Keys to the Castle

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

“A major talent of the genre.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“[Ball] knows how to keep a tale moving.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“Donna Ball has created a delightful world in her Ladybug Farm novels. Her characters are lively and endearing, and readers will feel a longing to join the girls on the front porch in the evenings as they reminisce about the day's activities.”

—
Fresh Fiction

“A must-read.”

—
Examiner.com

 

A YEAR ON LADYBUG FARM
AT HOME ON LADYBUG FARM
LOVE LETTERS FROM LADYBUG FARM
KEYS TO THE CASTLE

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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

This book is an original publication of the Berkley Publishing Group.

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2011 by Donna Ball

 

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Ball, Donna.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-47831-8

3. Life change events—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3552.A4545K49 2011

813'.54—dc22 2010030818

 

 

When she closed her eyes, her dreams were of summer seas and the call of gulls, and the sound of someone's laughter . . . laughter, which, each time she dreamed of it, seemed to grow farther away and more indistinct until sometimes she couldn't be sure whether it wasn't, in fact, nothing more than the cry of the gulls. Sometimes she would close her eyes and try desperately to bring those dreams to mind: the sound of laughter, the taste of salt and sunshine, days so blue they could make your eyes ache. The feeling of being utterly, wantonly, outrageously loved.

When she opened her eyes, the ocean was gray and the wind was biting and all she saw was the worry in her sister Dixie's eyes. It was an expression Sara had seen far too much of over the past year, and she hated herself for having put it there.

“Sara?” prompted Dixie, her short legs struggling to keep up with Sara's long stride across the damp sand. “Are you listening?”

The two sisters could not have been more dissimilar. Sara, with her long legs and windblown mahogany hair, had a figure that was made for skinny jeans and haute couture. She had turned forty-six last year, and even though the winter had left her heart-shaped face pale and pinched and had leached too much of the joy from her blue gray eyes, the resulting fragility seemed almost to have subtracted years, not added them.

Dixie was short and round and three years younger than her sister. A lifetime of ocean air and beach sun had bleached her bouncy yellow curls and added color to her face that even the gray winters of the Outer Banks couldn't strip away. She was mother to twin four-year-old boys, wife to a good and solid man, and owner of a thriving downtown business. Most people, seeing the two women together, would have guessed that Dixie was the older sister.

“Sara?” she repeated now, taking a single running step to close the ground between them.

“Right.” Sara shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her oversized gray sweater—Daniel's sweater—and wished she had worn a scarf. “Three p.m. flight out of Charlotte, connections in Atlanta. Next stop Paris.”

“You don't have to sound so excited about it. And could you slow down? You're not
walking
there, you know!”

Sara dredged up a grimace of a smile, and she slowed her pace. “Sorry. I just don't see why this all couldn't be done via e-mail. Good God, I've handled multimillion-dollar contracts by e-mail. Why the French government can't manage to settle one man's pathetic little estate without dragging me across an ocean . . .”

“I thought you said it had something to do with the house, and the property taxes, and it's not as though a trip to the French countryside in the spring is a punishment, you know.”

The wind whipped Sara's hair across her face, and she combed it back with her fingers distractedly. “I don't know. The trip sounded like a good idea when I booked it, but now . . .” She gave a brief, bracing shake of her head, and her hair flew into her eyes again. “Sorry. I guess this gray weather has got me down. It's depressing, isn't it?”

The ocean rumbled behind them, and the wind sent rivulets of dark sand scurrying across the deserted beach. The sky overhead was the color of lead, with darker clouds banking to the north. It had been a long ugly winter, and this day, this sky, seemed to epitomize all of it.

Dixie's smile was as bright and bouncy as the curls that peeked from beneath her stocking cap, and a good deal more genuine than Sara's. She replied, “In the Outer Banks of North Carolina, maybe. But in the French countryside, I hear the weather is gorgeous! It's going to be a wonderful trip. You're going to drink fabulous wines and eat French food and take tons of pictures of churches and châteaux and sunflowers. Sara, you deserve this. Please try to enjoy it.”

Sara stopped walking suddenly and turned on her sister. The buffeting sea winds tore at her dark hair again and she caught it wildly between both hands. “It's not a vacation, okay?” She could not believe the voice that came out of her mouth, raised and shrill over the crash and mutter of the waves, was her own. “I'm flying across an ocean to settle the estate of a husband I barely knew, and I
don't
deserve it, okay? I didn't deserve to meet Daniel, I didn't deserve for him to die, and I for damn sure don't deserve that
stupid
house in a country where I don't even speak the language. Stop trying to make this fun for me, Dixie, could you just do that? It's not going to be fun!”

Her sister endured the onslaught patiently, as she always did. Her eyes were filled with compassion, her wind-chapped face softened with understanding. She was the caretaker, the comforter, the patient, sympathetic friend. It was a role she had had to play all too often since Sara had come back to Little John Island almost a year ago, and life had changed for all of them.

She said gently, “You know you need to do this, Sara. You know you need to say good-bye.”

Sara drew in a breath for another sharp reply, a dozen angry retorts bubbling to her lips. How could she say good-bye to a place she had never been, a man who did not belong there? What was there to say good-bye
to
? Daniel wasn't there. Daniel was here, on this island, in her memories, in her heart. Lawyers weren't going to change that. Signed papers weren't going to change that. And flying to Europe for damn sure wasn't going to change it.

And neither was screaming at her sister on a beach in North Carolina three thousand miles away. Sara released her breath, closed her lips, and started walking again.

Dixie slipped her arm through her sister's in easy, companionable comfort. “Jeff said he'll be glad to drive you to the airport,” she said. “There's no need for you to leave your car in long-term parking.”

“That's okay.” Sara's reply was wooden. “I don't want him to miss a day of work.” Although she imagined her brother-in-law would be more than glad to miss the work and make the trip if it meant having his house—and his wife—to himself again for a few weeks. She released a breath, pushing back the tangle of her hair again. “I'm sorry I yelled at you.”

Dixie patted Sara's arm. “I know you are.”

“It's just . . .” She hesitated, not certain she wanted to put her thoughts into words, and, even if she did, how they would sound once spoken. She tightened her fists inside her pockets. “God, this doesn't even feel like my life!” The words burst from her lips in a single breath, and once she had spoken them she didn't seem to be able to stop. “Here I was, plain old Sara Graves, middle-aged workaholic, my entire life devoted to making the world a better place for useless household gadgets that break the minute the warranty runs out, and I had this one outrageous, incredible chance for adventure and I took it and that was crazy—it was crazy I would even do such a thing!—and suddenly I'm the widow of a man I've only known three months—a Frenchman, for God's sake, with a whole heritage and culture and past I know nothing about . . . and it turns out there's no one, no one in this entire world, left to deal with what he left behind but me. Me! They sure don't prepare you for that in the romance novels, do they?” She wasn't even aware of the tears that were streaming down her cheeks until a cold gust of wind stung her face, and she swiped the moisture away impatiently. “It's like some great big sick cosmic joke. God, I am so tired of crying!”