Small-Town Girl
Will a small-town solution work for a big-city girl?After her son is seriously injured in a car accident, Julie Matthew wants two things: for him to regain his health and for her family to return to normal. What a shock when she learns that Russell, her husband, sees normal as a rut. His solution? To move their family from Vancouver back to the tiny rural town in Saskatchewan where he grew up.It's for the sake of their child, he claims, and a guilty conscience leads Julie, who loves big cities, to go along with his plan. But once in Chatsworth, she begins to suspect that Russell has his own interests at heart. Especially after she sees him and his former girlfriend together at the school where they'll both be teaching.And that's not the only surprise her husband has for her!
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“I think we need to move.”
Julie froze, certain she hadn’t heard correctly. “Russell?”
“I know how much you love Vancouver, love this house. And you’ve done a beautiful job with it. But we’re in a rut.”
“Russell, this house is perfect—and I’m not talking about the bloody furniture or the color on the walls, for heaven’s sake. We’re close to Ben’s school, and his friends…. And what about the ten thousand we just spent on landscaping?”
She considered Russell’s long commute to work. “Do you want to move closer to the university? Is that it?”
“No. Farther. Much farther.” Russell cleared the plates from the table and rinsed them for the dishwasher.
Julie sat, waiting for him to tell her exactly what he had in mind. Finally he returned to the table. Gripping the back of the chair, he took a fortifying breath.
“I’ve been tossing the idea around for years now. Ben’s accident is only the catalyst.”
Cold dread pinned Julie to her chair. Years, Russell had said. Yet he’d never even hinted he wasn’t happy living here.
Then he added, “I’d like us to move back to the farm town I grew up in….”
Dear Reader,
We’ve all suffered personal tragedies, the sort that can turn your entire world upside down. You see people walking to work, stopping for coffee, mailing a letter, and wonder, Why are they bothering? Don’t they realize how unimportant it all is?
That’s how I felt as a young teenager when my brother was seriously injured in a farming accident. With my other brother and two sisters, I sat in front of the TV at my grandma’s house while my parents waited at the hospital. Disney was playing—it must have been a Sunday night. I remember staring at the set and wondering how Donald Duck could be up to his usual antics when my brother was so desperately hurt. I felt lost and scared. All I wanted was for life to go back to the way it had been that morning at breakfast, before any of the men had gone out to the fields.
In Small-Town Girl, that’s how Julie Matthew feels, too, when her son is gravely injured by a drunk driver. She wishes she could turn back the clock to the moment her phone rang that morning. She wishes she could change the answer she’d given, the decision she’d made so quickly.
But of course she can’t. And so our story begins….
C.J. Carmichael
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
For around-the-clock advice (mostly pertaining to my stories) I thank my brother-in-law, Dr. Gordon Bird
For my brother David
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
AT THE TIME, THE MEETING had seemed very important to Julie Matthew, senior editor of West Coast Homes. She frowned when the magazine’s administrative assistant opened the boardroom door and beckoned to her.
“I’m rather busy, Gina.” She’d just put up her first overhead on projected advertising revenue. “I don’t suppose this could wait?”
Gina shook her head, her expression grim.
“Well, then.” Julie sighed, then smiled apologetically at the familiar faces, including those of the publisher and managing editor. Her felt marker still in her hand, she strode out of the room, closing the door behind her. “This had better be—”
Without a word, Gina handed her the phone, her eyes huge in what was, Julie noticed, a very pale face. What was wrong? Julie took the receiver in her left hand and clenched the marker in her other.
Russell was due home from Saltspring Island today. He’d taken some papers to mark in the peace of their seaside cottage. Had there been a problem with the shuttle plane as it sprinted across the Strait of Georgia to Vancouver Harbor? Oh, God, please no…
“Julie Matthew speaking.”
A stranger asked, “Are you Ben Matthew’s mother?”
Ben. It was Ben. Julie leaned against the wall, her knees suddenly undependable. “Yes” was all she could say.
“I’m sorry. Your son was in an accident. The ambulance brought him here, to the General Hospital.”
No! She didn’t actually scream—at least, she didn’t think so. She tried to ask what had happened, where to go, how he was. But her brain was stuck in a loop. Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben…
It wasn’t her husband. It was Ben, her nine-year-old son.
JULIE TOOK A TAXI from her office to the hospital. Gina had ordered the cab for her, and had promised to get hold of Russell, too. Julie should have been the one to tell her husband. But when she’d held her cell phone she couldn’t direct her shaking fingers to the familiar numbers.
Julie managed to pay the driver, get out of the car and shut the door. Now that she was here at the hospital, her heart began to slam against her chest. The red letters spelling out Emergency seemed ominous, almost evil. A deep breath didn’t help much but gave her the strength to head for the reception desk.
“Julie.”
She froze, taking in the face of her husband, who had somehow beat her here. He had the shell-shocked expression of a casualty victim on the cover of Life.
