Smith Where the Road Ends

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-6678-2752-0
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 380 Seiten

'Where the Road Ends' is a gripping tale of healing, growth, and the magic of unexpected love. In this novel, Amanda Watson and her daughter, Lexie, return to Amanda's childhood summer home in Cape May, New Jersey. Amanda is still suffering the sting of her recent divorce and grieving the loss of her beloved aunt. As she adapts to life in Cape May, Amanda realizes that in order to move forward, she must confront and overcome her past.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Smith, Elizabeth

Leseproben

Chapter 1 Amanda Watson rocked back on her heels, trying to get a better look at the tangle of pipes and puddles of water in the cabinet under the chipped white porcelain kitchen sink. She rested her left elbow on her knee, and twirled an earring reflectively as she surveyed the situation. Why was it still dripping? Was something wrong with the trap? Was the water coming from a joint? A cracked pipe? The drain? How long has it been leaking? Did Aunt Tess ever try to fix it herself—or consider having it fixed? From the watermarks on the plywood, it looked as if this particular leak had been a problem for quite a while. Amanda sighed, mentally adding yet one more item to the old house’s ever-growing fix-it list. How was she ever going to sell the house in this condition? Always willing to take on a challenge, Amanda figured there had to be a way to get to the bottom of the problem. Okay, so she wasn’t a plumber. She wasn’t handy the way a tradesman would be, but she was resourceful and wasn’t afraid to take on something new. And she had learned a thing or two from her dad, helping him as he puttered around the house, fixing sticky doors and building bookshelves. She felt confident that she could tackle the sink. In her mind, the leak was simply a problem to be solved: she’d find a way. She had so far, she often reasoned. Hadn’t she found the courage to make it on her own, first after her father died, later in college, and now as a mother. And a newly-divorced single mother at that. Amanda reached under the sink, located the shut-off valve, and gave it a twist. It groaned grudgingly, but finally turned, and the annoying dripping slowed and finally stopped. There was no denying the obvious: this house—beautiful and Victorian though it was—needed to have a lot of time and money invested in it. And Amanda knew she didn’t have much of either one. She considered the scope of work she had noticed since just yesterday afternoon when she and Lexie, her daughter, had pulled into the driveway. Had the house really been this bad last fall when she had come to Cape May to care for Aunt Tess? Amanda had been too busy chasing her toddler and tending to her ailing and much-beloved aunt to take notice. But now the much-needed repairs were painfully obvious. Carpentry problems ranged from creaky stairs and broken shutters to rotting boards on the porch. The roof looked like slate, and its poor condition was the likely cause of the watermarks on many of the plaster ceilings. The house would need rewiring, too—what else would make the lights in the parlor dim every time the vacuum ran? Not to mention the myriad maintenance items that go along with home ownership in general: hot water heaters, oil burners, termite inspections, tax bills. And the occasional leaking kitchen sink. The most sensible thing to do would be to carefully pack up a few favorite items from the house—the painting over the mantle being one of them—and prepare herself for the inevitable: returning the realtor’s call. Carter James had certainly wasted no time. In fact, she and Lexie were home in Pittsburgh less than 24 hours when the eager young man had phoned, asking when she’d like to list the house. And the truth was that unloading it as quickly as possible was her only realistic option. Yes, the stately home was her unmarried, childless aunt’s greatest joy. Yes, it was where Amanda had spent her happiest childhood moments. And Cape May, New Jersey—a Victorian seaside town long on charm and short on crime—would make a lovely place to raise her daughter. But this was no time to wallow in sentimentality; Amanda was a single mother with a three-year-old to provide for. The sale of her aunt’s house would enable her to return to Pittsburgh with a bit of money, perhaps enough for a down payment on a place of her own. A place that she hoped wouldn’t be in need of quite so much maintenance and repair. And a place unburdened by memories—where she could make a fresh start. Amanda closed the cabinet doors and stood, glancing at her battered grey toolbox on the worn Formica countertop. Seeing the toolbox reminded her of the first argument she and Derek, her ex, had had as a newly married couple. “What are you doing with that old thing?” Derek had asked as he watched her pull the toolbox from the bottom of the tiny linen closet in their master bath of their first home. “I’m going to take a look at the leak in the tub. It’s been dripping for a couple of days now,” Amanda had replied. “Just call a plumber, why don’t you?” “Oh, I don’t mind checking it out. It’s kind of fun, seeing if I can figure out what’s wrong.” “Fun? Amanda, you’re crazy. What if you break something and make it worse? Think of the mess that would be. Would you please just call a plumber and get that dirty old thing out of our bathroom?” Amanda had looked down at the toolbox resting on the tile floor. Yes, she supposed Derek was right: it was a bit dirty. And certainly far from new. She knew well its every dent and nick. She thought of her stunned surprise when her father had presented it to her, complete with her own set of wrenches, pliers, and screwdrivers, on her tenth birthday. What her father had really given her, more than a metal container and Craftsman tools, was confidence. And his belief in her had made her believe in herself. “Dad gave me this, Derek,” she had said quietly, her gaze resting on the box. “Yes, I know, I know. It was a gift from Bart. For Christmas, right? But we aren’t poor. I make plenty of money for us to live well. And for God’s sake, Amanda, I won’t have my wife the doing dirty work some guy with his butt crack hanging out of his pants could be doing for a few pennies. And it’s not like your father is in any condition to help you anyway. Go call someone. Ask your mother’s secretary, she’ll know somebody half decent. Case closed.” And with that, Derek had swung out of the room. While she felt she could have easily fixed the leak, she knew that Derek was right about one thing: her father, newly diagnosed with colon cancer, was in no position to help her with much of anything, let alone home repairs. But the fact that her father had given her the toolbox made it—and the skills she had learned from him—all the more special. And made Derek’s glib remarks sting all the more. She was to learn that “case closed” was the definitive way Derek liked to end things. Including their marriage. Amanda left the toolbox on the counter, and turned to walk through the dining room into the parlor where Lexie lay napping on the velvet claw foot sofa under the front windows. Amanda smiled at the toddler as she lowered herself wearily into an overstuffed armchair nearby. Lexie’s blonde corkscrew curls snaked across the flowers of the needlepoint pillow beneath her head. Her long, dark lashes brushed the tops of her round cheeks, flushed with the warmth of late morning sunlight streaming through the dusty Queen Anne windows. In her right arm, she held a well-worn Scottie dog around the neck in a stranglehold of fierce young love. The white cotton blanket Amanda had carefully tucked under the toddler’s chin now lay in a puddle of wrinkles on the worn wooden floor. As Amanda watched her daughter, she considered the difficulties of staying in an older home with a three-year-old. And not just any older home, but a one-hundred plus year-old home, and one with historical significance—and probably lead paint—to boot. The Josiah Wincott House, circa 1887, read the pitted brass plaque by the front doors. Her aunt hadn’t talked much about the history of the house with her when Amanda visited during the summers of her youth. Instead, Amanda’s days had been filled with the memory-making joys that had made for the best times of her childhood. Trips to the beach, always with the wicker picnic basket with the blue gingham cotton lining filled with chicken salad sandwiches and fresh peaches from the Rosso’s Orchard. Walks into town to pick up fresh milk and rolls. Picking smooth, green pole beans and red Jersey tomatoes from the raised garden behind the grey clapboard house. Munching on her aunt’s crispy fried chicken on an itchy wool blanket by the bandstand gazebo as the Congress Hall brass band played a Sousa march under summer skies of navy velvet. Amanda also remembered fondly the friends she had made up and down Corgie Street, her “summer friends,” she used to call them. Blonde-haired Carly whose family lived in Philadelphia but spent all their summers in Cape May. Heather from around the corner on Queen Street who was lucky enough to be a year-round resident with the tan to prove it. Jimmy with a talent for catching toads to put on little boats he made from plastic bottles and set sail on the pond at the Kiwanis Park on Madison Avenue. Thinking of Jimmy and his antics led her to recall one Fourth of July holiday—she must have been eight or nine—when she and Beth Fisher slipped into Mr. Dawson’s back yard and sneaked away with his toy terrier wrapped in a beach towel to stifle his high-pitched barks. They had dressed him up as Uncle Sam, complete with a red, white, and blue stovepipe hat and red carnation, and rode down Beach Street in the Independence Day Parade. The terrier, resplendent in his patriotic garb, yapped happily from the basket of the four-wheeled surrey Beth and Amanda had “borrowed” from Mr. Fisher’s rental shop. She wondered if any of them still lived in the city proper or in the Cape May County area at all. Although the town had prospered as a whole from the boom in tourism over the past twenty years, it was hard for many locals...