Carolina Mist Read Online Free PDF Page A

time, she decided to follow an impulse and venture out for a rare afternoon walk.
    Abby stopped to purchase an ice cream cone from a sidewalk vendor before idly wandering with no particular destination in mind. It had been days since she had left her apartment, and she savored the fresh air, filled with the crisp promise of deepening autumn. The leaves that peppered the sidewalks leading through Rittenhouse Square rustled in the light October breeze and crunched beneath her feet. She sat on a bench in the sun to lick at the strawberry streams that slid down the sides of the cone.
    She had never, she suddenly realized, really known this city she had called home for the past nine years. In four years of college and five years of working and living on her own, she had never made the time to explore its haunts or its historical treasures, had never found its heart. Abby’s sole focus had been her career. Period. She had never developed friendships, had never made a social life to speak of. There was no one even to say good-bye to, no one to care that she was leaving. She had had few women friends in college, fewer still at the office. Those she had known at White-Edwards always seemed to view her as an oddity. She was the one who always worked late and took unfinished items home to work on even later. She would work on weekends, rarely sparing time for a night out except for those few occasions when one man or another had managed to get close enough to ask her out. No one had interested her enough for her to see more than a few times. Certainly, none of them had lit so much as a spark in her.
    Memories of her sixteenth summer tugged playfully to be recalled. As if she had forgotten the summer she and Alex Kane had discovered each other as more than childhood playmates. They had spent hours biking along the back roads, winding slowly through the fields and woodlands, taking their time, talking about school, their dreams, their futures. Alex would be a lawyer, a criminal defense lawyer, a true Perry Mason. Abby would be an artist, painting the Carolina countryside and finding fame and fortune in the pricey galleries in New York City. And always they would return to Primrose—and each other. They had taken long walks along the river, holding hands and learning how to kiss. They had acknowledged their everlasting love for each other that summer and had experimented with more than kissing before the second week in August arrived and, with it, Abby’s parents.
    Abby dragged the toe of one shoe through the hard dust in front of the park bench. That was the last truly happy t ime of my life, she thought.
    She tried to recall which of them had been the first to stop writing, but she could not be certain. She had auditioned for and won the lead in the junior play that fall, and Alex, as starting quarterback for his high school football team, had had a busy season. Before too long, it was June, and she had anxiously counted the days until they would meet in Primrose. It had never occurred to her that a time would come when he would not be there for her in summer.
    How bizarre, she thought with a wry smile. Alex set the standard by which I’ve judged kissing since I was sixteen, and he’s never been bested.
    Not that I’ve had much time for such things, she reminded herself as she stood and started across the square. I imagine that romance can take one’s focus from one’s goal. Working hard, getting ahead, is the only way to attain security. If my father had worked more and played less, things would have been different.
    But, ever the gambler, Harold McKenna had played fast and loose with the market for eighteen months. Confident that his latest little deal would turn a huge and speedy profit, he had invested every dime he had, as well as far too many he’d borrowed, and had lost everything. On the heels of Harold’s sudden financial decline—the news of which Harold had not yet shared with his wife and daughter— death had