Between You and Me
‘Love, loss, passion and everything in between… I love Susan Wiggs' novels so much.’ JENNY COLGANThe most important thing to Caleb Stoltz is family and the close community of friends and relatives in the village of Middle Grove. When his brother’s sudden death leaves him responsible for his niece and nephew, he is determined to raise them in the family traditions his parents embraced. But when further tragedy strikes, Caleb must look beyond the boundaries of Middle Grove.A world away from Caleb’s life is Dr Reese Powell, a brilliant doctor dedicated to her medical career. Forever working to live up to the expectations of her parents, a fateful accident brings her and Caleb together.Reese and Caleb embark on a journey into a life where everything they know will be challenged, forcing them to reconsider what love, community and family really mean. But will they be able to recognise what their hearts truly want?
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Susan Wiggs 2018
Cover photograph © Anne Krämer/Arcangel Images
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Susan Wiggs asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008151355
Ebook Edition © September 2018 ISBN: 9780008151362
Version: 2018-06-28
To my beloved daughter, Elizabeth, who must never outgrow fairy tales—I dedicate this book to you for reasons so profound we’ll just keep everything between you and me.
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Part One: Harvest
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part Two: The Match
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Susan Wiggs
About the Publisher
On the day you were born, when you were only a few hours in this world, I tucked you into an old apple crate and left you behind like a piece of my beating heart, like an offering to a god I didn’t believe in but didn’t dare not believe in. Some might say you were a human sacrifice, but in that moment, I felt as though I was the sacrifice, not you.
Because in that moment, something inside me died.
Though I was too young to know anything, I truly imagined I was leaving you to a better life … I didn’t want to walk away, but I was scared of what would happen if I didn’t.
After all we’d been through that year, I was self-aware enough to realize my youth and ignorance would be a danger to you, yet smart enough to figure out what to do. I didn’t know anything about the modern world, about the city, about the law, about the inexorable ties that bind the heart. All I knew was that you’d be better off with a different future. With some other family to guide you. With some other life, far from Middle Grove.
By that time, I understood very well what happens at a hospital. They save people. They saved me. So I took you to a place where I knew you’d be saved.
Of course, that’s not how the papers reported it. The news media focused on the most sensational aspect of the case—an abandoned baby, a mysterious puzzle to be solved, a terrible family secret hidden by a distrustful, closed community that walled itself off from the rest of the world.
But the papers got it wrong.
The silver flash of a jet plane glinted in the morning sky. Caleb Stoltz tipped back his brimmed hat and watched it soar high overhead. Against the flawless summer blue, the plane glittered like a rare jewel—precious and out of reach.
“Hey, look, Uncle Caleb. Plane tracks,” said Jonah, pointing out the twin white plumes that bisected the sky in the flight path of the jet.
Caleb grinned at his nephew and handed him a galvanized milk pail, half-filled from the milk house. “They’re called contrails. Don’t slosh it,” he cautioned. “I’ll be in to breakfast shortly.”
Lugging the pail, the boy headed for the white clapboard house, his dusty bare feet leaving shallow impressions in the dry earth. Jonah’s skinny legs, browned by a summer of swimming at Crystal Falls up the creek a ways, protruded comically from his tattered black trousers, which only a short while ago had fit him. Now eleven, the kid was growing like the corn in high summer. Caleb would have to get Hannah to sew him a new pair of pants before school started in a few weeks. If not for the way the kids were growing, he would have no notion of the passage of time.
On a farm, the seasons were important, not the years.
Caleb washed down the milking shed, the stream of water hissing on the concrete and misting his work boots. He turned off the hose, reeled it in, and left the shed, glancing up at the puffy trail of clouds dissipating in the sky. The jet was long gone, off to New York or Bangkok or some other place Caleb had no hope of ever seeing. He studied the flight path and then wondered why it was called a path when there was no visible roadway, nothing to mark its way but invisible air. It was only after the jet had passed that its route could be seen.
