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Chapter 1
Kim stood on the walkand looked at the cottage she had inherited from her mother.
Blue, with creamy white shutters, the paint was slightly faded, but it was in much better condition than what she had expected. The stable off to the side looked far better than she had expected as well, although the big barn farther back looked weather-beaten and was missing a few boards.
Because of her cancer, her mother had not been able to be at the cottage for the last few months of her life, so Kim hadn’t been sure what to expect.
Her mother had purchased the cottage and stable along the shores of Lake Michigan after Kim had left the house.
She’d never spent any time here, and her mother hardly ever talked about them.
From what Kim understood, her mother had occasionally rented the cottage out, with the tenant getting a discount on the rent to do upkeep on the stable.
That’s all Kim knew, and now, considering that she just buried her mother...well, the woman she thought was her mother all of her life...she could hardly get more information now.
She took a breath and adjusted her purse strap where it lay slung over her shoulder. Her mother had died.
Not really. Not truly. The woman who gave birth to her was still alive.
She still hadn’t quite gotten used to the idea that she had parents. A mother and father who hadn’t known about her until less than a month ago.
They loved her, they had all her life, and she felt the same about them. But to love someone was one thing, to have them be your parents was a completely different ball game. Kim wasn’t sure how to move forward from there. There was no roadmap for them.
She put a hand over her rounded belly and looked at the small cottage again.
She was going to be a mother, the second time over. This time, instead of having a distant husband who didn’t care about her at all and who cheated on her as well as belittled and neglected her, she would be alone.
Which was worse?
She wasn’t entirely sure. She supposed it said something about her character, or maybe her courage, since she figured that being alone should be better, but she wasn’t sure it was.
At least when she had a husband, she had the illusion of having someone to lean on.
Now it was just her.
And God.
Maybe she’d draw closer to the Almighty here on this secluded beach.
It wasn’t far outside of Strawberry Sands, just two hundred yards up the beach from where the main street ended at the dunes. Strawberries Sands was tiny, though, and the beach house felt like it was miles away from civilization.
She wouldn’t care if it were.
Except for... She touched her stomach again, placing a hand protectively over it. She couldn’t leave society and raise her child in isolation. Even though that’s what she felt like she wanted for herself.
If there was one thing she learned in her over forty years of life, it was she couldn’t live her life for herself.
She’d taken one night, one crazy, regretful, sad, exhilarating night, for herself, and now she had a new life to be responsible for.
The idea of giving that new life up for adoption crossed her mind more than once. She was forty for goodness’ sake. Divorced. With a child who was supposed to be going to college but who had decided to go to LA and become an actress instead.
Almost as though thinking about Alyssa had conjured her up, her phone rang with the specific ringtone that indicated it was her wayward daughter.
Still standing on the porch, she dug it out of her purse, for some reason not wanting to step into the cottage. Maybe delaying the inevitable. It would smell like her mother. Surely. It would have her mother’s touches in it.
Not her mother.
She couldn’t get that thought to settle into her brain. Iva May had been her mother in every way. But the secret she finally disclosed shortly before she died had turned Kim’s world upside down.
