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For Griffin, the new kid on the block, with a heart full of love
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank:
Thomas Norris for explaining tricky legal stuff. If I got it wrong, it’s not his fault.
The Ritchie family of Salisbury, North Carolina, and the fine folks at Cheerwine for explaining how you make and market a delicious regional soft drink. If I got it wrong, it’s not their fault.
Jack Reimer and Sharon Stokes and Beth Fleishman and Richard Boyette, who let me run away to their mountain cabins to work on the book, and who helped with some more stuff. I don’t know what happened to all the good wine you guys thought you’d hidden, but it could be my fault.
Meg Walker, of Tandem Literary, who told me about marketing stuff, and who, in fact, is a genius at what she does.
The aptly named Grace Qui
The Women of Weymouth: Alexandra Sokoloff, Bren Witchger, Diane Chamberlain, Katy Munger, Margaret Maron, and Sarah Shaber—and honorary chair Nancy Olson—who are absolutely essential to the writing process, and who beat me at Scrabble every time.
The divine Je
Stuart Krichevsky, the best damn agent in the business. Here’s to more ice cream and roses.
My family, listed last, but first in my heart. Tom, Katie, Mark, and Andy. Nothing works without you.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Epilogue
Also by Mary Kay Andrews
About the Author
Copyright
1
From her seat in the sanctuary of the Church of the Good Shepherd, A
Spring had arrived spectacularly early in Passcoe, North Carolina. Only the first week in April, yet the dogwoods and azaleas were already burst into bloom, and the weeping cherry trees lining the walkway to the church trailed fingertips of pale pink onto a blue and white carpet of violets and alyssum.
It was as if the bride, the equally flawless Celia Wakefield, had somehow managed to will perfect weather. Or perhaps she’d specified blue skies and color-coordinated bursts of blooms in one of her famously precise memos. If anybody could do that, A
Could there be a more beautiful setting? Baylesses had been getting married at the Church of the Good Shepherd for nearly two hundred years. Not in this grand sanctuary, of course. The original church was a quaint, stoop-shouldered gray granite affair, with uneven oak floors, a single Gothic-arched leaded-glass window above the altar, and two rows of ten primitively wrought pine pews built by black laborers from the casket factory in Moore County, twenty minutes down the road.
A
When the “new” Church of the Good Shepherd was built in the early ’90s, with reproduction Tiffany stained-glass windows, solid cherry pews, and a custom-built German pipe organ, the old church was renamed the Woodrow Memorial Chapel in memory of Pauline Woodrow, who died in her sleep the year Pokey and A
A
Had it been only seven years ago? Sometimes she wasn’t sure any of it had really happened at all, that it wasn’t something she’d just remembered from a long-ago dream.
Today’s affair was nothing like A
A
Pokey had managed to wedge herself into the pew. “Wake up and slide over!” she ordered.
A
Pokey gave her mother a grin and a finger wave, and Sallie’s head swiveled back around, eyes front, head held high, the Bayless pearls, a double strand, clasped firmly around her neck.
A
As usual, Pokey Bayless Riggs took no notice of the stir she’d caused. She’d been causing a stir nearly every day of her thirty-five years, and today, her brother’s wedding day, was no different.