Her Summer Hope (McClellan's Hope Book 1)

Chapter One

Madison

“I’m sinking.”

She laid her head back against the cheap vanity and closed her eyes.

She’d painted it two years ago during a spur-of-the-moment whole-house redecorating spree in which she’d attempted to make the home more inviting and comfortable for Rob. She’d wanted him to have a nice, homey place to relax after he’d been working so hard.

She wished she had all the money she’d blown on it now.

“What a waste,” she muttered.

“Mom, I’m sinking,” Jackson said, peering at her over the rim of the tub. “I can’t hold on much longer!”

“Jack, you are not sinking,” she said tiredly, raising her eyebrow at the little blond boy.

“Am too!” he said, holding out a little slick hand and waving it in the air. “Help me!”

She sighed, too exhausted for his game today. “Jackson, there is less than a quarter inch of water in that tub. Pull the plug again and get out, please. I want you in bed before your sister wakes up hungry again.”

Jackson stood, putting his hands on his hips and feet splattering the nearly-opaque water out of spite. His imperious expression was ruined by the toothless grin. He’d lost both his front teeth within the last couple of days.

He was so cute it hurt, especially when he looked so much like Rob.

She felt her eyes burn with tears, but she was sick of crying all the time.

“Come on,” she said, holding out her towel-covered arms.

“Mo-o-o-m, I’m not a baby. I’m a grown man. I can dry myself off,” he grumbled, dumping water out of the toy boat into the empty tub.

“You’re seven,” she said pointedly.

“You are,” he said nonsensically.

“I wish!”

And she did wish. Being seven again would be heaven.

A sudden wail from the bedroom interrupted their nighttime routine and she rubbed her eyes, feeling as if she’d been awake for three days, at least. She eyed the sludge at the bottom of the tub and shook her head. It would have to wait.

She didn’t understand how boys could carry around that much dirt after only two hours of playing outside.

The crying continued and she knew the baby wasn’t going to settle. She was hungry again. Madison thanked God every day that she had decided to breastfeed Emmie. She couldn’t imagine what she would have done if she had to buy formula on top of everything else.

She padded out onto the warm laminate flooring toward her bedroom where Em was demanding the boob. She kept the central air unit off as much as possible to save money, and sometimes it was late in the day before the house cooled off.

The room was dim, only the light of the small T.V. glowed from the wall where she had put on an old movie before Jackson had demanded his bath.

Emmie stopped crying the moment she stepped over the threshold and was now kicking her chunky little legs in the thin baby gown. Her little feet poked out the end before disappearing and reappearing with tiny grunts. She was about to get upset again at any moment.

“Emmie,” Madison sang, leaning over the crib. “Are you hungry?”

She reached in and picked up the warm little bundle, feeling the tiny diaper before sitting on the bed and settling back against the headboard. She propped her nursing pillow under her arms and put Emmie on her breast where the three-month-old nursed vigorously.

She’d gone into the whole breastfeeding thing blind, and it had been one of the best decisions, even if it was hard and exhausting. Emmie was fat and getting bigger, which was a huge relief to her since she hadn’t breastfed Ellie, James, or Jackson.

Speaking of…

“Ellie!” she called, looking down a little belatedly at Emmie to make sure she wasn’t sleeping. The baby was staring at her with wide eyes, chubby little cheeks moving enthusiastically as her milk let down.

“Yeah?” the little girl called back.

“Can you get James and Jackson their milk?”

There was silence and Madison had a sudden feeling of doom.

“Uh, James already got it…” her daughter said, moving away. Then, from the kitchen, “James! That was a whole gallon of milk!”

Crap.

Her heart sank as she nursed Emmie and contemplated the disaster in the kitchen. James had spilled the milk again. She felt like crying. Whoever said not to cry over spilled milk obviously had enough money to buy more.

She would have to have a talk with him again, but she couldn’t bring herself to yell at him. He was only five, and he was taking the death of his father worst of all. Whereas nine-year-old Ellie was serious and had started a crusade to help her with everything, and seven-year-old Jackson had taken it upon himself to make her laugh as much as possible, James had become, for lack of a better term, the problem child.

He had been the most like Rob—personality-wise—and had been Rob’s favorite, though she knew he had tried hard to never let the other kids know that. She saw it though, and when he died, James had taken it much harder than the others.

He seemed to resent her a little, perhaps blaming her for his father’s death, or perhaps not. She wasn’t sure. At least he was talking and laughing again. She hoped time and love would help her little boy overcome whatever was keeping him distant.

Ellie came into the room. “I saved part of the milk, but the rest spilled. I made him clean it up. He used the good hand towel though.”

Madison huffed out a laugh. The good hand towel. As if things like that mattered now.

“That’s okay. Did you guys drink your milk?”

“Yeah.”

Ellie was neat and fastidious. She loved to read and devoured every book in sight. Madison had to keep her romance novels high up in her closet so the little girl wouldn’t get her hands on them…not that she did much reading anymore. She should probably get rid of them.

These days it was all she could do to work part-time, go over the kids’ lessons with them, cook, and keep the house in somewhat livable condition after Hurricane James passed through every day. The house was larger than she could afford now, but she couldn’t bear to take the kids away from the only home they’d ever known.

The insurance money hadn’t been that great, and what was left after the lawsuit was only enough to cover the mortgage, car insurance, and home insurance. The only mitigating factor in the whole thing was that Rob had been under the legal limit and the other driver hadn’t.

Eventually, she’d have to worry about covering the insurance payments, but hopefully, the kids would be in college by then. For right now, everything else was up to her. Utilities, food, clothing, gas, and—God forbid—medical expenses were all on her shoulders.

Emmie was finished and falling asleep so she burped her and switched sides.

“Can you tell the boys to brush their teeth and get in bed? I’ll come to tell you all goodnight as soon as I’m finished feeding Em.”

“Can I stay up and read?” Ellie begged.

Madison sighed and knew she should make the little girl go to bed, but she couldn’t bring herself to discourage her from reading. Books had been her life, once upon a time. Ellie’s love of them came naturally.

“A few more chapters,” she finally relented.

Ellie flashed her a grin and ran out the door yelling instructions at the boys, who may or may not listen.

Her eyes were heavy and she felt them closing against her will. Sleep threatened to drag her down and she wanted so badly to let it. She was so tired.

Her head jerked and she startled awake, shifting on the bed to keep herself awake.

Tomorrow she would be up at six to feed Em, then get the kids ready to go next door to Mrs. Thompson. She needed to be at Christian’s Corner Books by eight, then she’d need to dash home on her break to feed Em, then go back and work another couple of hours. Her lunch break would be spent the same way before she went back for her final two hours.

She worked six hours a day at the bookshop and what felt like thirty-six hours a day at home. Her evenings were spent homeschooling Ellie, Jack, and sometimes James when she could get him to sit down. They had just started their third year and it was going to be a doozy.

She briefly considered giving it up after Rob died, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that either. She enjoyed the time with the kids, and now they were all she had. If she was getting overwhelmed, well…that was just part of being a mom.

Her phone rang and she quickly silenced it before checking the ID. She closed her eyes and sighed as she answered it.

It was Rob’s mother. Again.

The conversation went as it usually did—Rob’s mother beating around the bush about her call, offering her some gossip about Rob’s father’s friends who she didn’t know at all, and then a demand for a weekend visit from the kids.

She turned her down with excuses, as she always did, and offered to bring them over on Sunday afternoon for a few hours instead. It was the same thing she always offered, and they always accepted though the visits were awkward.

Rob’s parents didn’t know how to interact with the kids.

They brought them into the formal living room, offered them toys, and then proceeded to grill them on the school lessons Madison taught them. No amount of competency on her part would relieve their minds and they always ended the visit by forcing hugs from the kids and urging her to enroll them in a real school.

She always held her tongue out of respect, but her nerves were worn thin and sleep deprivation didn’t help.

She finally hung up, relieved and yet dreading the next wasted afternoon visit to their house.

She put Emmie in her crib, stroked her scant blond hair, and went to tell the others goodnight. She was looking forward to another night of sleep and another day between her and the worst day of her life.

∞∞∞

Helen Thompson was a healthy and hearty retiree who seemed to have the stamina of a teenager and the wisdom of a Depression-era housewife. It made sense considering that her mother had lived through the Great Depression and passed down her lessons to her only daughter.

Helen, lacking any daughters to pass her stories and knowledge onto, had adopted Madison.

She had saved Madison’s life, figuratively speaking, and the kindest thing was that she pretended that Madison was doing her a great favor by leaving all the children with her for a laughably small sum of money.

It was only because of her that her children’s routines hadn’t been overly disrupted after Rob’s passing. She couldn’t have done it otherwise.

“I have to run,” Madison said, placing Emmie’s bag down on the floor in the living room near the playpen. She gave Emmie smooches, her heart twisting painfully at the thought of leaving her, as it does every single morning she goes to work, before turning to kiss the others.

Ellie hugged her and returned her kiss on the cheek. Jackson leaped on her and kissed her square on the mouth with a loud smacking sound.

“Eww, girl kisses!” he joked, before sliding down to find the toys.

James allowed her to kiss his forehead briefly before running off to join his brother. Ellie was already settled in on the couch with a book while keeping an eye on the baby cooing nearby.

“I’ll—”

“Be back at ten, and again at lunch, and again at two,” Helen said, waving her away. “I know. Go on now so I can cuddle with my Emmie-bug and watch these youngsters build some sort of contraption from Legos and my kitchen spoons.”

Madison smiled. “I love you, Helen.”

“I love you too, but go now before they fire you for being late.”

Madison took one last inventory of her children before rushing back across the yard to her house and grabbing her keys and her purse.

∞∞∞

The shop door tinkled as she unlocked it and pushed it open. Despite Helen’s warning, she wouldn’t be fired for being late. Christian was grumpy and valued punctuality, but he wasn’t mean.

And he knew her circumstances.

As long as the shop was doing well, she wouldn’t have to worry about her job, at least. That was a huge weight off her mind. Her pay wasn’t great, but it was more than she would be able to earn elsewhere with very little college education and practically no other work experience.

The hardest job she’d ever had was being a stay-at-home mom, and unfortunately, that counted for very little in the real world. It was massively unfair, but she’d given up thinking about it long ago.

“Morning, Madison. Coffee’s in the back,” he grumbled.

He said the same thing to her every single day. He muttered about it, but he never failed to buy her a cup of her favorite coffee in the mornings. She flashed him a smile and a word of thanks before going to the back to store her purse and take her first sip of caffeine.

She closed her eyes and braced herself for the day ahead.

The jingling of the bell alerted her to their first customer of the day and from then on, it seemed to never stop. They stocked a variety of books, new and old, and the college students loved to come in and browse for hours at a time. The old leather sofas were always spread with one student or another, and the corner chair was almost always occupied by the elderly woman with the newest cozy mystery.

She never bought anything, and it was a testament to Christian’s generosity and kindness that he allowed her to read there every day free of charge. She had an inkling that the old woman couldn’t afford to buy the books that she loved so much, and she imagined that the books were in demand at the library. She knew the wait lists for popular books could be months long.

Madison scanned the stained wood, string lights, and overstuffed chairs. The fireplace in the corner was a fake—too dangerous to have in a bookshop, Christian said—but it lent an air of hominess in the little shop that set it above the other book retailers nearby. She understood why people would rather come here even though the prices were a little higher.

As long as people had the money for books, Christian’s Corner Books would stay in business.

She spent the first couple of hours ringing up customers, recommending books, and staring out the window at the green trees that lined the street. They were at the very end of their summer life and would soon begin to turn the variety of colors that she once loved.

Oranges, reds, and yellows would flutter outside the large display windows in the gusty winds of fall. Pumpkins and bales of straw would appear and the city would light the Christmas lights every night until late February. Eventually, pumpkins would turn into scarecrows and turkeys, then snowmen, reindeer, and giant fake presents.

Rob had died last December, early in the month and so not on Christmas day, but still…it tainted the whole season. Christmas was going to be hard. If it weren’t for the children, she would skip it completely.

That reminded her about the presents. She needed to buy Christmas presents, and she needed to start soon so that she’d have time to get enough for everyone. Then, she’d need to worry about birthdays again. The weight of it all was heavy enough to drag her right down to the shop floor, if she let it.

The world didn’t revolve around her tragedies. The city would continue to decorate and people would continue to shop. Through it all, the sadness she felt in her heart would linger on— the sadness of Rob’s death, but also the anguish of what she thought of as The Other Thing.

She blinked away a tear before it fell and turned back to her work. She didn’t get paid to cry and stare out of the windows.

I’m sinking.