The Long Road Home by Mary Alice Monroe

it. Well,” she said turning from the windows and taking a step forward. “I’d best be going before it gets too dark.” It took several plodding steps for her to cross the big room and several more to descend the steps to her car. She stopped at the door to catch her breath.
    “Come down and visit sometime. I’m that blue-and-white trailer ’cross from Seth’s. We’ll have some coffee and we can plan a garden. Nothing like a garden to make a homepermanent, I always say. That pasture up here would be perfect. Get some manure, some hay, throw some black plastic over it and wait till spring. Then we’ll put in the seeds. Put some perennials in, too. Nice showy ones, like hollyhock, rosy daisies, and lilies. They’ll give you pleasure and make you feel more at home way up here.”
    Her eyes softened when she saw the eagerness in Nora’s expression. “Come on down, honey, and we’ll talk.”
    Their eyes met and searched out what that innocuous invitation might mean to each of them.
    To Nora, it meant a mentor. Someone who’d show her the ropes, the tricks of a woman living alone in the mountains. She was also deeply grateful to May for her first real welcome. No warnings, no threats. This invitation was as ingenuous and warm as the woman who extended it.
    To May, it meant she’d found a possible ally in her campaign to heal Esther. God works in mysterious ways, she thought. Maybe he sent a MacKenzie to heal a wound a MacKenzie started.
    “I will come, soon. I promise.” Nora fairly beamed.
    Nora waved good-bye to May and watched the older woman rumble down the mountain out of view.
    The nighthawk cried and Nora entered her home just as the sun set and a deep blue blanket covered the mountains.

7
    NORA WOKE TO THE persistent cry of a finch outside her window. She yawned wide then allowed a sleepy smile to cross her face as she listened to the chirps. It seemed birds were to be her only friends up here.
    Bringing her knees to her chest, she looked out the far window at the morning sky. The sun shone over the fog-laden mountains, the cool green rusting to orange red. On the grass, frost sparkled like diamonds as it caught shards of the morning light. She sighed and stretched her toes against the crisp old cotton sheets. The mountain had worked its magic. Observing the power of the surrounding nature, her problems seemed somehow lessened.
    Nora peered at her bedroom. This was her favorite room. Like Heidi’s mountain loft, the ceiling was all angles that pitched dramatically beside long windows. Her big double bed, laden with down, was tucked in under one angle, making it cozy in the vast room. The other three fireplaces in the house were large and angular. Here, the fireplace was small, rosy bricked, and arched. A feminine touch in a masculinehouse. Everything about this room was charming rather than imposing; more a Swiss chalet in the mountains than a castle in the sky.
    She slipped from her warm bed and walked to the window, opening it just a crack to let in the morning. The air was crisp, even cold, and carried the faint scent of pine. How she loved this view of the valley. The Danby mountain range rolled rather than jutted upward, so instead of a majestic feeling, the view was pastoral, calming. Across this valley she could see a red barn and silo, and black-and-white cows grazing in the vertical field. It reminded her of her childhood home in Wisconsin.
    How long had it been since she felt this peaceful?
    Three years. Yet she remembered, like yesterday, the evening she’d driven up here to surprise Mike, hoping to patch up a particularly nasty quarrel. In the backseat she’d packed a bottle of French brut champagne and a box of Belgian chocolates, very dark. She’d even brought a new nightgown of peach silk, the blatantly sexy kind that Mike liked but embarrassed her.
    That warm June night three years ago, Nora had been determined to save her marriage. She had dreamed that maybe on this land that they had