There was one shadow of worry in Cait’s eyes. “The baby?”
“Family, too,” Dad told her. He was smiling, a half quirk of his mouth. “A gift, Caitlyn.” He said it quietly, in a way that brought a lump to Trevor’s throat.
Cait lit up. String of Christmas lights bright. “Cool,” she declared. “This is so, utterly cool.”
“Of course, you are two hours past your curfew,” Molly remarked thoughtfully, then cackled. Totally evil, and kind of funny.
Cait pummeled her, and next thing Trevor knew Dad was sitting on the coffee table holding Molly’s hand, and Trevor had sprawled on the sofa beside Cait.
He had this strange sensation, sort of out-of-body. Not looking down on them all, but more…seeing past and present and future, and knowing that as much as he loved his mother, he’d never felt as if either of his stepdads were family, not the way this felt. Somehow he knew that, from now on, this was home.
Dad and Molly, Cait and him and their new baby sister or brother. Maybe Bree sometimes—she’d be here next week.
He took a breath, and saw Christmas Day this year and next and next, and he met Cait’s eyes and knew she saw the same picture and she was right. Utterly cool.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt of The Road to Bayou Bridge by Liz Talley!
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CHAPTER ONE
August 2012
Naval Station, Rota, Spain
THE PAPER ACTUALLY SHOOK in Darby Dufrene’s hand—that’s how shocked he was by the document he’d discovered in a box of old papers. He’d been looking for the grief book he’d made as a small child and instead had found something that made his gut lurch against his ribs.
“Dude, come on. The driver needs to go.” Hal Severson’s voice echoed in the half-full moving truck parked below the flat Darby had shared with the rotund navy chaplain for the past several years. His roommate had waited semi-good-naturedly while Darby climbed inside to grab the book before it was shipped to Seattle, but good humor had limits.
“Just a sec,” Darby called, his eyes refusing to leave the elaborate font of the certificate he’d pulled from a clasped envelope trapped in the back of his Bayou Bridge Reveille yearbook. How in the hell had this escaped his attention? Albeit it had been buried in with some old school papers he’d tossed aside over ten years ago and vowed never to look at again, surely the state of Louisiana seal would have permeated his brain and screamed, Open me!
Yet, back then he’d been in a funk—a childish, rebellious huff of craptastic proportions. He probably hadn’t thought about much else except the pity party he’d been throwing himself.
The moving truck’s engine fired and a loud roar rumbled through the trailer, vibrating the wood floor. The driver was eager to pick up the rest of his load, presumably a navy family heading back to the States, and his patience with Darby climbing up and digging through boxes already packed was also at an end. Darby slid the certificate back into its manila envelope, tucked it into his jacket and emerged from the back end of the truck.
Hal’s red hair glinted in the sunlight spilling over the tiled roof, and his expression had evoled to exasperation. The man was hungry. Had been hungry for hours while the movers slowly packed up Darby’s personal effects and scant pieces of furniture, and no one stood between Hal and his last chance to dine in El Puerto de Santa Maria, the city near the Rota Naval Base, with his best comrade. “Let’s go already. Saucy Terese and her crustacean friends await us.”
“Not Il Caffe di Roma, Hal. I don’t want to look into that woman’s eyes and wonder if she might greet me with a filet knife.”
“You ain’t that good, brother,” Hal said in a slow Oklahoma drawl. “She’ll find someone else on which to ply her wiles when the new guy arrives.”
“You mean the new guy whose name is Angela Dillard?”
“The new JAG officer’s a girl?”
Darby smiled. “Actually she’s a woman.”
Hal jingled his keys. “Entendido.”