The Lost Daughter of Pigeon Hollow Read online

  RITA® Award–winning author Inglath Cooper delivers a classic story of love and forgiveness.

  Willa Addison doesn’t believe in fairy tales. She’s too busy running her mother’s diner and raising her wild teenage sister. She doesn’t like to dwell on the dreams she once had, dreams she put on hold. Then Owen Miller walks into her diner and changes her life.

  She doesn’t know what to think when Owen hands her a letter from her father—a father she thought was dead—requesting they meet. As if that wasn’t enough, her sister has become more than she can handle. It’s time for Willa to figure out what’s happened to her life. And maybe, with Owen around, she can finally believe in happily ever after…

  Originally published in 2005.

  The Lost Daughter of Pigeon Hollow

  Inglath Cooper

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  CHAPTER ONE

  PIGEON HOLLOW, KENTUCKY, was the kind of place that could never quite get past its name. No one knew exactly where the name originated. Folks said it had been somebody’s idea of a joke. Others said the original settlers in the valley had discovered a flock of albino pigeons that came to symbolize the peace the settlers had hoped to find in their new home.

  Nonetheless, the current-day residents of Pigeon Hollow were aware of the initial impression the name conjured. A town full of hicks whose definition of higher education did not broaden past Sugar McWray’s Beauty School or the local community college’s night course for mechanics.

  The town council had proposed changing it a number of times. But the council had never gotten past the talking stage, the consensus being that a town ought to be able to transcend its name.

  Mostly, it did.

  They had an unemployment factor of less than three percent; a fair number of their high-school graduates went on to college. In addition, the town boasted impressively high rates of volunteerism and a food bank that stored frozen and canned goods for families in need.

  To outsiders, the town was one of those places that existed simply because it was on the road to somewhere else. For Pigeon Hollow, somewhere else was Lexington, and the international horse industry that had become as rooted there as the blue-grass pastures on which equine royalty grazed.

  There were those in town who complained about that. Willa Addison wasn’t one of them. Except for a few years away at college, she had lived in Pigeon Hollow all her life, and taken over her mama’s business when she was twenty-one. A good number of those people driving through to Lexington stopped for a meal at the Top Shelf Diner.

  And each of those customers increased the probability that she would be able to pay the monthly stack of bills now looming at one corner of her kitchen counter.

  Willa turned her back to the bills, put her hand on the wall-mounted telephone, debating. Should she call or not? Wait a little longer?

  Surely, Katie would be home soon.

  She’d waited two hours. Long enough that her stomach had begun to feel as if it had a hole in it.

  She glanced up at the clock above the sink. Ten minutes past twelve.

  And it was a school night.

  She dropped her head back, closing her eyes.

  She picked up the receiver and punched in Shelby Franklin’s number. “Shelby?”

  “Yeah?” The response was groggy enough that Willa knew she’d woken her.

  “It’s Willa. I’m sorry to be calling this late, but Katie isn’t home yet. Is Eddie in?”

  Shelby let out a sigh, then said, “He don’t have to report in to me, Willa.”

  Exactly. Willa pressed her lips together and counted to three. “Katie was supposed to be home two hours ago. I’m getting a little concerned.”

  “He ain’t living here now, anyway.”

  Great.

  There was the sound of a match striking, a quick puff of a cigarette. “You see, Willa,” Shelby said, “that’s where you need to open your eyes to reality. If you had any hope of keepin’ that child on the straight and narrow, you shoulda’ locked her up a couple years back.” A crackle of laughter followed the short sermon.

  Willa straightened, heat suffusing her face. “You being an expert on successful parenting?”

  Shelby chuckled again, as if she enjoyed ruffling Willa’s feathers. “I know wild as hell when I see it.”

  “She’s not wild, she’s just—”

  “Sixteen. Don’t be too hard on yourself, sugar,” she said, placating now. “You’re not her mama. A sister shouldn’t have to be walkin’ into that role when you did, anyway.”

  “If you see her, call me back, please.” Willa hung up, anchoring the phone to the wall with enough force to rattle her elbow.

  The front door opened just then and shut with a bang.

  Thank God.

  On the heels of Willa’s gratitude was an already brewing lecture.

  Katie appeared in the kitchen doorway, as casual about her entrance as if it were the middle of the day instead of the middle of the night. A study in rebellion, her hair was cropped short, peroxide blond. A swirl of silver studs covered one ear. She wore a white T-shirt whose bottom just covered her breasts and a pair of boot-cut blue jeans the top of which rode a good two inches below her navel.

  She met Willa’s stern expression head on. “What?” With extra attitude.

  “Where have you been?”

  Katie slouched to the refrigerator, opened the door and ducked her head inside. “There’s nothing to eat in here.”

  “You were supposed to be home by ten, Katie.”

  “So I’m late.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Studying.” The insolence in her voice instantly negated the truth of the answer.

  Willa opened the dishwasher, pulled out a clean cup and carefully placed it in the cabinet above. “That’s the second night this week, Katie. You’re grounded.”

  Katie dropped a container of yogurt on the kitchen counter and slammed the refrigerator door, rounding on one heel. “God, Willa, will you get over yourself? You’re not my mother!”

  Hearing that from Shelby Franklin was one thing. Hearing it from Katie was another. Willa suppressed a quick flare of hurt and held out her hand. “Keys to the car.”

  Katie folded her arms across her chest and glared. “They’re in the ignition.” She grabbed the yogurt, yanked open a drawer and pulled out a spoon, then stomped upstairs.

  The doggy door flapped open from the hallway just off the kitchen. Sam trotted in on his stubby legs, ears lifted in question.

  “Heard us from the backyard, huh?”

  Sam dropped down on the rug in front of the sink, head on his paws, back legs stretched out behind him. If a dog could wear concern as an expression, Sam wore it clear as day.

  His ancestry was questionable. Almost for certain there was Lab in his lineage, accountable for his good nature, Willa suspected. Some beagle as well, judging from his short legs and fondness for rabbit chasing.

  He’d shown up at the back door of the diner one winter morning, looking as if he hadn’t had a meal in two weeks. It had been Willa’s intent to find a home for h
im, but his affable disposition had mysteriously turned to snarling intimidation whenever she’d shown him to anyone who happened to respond to the posters she’d hung around town.

  She’d finally decided to keep him, and he’d been nothing but affable since.

  He followed her outside now to her seen-better-days Wagoneer. McDonald’s burger wrappers and empty Coke cans littered the floorboard. Cigarette butts stuck out of the open ashtray.

  The distinctly sweet odor of something other than tobacco hung in the air. Willa’s shoulders slumped beneath a sudden wearing sense of defeat. She pulled the keys from the ignition, picked up the trash, and shut the door.

  She tilted her head back, drew in a deep breath. Late May in Kentucky. A neighbor’s freshly cut lawn scented the night breeze. A row of sweet-shrub divided Willa’s driveway from the house next door, adding its fragrance to the mix, the trees lining her street newly green and thriving.

  Willa loved spring. Loved its freshness, its promise and the sense she always had of starting over, wiping clean winter’s gray slate.

  Sam followed her to the front porch where she dropped onto the second step. He lay down at her feet.

  Willa rubbed his head, scratching the spot behind his left ear that caused a hind leg to thump automatically.

  “Really, Sam,” she said, defeat at the edges of her voice. “What am I going to do about her?”

  Sam raised his head, whined once. “She’s going to end up pregnant or…” She didn’t let herself finish the thought.

  Sam put his head on her leg and closed his eyes.

  “Yeah, I know. That’s what I’d like to do. Pretend I don’t see it.” She massaged the dull ache in her left temple. “But that’s not going to work, is it? When I finally do open my eyes, things will just be that much worse.”

  She glanced up at the dark night sky, chin propped on her hand, elbow on her knee, and stared at the blink of a faraway airplane. She smoothed her other hand across Sam’s soft coat, her gaze following the plane’s trek below the stars. “Wonder where those people are going.”

  Sam didn’t bother to look up.

  “That’d be kind of nice, wouldn’t it? Just taking off. Not really even caring where you ended up as long as it was somewhere different. Live another life for a while.”

  As appealing as it sounded, running away from trouble never worked. During Willa’s teenage years, her own mama had tried it a number of times, leaving Katie and Willa alone to fend for themselves. And inevitably, proving that the problems didn’t go anywhere. Somebody had to deal with them.

  For Willa, the problem was how to steer Katie into adulthood without letting her disappear beneath the too-numerous-to-count sinkholes along the way.

  She glanced up at the sky, the airplane now a distant speck. Thought for a moment of her own aspirations, plans she’d put aside to come back to Pigeon Hollow and raise Katie after their mother had died. Those dreams now seemed as far away as the destination of that plane.

  She got up from the step, too tired to think about it anymore tonight.

  The problems would still be here tomorrow. That, she could count on.

  * * *

  THE TOP SHELF DINER was something of a landmark in Pigeon Hollow. It sat midway down Main Street, in between Citizens’ Bank and Crawley’s Hardware.

  At eleven in the morning, a sprinkling of customers sat at the square, wooden tables. But within the next forty-five minutes, the place would fill up with the lunch crowd, workers from the sawmill at the other end of town filing in for the daily special: meat loaf and mashed potatoes or corn bread and pinto beans.

  Willa stood behind the front counter, filling a pitcher with iced tea. She wiped a hand on her just-above-the-knee black skirt, then glanced up at the TV hanging from the ceiling. It had also snagged the attention of Harold Pinckard and Stanley Arrington where they sat drinking a late morning cup of coffee.

  “A Bland County woman, twenty-three-year-old single mother, Teresa Potter, was the winner of last night’s five million dollar lottery—”

  “Can you believe that?” Judy Parker set a coffeepot back on its burner and scowled at the TV. She pushed her glasses back on her nose, only to have them slide right back to their previous position. Mid-forties, Judy barely broke the five-feet mark, weighed less than a hundred pounds and still managed to be known as a small tornado of energy. “I mean she just buys a ticket in the Mini-Mart, and presto, her life is changed overnight.”

  Willa began filling a row of glasses with tea. “Only happens in fairy tales.”

  Judy reached for a towel and began wiping down the Formica counter. “Does that mean something good can’t happen to a person once in a while?”

  “No. But I’m not going to stand around waiting for it.”

  Judy made a sound of disapproval, then moved to the sink, rinsed her towel and wrung it out. “So what would you do with it, if you believed in the lottery and if you won?”

  “I don’t, and I wouldn’t,” she said, lifting a shoulder.

  “Indulge me. And let’s just go ahead and assume you’d give a good portion to your favorite charity. Save the beagles or whatever it is. I want to hear about the you stuff.”

  Willa smiled. “The me stuff. Okay. I’d buy a black Lamborghini.”

  “You would not.”

  “Hey, I thought this was my fantasy.”

  “Fair enough,” Judy said, one hand in the air. “So we have one flamboyant sports car. Proceed.”

  Willa squinted in thought. “Maybe a nip and tuck at one of those fancy canyon-something spas.”

  Judy shot her a look, eyebrows raised. “What in the world would you nip and tuck?”

  “Decrease size of fanny. Increase size of breasts.”

  Judy rolled her eyes. “You barely have a fanny. If you go in for that, I’ll have to ask for the complete overhaul. So what else?”

  Willa pondered for a moment. “My own tab at any Barnes & Noble. Better yet, my own Barnes & Noble with unlimited iced lattes.”

  Judy made a face. “I never have gotten the whole cold coffee thing.”

  “Acquired taste,” Willa said.

  “Apparently. So once you’ve made the plastic surgeon rich and become the queen of lattes, what else?”

  Willa began lining up another row of glasses, quiet for a moment, and then said, “Go back to school, I guess.”

  Judy reached for the Curel lotion bottle beneath the counter, squirted some on her hands and began rubbing it in. “Dr. Addison. I always did like the sound of that. And you know what? That one shouldn’t have to wait around for lottery winnings.”

  “Yeah, well, the chances of my ever getting to med school are about as likely as my winning the lottery.”

  “If it’s about money, you could always sell this place.”

  “Right now, I’ll be lucky to get Katie through high school. Med school at the same time? I don’t think so.”

  “You could do it,” Judy disagreed.

  “Maybe someday,” Willa said, hearing the doubt in her own voice.

  “Speaking of the teenage terror, did she get home okay last night?”

  Willa sighed. “After midnight.”

  “That girl is gonna make you old before your time.”

  Willa opened another box of tea bags. “I get a time?”

  “Not if you stand around waiting for it.” Judy threw Willa’s words back at her with a pointed look.

  Willa knew better than to get this particular conversation started. “I’ll be in the back paying bills.”

  Thirty minutes later, she closed the checkbook, defeated as always by the dwindling funds in her account. She leaned back in the desk chair and stretched. Sam lay at her feet, snoring.

  Katie. Willa hadn’t let herself think about her all morning. She’d dropped her off at school without either of them saying a word to each other.

  On the subject of her sister, Willa felt as if she’d been dumped out in the middle of the ocean only to discover she could
n’t swim. She simply didn’t know how to reach Katie anymore.

  And if she didn’t figure something out fast, Katie would end up derailing her entire life at the age of sixteen.

  The office door opened. Judy poked her head inside, her eyes wide, her smile a little giddy. “To the front, please. Two o’clock.”

  “What is it?”

  Judy made a fluttering gesture over her heart.

  Willa gave her a look. “The last time he was a long-haul trucker with the amazing ability to forget he had a wife.”

  “This is no married truck driver,” Judy said. “This is a winning lottery ticket.”

  Willa shook her head, then smiled and got up from the chair. “Okay. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  At the register, she picked up a stack of menus, straightening them. Shania Twain sang on the jukebox.

  “Over there,” Judy stage-whispered.

  Trying to look casual, Willa let her gaze wander to the right-hand corner of the diner. A very good-looking man sat in the booth, rubbing a thumb against a glass of iced tea, a newspaper in front of him. He wore blue jeans and a light blue polo-type shirt. His dark hair was short, and he had nice wide shoulders, well-muscled arms.

  “Was I right or what?”

  Willa looked back at the man. He was staring at her. Dead-on. She turned around abruptly and bumped into Judy who was holding a tray of cookies that went flying toward the ceiling. Willa and Judy both juggled for them to little avail. Most landed on the floor. They dropped to their knees behind the register, scooping up cookies and aiming them at a nearby trash can.

  Judy gave Willa a smug smile. “Winning ticket, right?”

  “I think I’ll just crawl back to the office now.”

  Judy chuckled. “I’m sure he didn’t notice.”

  They catapulted to their feet at the same time. The man stood on the other side of the register, newspaper in hand.