The Single Mom's Second Chance. Jessica Keller

       Chapter Two

      “You can do this. It’ll be no different than talking to anyone else,” Claire coached herself, occasionally glancing into her car’s rearview mirror as she drove across town. Gray clouds crowded together and rolled over each other in the sky like a group of children pushing toward the promise of free ice cream. They were making their way over Lake Michigan, directly toward her. Goose Harbor was in for another round of lake effect snow.

      Good. A pending storm was the perfect excuse. That gave her a reason to keep the visit short.

      Visit.

      That was hardly the right word.

      Since being home, Claire had made a point of never driving past Evan’s house. Not a difficult task considering he lived in the thick, wooded area on the far reaches of the town’s limits—almost in the unincorporated section that belonged to the county. Claire rarely had a need to head out in that direction, and even if she did, there were roads she could take to bypass the stretch of land she knew he owned.

      Now it all felt silly. She’d mentally blown this moment—contact with Evan initiated by her—way out of proportion.

      Why had she let a person from her past, someone she hadn’t uttered a word to in more than a decade, have that sort of control on her life? She’d gotten over Evan a long time ago. He was an immature mistake. Falling for a cute guy had been an understandable blunder on the cusp of adulthood. She’d met plenty of people in college with far bigger regrets. So she’d entertained the idea of running off with her high school boyfriend, getting married at the county courthouse? It hadn’t happened.

      Good, again.

      She glanced in the rearview mirror another time. Dark storm clouds bubbled behind her. She’d focus on the behind her part. The path ahead of her was known, easy. Goose Harbor, her family, working for her father—she could have a life here. And the past was just that, the past. It couldn’t harm her any longer.

      And yet her hands were trembling on the steering wheel.

      “He has no power over me. None.”

      Sure, she’d mourned their relationship, and the question Why wasn’t I good enough? still lingered. But it wasn’t as if she’d spent years pining after him. Claire had moved on a long time ago, which was why she’d been able to get engaged to Auden Pierce, the most sought-after solutions architect for Fortune 500 companies, two years ago. At the stop sign she glanced down at her bare left ring finger and sighed. She’d called off the wedding six months in advance, leaving Auden speechless at first—not an easy feat—but at least she’d given him warning long before the day of the ceremony.

      Unlike Evan.

      Before she left Goose Harbor for college, Evan had still lived with his parents on a run-down piece of parched land that her father rented to the Danielses. Evan’s dad had been forever behind on payments, but her father had never kicked them out, though he’d threatened it many times. Often Mom would blow up and yell about the Danielses at family dinners, but Dad had always talked her off the ledge. He’d explained to Claire that it was their “Godly duty” to help out the unfortunate. Oddly, it was the only time Dad had ever been remotely spiritually minded or seemed to care about people who were in a different tax bracket than the Atwoods.

      Curiosity about the Danielses had bloomed in Claire at a young age, probably because of her parents’ heated fights over the family. When she’d finally rubbed shoulders with Evan in classes during freshman year of high school, she’d hung back, studied him. Evan had been one of those students who commanded the classroom with a funny remark and a winning smile. He’d strutted the hallways, high-fiving upperclassmen while a flood of followers trailed after him. As a teenager, he’d always been smiling, joking and full of confidence. While he hadn’t been a jock or among the top tier of popular kids, he’d been well liked by everyone.

      Her father’s word—unfortunate—had never fitted Evan’s brothers, Brice and Andrew, either. He had a younger sister, too, but Claire didn’t know Laura well.

      Over the years Claire had grown to despise that word unfortunate.

      Who decided the merits of a fortunate person versus an unfortunate one? Were finances all that mattered when applying the label? It was one of those words that, when used by someone in good economic standing to describe others, felt like a pat to the speaker’s back and an insult to the one being described. In her social circles, especially among her Christian friends, she’d heard it a hundred times since her father had first uttered the word.

      “Let’s organize a fund-raiser to help those unfortunate children without clean water in Africa.”

      “I saw this homeless man on the side of the road with a sign—how unfortunate.”

      “For our outreach project let’s do a food drive for the unfortunate.”

      “Did you see the viral story about that unfortunate puppy who was born without hind legs?”

      Fact was, in high school, when Claire had first observed Evan, she had come to the conclusion that she was the unfortunate one, not him. He could sway a crowd with a fast quip. He was surrounded by friends. He charmed the principal and every teacher he came into contact with. However, Claire had walked the halls with her books tightly pressed to her chest and chin to her collarbone. If her father had known how timid she’d been around her peers he would have been disappointed in her. She’d slunk to the back of the classroom and lost her voice when the teacher called on her.

      Up to that point freshman year, she hadn’t made one real friend in her whole life. Not one her own age.

      Not until Evan.

      Claire hooked the hand she wasn’t using for driving onto her shoulder and pulled at her tight muscles. She sucked in a deep breath and held it for the mental count of three, then let it out. She repeated the breathing exercise for the next mile.

      What she and Evan had during high school hadn’t been real friendship, either. Because friends don’t walk away like he did, at least, not the type of friends she’d always imagined having. Perhaps that’s why she still had such a difficult time connecting with people her age and always felt so out of place when she had to make small talk. Claire was definitely the unfortunate one. Money had nothing to do with it.

      “Stop. You have friends. Kendall is your friend. There. See? That’s plenty,” Claire muttered as she turned onto the street that led past Crest Orchard, where Jenna and Toby Holcomb lived. The couple’s daughter, Kasey, was Alex’s best friend.

      She took the tight curve extra slowly, remembering the car accident last year that had claimed the life of the community’s young pastor. The town had installed a wide guardrail to prevent cars from skidding off the road and going down the cliff that hung over Lake Michigan, but slow and steady was probably still the best course of action.

      Her father’s voice rang in her ears. Atwoods don’t back down. Losers back down, and Atwoods are winners. We settle for nothing less. You remember that.

      She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. “I can do this.”

      Dense woods hugged either side of the road. After a slight bend, Claire passed the dirt patch of a clearing that she knew, because of her friendship with Kendall, led to Brice Daniels’s cabin. Claire had actually had dinner at Brice’s house a handful of times in the last few months to help with planning their wedding. She was Kendall’s maid of honor, after all.

      She worked her fingers into the leather of her steering wheel. Evan’s land butted up to Brice’s. The brothers had purchased the land together when a piece of the old summer camp had gone on the market. They’d divided the land between them and each had built a home.

      More than likely she was driving by some of Evan’s property right now. Half a mile later, she found Evan’s wide concrete driveway, just as Kendall had described.