When We Let Go, Delancey Stewart [early reader books .txt] 📗

When the morning’s excitement was over, and I’d had three or four cups of almost-coffee, I felt prepared to move forward with the day. Which, for me, meant pulling a long shift at the diner in town.

Kings Grove was actually a wide spot in the road at just over six thousand feet up a California mountain. We had the necessities—a post office, a market, a library, a restaurant, and a hardware store. There was an old lodge, and the town saw its fair share of tourists, thanks to the towering trees that clustered in thousand-year-old groves to watch over us like sentinels. Grudgingly, I had to admit the place had a certain amount of charm. I’d liked it enough when I was a kid, when my family came to camp on the land where I now inhabited a tin can.

Forget that Jack had moved me here from San Diego, where we’d done wonderful things like go to the Old Globe Theater to watch Shakespeare in the summers, and eat the freshest seafood ever in La Jolla cove at a rooftop restaurant near the pink hotel where he had proposed. Forget that I’d been a girl who could find no occasion where heels were not appropriate, or that my previous wardrobe exploded from a walk-in closet roughly the size of my trailer. Where else would you store sixteen pairs of designer blue jeans? Before my divorce, an endless search for the perfect pair of jeans was exactly my kind of challenge.

But now? Now I was stranded. Literally.

My lawyer still could not explain to me how Jack had walked away with almost everything even though he’d been the one who cheated. When I’d pressed her, she’d thrown up her hands in frustration. Typical. Jack was the kind of guy who got everything he wanted. He was the definition of winning. Charlie Sheen had absolutely nothing on him. He got the house. He got the Escalade and left me with the racy Jag coupe I’d gotten as an engagement present, which was hardly an appropriate vehicle given the terrain of my new home.

Though I had to admit, I did love that car.

Jack got to keep his cheap little girlfriend and his fancy life, and I got … this. A half-built shell in a dusty mountain town where I didn’t belong and hadn’t belonged since I was a kid. Oh, and let’s not forget, I also had a rickety fifth-wheel trailer on blocks that Jack had bought used and towed up here when he’d put together his master plan for getting me out of the way. A trailer that barely had plumbing and maintained only a fleeting acquaintance with electricity.

That said, I was Maddie Turner before I became Madeline Douglas. And being a Turner meant that I would stand up, dust myself off, and fight my way forward. That’s what Turners did, as my dad would have reminded me if he were capable.

I tried to give myself a Dad-worthy pep talk as I pulled on the maroon polo shirt that was required for my fancy diner gig. It’s not forever. Just for now. Dad would have said that if I called him. Maybe. Or maybe he would have told me again about the cruise he was on, about the food and the other passengers.

Dad wasn’t really on a cruise. He was in a nursing facility for patients with dementia. But the cruise idea was one he held on to, and I thought it was better than his reality, so I didn’t try to disabuse him of the notion.

I glared at myself in the small mirror in the bathroom. This shirt was hideous. It matched the way I felt about my life at the moment. It was fitting that I should have to endure it all while wearing a poly-cotton blend in a color that brought out the red in my skin tone.

My lawyer assured me we weren’t done and that the money I needed to start over would come to me. There was a joint account she was convinced should be mine, one that would allow me to finish the house or move to a place I could live more comfortably. But Jack was fighting tooth and nail, and as of now, I was a broke would-be photographer-turned-waitress working in a mountaintop diner. And I was late for work.

Adele, the diner owner, frowned at me from the register as I arrived, her over-glossed lips sticky, pink, and disapproving as always. “Thanks for joining us, Princess.”

“Morning, Adele. Sorry I’m late.” I hated it when she called me ‘Princess.’

“Tables one through six will be happy to hear your sob story.” She tossed my pad to me and turned away to pluck at her cuticles in the light from the window.

“Morning, Mad.” Adele’s husband Frank was always reliable for a smile.

I didn’t think I was really a princess by any stretch, but compared to the locals up here in Kings Grove, I was fairly shiny. Visitors to the village tended to arrive in shorts and sandals with socks, or tank tops and acid-washed jeans. And the locals favored practicality over a flattering hemline or a leg-extending heel. Personally, I found it hard to shake the fashion ideals I’d cultivated over so many years, but tried to limit my mountain choices to denim and boots. Even if they had a three-inch heel, I figured boots were practical for a rugged environment.

Kings Grove was home to trees thousands of years old, and a place like that is bound to draw in all kinds. I’d grown up around these Giant Sequoias, but I was still floored by the sheer bulk of the things. It was humbling, standing next to something you knew had been in that same spot for over a millennium. My crumbly little life was a flash in the pan next to the lives of those trees.

“Sam. Chance.” I greeted the local contractors who had built the frame of our house before the divorce halted further progress.

“How are you, Maddie?” Chance Palmer gave me a smile. He was the most eligible man in town, a Stanford MBA who’d come to take over the family business when his dad had died suddenly of a heart attack. With his little brother Sam, he’d built almost every new structure in Kings Grove over the past four years, and plenty before that when they worked for their dad during high school and college. Chance was lean and muscular, his blue eyes sparkling above a chiseled jaw and a chest that appeared to be cut from stone.

There was no doubt he was the star of the daydreams of most of the ladies living in Kings Grove, with his hometown-boy good looks, easy smile, and bulging biceps. I’d had many opportunities to witness the way his muscled torso glistened in the sunlight when I’d been left alone to “supervise” the construction of our dream home. His brother was pretty cute too, in a more understated way. But I was hardly in the market, and they were both too young for me.

“I’m doing fine, Chance.” There were words unspoken there. Chance had seen a lot transpire between me and Jack. He and Sam had witnessed the complete disintegration of my marriage, and they treated me with a mix of pity and overprotectiveness.

“What’s going on with the house, Maddie? The weatherman’s saying this winter’s going to be a real one.” Sam watched me over the rim of his mug.

There’d been very little snow in California’s Sierra Nevada for the past four years. The odds of a real winter seemed slim.

“For the sake of this drought, I sure hope so, Sam.” I evaded his question and topped off their coffee. “Food up in a sec, guys.”

I tended my other tables, getting omelets and stacks of half-dollar pancakes out as quickly as I could while Adele hissed and tsked from her spot at the register. I probably wasn’t cut out for waitressing, but I did the best I could, and Frank helped me when I forgot to turn in an order or messed up someone’s request.