Small-Town Dreams by Kate Welsh Read Free Book Online

and that’s not a walk. It’s a six-mile hike up the mountain.”
    “Town sounds perfect. Did Josh mark it for your summer guests?”
    Irma chuckled. “Goodness, no. We don’t get that many. He marked it for himself. That boy has no sense of direction whatsoever.”
    “Did he go to school in the south?” Cassidy asked, and could have bitten her tongue. What was wrong with her?
    Irma frowned. “What’s that got to do with his sense of direction?”
    “Nothing. Forget I asked, please.”
    “But why would you think that?” Irma pressed.
    Now she was really sorry she’d let her curiosity get the better of her common sense. “’Y’all.’ He said ‘y’all’ earlier,” she explained. “It’s a southern expression.”
    Irma walked to the center island and started shelling peas, a worried and thoughtful expression on her lined face. “He does say that now and again, doesn’t he? Hmm. Now there’s food for thought.”
    “Thought about what?” Cassidy asked before she could stop herself.
    “Oh, about where he’s from,” Irma said matter-offactly. “He could have heard it in a movie or on TV, and it might have felt familiar on his tongue.”
    Now it was Cassidy’s turn to frown. How could his own mother forget where Joshua was raised? Irma was up there in years and she seemed hale and hearty, but perhaps her mind wasn’t as sound as Cassidy had assumed. She walked over to Irma, leaning her elbows on the island so she could watch Irma’s expression.
    “Josh is from Mountain View,” Cassidy replied carefully, and waited for a reaction.
    Irma smiled and shook her head. “Oh, no, dear, he isn’t. Joshua didn’t grow up here. He isn’t our blood son.”
    Cassidy’s eyes widened. “But he calls you ‘Ma.’ I will admit his calling your husband ‘Henry’ surprised me but—”
    “Joshua is the child we never had. He’s become our son since he came to us, but we never laid eyes on him till almost five-and-a-half years ago.”
    “He came here to be your husband’s assistant, and you still don’t know where he grew up?”
    Irma patted her hand, then pushed the bag of peas to rest between them. “No, we found him, dear. He was lying beside the road in a ditch, all broken and beaten. Henry and I—we just couldn’t forget that face of his once the ambulance came and took him to the hospital. We went to see him and just kept going back. He had no identification on him, you see. We were all he had. I’ve never prayed as hard for anything in my life as I did that that boy would live and wake up whole. The doctors didn’t give him much of a chance, but we just kept praying over him. He’s a miracle, that boy of ours.”
    “You got your wish,” Cassidy said, smiling.
    Irma shook her gray head. “It wasn’t a wish, child. It was a prayer. And no. I didn’t get all of what I asked for. I got more and less. The Lord works in strange ways. Joshua’s proof positive of that. You see, when he finally did wake from the coma six months later, he couldn’t talk or walk. We all soon realized that he had no idea who he was or where he’d come from. It was gone—his whole life. The doctors guessed that between twenty-five and thirty years were just…gone. And he was completely alone in the world.”
    Cassidy felt as if a hand had reached into her chest and had a choke-hold on her heart. She looked down and realized that she was automatically opening the pea pods and dumping the peas in a bowl that Irma must have put in front of her. “But he doesn’t seem brain damaged.”
    “The doctors thought that he was at first, but he relearned language so fast that they decided he had severe amnesia.”
    “And his past has never come back?”
    “Just little impressions and vague knowledge that he doesn’t remember learning.”
    “But his past could still come back to him?” Cassidy asked.
    Irma pursed her lips and shook her head. “After this long, that isn’t likely according to his doctor. He came to