Excerpt from Watch Over Me by Nina LaCour, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

And how did it turn out?

Terribly. But I promise to do better this time.

We could have had that conversation—­it would not have been impossible. I would not have told him everything about me, but I would have told him enough. I still would have taken that four-­hour drive up the jagged coastline to be with Terry and Julia and Billy and Liz and Lee and the rest of the children. All I'm saying is it would have been easier had I known.







welcome



From my upstairs bedroom window, I watched for Nick's shiny black car. Once it appeared, I stood and set my cell phone on the windowsill. I didn't expect Amy and Jonathan to keep paying the bill, and there was no service where I was headed anyway. I took one final look at the room from the doorway—­drawers empty now, bed stripped—­and then I went downstairs.

I said goodbye to Amy and Jonathan and promised to send letters as we loaded the little I owned into the trunk.

"I hope the baby is sweet," I said to Amy. Her eyes darted away, but there was nothing for her to feel guilty over. They had let me live in their house for three of the four years I had been in the foster system. They'd given me a nice room and cooked me food and talked with me and bought me everything I needed. It was nobody's fault that we didn't fall in love. They were young and they wanted a baby.

"I mean it," I said.

I climbed into Nick's car and waved goodbye. The finality of it all rose over me. I was leaving. My vision went dark, the world stopped. But then it passed, and I was all right.

*

Five hours later, Nick turned off Highway One and onto an unmarked gravel drive. He avoided potholes for a quarter mile, and slowed as we approached a wide wooden gate.

"For the goats," he said.

He stopped the car, opened the door to climb out, and left the engine running.

It was just before eight o'clock and the sky was pale pink, and I watched through the windshield glass as he unlatched the gate and pulled one side open, then crossed in front of the car to open the other. Behind him was a field and a big wooden barn. Some moss-­covered boulders. Two goats munching grass.

Here I was.

I had made it.

And then he was back in the car, and we rolled forward. When he stopped again, I said, "I'll get it," and I stepped onto the farm for the first time. It was salty and muddy and cold—­even in June—­and I breathed in its newness as I swung the gates closed and latched them shut. When I turned back to the car, I could see a row of small cabins, and past them, a sprawling farmhouse with its lights on, all white and three stories, something from a picture book or an old movie, nothing like any house I'd ever set foot in.

"See that over there?" Nick asked, pointing to a curved, white tent. "That's the flower tunnel. Julia's famous around here for her flowers."

"I can't wait to see everything."

He parked midway down the gravel drive, at the closest point to the cabins, and we walked across the field, Nick with my suitcase, me with my backpack and duffel. The cabins were identical from the outside—­each of them tiny, more sheds than houses—­with small front windows and old brass doorknobs. Some muffled words followed by laughter came from inside the first cabin as we passed it. About twenty paces later we reached the second, which was silent and still. And then after another twenty steps, he stopped in front of the last one.

"Welcome home," Nick said.

He made no move to open the door, so I turned the knob myself. I expected the inside to be dark, but it wasn't. A skylight cut through the middle of the ceiling, casting the room in the same pink glow as outside.

Nick tucked my suitcase just inside the doorway. My shoes were muddy from the field, so I set my backpack and duffel inside without crossing the threshold. I saw a rug, a twin bed with a wrought-­iron frame, a writing desk with a chair, a wood-­burning stove, and a stack of cut wood.

Excerpted from Watch Over Me by Nina LaCour. Copyright © 2020 by Nina LaCour. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher