Stealing Home. Sherryl Woods

      Contents

      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

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Chapter 24

      1

      Maddie focused on the wide expanse of mahogany stretching between her and the man who’d been her husband for twenty years. Half her life. She and William Henry Townsend had been high-school sweethearts in Serenity, South Carolina. They’d married before their senior year in college, not because she was pregnant as some of her hastily married friends had been, but because they hadn’t wanted to wait one more second before starting their lives together.

      Then, after they’d graduated, there had been the exhausting years of medical school for Bill, when she’d worked as an entry-level bookkeeper, making poor use of her degree in business, just to keep their heads above water financially. And then the joyous arrival of three kids—athletic, outgoing Tyler, now sixteen, their jokester, Kyle, fourteen, and their surprise blessing, Katie, who was just turning six.

      They’d had the perfect life in the historic Townsend family home in Serenity’s oldest neighborhood, surrounded by family and lifelong friends. The passion they’d once shared might have cooled ever so slightly, but they’d been happy.

      Or so she’d thought until the day a few months ago when Bill had looked at her after dinner, his expression as distant as a stranger’s, and calmly explained that he was moving out and moving on…with his twenty-four-year-old nurse, who was already pregnant. It was, he’d said, one of those things that just happened. He certainly hadn’t planned to fall out of love with Maddie, much less in love with someone else.

      Maddie’s first reaction hadn’t been shock or dismay. Nope, she’d laughed, sure that her intelligent, compassionate Bill was incapable of such a pitiful cliché. Only when his distant expression remained firmly in place did she realize he was stone-cold serious. Just when life had settled into a comfortable groove, the man she’d loved with all her heart had traded her in for a newer model.

      In a disbelieving daze, she’d sat by his side while he’d explained to the children what he was doing and why. He’d omitted the part about a new little half brother or sister being on the way. Then, still in a daze, she’d watched him move out.

      And after he’d gone, she’d been left to deal with Tyler’s angry acting out, with Kyle’s slow descent into unfamiliar silence and Katie’s heartbroken sobs, all while she herself was frozen and empty inside.

      She’d been the one to cope with their shock when they found out about the baby, too. She’d had to hide her resentment and anger, all in the name of good parenting, maturity and peace. There were days she’d wanted to curse Dr. Phil and all those cool, reasoned episodes on which he advised parents that the needs of the children came first. When, she’d wondered, did her needs start to count?

      The day of being completely on her own as a single parent was coming sooner than she’d anticipated. All that was left was getting the details of the divorce on paper, spelling out in black and white the end of a twenty-year marriage. Nothing on those pieces of paper mentioned the broken dreams. Nothing mentioned the heartache of those left behind. It was all reduced to deciding who lived where, who drove which car, the amount of child support—and the amount of temporary spousal support until she could stand on her own feet financially or until she married again.

      Maddie listened to her attorney’s impassioned fight against the temporary nature of that last term. Helen Decatur, who’d known both Maddie and Bill practically forever, was a topnotch divorce attorney with a statewide reputation. She was also one of Maddie’s best friends. And when Maddie was too tired and too sad to fight for herself, Helen stepped in to do it for her. Helen was a blond barracuda in a power suit, and Maddie had never been more grateful.

      “This woman worked to help you through medical school,” Helen lashed out at Bill, in her element on her own turf. “She gave up a promising career of her own to raise your children, keep your home, help manage your office and support your rise in the South Carolina medical community. The fact that you have a professional reputation far outside of Serenity is because Maddie worked her butt off to make it happen. And now you expect her to struggle to find her place in the workforce? Do you honestly think in five years or even ten she’ll be able to give your children the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed?” She pinned Bill with a look that would have withered anyone else. His demeanor reflected a complete lack of interest in Maddie or her future.

      That was when Maddie knew it was well and truly over. All the rest, the casual declaration that he’d been cheating on her, the move, none of that had convinced her that it really was the end of her marriage. Until this moment, until she’d seen the uncaring expression in her husband’s once-warm brown eyes, she hadn’t accepted that Bill wouldn’t suddenly come to his senses and tell her it had all been a horrible mistake.

      She’d drifted along until this instant, deep in denial and hurt, but no more. Anger, more powerful than anything she’d ever felt in her life, swept through her with a force that brought her to her feet.

      “Wait,” she said, her voice trembling with outrage. “I’d like to be heard.”

      Helen regarded her with surprise, but the stunned expression on Bill’s face gave Maddie the courage to go on. He hadn’t expected her to fight back. She could see now that all her years of striving to please him, of putting him first, had convinced him that she had no spine at all, that she’d make it easy for him to walk away from their family—from her—without a backward glance. He’d probably been gloating from the minute she suggested trying to mediate a settlement, rather than letting some judge set the terms of their divorce.

      “You’ve managed to reduce twenty years of our lives to this,” she said, waving the settlement papers at him. “And for what?”

      She knew the answer, of course. Like so many other middle-aged men, his head had been turned by a woman barely half his age.

      “What happens when you tire of Noreen?” she asked. “Will you trade her in, too?”

      “Maddie,” he said stiffly. He tugged at the sleeves of his monogrammed shirt, fiddling with the eighteen-carat-gold cuff links she’d given him just six months ago for their twentieth anniversary. “You don’t know anything about my relationship with Noreen.”

      She managed a smile. “Sure I do. It’s about a middle-aged man trying to feel young again. I think you’re pathetic.”

      Calmer now that she’d finally expressed her feelings, she turned to Helen. “I can’t sit here anymore. Hold out for whatever you think is right. He’s the one in a hurry.”

      Shoulders squared, chin high, Maddie walked out of the lawyer’s office and into the rest of her life.