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  PRAISE FOR LIZ TALLEY

  “Talley packs her latest southern romantic drama with a satisfying plot and appealing characters . . . The prose is powerful in its understatedness, adding to the appeal of this alluring story.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Relevant and moving . . . Talley does an excellent job of making her flawed characters vastly more gray than black and white . . . which creates a story of unrequited loves, redeemed.”

  —Library Journal

  “Talley masters making the reader feel hopeful in this second-chance romance . . . You have to read this slow-burning, heart-twisting story yourself.”

  —USA Today

  “This author blends the past and present effortlessly, while incorporating heartbreaking emotions guaranteed to make you ugly cry. Highly recommended.”

  —Harlequin Junkie

  “Liz Talley has written a love story between a mother and daughter that captured me completely. By turns tender and astringent, sexy and funny, heart wrenching and uplifting, Room to Breathe is an escapist and winning story that will carry you away with an imperfect pair of protagonists who just might remind you of someone you know. A delight.”

  —Barbara O’Neal, author of When We Believed in Mermaids

  “There is no pleasure more fulfilling than not being able to turn off the light until you’ve read one more page, one more chapter, one more large hunk of an addictive novel. Liz Talley delivers. Her dialogue is crisp and smart, her characters are vivid and real, her stories are unputdownable. I discovered her with the book The Sweetest September when, in the very first pages, I was asking myself, How’s she going to get out of this one? And of course I was sleep deprived finding out. Her latest, Come Home to Me, which I was privileged to read in advance, is another triumph, a story of a woman’s hard-won victory over a past trauma, of love, of forgiveness, of becoming whole. Laughter and tears spring from the pages—this book should be in every beach bag this summer.”

  —Robyn Carr, New York Times bestselling author

  “Liz Talley’s characters stay with the reader long after the last page is turned. Complex, emotional stories written in a warm, intelligent voice, her books will warm readers’ hearts.”

  —Kristan Higgins, New York Times bestselling author

  “Every book by Liz Talley promises heart, heat, and hope, plus a gloriously happy ever after—and she delivers.”

  —Mariah Stewart, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author

  “Count on Liz Talley’s smart, authentic storytelling to wrap you in southern comfort while she tugs at your heart.”

  —Jamie Beck, author of If You Must Know

  OTHER TITLES BY LIZ TALLEY

  Come Home to Me

  Room to Breathe

  Morning Glory

  Charmingly Yours

  Perfectly Charming

  Prince Not Quite Charming (novella)

  All That Charm

  Third Time’s the Charm

  “A Morning Glory Wedding” (short story)

  Home in Magnolia Bend

  The Sweetest September

  Sweet Talking Man

  Sweet Southern Nights

  New Orleans’ Ladies

  The Spirit of Christmas

  His Uptown Girl

  His Brown-Eyed Girl

  His Forever Girl

  Bayou Bridge

  Waters Run Deep

  Under the Autumn Sky

  The Road to Bayou Bridge

  Oak Stand

  Vegas Two-Step

  The Way to Texas

  A Little Texas

  A Taste of Texas

  A Touch of Scarlet

  Novellas and Anthologies

  The Nerd Who Loved Me

  “Hotter in Atlanta” (short story)

  Cowboys for Christmas with Kim Law and Terri Osburn

  A Wrong Bed Christmas with Kimberly Van Meter

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Amy R. Talley

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542009744

  ISBN-10: 154200974X

  Cover design by David Drummond

  For the friends who have come in all seasons of my life. Whether we are now in touch or not, you each gave a piece of yourself to me and made my life better for it. I’m so grateful for the beauty of friendship.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  Once upon a time . . . in the summer of 1985

  “Code Hot Pink” was the only thing the person on the other end of the phone said before the line went dead.

  Tennyson O’Rourke stared at the harvest-gold handset before hanging it back on the cradle. With five O’Rourke kids in the house, she was lucky she was able to get the message at all. Her sister Bronte had been on the phone for hours with her boyfriend, talking about which girls at the high school were cool and which ones were sluts. If Tennyson heard another “gag me,” she was going to literally, well, gag.

  Code Hot Pink meant one thing—she had to rendezvous.

  Tennyson pulled on her jellies and tried to get her unruly sandy-blonde hair into a scrunchie. Luckily, she’d already brushed her teeth and done her chores.

  “Hey, that’s my scrunchie, you little brat,” Bronte screeched from the hallway, hands fisted at her sides as she came through the living room, heading for Tennyson. Tennyson yelped, flung open the front door, and took off through their front yard. Bronte stood framed in the doorway, her face a mask of rage. “And stop using my nail polish, cretin.”

  “Bye, Bronte,” Tennyson called back in a singsong voice, knowing she’d have to stay out until their mother got home. Tennyson’s mom was getting her classroom ready for the new school year, and the O’Rourke children were on their own until dinnertime.

  She sped around to the backyard, jetting through a split in the chain-link fence toward the grassy area cut by a concrete ditch. They weren’t supposed to play near the culvert when it had been raining because once a little boy had tried to swim in it, and rushing waters had swept him away. Tennyson’s mom had taken a JELL-O salad to his wake, but that was before Tennyson was old enough to remember good. She just remembered her mother crying and the way the green JELL-O had pieces of peach in it.

  The culvert separated her very middle-class neighborhood of Broadmoor from her best friend Melanie Brevard’s upscale one. Most d
ays the girls got together in their meeting spot—a cooler area beneath the shroud of a willow tree—but their summer days of running wild were about to be curtailed by the dreaded first day of fifth grade.

  But that was tomorrow.

  Today they had a Code Hot Pink to deal with.

  When Tennyson arrived at the meeting place, she found Melanie sitting on the broken lawn chair they’d found on the side of the road. In her lap, she held a cardboard box.

  “Hey,” Tennyson said, pulling up the other chair they’d redesigned by bending the legs so it was flat to the ground. She plonked into it. “So what’s the emergency?”

  Melanie looked funny. Like she’d seen something scary. She grudgingly lifted the box she’d been holding like it was a bomb or something. “I thought we’d gotten in the stickers we ordered. I wanted to take them with me tomorrow.”

  “Don’t remind me about tomorrow. I wish you didn’t have to go to St. Ignatius. It’ll be weird going to school without you. Who will calm me down when I see bees?” Tennyson said, taking the box from Melanie.

  She was so allergic to bees.

  On Tuesday, they would start the fifth grade . . . at different schools. Melanie’s parents were making her go to private school because someone had found a condom in the boys’ bathroom at Glenbrook Elementary. Tennyson wasn’t sure exactly what that was, but she’d overheard her mother telling their neighbor about it, and the way her mother had whispered the word made her think it had something to do with s-e-x.

  “I don’t want to go to St. Ignatius, either. Penny loafers and blazers are my worst nightmare.”

  Tennyson turned the box over. “So if this isn’t our stickers, what is it? There’s no name on it.”

  “I don’t know what it is. I mean, I do, but I don’t.” Melanie sounded like she wanted to cry. What could be that bad?

  Tennyson traced the Brevard address with a finger. Her fingernails were painted carnation pink. She’d “borrowed” the polish from Bronte. Her sister pretty much hated her and had told her repeatedly, “Keep your grubby hands off my shit.” Tennyson would have told their mother about Bronte using cuss words, but she knew no one liked a snitch. Melanie was lucky when it came to sisters. Her sister, Hillary, wasn’t mean as a snake like Bronte. Sometimes, Hillary played salon with Tennyson and Melanie, doing their nails and hair.

  But Bronte was a bitch.

  Tennyson opened the flaps of the box, shaking it so the contents fell out into her hand. When she caught what was in the box, she blinked a few times. She rotated the object, taking in every inch, her eyes widening with each second. Then she quickly put it back into the box, closing the flaps emphatically. “Whose is this?”

  Melanie’s lip trembled. “I don’t know. What is it? I mean, is it, um, really bad?”

  “It’s stuff we’re not supposed to mess with.”

  Tennyson knew what it was. Having two older brothers had taught her a lot, and usually she liked knowing things that Melanie didn’t. Her best friend was what Tennyson’s mother liked to call “sheltered.” Melanie didn’t get to listen to rock and roll. Her parents made her listen to Bach and Beethoven. She also had to play the violin, which Melanie hated. Tennyson didn’t think she would mind playing the violin or the piano. Her grandmother had wanted to buy their family a piano so she and Bronte could learn something useful in life, but Tennyson’s mother had said they didn’t have room in the house. Not even for an upright.

  “What do I do with it?” Melanie asked, looking at the box like it was a snake, then looking up at Tennyson with eyes that pleaded for help.

  Thing was, Tennyson wasn’t sure what to do with the box. She wasn’t going to take it back home with her, that was for sure. There was no privacy at her house. Melanie should probably take it back and put it where she’d found it. Then try to forget about it. Or they could toss the box into the culvert right in front of them. But someone else might find it. And the Brevard’s address was on it. “I don’t know . . . yet. Let me think.”

  Melanie set the box away from them.

  Usually a Code Hot Pink wasn’t so . . . serious. Once, Melanie had burned off her bangs with Hillary’s curling iron. Another time, Tennyson had stepped on a nail and had to get a tetanus shot. Oh, and then there was the time Shaun Angelo had found the note they’d passed in math class. But this was . . . serious serious.

  “You know what? Let’s lie out. I want to get some more sun before we start school. That will give us time to think about what to do with”—Tennyson looked over at the box—“that.”

  “I guess so,” Melanie said. They both flipped their T-shirts up and tucked them through their necklines so they looked like Daisy Duke. Then Melanie carefully rolled up her shorts.

  They pulled the chairs out into the sun and sweated in the dry heat for ten minutes, neither saying a thing. Finally, Tennyson pulled her shirt from where she’d tucked it between her nonexistent breasts and sat up. “Did I get any sun on my stomach?”

  Melanie squinted. “Um, I think so?”

  Tennyson frowned down at her red belly poking out over her cutoff jean shorts. She’d probably made the stupid freckles on her cheeks worse. She hated her complexion and had tried all kinds of ways to get rid of what her daddy called her cute “sprinkles,” but nothing worked. Her only chance was God working a miracle, so she whispered a prayer each night along with ten Hail Marys. Her mother had once told her that she had said ten Hail Marys every day when she wanted to have children. It worked, ’cause her mother had had five of them.

  Melanie had darker skin because her mother was Japanese and her father had Indian in him. Not the kind from a different country, but the kind that lived here once upon a time in Louisiana. Melanie had straight, brown hair, skin that was smooth and honey brown, and a birthmark on her thigh in the shape of California. Her daddy was a surgeon, and she had her own bedroom with a canopy bed, a bathroom she didn’t have to share, and a housekeeper named Martha, who made them peanut butter–banana sandwiches while she watched As the World Turns on the television in the kitchen. Yeah, the Brevards had a television in their kitchen.

  Melanie was lucky she was so rich, but Tennyson’s friend didn’t even seem to care that she had been blessed with a boom box, two pairs of Tretorns, and a membership at the country club. And tennis lessons. God, Tennyson would die to have tennis lessons just so she could wear one of those cute white skirts.

  “So did you figure out what to do?” Melanie asked, casting a glance over at the box.

  “Is anyone at your house?”

  “Mother invited some students in Hillary’s new class over for a ‘get to know you’ event. She’s even letting them order Domino’s Pizza. She wants Hilly to be popular and stuff.” Melanie flipped her own shirt down. They’d been trying to get tans for the past few weeks so they would look awesome for school. At Tennyson’s school, fifth grade was in the new wing with the sixth graders. She didn’t want to look like a baby around the sixth-grade boys.

  Tennyson’s stomach growled at the thought of delivery pizza, but before they snuck a few slices, they had to do something with the box. “Good. That means Martha will be distracted.”

  “Why?”

  “I think we have to see exactly what that is before we decide what to do. It may be no big deal, but . . .” Tennyson looked over at the box, wishing Melanie hadn’t brought it to their spot.

  “I think we need some magic,” Melanie whispered, following Tennyson’s line of vision before reaching down and lifting up the cheap silver chain Tennyson had brought back from Silver Dollar City.

  Tennyson’s pappy and nanny had taken Tennyson and her four siblings to Branson last summer. They’d been gone for only five days, but it had been the best five days of Tennyson’s life. They’d eaten hamburgers at a diner counter, taken a tour of stalagmites, and watched some dude blow glass into a vase. She’d strained at the bit to ride the big roller coaster zigging by as they left the saloon where the dancers shook big, ruffled skirts and stol
e her pappy’s ball cap, but after the first exhilarating ride, she’d thrown up on her nanny’s new Keds. Nanny had said no more rides for Tennyson, so instead she’d haunted the gift shops looking for the exact right gift to bring back to Louisiana.

  She’d found the split-heart best-friends necklaces in the General Store, and now she and Melanie wore them every day.

  “Best friends forever,” Tennyson said, lifting her own pendant and fitting it with Melanie’s.

  Melanie sighed like that would fix everything. Her friend was funny. She really believed there was magic between them. That was probably because Tennyson had been able to superglue the Madame Alexander doll together so that Melanie’s mom didn’t find out they’d broken her. They weren’t supposed to play with those dolls because they were collectibles. Not that Tennyson played with dolls anymore.

  No duh.

  Tennyson wished she had something collectible. Her mother had plates from different states mounted on the wall in their cramped kitchen, but that was it. Melanie’s house was not only filled with expensive art but had wall-to-wall carpet and a crystal chandelier in the dining room. Not to mention a game room with an intercom and an Atari console Melanie’s dad had bought them against her mother’s wishes.

  All Tennyson had was a blow-up pool and Scrabble.

  Melanie stood up and stared at the bushes around the dusty culvert that contained a Big Gulp cup someone had tossed into the depths. “I don’t want summer to be over. I don’t want to go to stupid St. Ignatius. I’m scared, Teeny.”

  “It’ll be okay. You can still come hang out with me after school.”

  Melanie shook her head. “Mother says I’ll have to have a tutor because I’m academically behind. I’ll never get to see you.”

  “We can talk on the phone. We can figure anything out.” Tennyson slung an arm around her best friend’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze.

  “Pinkie swear?” Melanie asked, her voice trembly again like she might cry. She lifted and crooked her little finger.

  “Pinkie swear,” Tennyson said, linking her littlest finger with her friend’s. A pinkie swear wasn’t a light thing between her and Melanie. When they pinkie swore, it happened.