Nola, and her three beautiful girls, are looking for a fresh start. When they take up temporary residence in her grandparents home in London, she is told the musician living next door is rarely home. To Nola, he sounds like the perfect neighbor.
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July 2023: Nola (This is the only part of the book that has only one perspective)
Life is good these days. Like really good, but getting to this place felt like going on a road trip and taking one wrong turn after another while driving a car that could stall at any moment.
In those early days, my normal state, or the state in which I could function, was a moderately-medicated one. The anxiety was less, but I still had a heightened awareness of all that was now my reality. The awareness that I now had these beautiful girls that depended on me for everything. The awareness that the person I loved most in the world could no longer love me. Finally, and most painfully, the awareness that I had to leave almost everything I knew to be able to start over.
Starting over.
I actually hated that saying. I didn't want to rebuild my life. Mine was perfectly wonderful as it was and I didn't want to do it all over again. That's the thing about life, though. It has a way of bending and splitting off at places that you didn't see coming. After my forced new beginning, I'd been so close to going over the edge more times than I could count. Then he came along and pulled me back from it. He walked with me as I started over. He showed me what it was like to find happiness in the small moments or the simplicity of someone's adoration. In him, I found the bittersweet awareness that nobody is meant to do this life thing alone.
My time in England was short-lived that first stay, just twenty-seven weeks. Twenty-seven weeks to rebuild my life. Twenty-seven weeks that changed me forever.
So, if I knew how it would end, would I do it all again? Would I start over with him? That's a very loaded question. As I watch my kids playing in the tall grass with their step-dad, I can't help but wonder what life would be like today if we had never met? If he had never opened my heart up to love again?
I guess to really understand, though, we have to go back to week 1.
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