The First Love Cookie Club by Lori Wilde Read Free Book Online Page A

normal?” she asked.
    “You’re already normal,” he said.
    “You know what I mean. Will I ever be able to run and play like other kids?”
    It was a promise he had no way to guarantee, but he made it anyway. “Yes,” he declared. “One day you’ll be able to run and play like other kids.”
    She smiled faintly, closed her eyes. “So where’s Isabella now? Is she at the North Pole yet?”
    “Not yet.” He reached across the bed, squeezed her hand, and went back to reading about Isabella, his mind made up. They were going to try that new drug because Jazzy deserved a fighting chance at a real life.

C HAPTER T HREE
    By the time December rolled around, Sarah was no further along on her book than she’d been in October. Oh, she’d written plenty, but none of it had gelled. Nothing was right. She’d written, edited, discarded. She had no feelings for the work other than disgust. And disgust was not a passion on which to build a successful story.
    Going back to Twilight was beginning to look damn good in comparison. That spoke to how desperate she felt, considering that she’d rather vacation in Baghdad than return to her grandmother’s birthplace.
    But on the first Thursday in December, as a driver guided the Town Car that had been waiting for her at DFW airport, past the “Welcome to Twilight, Friendliest Hometown in Texas” sign, and she saw Lake Twilight glimmering blue in the distance, deep nostalgia swept through her. How she missed her Gramma Mia! Even now, she could smell her grandmother’s kitchen rife with the scent of fresh-baked yeast bread and the sweet taste of her homemade peach jam.
    She hadn’t expected the hit of sadness that fisted tight against her rib cage as the driver turned down Ruby Street with the tall, sheltering elms lining both sides of the road. The town was just as she’d remembered. Nothing had changed. Christmas decorations adorned almost every yard they passed. People smiled and nodded and waved at the car as it passed, as if they were welcoming friends.
    Twilight was one of those super-adorable tourist towns frequently found parked beside rivers and seashores and at the foot of majestic mountains. Verdant green lawns lush with St. Augustine grass and white, knee-high picket fences graced most of the Victorian, Cape Cod, and Craftsman-style homes that dominated the neighborhood near the square and around the lake. Flags fluttered from rooftops, a testament to patriotism. Wind chimes whispered in willow trees. Kitschy pink flamingos and wooden cutouts of ladies bending over showing their bloomers dotted the landscape.
    In the spring and summer, the flower beds were an arborist’s wet dream. Planter boxes and hanging baskets hosted a range of petunias and periwinkle and pansies. Sidewalk gardens boasted daffodils and amaryllis and hyacinth in late February and early March, later to be replaced by irises and gladiolas and day lilies. Elephant ears were a favorite in the rugged Texas soil, along with hearty salvia and geraniums and begonias. This time of year it was mostly Christmas cactuses and rust-colored chrysanthemums offering a splash of color.
    The sweet familiarity tasted like tears against her tongue. She clenched her purse with both hands, curling her fingers into fists around the Italian leather strap. It was all she could do not to beg the driver to spin the car around and zoom back to the airport.
    The Lincoln cornered the town square with its gorgeous old courthouse erected in the 1870s when the town was in its infancy. All the buildings lining the four quadrants of the courthouse had been constructed in the same era. When she’d walked the streets of Twilight as a girl, Sarah had often half expected to see Jesse James tying his horse to one of the wooden hitching posts that still sat outside the Funny Farm restaurant. Rumors swirled that the infamous outlaw had once used the caves around the Brazos River as a hideout.
    For the moment, however, Charles Dickens was