A Soldier's Return. RaeAnne Thayne

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СКАЧАТЬ that she would grow from the experience.

      That was a good life lesson for her. She wasted entirely too much energy dwelling on the painful reality that life hadn’t turned out exactly as she planned, that some of her dreams were destined to disappointment.

      Like Sonia, maybe it was time she stopped being cranky about things she couldn’t control and took any chance that came along to force herself to stretch outside her comfort zone. She needed to learn how to make the best of things, to simply enjoy a gorgeous April day.

      “Beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

      “Lovely,” Sonia said with her somewhat lopsided smile. “Hello...Melissa. Hello...Fiona.”

      She scratched the dog under her chin and was rewarded with one of Fi’s doggie grins.

      While the Irish setter technically lived with Rosa, the cheerful dog seemed to consider all the occupants of Brambleberry House her particular pack. That shared pet care worked out well for Melissa. Her daughter had been begging for a dog since before the divorce. Skye had been in heaven when they’d moved into Brambleberry House and discovered Rosa had a dog she was more than willing to share. This way, they got the benefits of having a dog without the onus of being responsible for one all the time.

      That was yet another thing she had to be grateful for on this beautiful spring day. She had been so blessed to find an open apartment in Brambleberry House when she and Skye returned to Cannon Beach after all those years of wandering. It was almost a little miracle, since the previous tenant had only moved out to get married the week before Melissa returned to her hometown and started looking for a place.

      She didn’t know if it was fate or kismet or luck or simply somebody watching out for them. She only knew that she and Skye had finally found a place to throw down roots.

      She ran hard, accompanied by the sun on her face, the low murmur of the waves, the crunch of sand under her running shoes. All of it helped calm her.

      By the time she and Fiona made it the mile and a half to the end of the beach and she’d turned around to head back, the rest of her frustration had abated, and she focused instead on the endorphins from the run and the joy of living in this beautiful place.

      She paused for a moment to catch her breath, looking out at the rock formations offshore, the towering haystacks that so defined this part of the Oregon Coast, then the craggy green mountains to the east.

      It was so good to be home. She had friends here, connections. Her dad was buried not far from here. Her mom and stepfather were here most of the time, though they had just bought an RV and were spending a few months traveling around the country.

      She would have thought being a military wife to Melissa’s dad would have cured her mother’s wanderlust, but apparently not. They would be back soon.

      Melissa didn’t envy them. After moving to a new base every few years during her childhood and then following Cody around from continent to continent, she loved being in one place. This place. She had missed it more than she even realized, until she finally decided to bring Skye here.

      She should have done it years ago instead of trying so hard to stay close to her ex-husband for Skye’s sake. She had enjoyed living on Oahu, his home training location, but the cost of living had been prohibitive. Most of her salary as a nurse had gone to housing and the rest to food.

      When he decided to move to South America on a whim, she had finally thrown up her hands and opted not to follow him. Instead, she had packed up her daughter for one last move and come home to Cannon Beach.

      She started her run again, not wanting to spend more time than she already had that morning dwelling on her mistakes.

      It made her sad, wondering if she should have tried harder to make things work, even though she was fully aware both of them had left the marriage long before they finally divorced.

      Now wasn’t the time to obsess about her failures or the loneliness that kept her up at night.

      He had gotten married again. That was what he called to tell her earlier. It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision and they’d gone to St. Croix for their honeymoon, which had been beautiful but expensive. He’d spent so much on the honeymoon, in fact, that he couldn’t make that month’s child support payment, but he would make it up to her.

      He was coming back to Oregon to stay this time, and was willing to finally step up and be the dad he should have been all along. She’d been hearing that story or versions of it for fifteen years. She hoped it would happen, she really did.

      Cody wasn’t a bad man. She wouldn’t have loved him all those years and followed him from country to country to support his dreams if he were. But with the birth of their child, her priorities had changed, while she was afraid his never would.

      Enough about Cody. She was genuinely happy for her ex, even if hearing about his new marriage did make her wish she had someone special in her own life.

      She sighed again and gripped Fiona’s leash. “Come on, Fi. Let’s go home.”

      An odd wind danced across the sand, warmer than the air around it. She almost thought she could hear laughter rippling around her, though she was virtually alone on the beach.

      She was hearing things again. Once in a while at the house, she could swear she heard a woman’s laugh when no one was there, and a few times she had smelled roses on the stairwell, for no apparent reason.

      Maybe the ghost of Brambleberry House had been in the mood for a run today, too. The thought made her smile and she continued heading home.

      Few people were out on the beach on this off-season morning, but she did happen to catch sight of a guy running toward her from the opposite direction. He was too far away for her to really see clearly, but she had the random impression of lean strength and fluid grace.

      Ridiculous, she told herself. How could she know that from two hundred yards away?

      She continued running, intent now only on finishing so she could go into work.

      Fiona trotted along beside her in the same rhythm they had worked out through countless runs like this together. She was aware of the other runner coming closer. He had a dog, too, a small black one who also looked familiar.

      They were only fifty feet apart when Fiona, for no apparent reason, suddenly veered in front of Melissa, then stopped stock-still.

      With no time to change course or put on the brakes, Melissa toppled over the eighty-pound dog and went flying across the sand. She shoved her hands out to catch her fall instinctively. Her right arm hit sand and she felt a jolt in her shoulder from the impact, but the left one must have made contact with a rock buried beneath the sand, causing a wrenching pain to shoot from her wrist up her arm.

      This day just kept getting better and better.

      She gasped and flopped over onto her back, cradling the injured wrist as a haze of pain clouded her vision.

      Fiona nosed her side as if in apology, and Melissa bit back her instinctive scold. What on earth had gotten into Fiona? They had run together dozens of times. The Irish setter was usually graceful, beautifully trained, and never cut across her path like that.

      For about ten seconds, it was all she could do not to writhe around on the ground СКАЧАТЬ