Willow in Bloom by Victoria Pade

was something.
    Because it occurred to Tyler that while he still wanted to find the mystery woman, while he still hoped finding her would fill that gap in his memory, it didn’t seem like the be-all and end-all the way it had before meeting Willow.
    And that felt good. It felt freeing.
    He just had to be extra cautious and not let that freedom go to his head.
    Because what he wasn’t free to do was hurt Willow.
    Under any circumstances.
    Â 
    Willow knew it was irrational, but somehow she felt that as long as her grandmother’s bedroom stayed intact and undisturbed, it was almost as if Gloria wasn’t gone.
    So in the weeks since her death, Willow had not so much as opened the door.
    But now she had no choice. She’d promised Bram she would finally go through their grandmother’s things, and that was what she had to do.
    It wasn’t easy.
    Especially after a particularly bad morning of nausea.
    Or maybe the nausea had been worse this morning because of the stress of knowing what she had to do today, what she’d begged off work in the store to do today.
    Either way, as Willow stood at the entrance to her grandmother’s bedroom, her stomach clenched. She could feel the tension in the back of her neck, and she suffered a fresh wave of shame, as if going into Gloria’s former sanctuary would reveal to her grandmother what she’d done in Tulsa and the results of that rash act.
    But Willow was resigned to the fact that she had to do it, so she took hold of the doorknob and went in.
    The room was small and spare, and Willow was greeted with Gloria’s scent—vanilla and lilacs.
    That made it seem as if her grandmother was somehow with her, and suddenly not coming into this room, feeling ashamed of herself for the baby she was carrying, all seemed silly. As silly as it would have been not to confide in her grandmother if Gloria were still alive. Because in this room Willow felt the same kind of unconditional love, the same kind of warmth and acceptance she’d always had from her grandmother.
    â€œHi, Gloria,” she said out loud, hearing the relief in her own voice. “I have to go through your stuff,” she said then, as if her grandmother really were there and needed to be warned. “Those weird things that started happening just before your first stroke are still going on, and we need to figure out why. So Bram wants me to see if you left any clues in here.”
    It was odd, but having said that, Willow actually felt as if she had permission to do what she’d come for, and so she began.
    The room held only a single bed, a night table, a few bookshelves and a dresser, plus an easy chair with a floor lamp behind it, where Gloria had liked to sit and read.
    The dresser seemed like a good place to start, so that was where Willow went.
    There was a gallery of framed family photographs on top of the bureau. Pictures of Gloria as a young woman with her twin sons—Trevor, who was Willow’s father, and Willow’s uncle Thomas.
    There were also pictures of Willow’s parents, of Uncle Thomas and Aunt Alice, of Willow and her brothers, and of all six of Thomas and Alice’s kids, too. Plus there were photographs of Gloria’s own parents—together when her mother was alive, and more recent ones of George alone.
    It was a nice array, and even though Willow had seen them all more times than she could count, she still spent a few minutes looking at them before she started her search through the dresser drawers.
    When nothing of any particular interest showed up there she moved on to the closet. Then the nightstand. Then the bookshelves. She looked under the bed and under the chair, and essentially left no stone unturned.
    But two and a half hours later she didn’t know anything more than she had initially.
    She hated to call Bram and tell him that there was nothing among their grandmother’s things that would explain why a stranger suddenly