A Bridge Home
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Virginia McCullough
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Will a new beginning… Lead to forever? What good is a home without a family? School principal Eric Wells finally has the house he's always wanted, but a painful childhood makes him question his ability to be a father. So when his high school crush Amy Morgan returns to Bluestone River with her troubled daughter, he's surprised to find he wants to be there for both of them. Will Amy finally give him a chance?
CHAPTER ONE
WITH A BASKET of clean clothes balanced against her hip, Amy Morgan climbed the basement stairs humming the opening bars of “My Funny Valentine.” A slightly off-key rendition, especially on the high notes, but what difference did it make? The song had looped through her head all day, no matter how hard she tried to purge it from her brain. There was zero chance of that happening, since Valentine’s Day plans were the buzz at work that afternoon.
As the River Street Salon’s receptionist she had a front row seat to the daily small talk. Every woman who came in that particular day was expecting her special someone to show up with a bouquet of her favorite flowers, a box of chocolates or both.
Amy carried the basket of still-warm clothes into the kitchen and plunked it down on a chair at the end of the long table. “Happy Valentine’s Day to me,” she muttered under her breath.
Oops, her words came out louder than she intended. Grandma Barb glanced up from where she stood unloading the dishwasher. “Did you say something, Amy?”
“Nothing important, Grandma. I was just talking to myself—again.” Amy injected an upbeat lilt into her voice.
“She does that a lot,” Cassie said. Amy’s nine-year-old sat at the table swinging her legs and tapping her pencil on her math worksheet.
“Oh, you, don’t exaggerate.” Amy made a face at Cassie before plucking a pair of her grandpa’s jeans off the top of the pile. “How’s that homework coming?”
“Boring. I told you I’m not good at math.”
“You used to be.” Amy immediately wanted to snatch those words out of the air. Couldn’t she have come up with something a little more original? She only seemed to remind Cassie about how her life “used to be.” But whatever she said was the wrong thing lately, and Cassie never thought twice about telling her so.
She waved the worksheet in the air. “My teacher said this is harder than what I did last semester in my old school. It’s three-digit multiplication.”
“You’ll catch on, honey,” Grandma Barb said. She pulled a chair out from the table and eased herself down. She reached out to pat Cassie’s arm.
Amy smoothed the wrinkles out of the jeans and braced for another argumentative answer from Cassie, but none came. Good. If she’d done one thing right, it was drawing a line in the sand when it came to Cassie’s great-grandparents. They were to be treated with respect—and only with respect. No back talk, no antics. Ever.
“As soon as I’m finished folding these clothes, I’ll heat up the stew, Grandma.”
Grandma tilted her head toward Cassie and smacked her lips. “And then we’ll have red velvet cake for dessert.”
Cassie smacked her lips back and grinned.
At least Grandma Barb could bring a smile to her little girl’s face. So could Barb’s gray-and-white cat, named Cloud because her coat resembled white clouds against a gray sky. At the moment, Cloud sat on her haunches next to Cassie’s chair, apparently in the mood to accept whatever attention anyone in the house chose to heap on her.
Amy took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. She had to fight off her own cloud of gloom and doom. She kept a watch on Cassie, who fidgeted with her braid, but kept her head down and finished up the remaining math problems on the page. Then she lifted the pencil high in the air and let it drop onto the paper. “I’m done, done, done.” She slid off the chair and hurried out of the kitchen and into the living room.
Phew. Amy exhaled in relief as if she’d finished her homework.
“I know you’re worried, sweetheart, but your little girl will be fine.” Grandma Barb spoke in a confident tone.
She meant well. Amy gave her that. Her grandmother seemed to have an unending supply of optimism. But Grandma hadn’t read the message from Amy’s teacher about the nine-year-old’s adjustment issues. Or rather, maladjustment. Grandma hadn’t been on the embarrassing phone call with the school’s office manager to set up an appointment with Eric Wells, the new principal. As if Cassie’s bad behavior wasn’t bad enough, Amy had gone to high school with Eric. They’d even worked together as coeditors of the high school newspaper.
“Maybe so, Grandma, but you don’t have to slink into the school tomorrow morning and hope no one notices you showing up at the principal’s office to meet with Mr. Wells.” She grabbed one of Cassie’s pullovers from the pile and quickly folded it and set it aside in a growing pile of Cassie’s things. Her daughter was old enough now to put away her own little pile of clothes, even if she griped about it. Amy herself had lived with her grandparents most of her childhood and doing a bunch of chores was part of a regular day. She’d rebel against them occasionally, but Grandma would shrug off her complaints. Now Amy found herself doing the same thing with Cassie.
Grandma pointed to the window. “Look at that snow. I doubt anyone’s going to be having meetings at the school tomorrow. We’ll be buried by morning.”
Amy turned to look out the picture window behind her. Grandma could be right. The snow was forecasted as barely deep enough to cover the half foot of snow that blanketed Bluestone River a few days ago. But the wind had picked up and blew the snow horizontally. They were in the midst of a whiteout now. “You could be right. Maybe we’re in the path of that giant storm after all.”
Grandma’s eyebrows lifted almost to her forehead in amusement. “I’m sure Les will tell us at dinner.”
Amy chuckled. “In great detail.” After a stroke forced her Grandpa Les to slow down, he’d become even more dedicated to news and weather watching. Unfortunately, it took a little effort for him to move around, but he balked at using a wheelchair, at least in the house. On the other hand, in his eighties now, like Barb, his mind hadn’t lost a beat.
Amy returned the piles of folded clothes to the basket and set it aside to put away after dinner. She took out the pot of stew she’d made that morning before work, and while it heated, she warmed the rolls in the oven and brought bowls and plates to the table. Grandma could finish setting the table without having to get up from her chair.
“We have our system, don’t we?” Barb smiled as she plucked silverware out of the wire basket on the table.
“Like the old days.” As happened so often since she’d been back in Bluestone River, a wave of nostalgia gently rolled in. Sometimes she couldn’t help but long for the simpler days of her childhood with Grandma and Grandpa, whose unconditional love had nurtured her when her parents wouldn’t—or maybe couldn’t.
“Speaking of systems...” She smiled at Grandma and went to the arched entry into the living room. “Time to come to the table, you two. Do you need help, Grandpa?”
“Nah.” He inched to the edge of the chair and braced his hands on the arms to lift himself to his feet. “Cassie will walk next to me. Maybe she’ll let me hang on to her hand.”
Cassie nodded eagerly. “You bet, Grandpa.”
She sounded so sweet. How could this be the same girl who’d refused to make valentines in class that day? Even worse, she’d dumped art supplies in the trash? It hurt knowing that today’s episode wasn’t the first. The other day, Cassie had instigated a name-calling match with a boy in her class.
“Hold on to your hats, girls,” Grandpa Les said as he sat in the chair Cassie pulled out for him. “Just saw the weather update. Winds are picking up.” He tapped the tip of Cassie’s nose. “I bet you’ll be home tomorrow and helping me put together that puzzle we’ve got going. What do you want to bet they call off school?”
“Lots of Valentine’s Day plans up in smoke, too, I suppose,” Grandma said.
“Not ours,” Amy said, trying to sound upbeat. She looked at her grandparents and her daughter. The three of them were her holiday plans. “Pass the bowls and I’ll dish up the stew.”
“And eat fast,” Cassie said, “so we can have cake.”
Grandma and Grandpa jumped in with their usual teasing about Cassie’s sweet tooth, so like their mother’s they’d say fondly. Amy couldn’t deny it. For the next few minutes, she enjoyed the comfort of the warm rolls topped with melting butter and a generous dollop of honey. The scent of thyme and garlic in the hot stew on the cold night made all her problems seem a little less serious.
After they’d cleared away the cake plates, her grandparents opened the cards Amy bought to give them, one from her, one from Cassie. She’d had some warning about Cassie acting out in the previous days when she couldn’t coax her daughter to even glance at the cards they were giving to her grandparents. Cassie cared about one thing only, and that was choosing the valentine to mail to her father, who apparently hadn’t bothered to send his daughter a card. At least nothing had arrived in that day’s mail. Cassie had checked yesterday and the day before, and she’d do it again tomorrow. It remained to be seen if Scott bothered to call before Cassie’s bedtime. She stopped trying to predict her ex-husband’s actions. Scott had been a major-league sweet talker before they were married, but those days were long gone.
Nothing could excuse Cassie’s outburst at school, but Amy had a pretty good idea what had prompted the hostile behavior. If only she could convince Scott that Cassie’s disappointments had piled up. Amy had resolved to at least try to stop keeping score of Scott’s broken promises, both to her and to Cassie, but she couldn’t expect her daughter to do the same.
Later, she leaned against the doorjamb of Cassie’s room and looked on as her daughter put her clean clothes away. She even took time to even out the piles of clothes in her dresser. Cassie claimed not to like anything about her new home or school, and Bluestone River was just a dumb little town, but for all that, she kept her room as neat as could be. Like mother, like daughter.
Amy had the sudden urge to bypass her meeting with the principal and pull Cassie out of the class and homeschool her. That would keep her out of trouble.
And let me save face.
ERIC WELLS STOOD at the window and cheered the blinding white snowdrifts that were frozen stiff under a sunny blue sky. More sharply angled drifts blocked his driveway and made the street impassable. He didn’t care. In all his years of teaching, and now in his new gig as principal, he’d never be this happy about a snow day. It wouldn’t solve any problems. He knew that. But at least he had a reprieve. He could avoid meeting with Amy Morgan that morning.
Eric texted his mom to let her know he’d be over in a couple of hours to clear her walk and driveway. Then, warm in a down vest and heavy work boots, he pulled his heavy wool hat over his ears and got to work. First, he shoveled his back steps and the short path to the garage behind the house. Then he dragged out his brand-new snowblower and cleared the way down his driveway and front sidewalk, where he joined one of his neighbors in making a dent in the snow blocking other houses on their side of the street.
Before he started the trek to his mom’s house a few blocks away, he dug his phone out of his pocket and took a couple of pictures of the front of his two-story brick house. The deep snow reached the first floor windows and even the drifted snow on the roof looked like whitecaps frozen in time against the blue sky. Cool.
This house, the first he could call his own, needed repairs and upgrades inside and out, but at the moment the snow hid the shabby exterior. That was okay. It wouldn’t look bad for long. Eric had spent many years teaching math in a town a couple of hours south of Bluestone River. He’d lived in a one-bedroom apartment in a large complex, but always had a goal to buy a big, rambling house of his own. He’d found it and closed on it a couple of days before Christmas. He’d made the leap from renter to homeowner only when he’d landed the principal’s job at the Madison School, the largest of the grade schools in Bluestone River.
Taking another shot of the snow-covered spruce trees in his front yard, a sense of satisfaction surged through him. He’d finally checked off two boxes on his list of goals. His time in the classroom had been rewarding enough, but he’d always tucked away ambitions to move into administration. The home was on tree-lined Oak Street, and with four bedrooms, a roomy attic and a big backyard, all the house needed—besides a major renovation—was a family. He needed a family.
His picture taking done, Eric set off down the cleared sidewalks to his mom’s house on another one of the “tree streets,” Birch Street. He’d spent his teenage years in that house on Birch and had intentionally bought his own place in the central and older part of town behind River Street. He liked being able to stroll over to the diner for a quick dinner or in decent weather walk the mile or so to work.
As he made the turn onto Birch, he spotted his cousin Seth getting out of his truck in front of Eric’s mom’s house. He picked up his pace and caught up to Seth on the sidewalk.
“You here to help me?” Eric asked, gesturing to the blanket of snow burying the stairs up to his mom’s front porch.
Seth held up the giant shovel as his answer. “And when we’re done digging your mom out, I thought we could hang out at your place and start ripping out those ancient bathroom fixtures.”
“Good thought,” Eric said. “I won’t turn down the help.” Seth was getting his own construction business off the ground and remodeling Eric’s house was a good filler project. Seth was painstakingly documenting progress with dozens of before and after photos he’d cull later and turn into a display on his website. At the moment, he and Seth were in the before stage, but they’d started messing things up worse in order to come out on the other side.
The two got to work removing enough snow off the stairs to get to the front door, where Eric’s mom stood watching until she could open the door and let them in.
“The school principal gets a day off, huh,” she said, giving Eric and Seth a quick hug each, “but poor me, my plans were all canceled.”
“Tomorrow is another day, Aunt Monica,” Seth teased. “I’ll bet it’s crammed full.”
“Maybe so, but this morning’s French class was canceled,” his mom said, “but, I’ll be all right. I’m just glad my boys are here to help me out.”
He and Seth exchanged an amused glance when his mom called them “her boys.” Before Eric left for college the cousins had lived two blocks from each other, but with their reddish blond hair and blue eyes, they looked a lot like brothers. Not so surprising since their mothers were fair-haired, blue-eyed sisters.
“Trust me, Mom, you won’t miss much. You’ll be back to your schedule by tomorrow.” After nearly forty years in nursing, including a twenty-year stint as the nurse manager of a medical practice, his mom had retired. That didn’t translate to slowing down, though, not with two book clubs and volunteer work for regional blood drives. Her French class at the community college was supposed to help her get ready for her dream trip to France next fall.
“Your efforts won’t go unrewarded,” she said. “I’ll have lunch ready by the time you’re done.”
An hour later, his mom could come and go from her house and the town’s road crews had made their way to the back streets. Eric and Seth were digging into giant BLTs.
“By the way, did you see what the storm did to the bridge?” his mom asked. “It’s awful.”
“I haven’t heard anything about it.” Eric assumed she was talking about the covered bridge spanning the Bluestone River. One of the town’s historic landmarks, the bridge was an important tourist draw. “What happened?”
“From the pictures, it looks all but destroyed.” She pulled a photo posted on a local radio station’s website and handed her phone to Eric.
“Wow. You weren’t exaggerating.” One side of the bridge had caved in, leaving the vertical wooden wall slats in a heap on what was left of the plank bottom. At least a foot of snow sat on top of the roof, now mostly collapsed. “That looks fatal,” he said, passing the phone to Seth.
“Not so fast,” his mom warned. “With all the improvements in town, you can bet Mayor Mike is putting a plan together to repair the bridge as we speak.”
Eric shrugged. “I suppose.” He’d gone to high school with Mike Abbot, better known now as Mayor Mike. Like so many of his classmates, Eric was among those who had scattered after they graduated. But many, like Mike and now Eric himself, had made their way back to their hometown. Unbeknownst to Eric until yesterday, Amy Morgan had added her name to that group.
“Let’s go have a look at the bridge before we head to your house and get to work,” Seth suggested.
The idea was a welcome distraction from mulling over Amy and her troubled daughter.
After a quick goodbye hug, Eric and his cousin climbed into the truck and Seth drove the few blocks down River Street toward the park and the river. “I see we aren’t the only ones here to gawk at the damage,” Eric said, nodding to the dozen or so trucks and cars in the parking lot.
Even through the snow-covered branches of the trees separating the parking lot from the playground, Eric saw a piece of the roof hanging off the one intact side. “The photo didn’t do the wreckage justice, huh?” he remarked as they started down the slope. “Mom could be wrong about the solution.”
“What do you mean?” Seth asked.
“Cooler heads might prevail and they’ll tear the thing down before the wooden bottom completely sinks into the river from the weight. It’s sort of a relic, anyway.”
“An important relic. I guess we’ll soon find out,” Seth said.
As they got closer, Eric noted clusters of people standing by the riverbank looking at the bridge and pointing this way and that. With everyone bundled up in hats and scarves and puffy coats, Eric couldn’t immediately recognize anyone. Some of the kids were running around, more interested in the snow than the bridge. A little boy put one foot into a deep pile of snow and struggled to lift his other foot. Another kid followed closely behind and tried to plant her feet in the deep footprints the boy made. Even with a scarf covering half the boy’s face, Eric knew he was Mike Abbot’s son, Jason. An easy ID, since Eric also spotted Ruby in the crowd. Even before he’d moved back to Bluestone River, his mom had told him his old friends Ruby and Mike had married. Now they were raising Mike’s son and had a new baby girl of their own.
Ruby was in the midst of an animated conversation with another woman who nodded along. She looked familiar, that other woman. Something about her reminded him of Amy Morgan. Whoa. It was her. He was almost certain. When she suddenly pulled off her hat and a mane of straight dark hair fell down her back, he was certain.
He grabbed Seth’s arm to hold him back. “Stop, stop. We have to get out of here.”
“Huh? Why? What’s wrong?”
“That’s Amy Raskin. I mean, Amy Morgan. She married that guy in our class, Scott Morgan.” His heart beat faster as he spoke. “I don’t want to see her.”
“Why? What’s the deal?” Seth asked, letting himself be pulled back. “I thought you liked her. Since like high school.”
“C’mon.” Eric hurried through the snow toward the truck. “I do like her, Seth. But I was supposed to have a disciplinary meeting with her today about her daughter.” He shook his head. “Forget I said that. I shouldn’t be talking about a student or a parent.” He held up his hand for emphasis. “I mean it. Don’t repeat that.”
“All right, man, calm down,” Seth said. “It’s not like it’s an emergency. And you know you can trust me to keep my mouth shut.”
Eric exhaled a heavy sigh. Seth was right. He’d overreacted, but he couldn’t help it. “I don’t want to be shooting the breeze with her about the busted up bridge with her one day and talking about, you know, her kid’s problems the next.” He climbed into the passenger seat, feeling over-the-top relief, like he’d escaped from some kind of danger.
Seth still eyed him with curiosity, but Eric kept quiet until they were at his house and had hauled Seth’s tools inside.
He led Seth into the old barn of a bathroom with its broken tile and ancient wallpaper. “My job can be tough sometimes.” He braced his hand on the doorway, his mind still on Amy and her daughter. “Being a principal in a small town means I run into people while I’m in the supermarket tossing bags of chips into my grocery cart. It’s inevitable.” He couldn’t help but chuckle at the memory of the very scenario last week. As he greeted the mom and dad, the first grader couldn’t keep his big brown eyes off tortilla chips and dark beer in the school principal’s cart.
“Goes with the territory, I guess. You better get used to bumping into people you knew from way back when,” Seth warned. “Lots of the kids you graduated with are back in town now. And it’s not only your crowd. I was two years behind you and now my classmates are turning up everywhere. People seem to drift back for all kinds of reasons.”
“I can handle Ruby and Mike—and the others, too,” Eric said. “They were friends of mine. I could even handle knowing Amy is around if it weren’t for her daughter. No mom likes to hear her kid is a troublemaker and disrupts the classroom.” He hesitated, but then said out loud what Seth was being tactful enough to leave alone. “I know, I know. I’m familiar with the problem. I spent more than my fair share of time sitting in the principal’s office, too. And my mom had more sleepless nights because of me than I like having on my conscience.”
“That can be an advantage, though, right?” Seth asked. “In a way. You were a handful for quite a few years. It can’t hurt to understand firsthand what the parents are going through.”
“True enough.” Eric gave the loose tile on the wall a bump with his fist. “Let’s make a dent in this mess. Later, burgers and shakes at the diner will be on me.”
Seth picked up a scraper from the plastic bin of tools he’d carried inside. “Okay, then, start scraping that wallpaper, buddy. It’s already half-disintegrated.”
Eric grinned and took the tool from Seth’s outstretched hand and got to work. It didn’t take long before the first strip of the old yellowed wallpaper was at his feet. History. Like that old high school crush he’d had on Amy.
