Finding Forever with the Single Dad
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Becky Wicks
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25
CHAPTER ONE
‘LUCIE HENDERSON? Is that really you?’
Lucie’s feet found their way to the chocolate shop doorway. Gramma May’s good friend Cynthia hugged her warmly to her bosom. ‘Oh, my goodness, duck...it’s been so long. I thought you were off saving the world! What brings you back to Yorkshire?’
‘Oh, you know...’ Lucie shrugged.
If she told Cynthia she was here not only to fill a temporary role at the Brookborough general practice, but to recuperate after a tragedy that had plagued her dreams ever since it had happened, she might as well announce it on a megaphone to the entire village. Brookborough was the place where secrecy came to die. Everyone knew everyone else’s business on this side of the North Yorkshire Moors. The last thing she needed was for people to start looking at her in sympathy.
‘Tell me what I’ve missed, Cynthia. When did I last see you? I think I was eighteen...’
Soon, the fragrant chocolate shop had her trapped in its cosy interior. She sampled white bon-bons and cinnamon swirls while Cynthia shared the highlights of what she’d missed. The cannon fire of questions she fired wasn’t so easy to swallow.
‘What was it like, working in Nepal?’
‘How are things there now, after the tragedy?’
‘How are you, really?’
Lucie was polite, but the barrage of questions was enough to shake her back into a state she hadn’t been in since the earthquake. She was so far away from where she was needed...
Cynthia had that look in her eyes now. Narrowed, pensive, a little scared that she might hear or say something that made them both feel uncomfortable. Obviously Gramma May must have told her oldest friend a few things about her specialism in mental health, her international placements with the Medicine Relief Operatives out in distant disaster zones, but how much did anyone know about what had happened to her colleague Jorge that day at the school on the mountain road in Nepal?
‘Wow, this is good,’ she heard herself say.
The chocolate was demanding full custody of her attention now, forcing her to acknowledge the taste of her childhood. She might as well have taken a bite of Austin Johnstone too, she thought. This used to be their number one Saturday morning activity.
It wasn’t hard to recall standing with her best friend on the steps of the Grade Two listed All Saints’ Church on the night of the Scarecrow Festival. Austin Johnstone—better known as AJ to everyone around here—would always buy her one chocolate and dare her to make it last all day. She could never do it. The chocolates were just too good.
‘Just made ’em this morning, pet.’ Cynthia rustled a paper bag and popped more chocolates into it. ‘Take a couple home for May, why don’t you? Bert used to buy her these, and I know she loves them.’
I won’t eat it, I won’t eat it...not like AJ would have done.
The scent of the sweet chocolate gift for Gramma, in honour of Lucie’s late Grampa Bert, tempted her from her handbag as she walked on.
Stopping at the bottom of the hill, she saw All Saints’ Church peering down at her like a weathered, wise brown owl. Her gaze ran over the gravestones protruding from the grassy knoll where AJ had once set up a séance. He’d planned for them to reach the spirit of the Black Knight of the North, who supposedly rested there. They’d done all kinds of stupid things in those days, them and their friends, making their own entertainment in a place the size of a postage stamp.
Until AJ had ruined everything, by hooking up with Claire Bainbridge.
Lucie scowled as she walked on. Of course he’d charge into her brain like that pushy Black Knight. Even the streams that flowed alongside the honey-coloured stone cottages with their picture-postcard pantile roofs couldn’t force the memories away. Thank goodness their paths wouldn’t cross while she was here.
Gramma May had told her that he’d moved to London. She’d said nothing else—just that he’d moved there and was a very well-respected psychiatrist. Lucie had made the mistake of asking about him years ago and had discovered he’d got married and had two kids. Twins, no less. That had not been a good day. Whenever she’d thought about looking him up online after that she’d chickened out. She knew she’d only find photos of him and Claire, all happily married, nesting with their beautiful twin babies.
Nope. No, thanks.
So, the blond-haired, blue-eyed former Mr Popularity was a psychiatrist. It made sense. He always had been the caring kind. Well, until he’d hooked up with Claire, she thought, wrinkling up her nose.
She’d never forgotten the bone-deep hurt and mortification she’d felt that night she’d stood outside his bedroom door, listening to him in there, laughing with Claire about her! Claire had been teasing him for the way ‘little lost Lucie’ always followed him around like a puppy dog, and he’d said nothing. Absolutely nothing to defend Lucie, who was supposed to be his best friend.
It didn’t seem to matter how many time zones and disaster areas she’d found herself in since—she could still be back there in a flash. Eighteen years old, secretly, hopelessly in love with the most popular guy in Brookborough, and listening to Claire telling him, ‘Lucie is seriously cramping your style, AJ. How about you let me show you some things little lost Lucie never could?’
The devastation. The total humiliation of hearing him betray their friendship like that. She’d fallen for him hard. He’d been her rock since he’d found her crying, back when she’d been nine and the new girl in town. Everyone had been whispering about her at school, calling her ‘the American orphan’. He’d stood up for her—a real-life hero. She’d barely been able to find the words to tell him about the fire on a campsite that had killed her parents while she’d been watching illicit horror films with her babysitter in Denver. Or her busy, travel-obsessed Aunt Lina, who’d taken her in for a while, but who ultimately hadn’t much wanted to be tied down with a grieving child, and had consequently flown her from Colorado to the UK, to be raised by her paternal grandparents instead.
AJ had always been there for her—as a friend, nothing more. He hadn’t left her side for a month after Grampa Bert’s death. She’d been fourteen then. He hadn’t agreed when she’d told him it was her fault. But of course it was her fault. Grampa had been forced to go back to work after she’d arrived, instead of retiring as he’d planned, so they could afford to look after her. He’d worked so hard he’d had a heart attack and died way too young.
‘Lucie? Lucie Henderson?’
Flora McNally bustled out onto the street from the gift shop, all smiles.
‘Hi, Flora, you look well.’
‘What a lovely surprise! May did say you were coming home for a while. How long do we have you for, Little Lu?’
Little Lu. Wow... No one had called her that when she was standing on stages, establishing civic engagement alliances, advocating for reducing disaster risks... It would have made her smile if it hadn’t reminded her of Claire’s snide comments all over again.
White-haired Flora had crossed her arms. Lucie smoothed her fringe, shook her hair behind her shoulders. Did her thirty-four-year-old self appear so very different from the teenager with a pixie cut who’d switched this place for America?
‘I’ll be here a couple of months, give or take.’
‘May’s so very proud of you, pet,’ Flora cooed, and her eyes shone with the same look Lucie had seen on Cynthia’s face in the chocolate shop. ‘What you must have gone through... It was all over the news. I heard you pulled some kids out of the rubble in Nepal? You’re lucky to be alive...well done, you.’
Lucie thanked her, eyeing the ground. It didn’t take much to make the memories come raging back. The school walls collapsing on Jorge. The creaking cascade of concrete and steel. The water tank toppling from its perch... They’d said it was a thousand gallons. She’d pulled the others out—the three kids had had to come first—as soon as the rumble had begun. Brie and Jero from her team had followed after, cut up and bloodied, but fine. They’d called it a miracle that she’d got out uninjured, but she hadn’t been able to save Jorge.
They’d given her a medal after that. She’d felt like a total fake, accepting it.
Lucie edged along the pathway as Flora talked. How many more people was she failing just by being here? Sure, she had nightmares about Nepal sometimes—but it was nothing really. Not when there were still people out there she could be helping with Medicine Relief Operatives. This hiatus was going to be good for her—a nice, cosy locum GP position to take her mind off things for a bit, and a chance to spend more time with Gramma May. But the sooner she could get back out there, where she belonged, the better.
‘Are you OK, pet? You’ve gone a bit pale.’ Flora caught her arm.
‘I’m fine. I have to be on my way, but it’s nice to see you, Flora.’
Hitting a left at the pub, she took the path along the stream back to Gramma’s. It seemed as good a path as any, going past the storybook Beck Isle Cottage. The gentle sound of the babbling water was always better than any CD.
This had always been her favourite part of the village and today every lungful of cool early-March air was a balm. AJ had kissed her here, aged ten and a bit, on the little bridge that boasted a world-famous chocolate-box view. If her memories were correct, she’d dared him to do it a couple of weeks after a dance in the school gym. He’d bought her a chocolate bar that night. She’d thought at the time that his gift had meant something. Clearly, it hadn’t.
The way he’d swiped at his mouth afterwards, as if kissing a girl was the equivalent of eating cat food, had not done wonders for her self-esteem. Neither had seeing him with a steady stream of girls after that, while she had remained firmly in the friend zone. Ugh.
She’d never expected Claire, though. She’d hightailed it back down his stairs and out through the door as fast as a lightning bolt after hearing them together in his room, before she’d been forced to hear anything worse. As if the only reason she’d run to him in the first place hadn’t been bad enough... She’d just heard Gramma May admit to Cynthia that she and Grampa Bert had always wanted to travel in their retirement, and that Lucie had stopped them!
Well, not in those words exactly. She knew her grandparents loved her. But she was the reason they hadn’t been able to travel as they’d planned before Grampa died.
Cynthia had said that maybe May could travel alone, without Grampa, once Lucie had gone away to university. But May had replied that she probably would not. She would wait, because Lucie would be home frequently for holidays.
She had concluded from that that she was still stopping Gramma from living the life she’d wanted before they’d been forced to take her in!
She’d wanted to tell AJ how Aunt Lina had emailed her, offering to pay for her medical training if she agreed to go back to the US and get to know her and her American roots. Apparently, Lina felt pretty bad for being too young and busy and grieving to keep her in America after her sister’s death.
She’d hoped that maybe AJ would say she didn’t have to go, and that after nine years her home was there. That had been her hope. But after hearing what she’d heard—first Gramma and Cynthia’s conversation, and then AJ and Claire’s—she’d run home, opened her laptop and taken her aunt up on the offer instead, chasing her dream of becoming a doctor.
She’d never even said goodbye to AJ. He probably hadn’t missed her always following him around like a puppy dog, cramping his style, anyway.
Lucie took the little path along the stream, breathing in the spring scent of the trees. She was still failing to shove the memories of AJ from her head when something huge, dark and furry seemed to launch at her from nowhere.
She shrieked, just as a man’s panicked warning was hollered at her from a distance.
What the...?
Before she could gather her thoughts, her feet were scrambling for solid ground. The man sprinted towards her, still yelling.
Too late.
Lucie lost her balance and toppled off the grassy bank straight into the icy stream.
