Josh took the boys in his truck and I took the flowers in the SUV, making the short ride across the street to the Orchard House barn. I pressed the gas pedal of my Honda Pilot harder up the slight incline of the driveway of the bed and breakfast.
Merry mums embraced the walkway and porch. Hanging planters of begonias and trailing vines clung to their last weeks of life on the large winding veranda of the old Victorian. Historic turrets and gables spoke of bygone times that guests seemed to find irresistible. And off to the side and the back of the property, for acres and acres, a grand apple orchard rolled up a gradual hill, their branches naked of leaves for their upcoming winter hibernation.
I still couldn’t believe we’d pulled off the renovation and the start of a successful business in such a short amount of time. Not only had Aunt Pris allowed Mom and my siblings to move into the old home, but she’d let us turn it into a thriving inn. Mom’s long-held dream come true.
I parked beside the patio of the bookshop. Through the large windows, I glimpsed strings of lights alongside bookshelves. Josie still got googly-eyed over the bookshop Tripp had built. I couldn’t blame her. Together, they’d breathed life into the place.
Josh and my siblings helped me set up the flowers on the tables in the barn while Josie and Tripp took pictures at Curtis Island Overlook.
Aunt Pris’s old orchard barn had been transformed into a fairytale. We’d strewn lights along the rafters and decorated the tables with Lizzie’s flowers alongside centerpieces of books—both classic literature and classic comics in honor of the bride and groom’s preferences.
It was rustic and romantic and done on a whim, and I couldn’t think of anything more perfect for my untraditional sister.
The sun hovered over the horizon, giving way to the arrival of the bride and groom, toasting and eating, dancing and celebrating. I wiped away tears when Mom danced the mother-son dance with Tripp. Ed Colton, Tripp’s grandfather, danced the father-daughter dance with Josie. At one point, Tripp took a spin on the floor with baby Amos. That’s how it was in this group. Family, even if not by blood. Family, filling in the places where others fell short.
The twins fell asleep on a row of empty chairs pushed against one side of the wall and Josh pulled me close for Wonderful Tonight. I relaxed into the warmth of my husband’s arms, the tune and words of the music swirling within me. The scent of spiced candles filled the room, strings of lights on the rafters above created romance and elegance. Even Aunt Pris and Ed Colton took a turn around the dance floor.
“I’ve missed you.” I snuggled into Josh’s embrace, the ambience of the night and the glass of champagne wrapping me in contentment.
“I’ve missed you, too.” Josh pressed his lips to the top of my head and pulled me against the length of his body. A stir of desire started deep in my belly. It had been too long. We’d missed one another for weeks on end. I’d been so involved in the opening of the B&B and keeping up with the boys’ schedules that on the rare occasions Josh was home, I collapsed into bed at night, sleep trumping any desire for intimacy.
What happened to the heat and passion of those first weeks of marriage? We hadn’t been able to keep our hands off each other, had savored those long sweet moments when the boys lay sleeping and nothing but the entire night lay between us. When had that stopped? We’d only been married fourteen months. How had the passion cooled so quickly?
“You want to get out of here?” Josh whispered in my ear, a slight tease in his tone.
I giggled. “I’m not leaving my sister’s reception to go have sex.”
“Not sex. Though I’m not saying I’m against that.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Seriously, Mags, I have something I want you to see. Something I’ve been working on for months. Just a quick drive.”
“Is it something you built with Tripp, because I can see it tomorrow just as well as tonight.” Hopefully, I didn’t sound tired of his building obsession. I wanted to be supportive, but Josh’s summer job working for Colton Contractors had turned into a permanent part-time job. With school back in session, not only did he work as a history teacher and cross-country coach, he ran himself ragged on the evenings and weekends with Colton Contractors.
Maybe if he wasn’t always working so much, I’d actually stand a chance at getting pregnant.
“It’s not something for Colton. It’s for us. Please?”
My lips inched upward at the adorable plea on his puppy dog face. “Okay.” I looked around the room, spotted Amie dancing in the arms of August Colton, Tripp’s younger brother. “Let me ask Amie if she’ll keep an eye on the boys. We’ll be back before the sendoff, right?”
“Absolutely.”
I pinched Amie lightly on the arm. She lifted her blonde head off August’s shoulder. “Hey, can you watch the boys for a half hour? Josh wants to show me something.”
August grinned wickedly. “I’ll bet he does.”
Josh punched him in the arm. The two worked with one another enough at Colton Contractors to be comfortable. Clearly. “Get your mind out of the gutter, kid. The surprise.”
August sobered up. “Oh, the surprise.” He winked at Amie. “I’ll help you watch the little guys if you want.”
Amie shrugged. “Sure. They don’t look like they’re making much mischief right now.”
I looked at the sweet faces of our boys puckered in sleep, pressed to the cloth-covered seats of chairs we’d borrowed from the church hall. “I think you’ll be safe.”
“Great.” Josh grabbed my hand and led me out into the chill of the night towards his truck, the lights of the bed and breakfast playing with shadows on patches of green lawn and herb gardens.
I shrugged off the cold climbing my arms. “So even August knows about this?”
Josh held the door of his truck open for me and offered his hand to help me up. “I’ve been working on the idea since summer. August and I worked together almost every day back then, so I did mention it a time or two.” He went around to the other side and started the truck.
“Since summer? Now I’m really curious.”
I didn’t miss his grin, and it stirred something like hope within me. Maybe all the magic hadn’t been lost after all. Maybe I needed to be more understanding. Patient. Maybe here, now, could be a new beginning for us.
Josh gripped the steering wheel tight with his left hand, the slight sweat of his other palm dampening the skin of his wife’s fingers. He’d waited so long for this moment, had dreamed about it for months now. He hoped she liked it. He hoped she loved it.
He drove into town, past the closed shops and restaurants where the harbor shone beneath moonlight on his left. Once on Bay View Street, the denseness of the buildings gave way to sparse, tasteful inns and homes nestled within woods. Josh turned right on Limerock then left on Chestnut, his heart pounding out a steady beat against his chest. Maybe he should have waited until tomorrow morning. Better to see it all in the light. Then again, with the amount of work needing to be done, dark might be better.
“Where are we going?” A nervousness coated Maggie’s voice.
“You’ll see.” He drove for a couple of minutes before turning right into a gravel driveway. Divots caused the truck to lurch back and forth. He pointed his headlights toward his destination. There. The moonlight helped as well. He imagined the rundown farmhouse restored to its former glory, the boys running around in the massive yard, Maggie and him sitting on the front porch to capture the amazing sunsets.
He turned to his wife, who squinted past the headlights.
“I—what is it?”
“It’s a house. Our house, actually.”
He studied the hazy outline of her profile in the dim light, willed her to say something.
She cleared her throat. “Our—but we have a house.”
“Not our house. Not really.” He’d purchased the small house they now lived in with his previous wife. A wife who chose a fierce addiction over him and their two sons. A wife who, by the time she’d given birth
to the twins, had been a small fraction of the woman he’d married.
He thanked God every day for sending him his second chance at family and life by sending him Maggie. By saving his boys in the accident. He refused to mess any of it up again.
“Our house now is small. The yard’s no bigger than a pocket handkerchief. You deserve better, Maggie. So much better.”
She slid her hand up his arm. “Josh, I have everything I could possibly want. I don’t need a bigger house or yard. I just need you.”
“I want to do this for you, Maggie. For us. For the boys. Let me, please?”
She shook her head, her earrings glittering off the moonlight. “I just don’t see how it can work financially. Despite the obvious work it needs, I’m cringing imagining the asking price.”
“I already made an offer. They accepted it today.”
Her hand froze on his arm. “An offer? What did you offer them—a plate of cookies? Because that’s about all we have that’s of any value. Even if we sold the house, we don’t have enough equity in it to make a dent. Josh, what were you thinking?”
He grit his teeth. She didn’t understand. She didn’t believe in him. “I’ve been working like a madman saving, Maggie. For this. I—I thought you’d be happy.”
“Honey, I’m happy with the house we have now. I’m happy when you come home in time for supper. I’m happy with just being a family with you and the boys. I don’t need to live anywhere else, not now. Isn’t that okay?”
On the surface, he supposed it was, but just beneath the surface, just an inch deeper, it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all.
He dragged in a deep breath. “When we got married, I told myself it didn’t matter that we were in the same house as, you know.”
“You and Trisha.”
“Yeah. Me and Trisha.” He rubbed the back of his neck. This topic of conversation was foreign soil for them. Maybe it shouldn’t be. “I mean, it’s just wood and sheetrock, right? Some plaster and paint. It shouldn’t matter. But I’ve been struggling with it. Like something in my spirit is tied down there. I want to break free of it.” He lifted a hand, let it fall on the steering wheel. “I know I sound crazy right now.”
A sigh from the passenger seat. “No. No, not at all, honey.”
She leaned her head back on the seat, and he could just make out her petite profile, her pert little nose and striking lashes and lips. His wife was beautiful. Not just on the outside, but on the inside. He wondered what a child of theirs would look like. God only knew she deserved a child from her own womb. But in some ways, he felt the house he’d shared with Trisha—the house where she’d shot up numerous times and hid her hard liquor inside the back of the toilet, the house where they’d argued and loved and cried and hated —had kept that happiness from them.
More than anything, he wanted to build a future with his own hands. Provide a place of safety and shelter for his boys, for Maggie, for whatever children God had in mind for them. One where he could come home and truly rest.
He bit his lip hard, looked out the side window into the dark. Maybe he really was losing it. Where was his faith? His assurance in God to help him through his struggles with a strength not of this world?
Yet, even as he wrestled with such questions, a nagging prick of something bitter stirred within him. He tried to brush it aside. Did God really expect him to forgive his long dead wife for all she’d put them through?
Maggie inhaled a quivering breath, the only sound other than the idle of his truck engine. “Okay, then.”
“Okay?”
“We buy the house.”
“Wait, really?”
“Yes. If it means that much to you, then I’m behind it. But Josh, we have got to change how things are. You’re never home. I feel like a single mother most of the time. I miss you. The boys miss you. I’m not sure a new house with no husband in it is the answer we’re looking for.”
He dove across the seat to kiss her. “Things will change, I promise Mags. I already saved a good amount. Once we sell our house, we’ll be in good shape. I’ll give my notice to Tripp. And with the B&B booming, you’ll be getting a raise for all the great work you’re doing in no time.”
“Mom did say we’re booked into spring already.”
He tapped her chin with his knuckles. “See? Everything’s going to work out. And we can redo the floor plan if you want. You can pick out kitchen cabinets and countertop, plumbing fixtures and all that jazz.”
“And we’re going to see you every night for supper?”
“Every night.”
Her smile warmed his insides. He didn’t deserve this woman—her love and understanding for not only him, but his sons. Their sons, he corrected himself.
He leaned closer, caught the subtle scent of the lavender shampoo she used. “I love you, Maggie Acker. With every fiber of my being. Every day I’m more and more amazed by you.”
“I love you.” She reached for him and he drew closer, dropped his mouth to hers, gave her bottom lip a tease of a kiss. Her arms came up to the back of his neck and they sank deep and slow into one another, needing, aching.
“We have to get back to the kids,” she murmured between kisses.
“I’m not thinking this will take too long.”
She laughed, kissing him harder and deeper, running her hands over his chest and neck, driving him to distraction.
From the dashboard of the truck, his phone lit up. For a second, he ignored it.
“Josh....”
From her handbag, Maggie’s phone let out a loud ring. A coincidence?
He grabbed up his phone at the same time Maggie answered hers.
“Hello?”
It was Tripp. He almost didn’t recognize the panic in his friend’s voice. “Josh, you got to get back here. Now, man. It’s Isaac. We were having trouble waking him up. His color looked off. Then he started throwing up, a lot. He said he couldn’t breathe. Hannah’s calling the ambulance now.”
Suddenly, nothing else mattered. Not the land they sat on, not the house he intended to build them. He had to get back to his son.
He didn’t remember hanging up the phone, was only conscious of Maggie panicked in the front seat, talking on speakerphone to Amie who assured her Isaac was in fact breathing, though his heart was racing and he was struggling to talk.
Josh pushed the gas pedal harder, peeling out of the gravel driveway. He squeezed his wife’s arm, wanting to comfort. “It’s going to be okay, Maggie. He’s going to be okay.”
He hoped God didn’t prove him a liar.
Also by Heidi Chiavaroli
The Orchard House
The Tea Chest
The Hidden Side
Freedom’s Ring
The Edge of Mercy
* * *
The Orchard House Bed and Breakfast Series
Where Grace Appears
Where Hope Begins (Summer, 2021)
Where Love Grows (Fall, 2021)
Acknowledgments
A huge thank you to brainstorming extraordinaire, Melissa Jagears, who also doubled as my editor on this project. Melissa helped me form the concept for this series, and I’m so very grateful!
Thank you to my agent, Natasha Kern, for giving me confidence to start this series. Thank you to my critique partner, Sandra Ardoin, for handling the nitty-gritty first draft, and to beta readers Karen Sargent, Daniel Chiavaroli (hubby and construction expert), and Donna Anuszczyk (a.k.a. Mom) for helping it shine.
Thank you to Doug and Louise Goettsche, who own our favorite inn, the exquisite and charming Cornerstone Victorian Bed and Breakfast in Warrensburg, NY. Not only are Doug and Louise fabulous hosts, they were beyond generous in answering my many questions and sharing their experiences and stories with us. The Orchard House Bed and Breakfast (including Hannah’s five-course breakfast) is modeled after the Cornerstone Victorian. I highly recommend a stay!
Writing would not be possible without my supportive family. Thank you to my boys, James and No
ah, and my husband Daniel for continuing to cheer my stories on. Love you so much! Lastly, thank you to the Author of life for allowing me the privilege to create in this manner. May all glory go to You.
About the Author
Heidi Chiavaroli (pronounced shev-uh-roli...sort of like Chevrolet and ravioli mushed together!) wrote her first story in third grade, titled I'd Cross the Desert for Milk. Years later, she revisited writing, using her two small boys’ nap times to pursue what she thought at the time was a foolish dream.
Heidi’s debut novel, Freedom's Ring, was a Carol Award winner and a Christy Award finalist, a Romantic Times Top Pick and a Booklist Top Ten Romance Debut. Her latest dual timeline novel, The Orchard House, is inspired by the lesser-known events in Louisa May Alcott's life and compelled her to create The Orchard House Bed and Breakfast series. Heidi makes her home in Massachusetts with her husband and two sons. Visit her online at heidichiavaroli.com
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