Prologue
There’s a particular comfort in believing you already know how your life will turn out.
You marry the person you love and build a home together. You settle into the rhythm of ordinary days until the years blur and passion becomes comfort.
I believed in that kind of life, and the quiet certainty that I would live out my days in peaceful companionship.
I believed Hazel was my forever.
For most of my adult life, I never questioned that assumption. Why would I? We had built something solid between us. Shared routines, shared history, shared plans that stretched comfortably into the future.
Our life was easy, drama free, slower paced. It wasn’t particularly exciting, either. But it was ours, and that seemed like enough.
Then one morning, while walking my dog along the path to Fernwick, the one I’d walked for years, I noticed a woman I’d never seen before.
Or maybe I had, but being the devoted husband I thought I was, my gaze moved over her without taking her in.
She had two dogs that were mismatched, one oversized, and one teeny tiny. And yet they matched her with her flushed cheeks and windswept hair.
We passed each other with nothing more than a polite nod, and a warning to our dogs to behave themselves. We ran into each other again on the other side of the river, me returning to Meadowcraig, her to Fernwick.
The next day, we did the same.
Then one morning it was a quiet “good morning.”
Eventually, we stopped for a few minutes while the dogs caught their breath. Just small talk between two people who happened to walk the same path at the same time each day.
That was all it was.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
Because nothing about Penny hinted that she would change my life so desperately, that she would shatter the peace I had found in my boring, predictable, safe life.
There were no fireworks. No sudden realisation that the ground had shifted beneath my feet. Just a beautiful, stubborn woman who showed up every morning with her mismatched dogs and a quiet determination.
And one day, without quite knowing when it had happened, I realised something deeply inconvenient.
I was looking forward to seeing her. And my days were planned around making sure I ran into her again. If only for a moment.
This isn’t a story about love at first sight.
It’s about how a nod becomes a greeting, a greeting becomes a conversation, and one morning you realise the part of your day you look forward to most is seeing someone who was supposed to be nothing more than a passing stranger.