Harlequin Romance March 2021 Box Set Cara Colter (the mitten read aloud TXT) 📖

a lot of memories. But honestly…? It’s her sadness I find myself remembering most.’

Owen stopped whisking and stared at his mother as if her words had speared straight through his heart.

She sent Callie a small smile. ‘Frances helped me escape an unpleasant situation and I’ll be forever grateful to her. I loved her. I just wish I could’ve done…more.’

She reached out to touch Margaret’s arm. ‘I’m glad she was able to help you. But from what Owen has told me, you all helped her tremendously too.’

Margaret nodded. ‘Owen especially.’

Really? She filed that under her Things to Pursue Later list.

‘I also remember her political rants,’ Margaret added with a laugh. ‘She could be scathing when she disagreed with whoever happened to be in power at the time. Hilariously so. She’d have us all in stitches, but nodding in agreement.’

‘That sounds like fun.’ And it did.

Margaret nibbled a piece of cucumber Owen had pushed her way, as if he was inherently attuned to what she’d like. He glanced at Callie and raised an eyebrow. She pointed to the red pepper, so he cut a nice long slice, speared it on the end of the knife and held it out to her. It made her feel ridiculously cared for.

Margaret gestured towards her son. ‘Owen did most of the cooking in our household from the age of twelve onwards.’

Her eyebrows flew upwards. ‘Really?’

‘Mom worked long hours. Cleaning houses all day is hard work. It seemed the least I could do.’

‘He traded me chores—told me he’d cook if I did the dishes.’

‘Doing the dishes is my least favourite chore ever. Besides…’ he grinned at his mother ‘…back then Mom had three standard meals that she cooked on rotation.’

Margaret winked at Callie. ‘And he wasn’t a fan of any of them.’

‘And she’d cook them up in these huge batches, so we’d be eating the same thing for days on end. I like variety.’

His shoulders lifted in a careless shrug and Callie tried to not let her mind dwell on other things that involved variety—things she really shouldn’t be thinking about.

‘So you taught yourself to cook?’ she said in a rush, hoping it would hide where her thoughts had gone.

He and Margaret shared a swift glance, a beat of silence passing between them, and Callie found herself nodding.

‘Frances taught you how to cook.’

They both turned, as if concerned the revelation might upset her.

‘It’s okay,’ she said, touched that they didn’t want to hurt her feelings. ‘You can’t miss something you never knew you had.’

‘Not true.’ Owen rinsed the fork before turning back and searching her face.

She thought of the little boy who’d probably been terrified of his father. He’d have missed his parents not having a harmonious marriage. He’d have missed not having a father who couldn’t control his temper.

‘You can,’ she agreed slowly.

She flashed to an image of her ten-year-old self, sitting in her classroom on Grandparents’ Day. It was a memory that stuck with her to this very day.

‘Do you guys do Grandparents’ Day at school? It’s where grandparents spend half a day at school in the classroom with their grandkids. I wasn’t the only kid in my class who didn’t have grandparents, but the split would’ve been about eighty-twenty. And on that day I really wanted grandparents. And aunts and uncles and cousins and siblings and everything in between.’

She smiled, but a thread of sadness for her younger self remained. She’d yearned for big family picnics and huge Christmas celebrations and spending holidays with people who belonged to her.

‘At the end of the day I raced home and told my mother that if she married again and gave me a stepfather, I would adopt his mum and dad as my grandparents.’

Owen leant his hip against the bench. ‘What did she say?’

‘She asked me what would happen if she fell in love with a man who didn’t have parents any more, just like—’ She pulled up short, suddenly conscious of how callous that would sound to Owen and Margaret—people who had loved Frances.

‘Just like her,’ Owen finished. He shook his head. ‘It’s okay, Callie.’

Actually, it wasn’t. But she pasted on a smile anyway. ‘I told her she was only allowed to fall in love with a man who had a mum and a dad and six brothers and sisters, all with little kids, so I could have first cousins and second cousins and third cousins twice removed.’

Margaret’s eyes twinkled. ‘Did she manage to keep a straight face?’

‘Not for a moment!’ Callie laughed. ‘Though I didn’t understand at the time why she thought my plan so funny.’

‘When I met Jack—Lissy’s father—Owen was fourteen at the time, and he took him into the courtyard out there and told him that if he ever raised either his hand or his voice to me he’d drop his cold, dead body in the river.’

Callie clapped both hands over her mouth. ‘You didn’t!’

His grin had her heart setting off on another tap-dancing routine. ‘I obviously had an over-inflated sense of my own power. Jack weighed twice what I did, and he had arms like—’ He made a big circle in the air the size of a pumpkin.

She swallowed. ‘What did he say?’ And where was Jack now?

‘He said that if he ever did either of those things he’d help me find the best spot in the river to dump his cold, dead body.’

She pressed her hands to her chest. ‘Perfect answer.’

Margaret took the salad to the small dining table as Owen lifted chicken breasts in a fancy salsa from the oven. He sent Callie a wink. ‘You’ll be pleased to know there has never been cause to find that spot on the river. Jack is at his monthly poker night tonight. He’ll be sorry to have missed meeting you. He and Frances became great friends.’

It appeared then that everyone had been on the best of terms with Frances. Everyone, that was, except her mother.

* * *

‘I’ve contacted three of Frances’s oldest friends.’

Callie had been kneeling on Owen’s living room rug, greeting