From Here to Home Read online

  ALSO BY MARIE BOSTWICK

  THE COBBLED COURT QUILTS SERIES

  Apart at the Seams (Cobbled Court Quilts #6)

  Ties That Bind (Cobbled Court Quilts #5)

  Threading the Needle (Cobbled Court Quilts #4)

  A Thread So Thin (Cobbled Court Quilts #3)

  A Thread of Truth (Cobbled Court Quilts #2)

  A Single Thread (Cobbled Court Quilts #1)

  TOO MUCH, TEXAS, NOVELS

  Between Heaven and Texas

  From Here to Home

  NOVELS

  On Wings of the Morning

  River’s Edge

  Fields of Gold

  The Second Sister

  NOVELLAS

  “The Yellow Rose of Christmas” in Secret Santa

  “The Presents of Angels” in Snow Angels

  “A High-Kicking Christmas” in Comfort and Joy

  From Here to Home

  MARIE BOSTWICK

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  A READING GROUP GUIDE

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  THE SECOND SISTER

  BETWEEN HEAVEN AND TEXAS

  A SINGLE THREAD

  A THREAD OF TRUTH

  A THREAD SO THIN

  THREADING THE NEEDLE

  TIES THAT BIND

  APART AT THE SEAMS

  Copyright Page

  With Many Thanks to . . .

  Martin Biro, my editor, for patience and encouragement above and beyond the call, his keen eye for the well-placed comma, and his ability to break up even the most convoluted of run-on sentences. Liza Dawson, literary agent, mother of dragons, and part-time border collie, for continual optimism, good humor, and wisdom, and her remarkable ability to steer me away from the cliff without letting me know I’m being herded. Donna Gomer, my sister, for her advice and counsel on all things equine. Scott Finley for insights into the world of television production. Jeff Turner for art project assistance. Betty and John Walsh, my sister and brother-in-law, for speedy, insightful, and accurate first-round reading and for getting me to listen when I don’t want to. Lisa Sundell Olsen, my Sparkly Assistant, for enthusiasm, organization, and flexibility, and for being able to drive a recreational vehicle like a boss. Joyce and Sara Ely, for first inspiring me to want to give Howard and Mary Dell a bigger stage, for helping make sure this book is accurate and sensitive to the experiences, challenges, and triumphs of the Down syndrome community and their families, and for being an uplifting example to me and thousands of others whose lives have been enriched and expanded simply by crossing paths with you. Crystal Lynn Wagner, a talented young artist who happens to have Down syndrome, for inspiring me to imagine new vocational adventures for Howard and Jenna.

  PROLOGUE

  On a hot Tuesday afternoon, on the outskirts of Alpine, Texas, in the remote western region of the state, a man wearing dark denim jeans, a black Western shirt embroidered with horseshoes and flowers in turquoise thread, and a gray Stetson atop his gray head walked into a tavern.

  The bartender stood at the tap drawing beers for his only other customers, three men in their early twenties who were sitting at a table in the corner. When he saw the cowboy come through the door, he jerked his chin and said, “Hey, Donny. How you doing?”

  “Oh, about right. You?”

  “Same.”

  The cowboy took a stool at the far end of the bar, directly in front of the TV set, which was tuned to a baseball game. After the bartender delivered three draft beers to his other customers, he brought a basket of tortilla chips and salsa and a bottle of Lone Star to the cowboy and set it on the counter in front him.

  “Anything else, Donny?”

  The cowboy shook his head, dug a much-creased ten-dollar bill from his back pocket, and laid it on the bar.

  “Keep the change.”

  “Thanks. Let me know if you want another.”

  The cowboy nodded.

  Without further conversation, the bartender picked up the TV remote and started clicking through the channels, his action eliciting a chorus of complaints and cries of “Hey, we were watching that!” from the three guys sitting at the corner table. Groans of disappointment became howls of protest when his search ended on channel 46, which aired the House and Home Network.

  “What? C’mon!”

  “You gotta be kidding!”

  “You turned off the game so that old geezer can watch a quilting show?”

  The cowboy sat silently, dipping chips into salsa and ignoring the ruckus, his eyes glued to the screen and the faces of the two hosts: a tall, big-busted woman dressed in a blouse of scarlet sateen, with ash-blond hair of a shade commonly used to cover gray, and a musical, Texas twang to her speech, and a stocky young man in his late twenties wearing a pressed blue button-down shirt, with a wide smile, brown hair, blue eyes shaped like almonds, and a slight thickness of speech, as if he’d recently been to the dentist and the novocaine hadn’t entirely worn off.

  The bartender came out from behind the counter to deal with the trio of disgruntled barflies. One of the young men, who wore an Arizona Diamondbacks baseball cap, got to his feet, intercepting his approach.

  “What the hell, man? The Diamondbacks are playing. Turn the game back on!”

  “I will in half an hour, when this is over,” the bartender said, cocking his head toward the television set, where the young man in the blue button-down was pointing at different spaces on a color wheel. “You sit down and enjoy your beer until then. I’ll get you a basket of chips. On the house.”

  “We don’t want any chips. We want to watch the game. This isn’t fair, man! There’s three of us and only one of him.”

  “Good. You can count. So can I,” the bartender said, his tone slipping from conciliatory to sarcastic. “Except things add up a little different, the way I see them.

  “You boys are just passing through. You bought three beers and I appreciate your business. But Donny here’s a regular; has been for the last seven years. Shows up every Tuesday afternoon, orders a beer and a basket of chips, watches his show, and leaves a four-dollar tip on a six-dollar order. Every week. That means that on Tuesdays, in my bar, from three to three-thirty, Donny gets to
watch whatever he damn well pleases. You hear?”

  The bartender, a bearded man in his middle forties who stood half a head taller and had twenty pounds on the Diamondbacks booster, took two steps forward, until he stood chest to chest with the kid in the cap.

  “Come on, Kyle. Sit down. We’re not missing anything. It’s only the second inning and the D-backs are down three runs,” one of the other guys at the table hissed.

  The kid in the cap, Kyle, hesitated a moment, then curled his lip and took his seat. “Fine,” he mumbled, slouching back into his chair.

  “I’ll get you those chips,” the bartender said, coolly amiable again. “And a side of queso to go with ’em.”

  The half hour passed uneventfully.

  Donny sat silently, watching his show and drinking his beer. The three out-of-towners ate their chips and ordered another round, the kid in the cap continuing to brood and drink while his two friends exchanged laughter that grew louder as the minutes ticked by.

  At three twenty-nine, the big-busted woman and the almond-eyed man said good-bye to their viewers and waved as music played and credits rolled. The cowboy tipped the Lone Star to his lips, emptying the bottle, got up from his stool, and thanked the bartender, who tuned the television back to the game.

  As the cowboy walked toward the door, the kid in the cap called out, “Hey! Nice shirt, man! What kind of flowers are those, anyway? Pansies? Did you embroider it yourself?”

  The cowboy paused, but briefly, then kept walking. The kid in the cap guffawed and punched one of his buddies in the shoulder.

  “I bet he did, man. I bet he sewed it with his own little hands. Ha! Probably picked up some tips watching that crazy quilt broad with the big boobs and her retard sidekick.”

  Still laughing, the kid swiveled to the right to face his friends, so he didn’t see the cowboy coming for him, nor the fury that blazed in those previously placid eyes. But he felt his collar choking him as the cowboy’s big hand closed on the neckband of his T-shirt, hauling him to his feet, and heard the crack of bone against bone as a hammer-hard fist slammed into his jaw, knocking the cap from his head and sending him flying.

  Lying flat on his back on the floor, the kid clamped his hand against his jaw. Angry, humiliated, and in no little pain, he rocked forward, attempting to get to his feet, but his friends ran to his side and pressed him back down to the ground.

  The cowboy approached the crumpled form, planted his feet wide, and in a low, burred voice, said, “You need to watch your mouth, son.” Then he turned and left the bar.

  When he was gone, the kid shook off his friends and started to curse. “I’m gonna sue that SOB! Somebody call a cop. I’m going to have him arrested for assault.”

  “I wouldn’t try that if I were you.”

  The bartender walked back behind the counter, scooped ice from a bin, and wrapped it in a towel.

  “I told you before, Donny’s a regular. He’s manager for a good-sized sheep ranch about eight miles north of town, lives here full-time. I don’t think the sheriff will have a lot of sympathy for your side of the story,” he said as he handed the ice pack to the kid. “Especially after I tell him what you said.”

  The kid sat up and pressed the ice to his jaw.

  “What I said about what? The flowers on his shirt? It was just a joke.”

  “Not about the flowers; about the young man on the television.”

  “Who? You mean the retard?”

  The bartender moved his head slowly from side to side.

  “Now, that’s a word Donny don’t like. Come to think of it, neither do I. Because Donny’s my friend.

  “And that young man on the TV show? He’s Donny’s son.”

  CHAPTER 1

  November

  People often remarked on Holly Silva’s resemblance to her mother. Considering her line of work, it was a fortunate inheritance.

  But what people usually failed to recognize was that her father’s features were equally in evidence. She had his sharper jaw and dark brown eyes flecked with gold, and his generous eyebrows, which Holly dyed dark and tweezed into a wide arch, providing stark contrast to her blond hair and the ivory and pink complexion she shared with her mother. The melding of these parental traits came together in a face that was lovely, arresting, and slightly exotic, like a warrior princess from an ancient land. But because her father, an Argentinian actor turned independent film director, had died of a drug overdose before his daughter’s third birthday, most of the people Holly met had either never known Cristian or forgotten what he’d looked like years before, so the similarities between them went largely unnoticed.

  Holly was introspective, too, like he had been, and sensitive, had unusual insight into and empathy for the feelings of other people, but was surprisingly obtuse when it came to her own emotional state. And, like her father, Holly was unfailingly kind and well liked by almost everyone, yet she constantly worried that people did not, in fact, like her or that they would come to dislike her before long. Cristian had been just the same. She had his addictive personality as well. But food, and not heroin, was Holly’s painkiller of choice.

  Unlike Cristian, Holly had managed to control her addiction, losing more than seventy pounds in her last two years of high school, which explained why few noticed how much she looked like her mom, which is to say how beautiful she was, until she was almost eighteen years old.

  Besides her mother’s good looks and in spite of the anxieties she’d inherited from her father, Holly had a kind of spark, an energy that made her stand out from the crowd. She was genuinely interested in other people and cared about and for others, and that trait shone through in all she did. When Holly applauded for a contestant who’d just won a new car she’d never dreamed she could afford, she did it with all her heart, as excited for her as if she’d been the one getting a new set of wheels. When she put her arm around the shoulders of another who’d embarrassed himself by having just given a bonehead answer to an obvious question on national television, then said she was sorry while escorting him off the stage, she really was sorry. If the contestant started to cry, sometimes she did too.

  There were five other models on the game show with Holly, yet she was the model people on the street were most likely to recognize and want to take a picture with. But coming home from the gym on a Saturday afternoon, dressed in yoga pants and a gray T-shirt, with no makeup and her shining blond hair in a ponytail, Holly Silva looked like any other single twenty-five-year-old enjoying the weekend.

  She pulled up in front of a big Tudor-style house in the Beverly Grove section of West LA, set the parking brake of her Jeep, then jumped out the door, ran across the lawn, and bounded up the stairs to her apartment, trying to extend the metabolic impact of her morning workout.

  Still puffing, she unlocked the door and entered, bending down to greet Calypso, her calico cat, before filling and then gulping down a glass of water. When she was done, she opened the door of the refrigerator and surveyed the contents. Calypso got up from where he was sitting on the floor and started winding around her ankles, emitting a series of chirruping half meows.

  Holly tilted her head to one side. “What do you think? Leftover moo shu pork and pancakes? Or coconut Greek yogurt and a pear?”

  Calypso chirruped and bumped his head against her calf. Holly looked down at him and reached for the container of leftover Chinese food.

  “Good idea. Leftover moo shu—no pancake—for you. Yogurt for me.”

  By the time Holly sat down with her food, Calypso had already wolfed down his shredded pork and was looking for second helpings. He hopped lightly onto the sofa, butting Holly’s hand with his head, trying to push his face into her bowl of yogurt.

  Holly pushed him away with one hand and hugged the bowl to her chest. “Knock it off. I swear, you’re a bottomless pit.”

  The cat gave her a disgusted look, jumped off the couch, and slunk off to pout under the coffee table. Holly’s cell phone buzzed. She glanced at the sc
reen before putting it to her ear.

  “Amanda? I thought you were supposed to be in Beijing.”

  “En route,” said Amanda Grimes, Holly’s agent. “Changing planes in Seattle. I’ve only got a minute before they make me turn off my cell, so this has to be quick. Remember that infomercial job I booked you for a few months back?”

  Holly did.

  Two years in, the luster had worn off her game show gig. Though she appreciated the security of a regular paycheck, she couldn’t see spending the rest of her life grinning into a camera as she held up boxes of dishwasher detergent or bottles of furniture oil.

  She was bored, trapped, and unhappy. When Amanda asked what would make her happy, Holly wasn’t sure. Sometimes she just wished she could wake up and be someone completely different, but she knew that kind of talk would just elicit an eye roll from Amanda, so she’d said, “Maybe . . . a talk show host? Something where I could talk but wouldn’t have to act?”

  Amanda got her a job hosting an infomercial for a juice machine—one of those things that looks like a talk show but is really just a long commercial with frequent entreaties for viewers to order now. It didn’t seem like an upward career move to Holly, but when she voiced her doubts, Amanda said, “Trust me, okay?” So Holly did.

  Now, apparently, something had come of it.

  “I booked the infomercial to get some decent video of you actually speaking,” Amanda said. “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to get your hopes up, but I’ve been using the tape to pitch you for real talk and information shows. It was a long shot, but I figured we might get lucky.”

  Hearing the smile in Amanda’s voice, Holly felt her breath catch in her throat. If Amanda was calling her en route to China with the results of a pitch that she’d been keeping secret, that could only mean . . .

  “And did we? Get lucky, I mean?”