Olivia Graham was twenty-two when she started a whirlwind romance with charismatic Jakob overseas.
By age twenty-five, Liv was back home and checking off the widowed box on paperwork. With zero plans, Olivia and beloved dog Snuggles find themselves...
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When I get home from Will's, I stand in my house, surveying my life.
It's modest; a two-bedroom house with one and a half bath. The big selling point was an additional room put off the kitchen with vaulted ceilings and picture windows and skylights to bathe the room in natural light.
It leads out to my wooden deck with the spacious back yard. Snuggles has made me want to get a dog, but it's hard with how much I am gone for work.
I moved away when I was 18 for college. I left Michigan behind for the University of South Carolina. Different lifestyle than I was used to, and I enjoyed it for a while.
I had to get away from town. From home. Where my mom had died from suicide when I was 13. Where my stepmom had coerced me into sleeping with her when I was 17, and my dad found out and beat me.
I shakily drove to Will's right after and hesitated on the doorstep. I didn't want to bother them. I was about to go, but before I could leave, Mac found me, bloodied and battered.
"Chris?" He opened the door for me. "I didn't know it was you. I just heard the alarm beep there was a visitor."
I turn on their porch to face him, stepping into the light spilling out of the doorway.
"Son, what the fucking hell happened to you?" He gasps, holding my chin in his hand to move it back and forth.
I had glimpsed it in the rearview mirror in my car, and I looked disgusting.
Mia came up behind him, gasping as well. "Christopher!" She has her hand over her mouth, then holds her arms out to me. "Sweetheart, come here."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know what else to do or go," I say tearfully.
"What happened, son?" Mac gestures to his couch.
Mia has come back with a frozen bag of vegetables for me, pressing it gently to my face.
"Tell us what happened," she urges, kneeling in front of me.
I put my bloody face in my hands and weep. I am so ashamed.
Through my embarrassed tears, I explain what happened while they look at me in horror.
Mac excuses himself and goes to make angry phone calls from his nearby study, sounding more and more like a quintessential angry Irishman.
"Are you hungry, love?" Mia touches my hair, and I shake my head. "Well, then let's get you to bed."
She takes me to one of the guest rooms, and I stand there, pathetically.
