Coming Home To You. Liesel Schmidt
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When one door closes…
Zoë and her fiancé Paul had everything ahead of them. So when Paul dies suddenly, Zoë doesn’t recognise the life she’s left with. Helping a friend by housesitting for a stranger is the last thing she wants to do – but she can’t deny that she needs time away from the memories which crowd her flat. So, collecting the keys, Zoë lets herself into her temporary home.
…another one opens.
Surrounded by a stranger’s belongings – his toothbrush, his favourite records, the pictures on his walls – Zoë begins to build a picture of the flat’s owner, Neil, who is away in the military. Driven by a need to know more, Zoë begins writing to Neil and finds herself feeling an unlikely connection with him. But while some people are destined to share our lives forever, others are sent simply to help us on the way. And for Zoë, a new life is just beginning…
Proof that life can change in the most unexpected of ways, Coming Home to You is the superbly moving debut from Liesel Schmidt, perfect for fans of Cecilia Ahern and Jojo Moyes.
Coming Home to You
Liesel Schmidt
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2014
Copyright © Liesel Schmidt 2014
Liesel Schmidt asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
E-book Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9781474007757
Version date: 2018-07-23
LIESEL SCHMIDT lives in Pensacola, Florida, where she spends her time writing, drawing, and reading everything she can get her hands on. She is currently working on her next novel and spends most of her days busily writing freelance for a list of local magazines that sometimes keeps her head spinning in a dizzy attempt to keep all the deadlines straight! When she has a few free moments, Liesel plunks away at her blog, Finding Words (http://fyoword.blogspot.com/), where she posts product reviews and offers her readers a peek at the inner musings of a writer slogging her way through the challenges of living a creative career and early-widowhood.
Having harbored a passionate dread of writing assignments when she was in school, Liesel never imagined that she would ever make a living at putting words on paper, but life sometimes has a funny way of working out… When she’s not writing, reading, or drawing, Liesel likes to indulge her guilty pleasure of watching competition television shows like Top Chef, Chopped, and Project Runway. Follow her on Twitter at @laswrites
To Jim – Thank you for believing in me enough to give my dreams wings. I hope I’ve made you proud.
To my family – Thank you for encouraging me all along the journey and giving me the confidence to never give up. You have all blessed me in more ways than you can ever imagine.
And thank you, most of all, to my faithful, loving God – who kept me going when nothing and no one else could.
Contents
Copyright
Prologue
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
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue
About the Publisher
I have a camera I rarely use, simply for the fact that pictures seem too permanent. Some pictures are catalogues of happy times, but too many become reminders of things that have been lost – people and relationships and chances at happiness that seemed to have slipped through our fingers.
I sat on my bed that morning, checking for signs of life in my neglected camera, when there it was. A picture of him. Smiling without knowledge of the camera focused on his luminous grin and sparkling blue eyes.