Yesterday's Treasures - Paperback

Excerpt:

Chapter 1

This is the letter that Adam Coates found sitting on his
kitchen counter the day his wife left him:

Dear Adam,

I’m sorry this is going to come as a shock to you. I’ve
tried to figure out how to tell you, and I just haven’t been able to.

I want you to know, first of all, that I admire your
dedication to your job and the business that you’ve built, and that you get up
every morning and you work hard.

But I guess what you don’t see is it was a single-minded
dedication, and you’ve neglected your family in order to be a success.

I know I should have said something sooner, and the fault
is mostly mine, except you are never here.

I didn’t feel like this was a conversation we should have
through texts.

You don’t know it, because you haven’t been around, but I
was laid off from my job six weeks ago.

Maybe you don’t remember, but I used to talk to you all
the time about how much time you spent at your job and how I felt alone and
neglected.

We didn’t fight. I just tried to talk to you, and you
would tell me that I was being dramatic or that it was what you needed to do in
order to be successful and didn’t I want you to be successful?

So yes, of course I did. So when I asked you to go get
ice cream with me and you told me to do it by myself, when I asked you if we
could have a date night and you said you were too busy, when I asked you to
mark on your calendar Sierra’s field trip but you couldn’t because you were
already planning to go somewhere else for your business, when I asked if we
could take a weekend away and you didn’t have time…when you forgot my birthday,
when our 20-year anniversary came and went and you never said a word, when you
took me out the last time and spent the entire time we were in the restaurant
on the phone with one of your business associates…I didn’t say anything.

I guess I’m saying something now.

I’m moving into the beach house. I’m taking Sierra with
me. I’ve already withdrawn her from school here in Pennsylvania and enrolled
her at Blueberry Beach High.

I guess I would have told you I was doing that if you had
been here.

I’m not angry, and I don’t hate you, and I hope you don’t
hate me, but I’m tired of being alone. Tired of being a single mom. Tired of
being married and washing your clothes and doing your shopping and cooking your
meals and raising your child, and yet I don’t have a friend or companion or
someone to talk to or even someone to help me change a freaking lightbulb.

I’m not asking for a divorce. I’m just moving to our
beach house, and I’ll figure out what to do with my life there.

I would have talked to you about that too, if you had
been here.

Of course, I understand if you don’t want me and find
another woman to neglect. I won’t fight it.

I’d thank you for the twenty years together, but it’s
been more like fifteen years alone.

I wish you the very best.

Sincerely,

Your wife,

Lindy

Chapter 2

Lindy drove toward their beach house outside of Blueberry
Beach. Her daughter, Sierra, sat on the seat beside her. Sierra had headphones
in, her cell phone in her hand, her thumbs running over it, and her feet
propped on the dash.

A typical sixteen-year-old, and maybe a little bit
belligerent because she had to leave the high school that she loved and start a
new life somewhere else.

Just because her mother had decided to.

It had only taken eight hours to get here from their home
just north of Pittsburgh, but she had to wait until Adam left for work at six
o’clock before she could pull out.

After Adam left, she had to wake Sierra.

Adam hadn’t even noticed that she’d packed her stuff.

He didn’t come home until late, and he left early.

His business was doing fantastically well. They were making
money and had been for years. Of course, when he’d just started, they’d had
lean years. Everyone did.

When he first started out, she helped him with his books and
took all the phone calls. Even with the baby crawling around, it wasn’t hard.
And Lindy loved it. Adam and she talked all the time about their plans and
their dreams and their hopes for the business and family. It had finally gotten
off the ground, and he moved to an office location where they had storage space
as well as room for more employees.

She hadn’t made the move with him because Lindy had been
starting kindergarten, and it was only half a day. Someone had to be home in
order to get her off the bus. Someone had to be home to put her on, since Adam
left for work hours before the bus arrived.

She admired his hard work and his determination to succeed.

Still did.

It was a crowded market, but superior service would always
draw customers, and Adam provided superior service.

He also provided well for them, once the business finally
took off about five years ago. For a decade, they didn’t draw much of a salary
and barely had enough to pay the mortgage and buy groceries.

She’d always been able to squeeze out the light bill as
well, but for a long time, they were a one-car family.

Lindy didn’t mind, except that meant, of course, that she
couldn’t go to work with Adam since she had to wait to put Sierra on the bus. He
didn’t have time to run her back and forth, and he needed their one vehicle for
his job anyway.

It was fine, except it was the beginning of the end.

She parked their car, a nice, almost-new SUV, in front of
their cottage on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan and pressed the ignition
off, keeping her hands on the wheel, staring at the house, and blowing out a
breath.

This was the beginning of the rest of her life.

Beside her, Sierra’s thumbs moved rapidly over her phone and
Lindy wasn’t even sure she’d noticed they’d arrived.

The house was boarded up for winter. The planters that she’d
had sitting on each side of the walk had blown over. There was some debris in
the yard, and one of the shutters hung crookedly down, held by a single screw.

The house looked neglected.

She felt like she could relate.

She didn’t expect to be coddled in her marriage, but there
wasn’t really a point of having a marriage when she did everything alone.

This wasn’t her walking out on her marriage, exactly. It was
more like her giving up.

She’d tried to gently nudge Adam, to mention that she wanted
to do more than just sleep together for six hours at night.

And the man worked hard. She had to give him that. She
admired hard work.

But wasn’t a married couple supposed to talk occasionally?

Weren’t they supposed to do things together once in a while?

Weren’t they supposed to have some kind of shared time
somewhere?

She tried to quit questioning herself and focus on what she
was going to do.

She and Sierra would settle in here, and she would see if
there was a job or something she could get in the town of Blueberry Beach.

She had skills. She’d been managing a candy store for years
since working her way up from starting behind the counter when Adam and she had
bought a second vehicle.

Her job in Adam’s company had long been taken over by
someone else, and he didn’t even suggest that she work with him.

One more thing she’d gone out and done by herself.

Managing a candy store couldn’t be too much different than
managing some other kind of store, and she wasn’t afraid to start at the ground
and build up.

To start with, all she needed was money for groceries and
electricity since the property was paid for as well as her car.

For the last five years, Adam’s business had done really
well, and she didn’t want for anything material.

She just wanted a husband.

Maybe it was natural to feel like since he never spent any
time with her, never wanted to do anything with her, he didn’t really want her.

That he didn’t like her. And if she believed in falling in
and out of love, she would say he’d fallen out of it.

But she was more of the mind that love was an action verb.

An action verb she’d tried to live out for the last fifteen
years, despite the fact that she saw less and less of the man she was trying to
live the verb out on.

How do you show love to someone who doesn’t seem to want to have
anything to do with you? How do you show love to someone you never see? How do
you show love to a man who is never around?

She blew out one more breath, and although she knew she
probably wouldn’t be able to stop herself from looking behind occasionally, she
really wanted to focus on keeping her eyes looking ahead.

She prayed for guidance. Although she definitely did not
have a peace about this decision, she’d also had doors open in a miraculous way.
At least getting Sierra taken out of school and put in Blueberry Beach High.

It just so happened that one of her friends had moved here
not that long ago.

Coincidence?

Maybe Lindy was just trying to grasp at straws to get God’s
blessing on what she knew she shouldn’t be doing.

She should stay with her husband no matter how alone she
was.

But things worked out with Sierra, and although her daughter
wasn’t super thrilled about the move, she wasn’t fighting her either.

Sierra’s feet smacked to the floor as she cracked her gum and
blew a bubble.

Lindy tapped her on the arm. “Take your earphones off for a
minute.”

Sierra straightened, slipped her feet into the flip-flops
she wore despite the cool spring day, and tilted her head, pulling one piece of
plastic away from her ear. “What?” she asked, not unkindly but in a tone that
let Lindy know she was being annoying.

“I want you to help me carry our stuff in, and there will be
some cleaning that we need to do.”

“I have to go to school tomorrow. I want to spend the day
relaxing.”

“You can relax after the work is done.”

“I’m glad you brought me along. That way you didn’t lose
your slave.”

It was borderline rebellious, but Lindy let it go, because
she had brought Sierra along when Sierra would have been much happier living in
a single-parent home north of Pittsburgh rather than living in a single-parent
home in Blueberry Beach, Michigan.

She got the keys out of the cup holder and opened her car
door. The last thing she needed to do was lock her keys in the car on her first
night in town.

She supposed that would be a way to meet people, but not the
way she wanted to.

She’d be handling everything by herself.

Not that she hadn’t handled the mundane as well as
emergencies by herself for years, but there was always that peace of mind in
the back of her head that Adam could help her if she needed it.

That peace of mind was gone.

It probably had been a fantasy most of the time she’d
cherished it anyway.

She shoved her phone in her back pocket. It contained the
code to her car, which she could use to unlock it in case she actually did lock
the keys in the car or lose them, but she wanted to be extra careful.

Shoving her keys in her front pocket after tapping the
button to open the trunk, she walked to the back.

Sierra started grabbing stuff immediately, but Lindy just
stood and looked at it.

She hadn’t brought any furniture. The beach house had its
own. Not super fantastic stuff, but stuff that would do.

She’d never needed fancy.

And she certainly wasn’t going to start now.

Chapter 3

Adam fingered the letter. She must have left it yesterday
morning. But he’d come home late and hadn’t even gone into the kitchen, having
picked up takeout on his way home.

He’d read it three times now.

Really, he should be on his way to work. He had an
appointment with a client west of Pittsburgh just across the Ohio River in West
Virginia, and he needed to be there in an hour.

If he didn’t get moving, he was going be late.

He prided himself on never, ever being late.

His company had an immaculate reputation.

And maybe, now that it was as successful as it was, most
business owners wouldn’t still be out in the field doing installations
themselves.

Adam prided himself on not being most business owners.

His business had actually been voted the number one small
business in Pittsburgh last year. Which was saying something.

It was an honor, although he hadn’t taken the time to go to
the dinner and receive the award in person.

He put his heart and soul into the business, and he would
make sure that it was successful. Except…he fingered the letter again.

Did she mean she was leaving for good?

What did she mean she would have talked to him?

They had just seen each other…had it really been two weeks
ago? On Saturday morning, he was still home when she had gotten up to take Sierra
to band practice. Or was it orchestra? Whatever the group of musicians were
that had a clarinet in them. Or was it a flute?

She played something that she blew into.

Although Lindy had gone and bought it herself, he’d earned
the money for it. And she’d bought a good one, at least he’d told her to.

That was years ago. Sierra was still playing it, wasn’t she?

He looked around, realizing that while Lindy usually kept a
clean kitchen, it seemed to be extra tidy.

And now that he thought about it, although their bedroom was
still dark when he’d left… Was it even possible that he’d slept all night in
their bed and didn’t even notice she wasn’t there?

Normally when he came in late, he didn’t slide across the
bed and snuggle up to her because he didn’t want to wake her up.

It was out of consideration, not because he didn’t like to
sleep with his wife’s body pressed to his.

That was one of the joys of being married.

Except he couldn’t remember the last time they’d slept like
that, because he always went to bed second and long after she did.

Now that he thought about it, he’d actually seen her last
Sunday. They’d sat down in the kitchen together. She’d gone to church, and he’d
been getting ready to run into the office to go over the spreadsheet he hadn’t
had time to review since he was out working in the field all week.

And he’d put that extra installation in, the emergency one
with the rush order that he’d gotten paid twice as much as normal for, on
Saturday.

She hadn’t said anything about it. She’d barely said
anything at all.

Of course, he’d had his mind on his work, and then he’d come
home after dark.

But Lindy and Sierra hadn’t been there.

Now he remembered. They’d been out getting ice cream, and when
they’d come home, he’d been in front of the TV, catching up on the news.

Lindy had stuck her head in and waved at him.

He really hadn’t looked away from the TV, but he’d waved
back.

He took in a breath and blew it out slowly, setting the
letter down on the counter and tapping his finger on it.

Maybe she had a point.

He took out his phone. He wasn’t going to wonder about this.
There was obviously a misunderstanding, and they could work it out.