The Perfect Hope by Nora Roberts Page B

librarian and composed a letter. Maybe there was some sort of documentation, old letters, something. She’d already mined her family, but according to everyone she’d spoken to, all the papers relating to Catherine Ford Darby had been turned over to the school long ago.
    “Just a name,” she murmured. “We just need a name.”
    The sisters might have written each other when Eliza left New York for Maryland, for Billy. If not, surely Catherine had written a friend or a family member
about
her sister.
    Next she wrote a distant cousin, one she’d never met. Family sources claimed the cousin was writing a biography on Catherine Ford Darby. If true, the cousin might be a source of information. You could hardly write about Catherine without writing about her sister, the sister who’d died young, and so far from home.
    With the emails sent, she brought up the site listing all the Civil War soldiers buried in the National Cemetery in Sharpsburg.
    They suspected Billy had been a soldier, either from the area or who had fought at Antietam. Perhaps both. But the data they’d uncovered on Lizzy had her arriving at the inn right before the battle, and dying while it raged.
    Everything indicated she’d given up her wealthy, well-positioned family in New York and traveled to Boonsboro—young and alone. For Billy.
    Every instinct told Hope that Lizzy had come for him, for love. An elopement? An assignation? Had they found each other, however briefly, before she’d contracted the fever that took her life?
    She hoped so, but everything pointed to Eliza Ford dying alone, without friends or family beside her.
    So many boys died, too, Hope thought. She picked up the sad task of reading names. So many, and William was a common name.
    Still, she stuck with it, making notes until her head began to throb and her eyes blur.
    “That’s all I can do tonight.”
    She shut down the laptop, walked through the apartment, checking lights and the door.
    When she crawled into bed, she reviewed her to-do list for the next day. But fell asleep with the memory of that kiss in the parking lot. Ryder’s hand fisted in her hair.
    The smell of honeysuckle drifted over her. But this time she didn’t feel the hand stroke her hair.

    WHEN THE CREW knocked off the next afternoon, Ryder took advantage of the quiet to run through his checklist, make adjustments to the work assignments for the next day.
    Dumbass snored under the plywood spanning the sawhorses, letting out occasional yips as he dreamed of chasing whatever dogs chased in dreams.
    Long day, he thought. Long week. He wanted a cold beer and a hot shower, in that order.
    He’d get the first at Vesta, with his brothers for company since their women were having a hen party at the inn. They’d go over progress, and he’d be pleased to report to Owen he could schedule the final on the bakery building. It looked like their new tenant could start loading in her equipment and furnishings over the weekend.
    Another few weeks—maybe middle of August—and Avery could start planning her grand opening.
    Then he could focus in on this place, he mused, looking around at the raw walls. If things went right—and he really wanted them to go right—they’d tear off that mother of a tar roof next week and start framing the pitch.
    He knew his mother was already looking at tile and paint fans, and put that right out of his mind. He had to deal with the right now, and the right now included bringing in steel beams, cutting through cinder block, and installing a shitload of new windows.
    No, he corrected, that was tomorrow and into next week. The right now was that cold beer.
    He toed the dog awake with his boot. “You can sleep in the truck, you lazy bastard.”
    The dog stirred himself to yawn, sit up. And plop his head in Ryder’s lap.
    “No beer for you.” Ryder scratched at the dog’s ears, gave the homely face a rub. “You can’t handle it. Remember last time? All you did was lap up half a spilled