My children thought they’d left me with nothing. They were about to learn how wrong they were.
The walk to town took nearly two hours. My shoes—sensible flats I’d worn for my husband’s funeral—weren’t made for country roads. By the time I reached Miller’s Gas and Grocery at the edge of Milfield, my feet were blistered and the afternoon sun had burned my neck. I didn’t care. Pain has a way of clarifying things, and with each step, my purpose had crystallized.
I didn’t go inside immediately. Instead, I sat on the bench outside, watching pickups and sedans come and go. Normal people living normal lives who had no idea that Naomi Canton—who’d judged their apple pies at the county fair for twenty years—had just been abandoned like roadkill by her own children.
“Mrs. Canton?”
I looked up to see Ray Miller himself, third-generation owner of the store, wiping his hands on his apron.
