The Mill River Redemption by Darcie Chan Read Free Book Online Page A

sat still with her eyes closed, Emily thought about the arrangements she would have to make. Her current job was scheduled to be completed in late May or early June, which was ideal timing. Since her mother’s plan was sheer lunacy, there was no telling what would happen or how long she might be living in Mill River. She would drive, not fly, back to Vermont, in late June.
In fact
, Emily thought,
maybe I should just pack up and take everything
. If she ditched the few pieces of furniture she owned, she could fit all of her other stuff into her car. She liked not being tied down or burdened by material possessions. She could pick up and move on her own anytime she wanted.
    Although she loathed the idea of living next door to Rose, she knew her sister would be far unhappier in Mill River than she. If Rose acquiesced to their mother’s wishes, there was no way she would pass up the opportunity to watch Rose leave her fancy life in the city to fester and squirm in “Hicksville,” her sister’s name for Mill River.
    Emily recognized that schadenfreude was not the primary reason she was willing to go along with their mother’s plan. Her first reason for returning would be to honor their mother’s wishes, to show respect and gratitude for all she had done. She would make a good-faith effort to do as her mother requested regardless of how unpleasant it might be for her personally.
    Secondly, Emily was tired of living like a ghost. Since the horrible accident years ago, she’d drifted from one city and failed relationship to the next. She’d gone first to Pittsburgh, then Chicago. She’d left the Windy City for San Francisco, where she’d lived since. She liked the city and its myriad neighborhoods. The weather was good there—never too hot or too cold. There was plenty of work for someone with her skills. Besides, save a move toHawaii or Alaska, she had run out of country. She was at the edge, as far west as she could go.
    Still, she was slowly coming to the realization that she no longer wanted to be alone. Instead of disappearing anonymously into city crowds, she wanted to
live
someplace and not merely exist as an unknown among the masses. After years of dating losers and living thousands of miles from the few people she was close to, she craved real companionship. She needed
connections
again—to people, to a smaller, familiar place where she wouldn’t feel lost.
    If that place was Mill River, with all its good and also painful memories, she would have to accept it.
    Perhaps her mother had known what she was doing.
    Perhaps not.
    Thinking about her summer plans temporarily diverted Emily’s focus from her mother’s death. The reality circled back around fast, bringing with it a deep sadness. She missed her mother terribly. She even missed the nagging and the lectures about her situation with Rose, and the phone ringing at four in the morning when her mother used to call forgetting the time difference. What she wouldn’t give to receive one of those phone calls again.
    The man sleeping beside her snorted loudly and shifted in his seat. Emily couldn’t see his face completely, but his hair color and profile reminded her a little of Sam Kiper, a guy she’d dated years ago, in Pittsburgh. Sam had been her first relationship after the accident, and in the beginning, she had had high hopes. Gradually, though, certain things about him began to give her pause. Sam had no problem holding a job as a mid-level manager, but he was too lazy to care about advancing further. His sense of humor was dry with a mean streak. He didn’t care much for kids or animals. And nothing she did infused any energy or warmth into his personality.
    After Sam, there’d been Riley Woodson in Chicago. He was a young trader in the Mercantile Exchange, full of frenetic energyand the ambition that Sam had lacked. Riley wasn’t handy at all, though. He’d confessed to her when she first came to work in his Lincoln Park row home that he’d never