Her Reason to Stay by Anna Adams

independence.
    Twenty-eight years of living virtually alone, and yet she’d reached out to him and to Raina with no promise of acceptance.
    “It’s time you knew the truth about Honesty. Taking care is what small towns do best.” He let her go, but she rubbed her forearm.
    “I know you’re trying to make me feel welcome. Especially after what happened in your office, I appreciate that you actually care.”
    Care? He was trying not to care too much.
    As she walked away, another gust pushed her dark hair over her shoulder. She glanced back, as if drawn. She couldn’t look away, either.
    He felt a strange jolt of happiness. It might be hope.
     
    D APHNE STOPPED on the other side of the square and dropped onto the first bench out of Patrick Gannon’s sight. She couldn’t let him distract her. Her sister was her priority. They needed to settle their disagreement now.
    She opened her phone and searched the record of her incoming calls until she found her twin’s phone number. Then she pushed talk and willed Raina to answer. She didn’t.
    “Raina,” she spoke softly, aware of couples and families strolling past in the spring sun. Raina wouldn’t want her airing their dirty laundry over the phone. “Please call me back. I need to tell you why I had no right to—think or say anything about what you told me.”
    Hell, she’d stolen newspapers to layer between her clothes. And food when her hands were shaking so hard from hunger she couldn’t understand why she wasn’t caught. Once she’d pilfered a romance novel from a drugstore’s Dumpster and then protected the book as if it were a window into a world she’d never be allowed to visit.
    One stormy night, huddling beneath a thick piece of cardboard and an overpass, she’d shoved the book beneath her sweatshirt to keep it safe.
    She wanted to tell Raina, to explain why she’d put her sister on a pedestal. But not over the phone. They had a hard enough time understanding each other face-to-face. She’d confess all her sins in person, but for now, Daphne closed her phone.
    The time flashed across its black screen. She had to make her interview. She stood, straightening her secondhand cardigan. At the far corner on this side of the square, Miriam Burke, proprietress of Bundle of Blooms, was hoping for a viable candidate to deliver her flowers.
    Daphne advanced on the store with all the confidence of a night-blooming orchid. She’d better look as if she’d be good at this.
    Someone had arranged bright spring bouquets and sheaves of fresh-cut flowers in the two large windows that flanked a green door decoupaged in ribbon and posies.
    Daphne glanced down the street, unwilling to admit, even to herself, that she was hoping to see Patrick’s tall, broad back, the confident jut of his shoulders among the citizens milling around Honesty’s square.
    Damn him for getting into her head like this.
    She looked everywhere but at herself in the reflective windows. She licked her lips. Her mouth felt so damn dry when she stressed. It might be a nothing job to Raina, but Daphne had to find a way to pay the rent.
    She also had to find a meeting. Missing another one was asking for trouble.
    Her phone rang as she reached for the doorknob. She pulled it out of her pocket. Raina’s name on the caller ID made her thumb edge toward the talk button, but that conversation would take more than two and a half minutes, which was when she was scheduled to meet Miriam Burke.
    She eased the door open. A woman barely older than Daphne looked up from a huge crystal vase half filled with roses and carnations. The rest of the flowers were lined up on green paper along the counter.
    “Hello.” Daphne held out her hand. She should have wiped her palm.
    “You must be Daphne Soder.” While the woman shook her hand, she stared as if Daphne’s face were a science project. “But you look exactly like someone I know.”
    On the verge of explaining, Daphne stopped. Raina might not want her