To Begin Anew (Blue Jay Romance)

Copyright © 2012 by BlueRibbonBooks.com

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Birthdays were for young people and older people who no longer cared. Which, of course, put Debra Brown somewhere in the miserable middle. Her stint as a blossomed thirty-year-old had gone by just too fast. The calendar with that big red X on it that marked her thirty-first birthday said so. It was approaching too quickly for her liking, making her wish that her life had gone differently and that it should be possible to roll the time backwards instead of forwards.

Boy, did she feel her age. Playing mother to her two youngest siblings had drained the youth right out of her. That and the lack of any time to herself had made her feel her ever deepening frown lines and sneaking gray hair like a slowly ticking addled clock. Not that she had grey hair - if she did, they’d slipped past her womanly radar.

Debra rolled out of her four-poster bed, managed to dodge the comforter as it tried to claim her back into the depths of comfort, and sauntered off into her living room. On her coffee table, the one that had cup circles on it that dated it like the rings of a tree, she looked over the mail that she was too tired to ponder the night before.

A letter from her brother - how nice. He was happy where he was, a college student that was sailing out in life on a brand new boat she’d helped build for him. She sighed and ran a hand through the mass of her tangled blonde hair.

Aaron had needed her, a kid lost without a hand to guide him, and now that he was gone she felt lost. Lost because she couldn’t absorb the slow pace her life had ambled into, couldn’t get used to the fact that she wasn’t split into several directions at the same time any more.

Debra sighed. She heard what she thought was the roar of a lion growling in the distance and it took her a moment to understand that it was her empty stomach. She flipped on the television for noise before she got to her feet and shuffled from her small apartment and into the kitchen.

Years ago she’d decided to open up her family home to travelers looking for a night’s lodging and a home cooked meal. Fred Williams, a retired architect, had graciously agreed to build her a small, yet comfy, apartment off the back of the kitchen to allow as many bedrooms as possible for her overnight boarders.

She reminisced how she griped to Aaron about cooking, but in truth she loved it. The idea of taking ingredients, taking spices and meat and odds and ends, turning them from nothing into something was nothing short of fascinating to her.

Debra caught her reflection on the surface of a metal mixing bowl and frowned. Even though the image was distorted, she knew she probably looked like a Mack truck had hit her doing about a zillion miles an hour. She knew she could look good when she tried, but at the moment her heart-shaped face was framed by hair so frizzy she might as well have stuck her hand in the toaster and zapped it straight. Her one blue eye winked at her as if it knew her thoughts, while her one green eye, the one with the most wisdom, watered in understanding.

Heterochromia, having one eye one color and the other another, was something that’d marked her for better or for worse her entire life. Her mother had said that it made her unique and special, while her father said that she was the cutest toddler he’d ever seen. Either way, it was what it was and she was probably the only person on the planet that had names for her eyeballs. Lefty was the serious one, the green emerald of knowledge, and Righty was the fun-loving, deep blue mischievous prankster that got her into trouble more times than she could remember to count.

All of it was in her head, but that was fine too. Debra was sane, but the duality that resided in her personality had to be explained somehow.

As she set to cooking her private buffet, she tilted her head occasionally while she listened to the news.

“And that’s our weather report for the morning. We now return to Cathy, our lovely local gossip queen, so that we can hear the latest she has to tell us about what is happening in our lovely little piece of heaven on Earth.”

Debra could hear the switch over as the television panned to Cathy. She had to assume this, since she didn’t have eyes in the back of her head.

“Thank you, Jordan. So! Have I got some news for you folks! You’ll never guess who is the newest local doctor at Our Lady of Peace Memorial Hospital! That’s right, you guessed it, the one and only Dr. Eric Nelson!

“Many of you might remember him from his long-running role on the television series, Adam’s Hospital, the reality show about the hottest star the movie business has known, Adam Kent, and his doctor, whom he saw on a regular basis due to his reckless attempts at doing his own stunts.”

Debra was familiar with the show and as she cracked a couple of eggs into her skillet, she tilted her head to listen. She was familiar with the doctor, knew his face, had admired his way of handling the young Adam Kent. She also knew he’d recently lost his wife.

“Most of you know of the recent tragedy that Eric Nelson has suffered, but most of you should also know that he canceled his contract with the reality show and has gone off the grid in hopes to heal from the loss of the late Tina Nelson.

“It wasn’t until earlier in the week when yours truly happened to verify that Dr. Nelson was, in fact, spotted at Our Lady. And when I did a little digging, I discovered that not only was one of the most well-known doctors in the world saddled up for a job here in our little town, but he’d also purchased property out here. You know what that means, ladies! Dr. Nelson is here to stay!”

Debra fought the urge to smile and agree with Cathy. If that were only possible. She knew that a man like that, with two children and recently widowed, couldn’t possibly be looking for romance. That and, if she was in his shoes, she’d be mad at Chatty Cathy on the screen, since she’d basically marked it open season on him. Every woman within fifty miles would come sniffing around him like a hunting dog on the trail of prized game.

~*~*~

Making breakfast for his boys wasn’t something Dr. Eric Nelson was accustomed to doing.  In fact, there had been a time when he’d despised it, but now that he was a single parent, what choice did he have? The kids needed their morning meal, as did he.

Tina, the beautiful and loving mother of his children, was no longer here to take care of them as only she could. And it wasn’t getting any easier for him to deal with, either. God knew how much and how often during the day Eric missed her presence, especially when it came to taking care of the daily needs of the boys.

Sadly, she’d passed away after a particularly rare and rapid growing form of cancer hit the majority of her reproductive system. Neither of them even knew what was happening until it was too late. Radiation and chemo wouldn’t have done a thing for her and that’s the part that ate at his insides like a ravenous beast. But the worst part of it all was watching the fire of her existence slowly fade from her eyes. She fought a valiant battle, but in the end the cancer won out and God took Eric’s angel home.

Eric poured the beaten eggs into the skillet, dropped the four slices of bread in the toaster and turned on the small under-counter TV. He never understood before why Tina wanted that thing, but it made perfect sense now. He could get the latest news and weather while cooking breakfast and he decided he liked that.

Unfortunately, he’d missed the weather report, but all he had to do was look out the window to see that it was a beautiful and cloudless Spring day. Sunshine always warmed his heart and helped ease some of the yearning ache he felt. Not much, but it was enough to remind him that there was One up above who knew what He was doing. Eric would take any small amount of solace he could find.

Now there was a talkative gossip girl going on about something and he automatically tuned her out. Idle chit chat about what other people were doing was of no interest to him. That is, until he heard his name mentioned along with the name of the hospital he’d been lucky to find employment with. This was just
great
! Now every female in this town and all the neighboring towns within dozens of miles would be coming in droves. Just what he needed - hundreds of riotous women clamoring over him.

As he set the plates on the table, Eric called out to his boys. “David! Danny! Come get your breakfast.” He turned and caught the toast as it popped up, buttered each slice between stirrings of the scrambled eggs, then topped the eggs with shredded cheese.

He was just about to call the boys again when they appeared at sat down at the table, bleary-eyed from sleep and still in their pajamas. They’d stopped in the bathroom to brush their teeth and comb their sandy blond hair that they apparently inherited from his mother. Tina had the most radiant auburn hair he’d ever seen, so they didn’t get it from her.

Eric still marveled at how his seven-year-old twins could be so identical in build, hair color and facial features, yet so different. David, the older of the two by only four and a half minutes, was right-handed and had blue eyes. Danny was a lefty with green eyes. Their personalities were much the same, but David seemed to be the more outgoing of the two, while Danny went along with anything his twin said. They had the same likes and dislikes, for the most part, and they both missed their mother as much as Eric did. He could see it in the way their eyes had lost much of the natural sparkle that used to be in them. His own eyes didn’t have that glow anymore, either.

Placing the plate of eggs and toast on the table, he sat opposite the boys and doled out the portions for each of them. Neither of them looked particularly upbeat this morning, not that it was unusual since Tina’s death, but Eric could tell something else was bothering them.

“What’s with the long faces? You look like somebody just stole your puppy or something.”

There was silence for several moments, but Eric noted the thoughtful look on David’s face as Danny glanced expectantly at his twin. “Are you having trouble in school? Got some girls after you or something?”

This got him a giggle from the boys. “No, daddy,” David said. “No silly girls bothering us. Nobody wants to talk to us or anything. We try to be nice to all the kids, but they don’t wanna be our friends.”

“They just don’t know you yet, that’s all.” Eric didn’t know what else to say. It had to be tough on them being uprooted from everything they’d ever known and plopped down in this little town where they knew absolutely no one.

“That’s what I said, daddy,” Danny piped in. He looked into his father’s hazel eyes and Eric felt as if he could see straight into his son’s heart and soul. Although Danny was the quieter of the two, he was also the more insightful and intuitive. It showed in his eyes.

“Well, maybe you should just try a little harder.” Eric felt that David was hit by the uproar in their lives a little harder than his brother and it bothered him. David was usually so upbeat and made friends easily. “If there’s someone you think you might like to be friends with, why don’t you start up a conversation with them?”

David pushed his eggs around his plate while Danny began eating, slowly at first. Soon both boys were enjoying their breakfast and Eric could almost hear the gears turning in David’s head. The intense look of thoughtfulness in the boy’s eyes told him all he needed to know.