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“I know you've been settling in at Miss Laverne's, getting oriented at the clinic.” She set down the peeler and turned to face me fully, wiping her hands on her apron. “But Joy, I need to say something.”

Here it came. I'd been expecting this conversation since I'd announced my living arrangements. I braced myself, gripping the counter edge.

“Miss Laverne is a lovely woman, truly. She makes the best cornbread in three counties, and her quilts have won more blue ribbons than anyone can count.” Mom reached out and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear, a gesture so familiar it made my chest ache. “But your father and I have missed you while you've been living in Nashville. We want our Joy time.”

The raw honesty in her voice nearly broke my resolve. “Mom, we talked about this when I decided to move back to Jasper Creek.”

“Talking about it and living it are two different things.” Her hand dropped to cover mine. “You're finally home, and you're living across town instead of here with us. Your room is exactly as you left it. I even bought new sheets, those high-thread-count ones you always talked about.”

I slid off the counter and wrapped my arms around her. She felt smaller than I remembered, or maybe I'd just forgotten how perfectly we fit together.

“I need my own space right now.” I pulled back to meet her eyes, those same blue ones I saw in the mirror every morning. “It doesn't mean I love you any less. I'll visit all the time. Sunday dinners, random Tuesday lunches, Thursday night TV shows. You'll probably get sick of me.”

“Never.” She cupped my cheek. “A mother never gets sick of her children.”

“Even when Seth and Randy used to practice their wrestling moves in the living room and broke your grandmother's lamp?”

A laugh bubbled out of her. “Well, maybe I wanted to ship them off to military school that day.”

“They both tried to enlist anyway.”

“Don't remind me.” She picked up the peeler again, resuming her work. “I aged ten years when Seth came home with that knee injury from training. And Randy with his heart murmur discovery—thank God they found it before he shipped out.”

We fell into easier conversation as I helped her prep vegetables. She told me about the new family that moved in down the street, the Petersons from Memphis with their three kids who'd already made friends with everyone on the block. I shared a funny story about one of the dogs at the clinic who'd learned to open the treat cabinet and had to be relocated to a kennel with a better lock.

“Dr. Laramie says he's too smart for his own good,” I said, chopping celery with the knife skills Mom had taught me years ago. “Yesterday he figured out how to unlatch his kennel from the inside.”

“Sounds like you when you were two and learned to escape your crib.”

“I was an angel.”

“An angel who gave me gray hair.” She bumped my hip with hers. “Speaking of the clinic, how are you finding the night shifts?”

“They're quiet, mostly. Emergencies here and there, but nothing I can't handle.”

“Your father worries.”

“Dad worries if I get a paper cut.”

“He loves you.” She opened the oven and pulled out the roast, it smelled heavenly. She scooped up some of the drippings and poured them over the top, then popped it back into the oven and closed the door, then turned to me. “We both love you. We worry. Neither of us liked the way you came home from London and immediately moved to Nashville. It felt like you were running away.”

I bit my lip, then immediately released it. Luckily she hadn’t been looking at me, if she had, she would have called me on it. That was the problem with moms—they knew you too well. “I wasn’t running away, Mom. I was just spreading my wings. It turned out that Nashville wasn’t all I’d thought it’d be, so I decided to come home.”

“But not home, home.”

I turned and kissed her cheek. “Now I’m just twenty minutes away.”

She sighed. “That’s what I keep telling myself.”

Before she could press further, the front door banged open with enough force to rattle the pictures on the wall.

“Where's my baby girl?”

Dad's voice boomed through the house with the same enthusiasm he'd had every time he came home during my childhood. Heavy footsteps approached, and I barely had time to set down my knife before he appeared in the kitchen doorway. His face split into a huge grin, and he crossed the room in three strides, sweeping me into a bear hug that lifted me clean off my feet.

“Dad, I can't breathe.”

“Let the man hug his daughter, Joy.” Mom laughed. “He's been asking every day when you were coming by.”