A Family for Dillon (Cobbler Cove #7)

Chapter 1

Fern Lawrence had been dead a full week, and she was still bossing people around. Tessa Lawrence could only marvel at how her ex-ish mother-in-law could reach from beyond the grave to do it.

Every detail of this memorial celebration had been dictated by Fern, down to what food went where on the table. Tessa wouldn’t have minded so much if the letter hadn’t ended with a snarky comment in Fern’s messy handwriting about how Tessa, left to her own devices, would get this shindig all wrong.

As if. She’d been trained to organize, plan, and graciously host events by one of the most accomplished and polished socialites on the eastern seaboard.

Speaking of which, she glanced over at the refreshments table and noticed the deviled egg tray was empty. Picking it up, she headed for the church kitchen to restock it.

Grace O’Donnell looked up from a box of cookies she was unpacking onto a tray. “How’re you holding up, sweetie?”

Tessa shrugged, unsure of the answer. She took the container of deviled eggs out of the refrigerator and commenced refilling the serving platter’s shallow, egg-shaped indentations.

“This must be hard for you, Tess. I know how complicated your relationship was with your mother-in-law. Or should I say ex-mother-in-law?”

“I never have been sure about that,” Tessa answered ruefully. “When I hear the word ex, I think divorce. But what happens when the son slash husband dies? Does the marriage end and make Fern my ex mother-in-law, or does the marriage not technically dissolve and mean she was still my mother-in-law?”

“Either way, she’s gone now,” Grace said gently. “And it’s kind of you to put on her funeral like this.”

Tessa sighed. “She wasn’t a bad person. She and I were just . . . different.”

Grace laughed quietly as was fitting at a funeral. “She was a royal pain in your side from the day you two met till the day she died.”

Tessa allowed herself a small smile of acknowledgement at Grace’s pithy and entirely true observation. But she’d been taught that one did not speak ill of the dead, particularly at said person’s memorial service.

Tessa carried the reloaded egg tray back into the drafty fellowship hall of the Cobbler Cove Community Church.

Her chic stiletto heels kept catching in the ancient orange rug splayed across the middle of the room like a giant orangutan pelt, and she did her best not to look like a crippled flamingo as she cautiously minced across the treacherous rug to the refreshment table.

Fern might have been a constant aggravation that she wasn’t going to miss, but she was sad Makayla had lost her only real grandparent. Mick Lawrence had been Fern’s only son, the product of a summer fling in Europe, and Fern had raised him alone back here in Cobbler Cove.

Tessa’s parents were alive and well in New York, but they’d disowned her when she came to Montana for a ski vacation, met Mick, and never went back East. They’d never met Makayla, who’d just turned eleven, and she was fine with keeping it that way.

Tessa pasted on a polite smile as Fern’s next door neighbor, Arlo Pickett, came over and announced, “Fern was specific about the potato salad at her memorial, you know.”

“Specific how?” she asked, startled. Although it had been on the menu Fern provided for this party, Fern’s instructions hadn’t included any details about the potato salad.

“She said—and I’m quoting here—‘If anybody brings store-bought potato salad to my funeral, I will haunt them.’” His eyes twinkled behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “She was dead serious about it.”

“Good thing I didn’t bring it, then,” she replied with a genuine smile. “I don’t have the first idea how to make potato salad.”

“It’s all in the right potatoes and cooking ‘em the right way,” he declared. “Fern gave me her recipe twenty years ago, and I’ve been making it for every funeral, potluck, and picnic in this valley since. If anyone complains about it, you send ’em to me.”

Was she somehow in charge of potato salad complaints, now? She was barely in charge of herself today.

This morning, she’d stood in front of her closet and debated what to wear for longer than she cared to admit. Normally, she was at ease with and decisive about fashion. She had unerring instincts for choosing the right clothing and accessories for any occasion.

But this morning she’d blanked out as she stared at her closet.

Should she wear a black dress to the funeral because Fern was sort of her mother-in-law and black would be respectful?

Or should she wear something bright and colorful because Fern had despised black and she should honor Fern’s taste?

She eventually settled on a dark plum sheath dress with a matching bolero jacket.

But she tucked a silk scarf in shades of turquoise, gold, teal, and purple in her purse in case everyone else at the funeral went full technicolor rainbow for Fern, who’d been proud to call herself the town’s token hippie.

Then Tessa had to make the whole decision again standing in front of Makayla’s closet. Not only did her daughter lack a wide selection of funeral-appropriate clothes, but Makayla had shot up in height the past few months and half her wardrobe didn’t fit any more.

And that had been before breakfast.

Now, standing in the fellowship hall in her plum dress and pearls, she was trying very hard to be the composed, gracious hostess her mother had raised her to be.

The kind of woman who said the right things to put others at ease, who accepted condolences with a gentle smile, who didn’t give any hint of the uncomfortable friction that had characterized her relationship with Fern.

Makayla appeared at her elbow, holding a cup of punch in both hands and looking like a miniature socialite in her navy dress with the white Peter Pan collar, matching headband, and black patent leather Mary Jane shoes.

“Mom, there’s a man outside with a horse. Can I go see them?”

“We’re at a funeral, Makayla..”

“He’s right outside. I’ll still technically be at the funeral.”

Tessa glanced across the room to where several of her best friends, fellow widows from the fire that took Mick, were gathered near the food table.

Charlotte caught her eye and gave a little wave.

Grace was readjusting the display of pastries she’d made in her bakery and donated today.

Molly was deep in conversation with someone Tessa didn’t recognize, and Bonnie was doing her best to prevent her twins from turning a coat rack into a jungle gym.

These women—her women, her Worn-out Widows Sisterhood—had showed up in force today.

Not because any of them had been close to Fern, but because that’s what people did in Cobbler Cove.

They showed up. They brought casseroles.

They made sure the bereaved weren’t alone in a drafty fellowship hall with a plate of deviled eggs and a daughter who was more interested in a farrier than a funeral.

“Fine,” Tessa relented. “Stay where I can see you from the window. And don’t pet the horse without asking.”

Makayla was gone before Tessa finished the sentence. She envied her daughter’s escape from the roomful of Fern’s friends, most elderly and mostly as cussed as Fern.

Tessa made her way toward the coffee pot.

She needed caffeine right now like she needed oxygen.

The week since Fern’s death had been a blur of phone calls, funeral arrangements, and the growing, gnawing suspicion that her former mother-in-law’s passing was about to complicate her life in ways she couldn’t yet fully see.

The will reading was tomorrow. The lawyer had called her twice to confirm she’d be there. Both times, his voice had held a note of something she couldn’t quite identify. Pity? Warning?

Whatever Fern did, you can handle it.

She poured herself a cup of coffee so strong it could strip paint and took a sip. It was terrible. She drank it anyway.

“You must be Tessa.”

She turned to find a tall, broad-shouldered man, holding a battered tan cowboy hat against his chest like a shield.

He had the kind of face that belonged on the side of a feed store—square jaw, sun-weathered skin, eyes the color of bright Montana sky.

His dark hair was slightly too long, curling over his collar, and he wore clean jeans and a pressed button-down that looked like it had been ironed with great reluctance.

He’d cleaned up for the funeral. She could tell because his boots, while polished, had a crescent of dried mud along the sole seam that polish couldn’t quite reach.

“I’m Dillon Steele,” he said. “I was Fern’s vet.”

“Her veteran?” Tessa asked blankly.

“Her veterinarian.”

Ahh. Right. Fern’s menagerie of misfit animals no one else would take. Aloud, she said politely, “Of course. Thank you for coming.” She extended her hand the way her mother had trained her—firm grip, eye contact, smile.

His hand was rough and warm and approximately twice the size of hers.

“Fern was a good woman,” he said. “A pain in the rear, but good.”

Tessa blinked. Nobody at funerals where she came from would dare speak ill of the dead. Nor would they show up in muddy boots and insult a dead woman with easy affection, either. But truth be told, both seemed imminently fitting for Fern’s memorial.

“She was a good person,” Tessa agreed carefully.

His gaze traveled over her with the same clinical assessment she imagined he used on livestock. She bristled. Had he just looked at her the way he’d look at a horse?

“You’re the daughter-in-law from New York City,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“I live in Cobbler Cove, actually. I’ve been here over a decade.”

“Huh.” He glanced at her pearls, heels, and handbag, which admittedly cost more than some of the trucks in the parking lot. “Could’ve fooled me.”

The words landed with a casual precision. He wasn’t being rude, exactly. He was being honest in that blunt, infuriating way people around here tended to be. As if tact was a foreign concept they’d never warmed up to.