Snowfall at Willow Lake: Lakeshore Chronicles Book 4 (39 page)

“I thought I called you for a diversion.”

“You called me,” he said, “because you're having second thoughts about the choice you've made.”

Restless, she cleaned the house, though it was hardly messy, since she was the only one here. Still, the mindless rhythm of dusting furniture and scrubbing the kitchen was oddly soothing—at least for a few minutes. Then, while running the vacuum, she came across one of Charlie's favorite toys. It was a brightly colored clown, weighted at the bottom so that it would pop up every time it was knocked down. The toy never failed to make him laugh. Even the memory of the baby's laughter made her smile and, at the same time, pervaded her heart with wistfulness. She caught herself wondering what her life would be like with another child again. Could she do it? Go down that road with Noah? Even if she was willing, she couldn't have another baby, so it was pointless to imagine it. Frustrated, she slapped down the toy again. Up it popped, goofy smile in place, mocking her.

She grabbed the toy and put it in a cupboard, then looked around the spotless house. Eerily, it seemed to have the same impersonal air as her flat in The Hague. Maybe—

The phone rang and she snatched it up like a lifeline.

“Mom!” Daisy's voice sang in her ear.

“Hi there. How's Long Island?” Sophie asked. “How's my grandson?”

“Both excellent. Seriously, Mom, the O'Donnells are being pretty great. They've got this incredible house in Montauk. I'm glad we came.”

“That's good.”

“We miss you, though,” Daisy said, her haste making Sophie smile. Since Sophie's arrival in Avalon, they had become best friends. Confidantes. Daisy was wise beyond her years, and Sophie trusted her completely.

“Same here. Seems like winter will never end.”

“That's kind of why I called. When I was on the train, coming down here, I got to thinking…maybe you should get away, too,” Daisy suggested. “I mean it, Mom. And I know just where you should go.”

Umoja, southern Africa

T
he fine red dust of the Umojan plains swirled in small funnel clouds, coating everything it touched. Shading her eyes, Sophie could just make out the rain-drenched highlands, so rich with wildlife and pristine wilderness that it was now protected by an edict of the United Nations. There would be no more plundering this land, no more violence done in the name of greed. The goal was probably too idealistic, but over the course of her long career, Sophie had learned that ideals were a powerful thing.

Bibi Lateef, a jurist Sophie had last seen in The Hague, was now the minister of social welfare in the capital of Nossob. In honor of Sophie's visit, Madame Lateef had given her a tour of the city, where people were rebuilding their lives. Sophie was moved by the sight of broken families trying to mend, with aid workers on hand to help with medical issues, schools and farming. The orphanage, called the Children's Village, was heartbreakingly crowded with children who had lost everything in the war. Some had been orphaned at a preverbal age, and couldn't even tell their rescuers their names. There were so many displaced children that adoptions had been expedited under emergency provisions. Yet the staff and children sang as they went about their chores. Their high, clear voices had reminded Sophie of that night in The Hague, but here in the bright African sunshine, the nightmares kept their distance. There had been a small ceremony of thanks, and Sophie was given a booklet of photographs, a woven wall hanging and a necklace of colorful beads. One visit wasn't nearly enough. She'd promised to return that evening to have dinner in the dining hall.

At the end of the day, a spectacular sunset spread its intense colors across the landscape, lending an odd beauty to the broken buildings and monuments that made up the town center. Three-wheeled green-and-white taxis darted through the streets, kicking up dust that glittered in the sunlight like a storm of gold. Sophie's driver took her to the Hotel Paradeis, where the accommodations were simple, but clean and safe. There would be just enough time for a shower before dinner.

With her hair still damp and her arms laden with supplies from the airport commissary, she stepped out and stood on the brickwork pavement to wait for the driver. The airport bus lumbered into town as it did each evening, bringing aid workers and the occasional reporter. Every once in a while, Sophie encountered someone she had met while preparing the case.

Despite its air of poverty, the capital city still retained a timeless majesty in its tufa-stone buildings and network of streets and alleyways. The round, thatch-roofed towers of the Narina's palace overlooked stone-lined pits and livestock
kraals
and grassy upland fields beyond the city. She wanted to bring Max and Daisy and Charlie here one day, to show them this world, so distant from their own.

She had three more days before she had to leave. For her, the prospect of returning to Avalon was bittersweet. She felt a tug of yearning for her family, but also a sense of futility. Now she had two exes in Avalon. Two failed relationships. But the richness she'd found with her children superseded that, she reminded herself.

A group of scruffy dogs erupted in a sudden fight, grabbing her attention. A thick swirl of dust rose around the dogs, which were squabbling over some scrap of food or turf. Through the dust, a tall, broad-shouldered man approached, backlit by the setting sun. Another aid worker, probably. He had a duffel bag slung over one shoulder and a distinctive long-limbed gait that was somehow…familiar.

Sophie stood riveted as he ambled across the dusty plaza toward her. Dear Lord, could it be…? She pressed her hand over her mouth to hold in a gasp of surprise.

“I once told you I'd follow you to the ends of the earth,” Noah said, setting down his bag. In the same motion, he pulled her into his arms. “Does this count as the ends of the earth?”

“You are,” she said, her voice breaking, “so completely insane.”

And then he kissed her, and she couldn't help herself—she pulled back, still hanging on to him, laughed aloud in a way she hadn't since she'd last seen him, and said exactly what she felt in her heart. “I adore you, so I suppose that makes me insane, too.”

“I was counting on it. Sophie, I screwed up so bad. I can't begin to tell you how bad. I should never have let you walk away.”

“Then we both screwed up, because I should have stayed and found a way to…” She grew serious, gazed up at him. “To make this work,” she concluded. “Oh, Noah. Can we?”

“After making this trip, I'd say anything is possible.” He stepped back, combed his fingers through his hair as he looked around the plaza. “Seriously, until now, I've never been anywhere.”

She took his hand, brought it to her cheek, turned her head and kissed his palm. “That's probably because you have everything you need back in Avalon.”

“Not anymore. I mean that, Sophie. I love you, and where I need to be is with you, wherever that is.”

Here was a man she loved, telling her things that made her heart soar. Yet at the same time, it had to be said. “The age difference between us—it can't be changed, Noah. It will always be there.”

“Your age is one of my favorite things about you.” He grinned. “It's nice to make out with somebody and not have to worry about a tongue stud.”

“Yet another virtue of maturity.” Still holding his hands, she stepped back. “But I know you, Noah. You're a born family man. You want to be a father, and I can't give you kids.”

“I want a wife, not a broodmare. You said the thing that I want most of all is a family. Kids. And you're wrong. The thing I want most of all is
you
.”

Two taxis started jousting in the plaza, threatening each other with their nasally beeps. Sophie had to raise her voice to be heard. “I want to believe that, but you can't just go from wanting a family to settling for something less.”

He touched his finger to her lips. At the same time, the taxis sped past one another. “No, wait a minute. Let me finish. I've had an extremely long flight to think about all of this. Giving you up, that would be settling for something less, because when I met you, everything changed. My priorities, my life. Look at me. I've never left the country before, and here I am halfway around the world. With a passport. I want to marry you. Please.” Then he did something she had never dared to imagine. Keeping hold of her hands, he sank down on one knee, there in front of the busy hotel. “I'm begging you, Sophie. I'm dying to marry you.”

Marry Noah? Spend the rest of her life with him? A part of her leaped up with a huge—but silent—
yes
. Then reason dampened the jubilant fantasy. Never taking her eyes off him, she tugged at his hands until he was standing again. “You say that now, but what about down the road? In ten years, I'll be nearly fifty.”

“I'll be forty. And how old will we be in ten years if we don't get married?” He took her by the shoulders and held his face level with hers. “Do you love me?” he asked bluntly.

She tried to escape his frank stare. Did she love him?
Oh, my,
she thought. Did she ever, in a way she'd never felt before and never expected to feel again. “Yes, but—”

“A simple yes will do.” He framed her face between his hands and kissed her again. “Look at you. You're perfect. You speak all kinds of languages. You've got two great kids and Charlie. And me—I'm a country vet, rattling around in an old farmhouse. You loving me—that's a miracle.”

She felt close to tears, but his words drew a soft laugh from her. “Believe me, it's not a stretch. You are incredibly easy to love.”

He pulled her against him and kissed her. “I can't promise I'll always be so easy, but I promise I'll always love you—including your age and your family and anything else you want to throw at me. So come on, Sophie. What do you say?”

She hesitated, and he held her even closer.

“Don't think,” he whispered in her ear. “You do a lot better when you don't think so much. Just tell me from the heart what you want.”

“I want you, Noah Shepherd. Yes,” she said, and didn't bother trying to hold her emotions in check any longer. She loved the tears because they were all about loving him. “Yes, I'll marry you.”

“Yes,”
he said, shutting his eyes briefly. Then he opened them and said, “When? As far as I'm concerned, the sooner the better. What about here? Now? Today—would it be legal?”

“It might be, but I'm not about to do something this big without Daisy and Max.” Her eyes misted. “Too much of my life has excluded them, and I don't want to do that anymore.” She looked up at Noah, studied his smiling face, shaded golden by the setting sun. “I hope you understand.”

He nodded. “More than you know, Sophie. More than you know.”

She clasped his hand in hers. “What are you doing for dinner tonight?”

“I had no plans. Did you have something in mind?”

“I thought you might like to meet some friends of mine.”

Ulster County, New York
Summertime

N
oah and Sophie got off the plane at the tiny regional airport in the sunny heart of the Catskills in summer. Each held a small child in their arms—their new son and daughter. Uba and Aissa were brother and sister, orphaned in the troubles in Umoja. The four of them had cleared immigration at JFK, and their long journey was finally at an end.

They had met their new son and daughter on Noah's first surprise trip to Umoja. The little boy and girl had been staying at the Children's Village, amid a sea of waifs with cardboard identification tags around their necks, desperate for a family. Madame Lateef had lent her considerable influence to expediting the adoption, and within a matter of months, Dr. and Mrs. Noah Shepherd became the proud, elated parents of an adorable brother and sister. At age three and six, they were undersized and bashful, but already clung to Sophie and Noah, recognizing them to be a safe haven in this strange new world.

Daisy and Max were at the county airport, waiting to greet them. They had been part of the decision to adopt, and to Sophie's eternal gratitude, her older children were as excited about it as she and Noah. Max and Daisy understood that their mother wasn't trying to replace them, but to add more love to all their lives.

Daisy went down on one knee and hugged each child briefly, showing a keen sensitivity to their fatigue and apprehension, and then Max followed suit. Daisy presented Charlie, who was napping in his stroller. She took out her camera, snapped a few pictures. She already had big plans to do a photo essay on the children.

“I'm very proud of you,” Sophie said to her new son and daughter, speaking in Umojan. “You are very brave.” She had given Noah a crash course in their language, memorizing phrases like “I love you” and “Do you need to go to the toilet?” During the adoption visits, she had shown them pictures of their new home and family—Daisy, Max and Charlie, Opal and Rudy and the horses in the barn, and the big painted farmhouse where they would be living, on the brow of a hill overlooking Willow Lake.

Now the children were seeing their new family for the first time. Uba was quiet. Aissa clung to Noah's pant leg, but the little girl's eyes danced with interest as she looked around.

“You guys are awesome,” Daisy said. “I can't believe you're doing this. And so soon after getting married. You're the only people I know to bring two kids home from your honeymoon.”

“They need us now,” Noah said simply. “It's not too soon.”

Sophie looked down at her youngest children, and her heart was so full of love she couldn't speak for a moment. Already these two, lost in a world of flame and then given to her like a gift from heaven, were so beloved that she sometimes wept at the mere sight of them.

Max sat down right on the floor of the airport lobby and took out his Hornets baseball cap, putting it on his head. Then he handed one to each of the others. “It goes on like this, see?”

Uba took the cap, soberly inspected it, and put it on his head with a gap-toothed grin. Aissa handed hers back to Max, silently requesting that he do the honors, which he did with a tenderness that caught at Sophie's heart.

Sophie noticed Daisy wiping her eyes. “Just like Brad and Angelina,” she said.

“Not funny,” Sophie told her, though she couldn't help laughing.

“I'm going to have to give you a celeb couple's name,” Daisy insisted, mimicking the paparazzi with the camera to her eye. “Let's see…Soph-Noah? Snophie? Sofa?”

“Ha-ha,” Noah said, lifting Aissa and settling her on his hip. “Let's take your baby brother and sister home.”