Page 62 of The Holiday Cottage

And then she’d opened her eyes, and nothing had prepared Sara for the rush of feeling that had engulfed her.

Sara had gazed into Imogen’s blue eyes and realized that love at first sight really could happen. It was a thing. Right there in that moment she’d given her whole heart to her sister’s child.

And four years later her heart had been broken.

And it was probably about to be broken again, because whenever Tina was involved, that was what happened.

Bracing herself for what came next, she stepped outside and shivered. While they’d been inside, the temperature had dropped and it had started snowing again. She was glad now that she’d decided to drive and not walk.

But Imogen had been walking, and she’d left her coat in the kitchen.

Sara felt a flicker of concern as she turned the car and headed back down the drive to Holly Cottage. It wouldn’t have taken Imogen long to walk home, but it would have been long enough for her to get cold. If she was sensible, she’d take a hot shower before packing up the car, which at least gave Sara a little more time.

If necessary, she’d beg her to have at least one calm conversation with her mother. She’d explain that Imogen had some of the facts wrong (some! Ha. All of them, more likely) and that it was important that she listen to Dorothy.

But what if she refused to listen?

The trees that lined the side of the drive were coated with fresh snow, and normally Sara would have taken a moment to admire it. Snow had a certain magical quality, and it made her happy. Or, to be more precise, it made her girls happy, and anything that made her children happy made Sara happy. But today she wasn’t thinking about snowmen, or snow angels or snowballs. She wasn’t thinking about Christmas.

She was thinking about her mother. About how white she’d looked. How stressed.

And she was thinking about Imogen, and the shock of that interaction they’d just had. She’d done everything she could to avoid meeting Imogen face-to-face because she just found it all too difficult. At the event last year she’d made the excuse that Ava was ill because she hadn’t trusted herself to come face-to-face with Imogen and not react. And her mother had known it was an excuse.

She felt an ache deep in her chest.

Part of her wanted to pull over and have a good cry as her mother had, but she couldn’t do that. She didn’t have time to waste. She needed to talk to Imogen.

Sara gripped the wheel more firmly and told herself that this was not the same situation they’d faced with her father. Her mother didn’t have high blood pressure or any of the other medical issues that had affected her father.

Her mother was going to be fine. But the sooner they could have a conversation with Imogen and set her straight on a few things, the better Sara would feel.

You were her family, her only family, and you threw her out when she needed you most.

She didn’t have to ask herself why Imogen would have believed all those awful things. She already knew.

She clenched her jaw. It had been decades since she’d seen Tina, but she was not going to think about her sister now or she’d be the one with blood pressure problems. She needed to focus on Imogen. Imogen was an innocent victim of very unfortunate circumstances. She deserved to hear the truth. Whether she chose to believe it or not was outside Sara’s control.

She approached Holly Cottage and felt a rush of relief as she saw Imogen’s car parked outside the cottage.

At least she hadn’t left. That was good.

She parked, picked her way along the snowy path and pushed open the door of the cottage. “Imogen?”

There was no reply, and Sara tugged off her shoes and stepped into the hallway and then into the kitchen. It was empty, and there was no sign that anyone had been here in the past few hours.

Maybe she was upstairs using the bathroom.

Sara walked to the bottom of the stairs. “Imogen?”

She went from room to room, which didn’t take long because the cottage was small.

A quick glance told her that Imogen’s suitcase was still in the bedroom, her clothes neatly folded into the drawers.

Sara walked back downstairs, confused.

Imogen’s belongings were still here, but there was no sign of Imogen herself. So where had she gone?

15

---