Tomorrow's Sun (Lost Sanctuary) - By Becky Melby Page 0,1

the dining room. “Is everything all right?”

“Everything is fine.” The creases in his brow had never seemed so deep. His shoulders slumped. “Make some corn cakes, too. We will need them tonight.”

With her heart choosing a tempo to rival Big Jim’s fiddle, she nodded. Emotions clashed inside her. The risk was great for all of them, but fear mingled with joy. Tonight they would have guests, which meant tomorrow night she would see Liam. “How many rugs?”

“Two.” He turned away and stared through the lace on the north window.

Hannah followed his gaze to the river. Tomorrow night.

“Hang two rugs. And pray, my dear.”

CHAPTER 1

What do you call the place you live if it isn’t home?

Emily Foster blew her bangs off her forehead and tapped the steering wheel to “Haven’t Met You Yet” as she searched the afternoon shadows for a street sign, and the house she wouldn’t call home. For the next few months. Or weeks, if she was lucky.

Rochester, Wisconsin, population 1100. She’d have eleven hundred neighbors—and she’d try to get to know as few of them as possible. Michael Bublé said it would all work out. Emily turned at the corner, hoping he was right.

The old, white clapboard house framed in her windshield had shrunk in nineteen years. Or maybe the rest of her world had gotten too big since that innocent summer. She parked in a short strip of gravel that pointed toward the river. Opening the car door, she stared at the house across the street. It occupied the spot where she’d found God, and almost missed her first kiss. A long, measured sigh bowed her cheeks. With deep, controlled breaths, she swiveled in the seat then eased her feet to the ground. Moving like a woman three times her age, she unloaded the car and hobbled up the stone walk to the paneled door. The lock complained at the twist of the key.

In the front parlor, the plank floor groaned beneath her feet. With nothing to absorb the sound of her intrusion, each tap of her paisley-covered cane echoed off the peeling plaster.

The house was as hollow and weary as its new owner.

“Counter with a positive.” The ever-nagging voice of Vanessa, her therapist—the one who therapied her mind, not the one who pummeled the rest of her—whispered a warning. “Counter with a positive thought before you teeter off the brittle edge.”

Dropping her sleeping bag and air mattress in the middle of the room, Emily turned in a slow circle. First positive Wisconsin thought: Empty is not always bad. This place is full of potential.

Am I?

The front parlor was no larger than a hospital room. A poor excuse for sunlight struggled through warped glass in the nine-pane windows. Pale ovals patchworked dingy beige walls where long-dead faces had once kept watch, and spider-vein cracks trailed like quilt stitching between the phantom frames.

Emily closed her eyes, envisioning the space as it would soon be. Sans claustrophobia. By knocking out the walls that divided the main floor into five rooms, she’d create an open floor plan. New windows, gleaming floors, rich colors. Modern. Roomy. Sellable.

In the dining room, she unzipped her fleece jacket and yanked open a window. Storm-scrubbed air transfused the staleness with hints of apple blossom and made her hungry for more. On her way to the back door, she checked her watch. Fifteen minutes to kill until the first contractor arrived. Fifteen minutes best spent without walls. She hung the key ring on a black hook by the door. Kicking off her shoes, she stepped onto the porch.

The swollen Fox River bursting the hem of her temporary backyard rushed through Rochester on its way from Menominee Falls to northern Illinois. It bubbled over a massive limb hanging at a grotesque angle from a fresh gash in an oak tree. All that anchored the limb to the trunk was a narrow strip of twisted bark.

She hadn’t thought about lawn care or tree trimming. She hadn’t thought about much, other than putting Lake Michigan between her and the eggshell walkers.

A flash of red drew her attention from the water to a solitary pine on the north side of the yard. A male cardinal landed on a low bough. His mate called down from the top of the tree.

Emily imagined a hammock next to the pine. Maybe the white noise of the river would muffle the specters in her head.

A child’s high-pitched wail caused her pulse to stumble. Laughter followed the squeal, and Emily breathed a sigh. She