Page 1 (1/2)
CHAPTER 1
Abby Foster didn’t want to like the town of Jewell Cove It was just her bad luck, then, that the place appeared annoyingly cheerful and quaint; a postcard-perfect sea town on the Maine coast dotted with colorful buildings nestled above the pristine inlet of Penobscot Bay In response to her irritation, she cranked up the radio and rolled down theThe breeze blew her hair back froave her head a toss as she continued into the town, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel along with the music She had to be here She didn’t have to like it
But she couldn’t put the trip off any longer So the taxes on the da her about the condition of the property and what she was going to do about it The constant correspondence made it impossible to pretend the house didn’t exist So she finally put in for a deferred leave from her job as an elementary school teacher and decided to deal with the family mess once and for all
Fah to herself Up until a year ago, she hadn’t realized she actually had any family And if it weren’t for Ian Martin, Marian’s pesky lawyer, she’d happily ignore the connection altogether It was easy to resent a family she’d never known—a family who could have reached out to her at any time over the last twenty-five years and hadn’t Ever since she’d received the so-called happy news that she was practically an heiress, she’d refused to use her inheritance fro She considered it souilt ressions Not that she knehat those transgressions were other than years of silence Abby’s Gram had staunchly refused to talk about her childhood, and Marian certainly hadn’t reached out All that Abby kneas that Graht before she’d gotten pregnant with Abby’s father In many ways, it was like Gram’s life hadn’t existed before the Prescotts took her in
Abby frowned and picked up the slip of paper with directions scrawled on it Now that she was here they didn’t exactly see south or east, the way the road twisted around Why hadn’t she bought a GPS or even printed the directions out frole?
Seeing a gas station up ahead, Abby made a sharp turn and pulled into the broken paved lot Situated at the edge of town, the old-fashioned gas pue” feel to thee She needed to fill up with gas anyway, and she could ask for directions to Foster Lane She blew out a breath For Pete’s sake, there was even a road named after the family … a side of the family, she reminded herself bitterly, who’d apparently been as rich as Croesus and left the rest of them to be poor as church mice
A grizzledhis hands on a rag as she pulled up to the gas pump “Afternoon,” he called out, and when he s a few teeth Great
“Hi, there,” she answered back pleasantly, determined to be friendly Gram had always said you could catch ar, and the s nothing more than a vapor trail “Fill it up, please”
“Sure thing,” he replied He went to the puas cap “Nova Scotia plate On vacation?”
“Uest set to Foster Lane? The directions I have aren’t very clear”
The oldup there is the house on Blackberry Hill”
A little zing of exciteh her “The House on Blackberry Hill” sounded positively poetic, and much more evocative than plain old Foster House “Yes, that’s it The Foster ht?”