Harper Rivers ran along the shoulder of the narrow, twisting country road, the rising sun at her back and the broad Hudson lazily flowing to her left across a half mile of freshly plowed floodplain. The brisk early summer breeze cooled the sweat on the back of her neck, and the aroma of tilled earth burgeoning with life teased her senses. Her skin tingled with the pulse of blood through her veins, and the crisp air filling her lungs chased away the lingering exhaustion from a sleepless night. The rhythmic thump-thump-thump of her Sauconys on the cracked blacktop kept pace with her pounding heart, and her mind slowly emptied of everything except the inevitable joy that came with the resurgence of spring. She slowed as a pickup overtook her from behind and waved as the driver blew his horn before she turned down a crushed-gravel drive, wide enough for two good-sized tractors to pass, bordered on either side by apple and pear trees, their leaves a vibrant green and the first blush of blossoms glistening on the tangled boughs. A half mile ahead, a stately white country house reminiscent of a Southern plantation home with a pillared two-story front porch sat on a hill above the river. Smoke curled from one of the four stone chimneys, carrying the sweet, yeasty scent of baking bread from the kitchen hearth. She angled away from the flagstone walk leading to the formal front entrance, followed the winding rough stone path around the side of the portico to the rear of the house, and bounded up the broad wooden steps to the wide-planked rear porch. Just as she reached the screen door, a voice from inside greeted her.

“Don’t come in here with those muddy shoes, Harper Lee Rivers.”

“Yes, Mama,” Harper said as she always did in response to the familiar order. She toed off her running shoes, left them by the door, and walked in her socks into her mother’s domain. The kitchen, the informal meeting room for the entire family and most visitors, stretched almost the entire length of the rear of the home, dominated by a fifteen-foot-long timber table that had been carved from the hickory trees that once dominated the hilly profiles of upland New York farms. The rough-hewn wood had been worn down by decades of pots and dishes sliding across its surface and the vigorous polishing of generations of Rivers wives and children. The appliances had been updated, but everything else about the kitchen was as it had once been when the home was built 250 years before. The counters were of the same dark red-brown hickory as the table, the long thin grain interrupted here and there by darker knots and whorls. Hand-cut beams bearing the square scars of the axman’s blade supported the white board ceiling, and gray-green flagstone formed the entrance floor adjacent to the oak floorboards. An open hearth, four feet square and just as deep, held an early morning fire to chase away the chill.

Her mother pulled a pan of biscuits from the double-stacked oven and slid it with practiced efficiency onto a stone trivet on the wood counter. Harper made a fast grab for one and just as quickly snatched her hand back when her mother swatted at her with a wooden spoon.

“You know they’re best when they’ve cooled a little. Sit and drink your coffee.”

Harper pulled out a straight-backed wood chair with a leather seat shaped to comfort by decades of occupants, plopped down at the table in her usual place, and stretched her legs toward the hearth.

“You’re up early,” her mother said, sliding a mug of coffee in front of her. She regarded Harper with the direct gaze guaranteed to make Harper squirm when she was keeping something secret, although she hadn’t had secrets in a long time. At least none that her mother needed to know about. She tried hard not to fidget and searched her memory for a forgotten birthday or a missed family gathering. Ida Rivers was big on meeting family obligations.

“Or,” her mother went on, “have you not been to bed at all?”

Relaxing now that she realized she hadn’t committed a family sin, Harper sipped the strong black coffee and gave a sigh of contentment. The run and the familiar scents and sights of her mother’s kitchen drained away the lingering twists of tension from the last few hours. “Mary Campbell decided to deliver a little early. Her labor took most of the night.”

“First times can be like that. Everybody doing all right?” Her mother sounded interested despite having undoubtedly heard the same story in countless ways from Harper’s father over the last thirty years. Maybe truly caring helped make up for all the times Harper’s father hadn’t been around when her mother would have liked him to be.

“Everybody’s fine, including Tim. I thought for a while I’d have to get him a bed next to Mary’s.”

Ida laughed. “First-time fathers. Worse than the mothers by a long shot.”

“You got that right.” Harper grinned, leaned over, and snagged a biscuit without getting swatted this time. “I saw that Dad’s SUV is gone. I thought he wasn’t going to take night calls anymore.”

Ida huffed. “Yes, and we won’t be planting the lower forty again either.”

Harper nodded as she buttered the flakey biscuit. Neither was likely to happen in her lifetime. Her father was an old-time country physician, just like she was, and if the call came, it went against the grain to tell the patient to go to the emergency room. Not when all it meant was getting out of bed, pulling on a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt, kicking into boots, and driving through the quiet country night with the company of the deer and possum and raccoons who appeared in the headlights, stared for a moment as if questioning why you were intruding on their domain, and bounded off into the underbrush with a dismissive swish of a tail. Those moments were among the most peaceful she’d ever known. Why would she pass those up while denying her patients the care of a doctor who knew them, and whom they trusted, at the same time?

“I told him I’d take his calls. I know all his patients.”

“You ought to—you’ve been going out with him since you were ten.”

“So you work on him—he’s earned a full night’s sleep.”

Ida speared her with a glance. “You think you’ll be ready to turn your patients over to someone else in another twenty-five years?”

“Okay, maybe not.” Harper didn’t think of medicine as a job, but as a responsibility, one she’d wanted since the first time she’d rode beside her father in the front seat of a Ford pickup with his big battered black bag between them, making house calls. She loved being greeted at the door by a friend or neighbor who opened their home to her and put their life in her hands because they trusted her. What she did mattered, and in her heart of hearts, she didn’t think anyone else could do it as well. Except her father. “Maybe I can get him to cross-cover with me now and then. At least he’ll get a few nights off that way.”

“You suggest it, and I’ll work on him.” Ida wiped down the counter with a damp dish towel and asked casually, “How are things at the hospital?”

Harper went on alert. Her mother didn’t do casual. She wasn’t a big talker, unlike her father, who could carry on a conversation with anyone, including strangers in the market, about any topic for seemingly endless lengths of time. Her mother was direct, perceptive, and the power to be reckoned with at home.

“Fine, as far as I know,” Harper said. “Is there something I don’t know about that I should?”

Ida turned and rested her slender hips against the counter in front of the five-foot-long cast-iron country sink. She and Harper were built the same, tall and lanky, slender in the hips and long in the leg. Even their hair color was the same, a brown so dark it looked black in low light. Harper’s hands were like hers too, long slim strong fingers. Right now Harper’s fingers were clenched around the steaming white porcelain mug. Her mother’s blue eyes, almost indigo like Harper’s, shimmered with…worry?

Harper’s shoulders tightened. Her mother was never wrong about something being wrong. Her mother had known when Harper’s sister Kate had been ill, even when no one, including Harper’s father and all his colleagues, could pin down why she suddenly wasn’t eating and was losing weight. And when the leukemia had finally surfaced, there’d been no way to stop it. Harper shook off the memory of saying good-bye to Kate in the bedroom next to hers. “What?”

“Your father.”

Stomach in free fall, Harper pushed the chair back and sat up straight. “What, is he sick? He hasn’t said anything to me.”

Ida waved a hand. “He’s healthy as a horse. But something’s worrying at him. He’s been pacing at night, doesn’t sleep even when he has the chance, and he’s had a couple phone calls that have clearly upset him, but he isn’t talking about it.”

“Is it money?”

“Not unless he’s suddenly taken up gambling.”

Harper snorted. Her father had two interests in life—medicine and his family. He didn’t have time for anything else and had never shown any inclination to change that. She admired him for his dedication to both and hoped that one day she would do as well, heading both the hospital, after her father retired as chief of staff, and a family, when she met the right woman to settle down with.

“Things are busy,” Harper said. “ER traffic has picked up now that the weather has broken, and we’re getting more tourists coming into the area. Other than that, I don’t know of anything at the hospital that might be bothering him.”

“Well then,” her mother said as tires crunched on the gravel outside, “whatever it is, I suspect we’ll know soon enough.”

Harper listened to the familiar sound of her father’s footsteps returning home, uneasiness settling in her middle. Her mother was never wrong about something being wrong.

*

Presley grabbed her roller bag off the carousel and pushed her way through the sparse pack of fellow travelers toward the airport exit. Three men in off-the-rack suits, white shirts, and dark ties held cardboard placards in front of them. One, a sandy-haired, florid-faced man in his early forties, held one with her name scrawled in black marker across it. She walked to him and he greeted her with a broad smile.

“Ms. Worth?”

“Yes.” She barely managed not to snarl. There’d been no first-class cabin, and the plane had been small and cramped and the service nonexistent. She’d managed a cup of coffee that tasted like lukewarm instant and a bag of nuts for breakfast. “How far is it?”

“About forty-five minutes.” He took the handle of her bag and headed for the exit. “Not much traffic out that way, so we’ll make good time.”

“Fine.” She followed along beside him into a sunlit morning. The air was crisp and a good twenty degrees cooler than she was used to at this hour of the morning. That was a bonus, of sorts, and about the only positive thing she’d noticed thus far. The airport was ridiculously small, which explained why she’d had to take two flights to get here. Really. Could she get any farther from civilization?

He led her to a black town car. While he took care of her bag, she climbed into the back and immediately checked her phone. Hopefully he wouldn’t want to chat once he saw she was busy. She scrolled through her several business email addresses and then her personal, sending instructions to her admin on several matters that had come up since the last time she’d checked. Thank God Carrie would be arriving the next day. Between the two of them, they ought to be able to wrap this up quickly.

The sooner they set the groundwork for a transition team to take over, the faster she could do what needed to be done and get out of here. The familiar anger at her brother and his maneuvering surged through her, and she tamped it down. Some battles were not worth fighting, and since he had the support of the board behind him, she’d had no ammunition with which to fight back. So here she was, pushed out of sight for the time being. The sooner she finished off the takeover, the better. Preston was mistaken, though, if he expected her to let him campaign for the CEO position while she was exiled in the ass-end of nowhere.

She glanced out the window at the city, or what there was of one, and discovered it had disappeared. Rolling hills and broad fields bordered the two-lane road. Farmhouses, white or yellow seemed to be the common color, sat along the road or back a distance on narrow dirt drives, the houses generally dwarfed by larger blood-red barns, silos, and a jumble of other buildings. No one had close neighbors. The landscape couldn’t be more different than Phoenix, where the starkly beautiful desert stretched for miles to the foot of the craggy mountain faces. Here, color exploded everywhere: greens in every shade and hue, deep yellows and rich earthy browns, purple-and-white flowers—lilacs, at least she thought they were lilacs—and other plants and flowers she could not name. The dizzying riot of bold colors was annoyingly distracting, and she turned back to her iPhone.