Chapter 1
Maisey Spencer, a.k.a. a single mom who can’t stop second-guessing all her life decisions
This is fine.
Everything’s fine.
I have it all under control. Three days from now, we’ll think back on this, and we’ll laugh until we cry.
Just like we have about a dozen other things in the past few months.
“Mom,it’s a bear. What do we doabout a bear?” Juniper, my sixteen-year-old daughter, punctuates the sentence by crawling onto my back and clinging to me for dear life.
For one glorious moment, I high-five myself. We’re bonding! She’s forgiven me for uprooting her and moving her from the only life she’s ever known in Cedar Rapids to Wit’s End, my uncle’s old hobby ranch in Hell’s Bells, Wyoming.
I was right.
This is exactly the fresh start we both need.
Champagne! Party balloons! Celebration!
Junie loves me, and once she starts school and makes friends and we get settled here, she’ll forget she initially didn’t want to come, and everything will be fine.
Moving truly was the solution to all our problems. We’re home free.
The bear lifts its head and looks at us.
Happy feelings all gone.
Maybe this isn’t our year to be happy.
Or our decade.
“It’s outside, honey. We’re safe. It won’t get us.”
I shift, adjusting her on my back so I can grab her legs and make this teenage bonding moment more ergonomically correct. My back isn’t as young as it used to be.
Especially after childbirth,I hear my own mother say in my head.
“The window is open!” Junie screeches.
“There’s a screen.” I don’t think I’m screeching back.
I think I’m being calm.
I am the competent, confident voice ofthis will all be okayreason.
The bear squints at us with murder in its eyes, and okay, yes, now I’m shrieking.
Junie squeaks out a terrified noise and tries to climb onto my shoulders.
The bear snorts in our direction, then goes back to eating—something.
“Shut the window!” Junie yells.
The bear lifts its head again.
I reach for the windowsill, and something twists in my lower back.
