Second Chance Spring Read online

  Also by Delancey Stewart

  Mr. Match

  Scoring a Soulmate, a Mr. Match Novella

  Singletree

  Happily Ever His

  Happily Ever Hers

  Shaking the Sleigh

  Second Chance Spring

  Falling Into Forever

  Watch for more at Delancey Stewart’s site.

  Second Chance Spring

  Singletree Book 4

  Delancey Stewart

  I’m releasing this book into the world at a scary time… I hope a little bit of humor and levity will help shine a light into these dark days.

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  My Guilt is Organic

  Paige

  The late April rain was pouring down in buckets, sheeting my car and making it nearly impossible to see out the windshield. I squinted and leaned over the steering wheel like an old woman, shouting into the car’s speakerphone. “I’m on my way, Mom, I promise. I’m sorry I’m late.” I swallowed hard and said it before she had a chance: “Again.”

  “You be careful out there, young lady. That rain is torrential right now.” My mother’s voice filled the dark car, and though she sounded annoyed, I was still happy for the company. I hated driving in the pouring rain at night. There were no streetlights in this part of our small town, and the low clouds and rain didn’t help with visibility. Mom went on, laying it on thick as only she could do. “Don’t rush just because you’re nearly an hour late for family dinner.”

  “Mom, you don’t have to pile on the guilt. I come by it naturally.”

  “Good. I’d hate to think I raised you to believe it’s perfectly acceptable to be an hour late to a family dinner.”

  I sighed as my hands gripped the wheel, both out of frustration and for better control. “Do you want me to rush or to be careful, Mom?” I guided my little car through a traffic circle and then signaled to turn into Mom’s neighborhood.

  “Be careful, for goodness sakes. And try to do it in a speedy fashion.” Standard Lottie logic. “The pot pie’s getting cold. Why do you have to work so late?”

  “I told you to go ahead and eat without me!” Frustration sent my hand into my hair, pushing my bangs back off my face as I pulled to a stop at the curb in front of Mom’s colonial cottage. “I’m here. I’ll be at the door in a sec.”

  The door of the brick-fronted house opened not two seconds later, and Mom’s rotund figure appeared in the glow from within, holding her phone to her ear as she peered out at the car through the water sheeting down.

  I switched off the engine and sighed. Having Mom in my life was a blessing, and the woman loved me fiercely. But sometimes I wondered if it wouldn’t be freeing to have Mom love me just a little less fiercely. Or maybe just as fiercely, but from a greater distance.

  I pulled my keys from the ignition, grabbed my purse, and made a dash for the front door. Lottie stopped me just outside under the little overhang. “You’re soaked! Remind me to give you an old umbrella I’ve got before you go tonight.”

  I shook the rain from my hair and arms and removed my shoes as I stepped inside. “I have an umbrella, Mom.” It was on the passenger seat in my car. It just hadn’t made sense to go to the trouble of opening it up for a fifteen-foot walk.

  “Then remind me to teach you what those are used for. We must’ve skipped that when you were little.”

  “Good to see you, Mom.” I pulled my mother into a hug, and felt her relax.

  “You too, Paigey. Come in. Your sister’s waiting.” Mom stepped back and led the way to the dining room.

  “Hey,” Amberlynn waved from the table, where she sat with a half-full glass of red wine and an expression somewhere between relieved and irritated. “Took you long enough.”

  “You didn’t have to wait,” I said. I’d made that clear to my mother when I’d called from the clinic an hour ago to let her know I was going to be late. Right before I scarfed the fries left over from my lunch and chased it with a vanilla latte supplied by my ever-adored physician’s assistant. Though Leslie’s job in no way meant she was actually supposed to act like my actual assistant, the fact that we were best friends made her a great asset at work.

  The clinic where I worked was usually calm and my hours weren’t overwhelming at all, but now and then we had a crazy day. And those days always seemed to coincide with my mother’s dinners.

  “Sit down, for Heaven’s sake. Let’s eat. This pot pie is undoubtedly a gelatinous disaster inside a crust at this point.” Mom put the pie down on the table, pursing her lips and shaking her head, making her spray-frozen bob brush her shoulders on each side.

  “Well, when it sounds so appetizing,” I said.

  “Don’t sit yet, Paige,” Amberlynn said, her voice low.

  “I thought you were starving.”

  “Just thought you would want some wine before the inquisition begins.” Amberlynn pointed to the kitchen just beyond the table.

  “Oh please,” Mom said as I ducked past her to pour myself a glass of wine.

  “Mom? You want?” I raised the bottle and looked over my shoulder.

  Mom sighed dramatically. “Well if we’re all going to behave like lushes tonight, I guess I’d better. Are you planning to stay over then, Paigey?”

  I returned to the table with the bottle. “Mom, one glass with food before I go home in two hours should be fine.”

  My mother raised an eyebrow, but put up no further argument, and I poured myself a glass much less generous than I would have without the presence of the judgy eyebrow.

  “The pot pie is great, Mom,” I said around my first bite. It was. And it was miles away from the usual protein shakes and cereal dinners I made for myself.

  “Oh, you’re just saying that.” Mom waved a hand and pretended the compliment wasn’t absolutely required at Sunday dinner.

  “Of course she is, Mom. You’d be annoyed if one of us didn’t say it.” Amberlynn took another big bite, and through a full mouth added, “though she’s completely right. This is amazing.”

  We talked about her cafe on the town square in downtown Singletree, which she had recently renamed and had a huge sign made for, and about Amberlynn’s job at the high school. And then all eyes turned to me, and I gave as brief a summary of my work at the family clinic where I was a general practitioner as I could. It turned out that hearing about scads of kids with runny noses and coughs didn’t make for great conversation, and as busy as I always was at work, very little changed in the small-town practice I ran.

  “And did you treat any handsome men today, Paigey?” Mom looked ever hopeful as she brought up her favorite topic and Amberlynn grinned expectantly. Since my younger sister was engaged and my older sister had escaped to New York City, they were rarely the subject of Mom’s matchmaking meddling at this point. But in my aging and clearly withering state as a divorcee at almost thirty-one, I was dead in the crosshairs.

  “That would be a no.” Not that I would have been excited about the idea of dating a patient, but at this point, if a good-looking single man happened to wander through the clinic doors, I wouldn’t send him to the other family practice across town.

  “You have to get over Adam,” Mom said sadly, shaking her head and folding her small hands over her generous middle.

  “Mom, stop that!” I half laughed, half snorted. “We are not grieving my marriage. I was married less than a year and the whole thing was clearly a mistake.”

  “The wedding was so beautiful,” Mom said sadly.


  “Turns out marriage is about a lot more than the actual ceremony,” Amberlynn said through a mouthful of peas and carrots. “Don’t think Adam got the memo.”

  This was not my favorite topic, but it was practically a requirement of Sunday dinner to rehash my short-lived marriage to my high-school boyfriend. The fact we’d stayed together as I’d gone off for college and medical school made Adam seem loyal and true. I should have known that no red-blooded eighteen-year-old male would agree to wait for eight years for regular sex. It turned out Adam wasn’t waiting. He was waiting for me, don’t get me wrong—he just hadn’t realized that monogamy was an expectation of marriage. It was easy to cover his dalliances when we were both away at school, but it turned out to be tougher to do when we shared a house in a small town like Singletree, Maryland.

  Adam was not a bad guy. But he was not husband material, and the entire experience had made me feel like I’d wasted the best years of my life with one man who didn’t deserve me in the end. Now I was over thirty and still getting grilled about my prospects over Sunday dinners. I imagined these same dinners in the future—seeing myself as a sixty-five-year-old woman, getting interrogated by my ninety-year old mother.

  I sighed, finishing the meal and pushing my plate away. “Let’s not rehash all that tonight,” I suggested hopefully.

  Mom shook her head and finished her meal, sipping her wine. “Amberlynn, I’m just glad you and Wiley both understand the commitment you’re making.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut to keep from rolling them. Wiley was a great guy, and I knew Amberlynn had found one of the good ones, but I didn’t want to play the comparison game or hear about my sister’s wedding plans—for the ninetieth time—tonight.

  “He’s great, Mom, and I think we’ll be good. We’ve talked about everything. We should be fine. Happy, I hope.”

  I gave Amberlynn a reassuring smile. I didn’t want to take one second away from her happy ending just because I didn’t get one of my own, though it seemed like there was something behind her forceful assertion that they would be happy. “You guys will be fine,” I said softly.

  “So,” my sister said, rising to clear the table. She smiled sweetly at Mom and then we both carried plates into the kitchen. “Did you tell Mom you’re moving yet?”

  I glared at her and looked back to make sure Mom hadn’t heard.

  “So that’s a no, I guess.”

  “Not yet. It’s not a sure thing.” I set the dishes on the counter and opened the dishwasher, and my sister and I fell into our routine, her rinsing plates and handing them to me to put inside the racks. “I told them I’d need a few weeks to think about the offer.”

  Amberlynn nodded. We’d talked at length already about the job offer I’d gotten from a clinic in Baltimore. It would be a bigger practice in a bigger place—and would hopefully represent bigger opportunities for me. Both as a physician and as a woman who might like to meet someone besides the handful of single men still in the small Maryland town where I grew up. “I’ll miss you if you go, sis.”

  I stopped moving for a minute and looked at my sister, brushing a strand of her long blond hair back over her shoulder as she rinsed dishes. “I’ll miss you too.”

  We finished up and I kissed my mom and sister good night, and then drove home to my own quiet cottage. This was the life I’d built, and it was good. I had everything I needed. I had a family that loved me, a dog to greet me at the door when I came home. I was successful and healthy. So why didn’t I feel happy?

  Rocks are not Nutritionally Balanced

  Cormac

  “Here’s a snack. And here’s a snack. And you can have this one, and this one.” My older daughter, Taylor, had never met a rock she didn’t like, and every single one of the tiny pieces of gravel that filled the Singletree Park playground evidently seemed a perfect snack for her three-year old sister Madison to her. She was filling up Maddie’s upturned shirt with rock after rock. “You can eat these before dinner,” she told her sister. Madison stared up at her big sister with adoring eyes filled with trust.

  “Or maybe we just save them for later,” I suggested, deciding I’d better intervene before Sunday night turned into a fun-filled night of emergency room visiting. “Rocks don’t taste good and they’re not easy on the teeth. Also, your body can’t digest them.” I reached down and helped Madison smooth the front of her shirt, letting all the little pebbles fall back to the ground.

  Madison looked relieved.

  “Taylor, it’s your job to look out for your little sister,” I said, squatting down to look into the deep serious eyes of my older daughter. They reminded me so much of her mother’s eyes that I actually had to fight off the choke that rose in my throat every time she looked at me a certain way. “You know she can’t eat rocks, but she might not know that.”

  A small crease appeared between Taylor’s eyebrows—also like her mother, and I swallowed hard. “I have to be the mommy now.” The deep liquid pools of my daughter’s beautiful eyes at once revealed the deep misery she felt over losing her mother, and the strong sense of responsibility she’d managed to take on at only seven.

  “No, Sweetie. You have to be a little girl. Your job is to play and have fun, but you do have to look out for your little sister and help her get bigger like you.” I tried to keep my voice upbeat.

  “But she needs a mommy,” Taylor said, and the crack in her voice matched the one deep in my heart. Despite the warmth of the sunny Sunday afternoon, despite the glorious sunshine, brilliant green trees and fresh-cut grass, I was having trouble remaining positive.

  “She has everything she needs in her daddy and her big sister,” I told my serious older daughter. “Now go up in the crow’s nest and see if you spot any pirates. I thought I heard cannons a second ago.” I turned to address Madison too, who’d been watching our conversation thoughtfully while testing a small rock with her teeth. I took it from her and shook my head. “We don’t eat rocks,” I said.

  Madison grinned and leaned into me, tucking her small head beneath my chin and nearly bursting my wounded heart. She always had a knack for knowing when I needed a hug or a little snuggle. She pressed her tiny body into mine and I stood up, holding her in my arms.

  “Are you going to go up with your sister and look for pirates?” I pointed to the highest point on the playground, which was a fantastic wooden structure made with wide planks and ropes to look like a castle or—to some kids—a ship. There were two towers, more slides than I could easily count, and plenty of things to play on in between. Was it wrong that I felt slightly jealous my home town had never had such a cool playground?

  “Pi-wats.” Maddie wiggled in my arms and I put her down, her feet already moving to carry her up to where her sister was using one of the big plastic telescopes mounted on top to search for pirates.

  I watched Maddie climb, then sighed and sank back down onto the bench where I’d been sitting. For another twenty minutes, I watched the girls play and tried to feel grateful for the old-fashioned goodness my adopted home town embodied. Singletree was as safe a place as you could get, made up of wide streets with big old trees arching above and beaches lining the land where it met the Chesapeake. People were kind and generous, and it was the kind of place that had hayrides and corn mazes in fall, and a cherry blossom festival in the spring. It was the kind of place I’d always wished I had grown up.

  It was the kind of place my wife had grown up.

  And now she was gone.

  Linda had actually grown up somewhere along the Gulf, but Singletree, Maryland was our adopted home. She’d found the place on a business trip—she was a travel writer and had been scouting quaint inns along the Chesapeake—and we’d moved not long after. I was an accountant and could work from just about anywhere, so I set up a home office in the house we bought, got a tiny office with a partner in town, and together we began our perfect family.

  But perfect was a myth, and one I would never buy into again. Linda had died four years later
, suddenly and unfathomably. And now I was a single father, living in the quintessential American small town where no one was ever alone. And I’d never been lonelier.

  “Daddy, I told Maddie she can’t fly, but she won’t listen!”

  I shot up, my blood going cold, bounding to the top of the play structure, where Madison was trying to wrestle her short legs over the side of the highest point, her small hands scrabbling on the sides of the structure.

  “I can fly! Like a angel!”

  I pulled Maddie from the side of the turret, crushing her to me as my heart raced. The talk of angels had started when Linda died. Maddie had been so young when she’d passed that she didn’t really remember her mother, but Taylor had misty memories, and she’d decided to think of her as an angel now, sharing her vision with her sister and peppering me with questions about angels at every turn.

  “Let’s go home, guys.” I descended the structure with Madison in my arms. She’d stopped struggling and had relaxed against my shoulder, and I envied her the exhausted sleep I knew would hit her as soon as she was in the wagon we’d towed from home.

  Taylor refused to come down for five minutes as I wheedled while staring up at her, searching for the one thing that would keep me from having to march back up. I understood her emotions, a mix of frustration over not being the one who got carried and general seven-year old angst, but eventually the promise that she could make the noodles for dinner brought her down.

  Together, the three of us started along the sidewalk for home, pausing to watch as a horse and carriage clip-clopped by on the street next to the park, carrying an Amish family within. There was something so reassuring about seeing them, tucked into their little carriage—it made me realize that not all things had to be done immediately, that it was okay to take our time.