Time After Time (Sweetbriar Cove #14) - Melody Grace Page 0,1
of lemon polenta loaves, too,” Summer added, stacking the packages higher. “I’ve been playing around with a new recipe, a rosemary cream cheese frosting.”
“Sold.” Stella said, her mouth already watering. “But those, I’ll be keeping for me.”
The bell over the bakery door soon began chiming with the afternoon tea rush, so Stella packed up her tools and the baked goods, and headed out back up the Cape. It was early October, and the leaves were a blazing riot of color against the clear blue skies: reds, and orange, and gold, whirling together on the breeze. Fall was usually her favorite time of year, all brisk morning chill and chunky knit sweaters, but they’d been having an unseasonable heatwave all week, and now her thin T-shirt was sweaty and her hair was sticking, damp, to her face.
Stella rolled the windows all the way down to get some air, and blasted a Fleetwood Mac cassette as loud as it would go, singing along as she drove the winding coastal road with the ocean glittering blue on the horizon. The rattling old truck was practically an antique, but it hadn’t let her down yet, and – fingers crossed – it would make it through another winter without leaving her stranded and shivering on the side of the road. Although, maybe one of the rich summer folks would leave their pipes in their fancy beach house to freeze, and she could bill enough hours to afford a new (used) one by Spring…
Stella slipped into a pleasant daydream of heated seats and air conditioning before snapping out of it with a rueful laugh. A new truck wasn’t even tenth on her windfall wish list, not with the roof still leaking, and the mortgage due, and her son, Matty, hitting an awkward teen growth spurt, seeming to need new sneakers and jeans every other week. The truth was, despite what she’d told Summer, Stella could pin-point exactly when her life had shifted course, and it wasn’t walking into Plumbing 101.
No, it was the day she saw those two little lines on the pregnancy test, the week before her eighteenth birthday.
Up until then, Stella hadn’t really realized what a charmed life she’d been living. Private schools, and riding lessons; an ivy-covered house in the best neighborhood in Boston. Perfect grades (thanks to her private tutor twice a week). Perfect teeth (thanks to Dr. McGarry). Perfect brand new BMW on her birthday, the envy of all her friends. She’d made her debut in the ballroom of the Plaza hotel, followed by a reception for two hundred of her parents’ closest friends, all cooing over how much potential she had; how far she’d go.
None of them figured on her being knocked up before her high school graduation, least of all Stella herself.
What could she say? She’d been young, and headstrong, and high on that dizzy cocktail of summer romance and lust. They’d fumbled with a condom – but clearly, not carefully enough. Because there she was, pregnant. And just like that, the magic spell that had been wrapped around her life suddenly melted away, and Stella woke up to find herself in the real world.
Alone.
She shook off the old memories as she turned down the bumpy dirt road towards home: a rambling old farmhouse nestled a few miles outside town. She’d bought the place for a song years ago, when it was barely standing after a bad storm. Nobody had lived there in decades, but she’d fixed it up little by little, trading plumbing work with the local contractors until the roof was fixed, and the walls were sturdy, and the old Aga stove in the flagstone kitchen kept them snug all winter long. A little corner of Cape Cod, just for them.
A cluttered, overflowing corner, full of school projects, and discarded laundry, and hairy, enthusiastic beasts. Matty was a soft-hearted kid, a sucker for any stray that came his way, and somehow, they’d gone from a single, neat little hamster to three dogs, two cats, and a couple of ornery alpacas, who’d wandered off the Lane farm last year and refused to go back. It was a menagerie, alright, but Stella liked the chaos. She’d grown up in a pristine magazine spread, full of priceless objects to look at but not touch. Her life now may be haphazard, loud, and drool-stained, but it was a house full of love, and she smiled every time she walked through the door.
Today, that smile was even wider than usual. She’d cleared