richy summer kids doing poking
around on this side of the lake? Their side had the marina and the ice cream place.


“What’re your names?”

After a long hesitation, while Lily imagined the kid was weighing the possibility of getting caught if he lied, the skinny
one said, “Peter Holt.” His voice squeaked slightly.


Lily was pretty sure he told the truth. Who would choose to be a Peter?


The bigger one stepped forward, more into the light. When he did, Lily’s breath caught in her throat. It was the kid who had
helped her little sister Molly late last summer when she fell off her bike at the park. When Lily had found the two of them,
he’d already gotten Molly to stop crying. In fact, he had her laughing a little bit.


“Clay Winters,” he said.


His voice was deeper than last year. Deep enough to make Lily wonder how long they were going to buy Luke’s impersonation.

“Your folks let you smoke?” Luke used just the right tinge of adult-sounding sarcasm.

“We just wanted to try it. We don’t even like cigarettes. We won’t be doing it anymore,” Peter, the skinny one, said.

God, even Molly wouldn’t believe that line.

Luke grunted, just the way she’d heard Sheriff Hayes do when he didn’t buy a kid’s story. “Get on home. Don’t let me catch
you back here.”


“Yes, sir,” both voices chimed together.

When they were almost out of the range of the flashlight beam and Lily was about to burst out of her hiding spot, Luke called
out, “Hold it!”


The boys froze. Clay turned to face him.

“Be at my office at four o’clock tomorrow. Bring your parents.”

One of the boys said, “Shit!” under his breath.

Luke said, “What was that?”

Clay said, “We’ll be there, sir, but my father’s in Chicago.”

“That’s fine, son. He can call my office at four.”

Don’t push your luck. Just let them go, Lily pleaded silently.


“Go on,” Luke finally said. He kept his flashlight shining from his shoulder until the sounds of their flight disappeared.
Then he burst out laughing.


Lily exploded from behind the bush. “You should have stopped while you were ahead. Once they go to the sheriff, they’ll know
they were tricked.”


“Yeah, but by then they’ll have had to tell their parents.”

“But they’ll come back here looking for us!”


He rubbed her hair, just like Dad did. “That’s right. We’ll be ready.”

She and Luke took to the field of battle as though their very lives depended upon it. They warred with Peter and Clay through
the early weeks of summer—water balloons and booby traps, tit for tat, attack and retaliation. It had been all-consuming,
the reason they got out of bed each morning, the subject of their quiet conversations at night.


The Fourth of July dawned and Lily felt a charge in the air.

“The only way to gain the upper hand,” Luke said, winking at Lily, “is to stake your territory first.” He loaded a paper grocery
bag with fireworks.


Lily didn’t like the idea of missing the Fourth of July parade and picnic in the park. But if Luke said it had to be done,
it had to be done. So just as the sun was coming up—Luke assured her that rich kids never got up until nine—she and her brother
left a note for their dad and headed to The Place. They each held a brown grocery bag. One was packed with snacks and a couple
of bottles of Coke. The other, ammunition—firecrackers and some illegal M-80s, bottle rockets and even a few real aerial fireworks.


That was another law Lily never fully understood. It fit right up there with not being able to go downstairs to talk to her
dad at the Crossing House. You could buy illegal “out-of-state” fireworks if you told the man you bought them from that you
weren’t going to set them off in Indiana. Every year the same beer-bellied man, who called himself Firecracker Bill, came
to Glens Crossing from Tennessee and set up a tent in the parking lot of Kingston’s Market. Of course, Dad didn’t have any
idea that they pooled their allowance and visited Firecracker Bill. If he had, there would have been no more allowance or Fourth of July for either of them.


As the day wore on and boredom was replaced by severe boredom, Lily’s regret over missing the festivities grew. She’d never
noticed how little there was to do at The Place. Of course, she’d never been stranded here like a castaway on a desert island.
Man, if it could be so boring here, why did they care if someone else used it every once in a while?


She’d just bet those kids, Peter and Clay, were at the watermelon-eating contest at the park right now. And Dad would have
Molly’s bike all decorated with red, white and blue streamers for her to ride in the parade.


Sighing as loud as she could without getting light-headed, she was disappointed when Luke didn’t stir from where he was dozing
with his head on a big rock.


For a while, she sat next to him and amused herself by tickling his nose with a jack-in-the-pulpit she’d picked near the big
sycamore. After the fourth or fifth time she got him to scrunch up his face and scratch, that used up all its amusement.


Sighing again, she leaned back on her elbows and closed her eyes. The sunlight flickered through the leaves and she watched
it play in pink patterns on the insides of her eyelids.


Something small hit the ground nearby. Lily figured it was an acorn or walnut knocked loose by a squirrel, so she didn’t open
her eyes.


The snap of the firecracker brought her directly to her knees. The sharp acrid smell of gunpowder stung her nose and a puff
of blue smoke clouded her vision. Luke was at her side before she’d drawn a breath. He got his arm around her shoulder and
knocked her back to the ground.


“Bastards,” he whispered through his teeth. “I knew I shouldn’t have gone to sleep.”

“It’s them?” As she whispered it, she strained to see any telltale movement in the bushes.


Luke looked at her like she didn’t have a brain in her head. “Who else, Einstein?” He crawled over to their fireworks bag
and dug around in it for a minute. When he crawled back to where she was crouched behind a log, he shoved a bunch of firecrackers
into her hands. “You just hold this stuff.” He opened a box of kitchen matches. “I’ll light and throw.”


She looked at the firecrackers she held. “Could these hurt someone?”

“Only if they go off in your hand.”

Lily felt her eyes widen.

“Don’t worry. They’re not going to be lit in your hand.”


She just about said he might want to be concerned about his own fingers, but she didn’t want him to think she was a wuss.

Just about the time Luke struck the first match, another firecracker came flying from the shrubbery to their left. Lily drew
herself into a ball and squeezed her eyes closed, waiting for the pop.


Instead, she heard a loud hiss.

Luke launched his first round.

Lily looked behind them. A smoke bomb was spewing a red cloud.

“Peeeewwww.”

“Give me another one.” Luke poked at her closed fist.

Handing it over, Lily still couldn’t actually see the enemy. She heard something land back near the limestone outcropping—far
enough away that she stood her ground and waited for the explosion without flinching.


When it came, it was much louder than she expected. She ducked her head close to her shoulders. Luke was trying to pry another firecracker out of her clenched fist. “No!”


“Gimme!”

“It’s too danger—”

The rapid succession of explosions made them both spin around.

The paper sack jumped as if it were filled with popping corn. It smoked, then burst into flames. Lily’s copy of Little Women was right next to the bag—as was the blanket. She started for them and Luke jerked her back.


He jumped over to the bag and tried kicking the flames out. But it was too late, the bottle rockets and fireworks had started
to take off.


Lily ran toward him, but something big came crashing past her. She lost her balance and teetered to the left.

Clay skidded to a stop beside Luke, seemingly oblivious to the rockets taking off in every direction, and scooped up fistfuls
of dirt, throwing them onto the burning blanket.


Once she regained her balance, Lily started toward the fire again. The pops and hissing kept going and a rocket whizzed past
her ear. If she hadn’t ducked, she was certain her hair would have been on fire. She was almost to Luke when something hit
her leg.


She screamed, falling to the ground. It felt worse than the time she was accidentally shot by a BB gun.

Looking down, she saw the long launching stick of the firework protruding from her thigh. The fuse snapped and hissed as it
burned closer to the rocket filled with explosives.


Clay was there before she could react. He pulled the rocket from her thigh and hurled it a good ten yards away before it exploded.
He bent over her, shielding her from the worst of the burning spray of color that showered them.


The rocket was deep. In her brief look, Lily had seen that nearly half of the shell was buried in her leg.


Luke was still trying to spread the arsenal and get the burning fuses stamped out. Clay picked Lily up. “She’s bleeding pretty
bad. I’m taking her for help.”


The pops sounded farther away. The searing pain in Lily’s leg occupied most of her attention, but she heard Luke yell, “Wait!
She’s my sister. I’ll take her.”


“Put out the fire, then catch up,” Clay called back. Then he yelled, “Peter! Help him!”

They reached the path, where Peter stood staring at Lily’s bloody leg for a moment before he took off in the opposite direction.
The terror she saw in his eyes told her she was in serious trouble. She started to shake.


Clay kept moving. He murmured softly in her ear, “Take it easy. I’ll get you to a doctor. It’ll stop hurting soon.”

Lily let her head fall against Clay’s shoulder and pressed her lips together to keep from crying out. Her leg felt like it
was on fire. She hadn’t looked at it after he had pulled the rocket out. She was too afraid of what she might see. He had
said she was bleeding. She couldn’t tell. It just hurt.


The trek through the rough woods seemed to take forever. Normally, it took Lily and Luke fifteen minutes to get to The Place.
But Clay was moving slowly, his footing sometimes faltering. His breathing sounded like he’d been running a mile. At one point
she heard Luke say he’d carry her for a while, but Clay kept moving.


Then she heard another voice. This one sounded as scared as Lily felt. And that really got her worried—this was a grown-up
voice. Lily landed in the back seat of a car. Doors slammed closed. Then they were moving again. A woman with blond hair was
driving. She kept asking Clay where Peter was.


After the fifth time, he nearly shouted, “I don’t know!” Then he added, more quietly, “He’s okay.”


Clay kept turning around in the front seat and looking at Lily. Luke was in the back next to her, holding a towel against
her leg.


Once they pulled up at the emergency room of Henderson County Hospital, other people crowded around her. She lost track of
Luke and Clay and the woman who drove the car.


Lily felt all floaty, like she was a kite bobbing on the breeze. She heard her dad’s voice, felt his hand on the top of her
head.


“How are you feeling, sweetie?”

The pain in her leg was still there, but much more dull. She hesitated opening her eyes. Dad was going to be really mad. Right
now he was talking to her like he did when she was sick. Once he knew she was better, it was going to hit the fan.


She opened her eyes. She was in a hospital room.

Dad smiled.

That made her more worried. Was she going to be crippled?

Then he said, “There’s someone here to see you.”

He stepped away. Lily was surprised when the face that appeared next wasn’t her brother’s, but Clay’s. His eyes moved restlessly
back and forth from her leg and her face. Finally, he looked her in the eye.


He had the most incredible golden brown eyes with a darker brown ring around the irises. Lily almost forgot how much her leg
hurt when he looked at her like that. It was as if she were the only person in the world that mattered.


“I—I’m sorry. We didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.”

She shook her head and the room swam for a moment. “You carried me all the way home. You could have run.”


The startled look in his eyes told her he was shocked she’d even think such a thing.

She said, “Besides, it was an accident.” She looked around his shoulder to see if her dad was listening. He’d left the room.
She said, more quietly, in case Dad was just outside the door, “We shouldn’t have had those rockets in the first place.” She
paused. “I suppose Luke’s grounded.” For a moment she almost wished she would be crippled—that way Dad couldn’t be too mad at her.


Clay smiled. “Let’s just say none of us are going to that spot by the creek anytime soon.”

It was then that Lily noticed the bandage on his right hand. “You’re hurt?”

He quickly tucked the hand behind his back. “Just a little burn.”

The events of that horrible moment began to take on definition in her mind. “The fuse on the rocket burned your hand when
you pulled it out of my leg.”


He looked away. “It’s not bad.”

“But if you hadn’t pulled it out…” Lily realized that what felt like a vast burning crater in her leg would have been exactly
that. With a sense of sickness in her stomach, her close call became crystal clear. “Oh, my gosh, it could have blown my leg
completely off!”


Clay laughed, but it was a nervous laugh that said he was just trying to make her feel better. “Oh, it wasn’t that dramatic.
You’re gonna be okay. Don’t think about it anymore.”


At that moment, looking into his eyes, she decided she could trust Clay Winters with all of her eleven-year-old heart. And
Lily Boudreau didn’t give her trust easily.


Twenty-one years later

For the past twelve years of her marriage, Lily had fought against the cyclone working to tear her world apart. She’d frantically
snatched and grabbed the pieces, as the winds whipped and whorled, ripping them away more quickly than she could reassemble
them.


Maybe she shouldn’t have tried so hard. Maybe at sight of the first black thunderhead on the horizon she should have simply
thrown her body over her son, covered her head and waited to see where things settled after the storm. Maybe then her ex-husband,
Peter, wouldn’t be in alcohol rehab right now. Then the divorce would have been over before Riley was old enough to react
with so much antagonistic belligerence and bad behavior. Even if he had, he would have been young enough to control—and it
would all be just a distant memory by now.


Exhausted from the past days’ emotional events and the five-hour drive from Chicago, Lily pulled up in front of the southern
Indiana lake cottage and shut off the engine, telling herself she was not running away. She was putting necessary space between Riley and his grandparents, herself and her ex-husband. She was taking the first step toward a new life.


After a long and bumpy struggle, she and Peter had surrendered the fight for their marriage. And for some inexplicable reason,
with the ending of her present, Lily had a sudden, irrepressible urge to review her past. That past was deeply rooted in Glens
Crossing, the catalysts for its changing course embedded in this cottage on Forrester Lake.


She rested her chin on the steering wheel and studied the house. It was still the same forest green with white trim it had
been since it was built by Peter’s grandparents. Two tall stories, it had deep, open eaves, multipaned windows and a foundation
made of river rock. The lower half of the front porch pillars were river rock, too, topped with square wooden supports that
were wider at the base than at the top. A symbol of tradition, of familial stability.


She hadn’t been back here since she and Peter eloped fourteen years ago. The lake house was Peter’s now, deeded to him by
his grandparents on his twenty-fifth birthday. That was one of the few things his parents couldn’t circumvent. Lily had no
doubt that Peter’s father would have given his right eye to have prevented that transfer of control.


Although the ownership was Peter’s, they had never returned here as a family, she, Peter and Riley. It seemed best to let
the specters that dwelt on this quiet lake rest undisturbed. The past had caused enough unrest in their lives from three hundred
miles away.


The mere mention of Forrester Lake always brought doubt to Peter’s eyes, a pain born of wondering if Lily would have been
his had things unfolded differently. In his most unhappy moments, he always posed the same question: “If Clay walked through the door today, would you leave with him?”

The question, no matter how often she heard it, no matter how she steeled herself against it, made her heart trip a little
faster. Clay had abandoned her, discarded her love with no more thought than he’d give yesterday’s paper. And she hated him
for it. But it was an odd sort of hatred, one that fueled angry fires in her soul and flirted with the edges of her heart
at the same time. When she thought of him, she wanted to strangle him with her bare hands; she wanted to throw herself into
his arms for one more embrace. Both feelings brought self-loathing. She was so weak. Weak enough to have damaged Peter’s life
while trying to save her own.


She had loved Peter, she supposed for nearly as long as she’d been in love with Clay. But it had been a different kind of love, a safer love, than what she’d felt for Clay. Clay set off volcanic upheavals
deep in her soul. Peter calmed her spirit, warmed her with security. Clay was passion. Peter was family.


Throughout their marriage, her reassurances had done nothing to erase Peter’s doubt. It had grown and expanded, becoming the
strongest link and, at the same time, the thickest wall between Lily and her husband.


Now, as she looked at the house, a sense of déjà vu settled over her, draped itself weightlessly about her shoulders, wrapped tightly around her chest and sent far-reaching
roots directly to her soul. So easily did the years of adulthood slip away, leaving the heart of a girl exposed and bleeding.
A girl who had trusted completely, without reservation—and paid the price.


What would she have done, if Peter hadn’t been there to pick up the pieces when Clay left?

And now she was alone, really and truly, alone. There was no one to pick up the pieces except Lily. And she would do it. She
had to, for her son.


The press of tears was strong. But she would no more let them fall now than she did fourteen years ago. Forge ahead. Take
care of business. Deal. That’s what had sustained her for most of her life. No sense in ignoring the tried and true at this
point.


She glanced at Riley leaning against the passenger door, asleep. He didn’t stir. His head remained propped on his hand, his
dark hair tousled over his closed eyes. The tinny beat from his headphones was the only sound in the car.


Every time she saw him sleeping, her heart broke. He looked the same as he had when he was three, sweet and open and loving.
When he was sleeping, there was no trace of the wary tension and defensive attitude that dominated his waking features.


He’d been “excused” from the last week of seventh grade for “conduct unbecoming.” That’s what went in the official record.
What really happened was Riley’s friend had come to Carrigan Park Prep School with some pills he bought at a party. The exact
type of drug had yet to be determined. That’s what frightened Lily the most—he took something without any idea what it was.


After swallowing the pills, Riley and two friends flushed cherry bombs down three of the toilets in the boys’ bathroom. They’d
been too stoned to even have the sense to run. They just sat there in an inch of water, watching the plumbing spew.


Riley had insisted this was his first experience with drugs. Lily wanted to believe him. She wanted that with all of her heart.
There had certainly been no indication of his using prior to this.


Anyone else might have been expelled from school, but Peter’s parents stepped in and softened the blow—again. Being on the
board did have its perks. But this had to stop, before Riley got into something with permanent consequences. When she’d called Peter at the Sheldon Center to tell him about
Riley’s latest, they’d agreed the boy needed to be away from his current environment, at least for a little while. He’d