Prologue 1: Kelly
Ever wake up and start running through your usual mental checklist for the day—coffee, shower, try not to embarrass yourself in public—only to realize your life isn’t the same anymore?
Like somewhere along the line something big happened and now everything feels totally unrecognizable.
You’re still brushing your teeth and putting your pants on one leg at a time, but suddenly you’re living in a version of your life you never planned for.
And you find yourself standing there, staring at your own reflection, wondering how the hell you got here, and whether you’ve been making questionable life choices for a lot longer than you realized.
Because that’s exactly where I’m at right now.
And believe me when I say, if someone had told me a few months ago that this is where I’d end up, I would’ve laughed in their face, right before backing slowly out of the room.
See my life has always been planned out.
Girl meets boy.
They fall in love.
They get married.
They have a great kid.
Then they grow old together.
That kind of thing—only, it didn’t end quite that way.
Mike and I started dating when I was barely in high school.Fifteen and green as spring grass.
Back then everything felt simple.The world was small—just the sawmill, the mountains, Friday night football games, and the little diner on Main where we’d split fries and milkshakes like it was the most romantic thing on earth.
Mike was older.
Confident.
Handsome in that careless way boys are when they know girls are watching them.
And he chose me.
At fifteen that felt like the most important thing in the world.Especially since I was a little bit chubby and a lot snarky—so, my options were kind of limited.
Still, he saw something in me.Or maybe I wore him down, following him around my baby brother’s baseball games where he worked as an assistant coach and umpire.
At any rate, we started dating.He started waiting outside my classes.It was sweet, really.
He would walk me home from school.Kiss me behind the bleachers when nobody was looking.And we talked about everything.
Talked about what our lives were gonna be like.Talked about college and the jobs we’d have.
We talked about the future like it was something already decided.
Us.
A house.
Kids.
A life right here in Woodhaven.
