Take Me Home by Nancy Herkness Page A

being hot and sweaty and chewed up by horseflies.”
    “Not for me,” she murmured, turning away to stare out her window.
    “What did it feel like to you?”
    Dozens of trees flashed past before she said, “An admission of failure.”
    He understood that she had admitted something to him she didn’t let on to many people, so he thought for a moment before speaking. “I don’t see it that way.”
    “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that,” she said, touching his sleeve in a feather-light gesture of apology. “Home doesn’t mean that to most people.”
    “I’m not offended. I’m interested. You held a trusted position at a big art gallery in New York City. You came here to help out your sister when she became ill. Where’s the failure in that?”
    “Didn’t you work very hard to get into college? Didn’t you think that, once you left Sanctuary, you would never come back? Didn’t you believe that you really didn’t belong here?” Her voice grew more passionate with each question.
    “Yes, but I see things differently now. I have different resources to draw on.”
    “I guess I don’t. As soon as Holly is on the mend, I’ll be heading back to the bright lights.”
    He was surprised at the stab of regret he felt. Claire intrigued him. He liked the New York edge softened by her mountain twang. She was smart and sophisticated, but grounded in ways most of his wife’s friends in the city hadn’t been.
    “I have a dream job waiting for me there,” she continued, “opening a new branch gallery for Henry Thalman.”
    “No wonder you want to get back. He’s top of the heap in art dealers.” He considered how powerful the lure of that position would be to someone in Claire’s field. She wouldn’t linger in Sanctuary with that prospect in her future. He slowed down to negotiate an especially sharp turn and changed the subject again. “How’s your sister doing?”
    “She still has a lot of joint pain, and she gets exhausted very quickly. The doctor says it may take a year to get back to normal. I guess you know that Lyme disease is hard to diagnose, so she didn’t start on antibiotics until it was pretty advanced.” She seemed about to say something more, so he waited. Then she gave a tiny shake of her head and remained silent.
    A sign indicating the turn to the Aerie flashed white in the dusk, and he steered the big car onto the narrow road. A muffled trill of electronic notes sounded from Claire’s purse.
    “I’m so sorry,” she said, digging out a cell phone. “I leave this on in case Holly needs me.”

    The number on the phone’s screen had her pushing the
Answer
button immediately. “It’s Holly. She wouldn’t call if it weren’t urgent. Hello?”
    It wasn’t Holly; it was Brianna, whispering. “Aunt Claire? I’m scared Papa’s going to hurt Mama. He’s yelling at her, and I just heard a noise like glass breaking.”
    For a moment, Claire couldn’t grasp what the little girl was talking about. “Brianna, sweetie, where are you?”
    “In Mama’s bedroom. She told us to come here after Papa came in. Now they’re in the kitchen, but I can hear them. I’m afraid he’s going to hit her again.”
    “He hit her?” She was still trying to comprehend what Brianna was telling her.
    “Not yet, I don’t think. It was another time when they had a fight.”
    Suddenly, the bruises Holly blamed on Lyme disease took on a horribly different significance. Claire shook her head to clear the panic that threatened to cloud her thinking.
    “Brianna, I want you to take Kayleigh and go to that little secret storage space in your closet. Be very quiet when you go down the hall, and take the phone with you. Tell me when you’ve gotten there safely.”
    “Okay.”
    Claire was concentrating so hard on what she was hearing through the phone that she had forgotten she was in a car untilit swerved sharply. She looked up to see that Tim had reached a slightly wider spot in the road and was