Trisha needed no reminder of how much she’d changed in the past five years. The cream silk pantsuit was sophisticated, designed to make the most of her slender figure and ivory skin. Her face was lovely in a fragile, ethereal way. Deep-set eyes were almond shaped, the color of sapphire, and her dark gold hair was thick, swept back to curl on her shoulders. There was no sign at all of the girl she had been five years before, no bundle of nerves, no edge of tears, no telltale sign even to Julia that in any way she dreaded having to meet Kern after all this time. She looked the sophisticated twenty-five-year-old from Grosse Pointe that she was. No one would ever mistake her for a mountain girl.

“I’ve barely seen a house in an hour,” Julia remarked suddenly.

“And we probably won’t, darling, until we reach Kern’s. But you’ll find Grosse Pointe prices at Gatlinburg, I promise you, and that’s only half an hour past Kern’s. It’s a lovely little town.” It was a town set in the valley at the entrance to the Smoky Mountains. She remembered it well. Her palms were damp on the steering wheel, Trisha discovered, and she was disgusted with herself. She was miles, centuries away from the Trisha she had been at twenty, frightened of her own shadow, carting the word love around as if it had a halo that came with it. She had been a bit of fluff just asking to be crushed.

“How much longer?” Julia accused her wearily. “You said we’d be there.”

Trisha shot her mother-in-law a sharp, worried glance. “And we will be. Just a few more minutes, that’s all. Please relax, darling.”

The road twisted past the campgrounds Kern had built. There were campers and trailers parked, although it was early yet, the end of May. Up past the shaded campgrounds the road curled and swirled like a black ribbon with a meandering silver stream on the right. Above were the forest acres bedded with trillium and rhododendron, the scent overpowering on one stretch of the drive. And last was Kern’s place…