Story for the Week
Four years sounds like a long time.
I have held two roles for the same company in the past four years and spent at least 8,000 hours working. I took one work trip to Tampa and have spent every other day working from home. I have written 189 blog posts and read 146 books. I have played The Sims 4 for at least 300 hours, which probably seems like very little to any gamer, but I spend more of my free time reading than playing as I get older.
We’ve taken four vacations along with a quick weekend trip to Oklahoma and a nine-day trip to New York that I spent in an AirBnB working while Corinne attended the National Student Leadership Conference. At least I had the weekends and evenings to spend with my in-laws. 😉
Forty-eight mortgage payments, electric bill payments, gas bill payments, 96 car payments, two health scares (which turned out to be nothing), one haircut. (Note to self: Call Eva. 😬)
Corinne completed her entire high school career. She performed at countless weekly speech tournaments and in nine shows for theater, including the Group Interpretation piece that took second at the state competition. There were about a dozen marching band performances at football games and probably another dozen band concerts. She took driving lessons and got her license. There were three proms. She (finally) got a job as a server at Denny’s and realized how expensive it is to have her as a child when she started paying for things on her own. She started college classes last month.
And she filmed as an extra in a movie that will hit streaming services in 2025 and was selected to spend her 2025 spring semester in Liverpool as part of her university’s Honors program.
Four years of just living life. Four Christmases, four New Year’s countdowns, four birthdays, and four anniversaries…and countless times we wanted to tell Dennis something exciting that happened and couldn’t.
The months after we lost him were a bit of a blur, but I remember that day, and the days leading up to it, so vividly. As much as I would like to, I will never forget how he looked when he took his last breath. I can picture the color of the sky that day and how crisp the air was as we walked out of the hospital for the last time with all of the things from home that we had put in his room for his last days…and all of his personal belongings that he wouldn’t use again.
That day feels like yesterday. Fours years sounds like a long time, but it feels like he was here just a moment ago.
The book below is an older one by one of my must-read authors. I have no idea what made me purchase a 14-year-old title 16 months ago. I might have seen an ad. It might have popped up on my Kindle as one of those “if you liked this, try these” options. I literally have no idea.
I base the reading order of my TBR list by the publication dates of the ARCs I receive, and I fill in the gaps with Amazon purchases. I don’t know when I slotted this one into the schedule or how many times it moved to make room for something else. I also typically read books and draft posts a couple weeks in advance, so the publication date isn’t top of mind. But I believe in signs, and when something pops up in a book that makes me pay attention, I pay attention.
The main character in the book happens to be pregnant with twins. Her due date is October 15—Corinne’s birthday. Her C-section is scheduled for September 20—the day that Dennis died. 🤔 I paid attention, and then I looked at the calendar and noticed that this would be the “tribute” post this year…but I hadn’t settled on the connection of the book to the story.
Later in the book, I found it: “I wanted to convince her that real love, a better love, would come to her if she took the time to enrich some other—any other—part of her life. I wanted to convince her that there are some things we can find only when we aren’t looking.”
Dennis and I didn’t really date before we got married. We met in a chat room in January of 2002, met a few times in person (he lived in New York, and I lived in Chicago), and married in July. I had pretty much settled into the idea that I was destined to be single when we met. I wasn’t looking for love in that chat room, but I certainly found it. 💜
Dennis Dominic Ahyee
July 18, 1959-September 20, 2020
Always in Our Hearts
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐
4 Stars for Get Lucky by Katherine Center
290 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: March 25, 2010
Purchased on Amazon.
Publisher’s Description
Sarah Harper isn’t sure if the stupid decisions she sometimes makes are good choices in disguise—or if they’re really just stupid. But either way, after forwarding an inappropriate e-mail to her entire company, she suddenly finds herself out of a job.
So she goes home to Houston—and her sister, Mackie—for Thanksgiving. But before Sarah can share her troubles with her sister, she learns that Mackie has some woes of her own: After years of trying, Mackie’s given up on having a baby—and plans to sell on eBay the entire nursery she’s set up. Which gives Sarah a brilliant idea—an idea that could fix everyone’s problems. An idea that gives Sarah the chance to take care of her big sister for once—instead of the other way around.
But nothing worthwhile is ever easy. After a decade away, Sarah is forced to confront one ghost from her past after another: the father she’s lost touch with, the memories of her mother, the sweet guy she dumped horribly in high school. Soon everything that matters is on the line—and Sarah can only hope that by changing her life she has changed her luck, too.
************
Main Characters:
- Sarah – 30 years old, lived in New York and worked in advertising until she got fired for forwarding an inappropriate e-mail to the entire company
- Mackie – Sarah’s older sister, stills lives in Houston, married to Clive who runs a successful toy company, suffers from endometriosis and has decided to stop trying to get pregnant and go to graduate school
- Everett – 30 years old, also lived in New York, recently hired by Clive to be an in-house attorney based in Houston, Sarah’s high school boyfriend who had his heart broken when she unceremoniously dumped him to date someone else
- Dixie – engaged to Sarah and Mackie’s father who was widowed when the girls were young, teaches a self-defense class
Anyone who reads Katherine Center knows that she excels at romantic comedy. She writes great characters and fantastic dialog, and the romantic interactions in her books make me smile. This book is not a rom-com. It’s women’s fiction, one of her earlier titles, and it is classic Katherine Center.
Told in the first person by Sarah, the story unfolds with Sarah losing her job and packing up to go home to Houston to lick her wounds and figure out what she wants to do with her life. On the plane, she runs into her high school boyfriend Everett who informs her that she got old. 😲
When Sarah arrives at her sister’s and discovers that her sister has given up on the idea of having a baby on her own, Sarah comes up with a crazy idea. She needs time to get her life together, needs time with her sister, needs to give her sister the ultimate gift. Sarah offers to become a gestational surrogate for Mackie and Clive. “I proposed this plan: I’d move home for a while. Have this baby. Stay rent-free with Mackie and Clive. Figure out my life. Become a better person.”
This book is not about Sarah’s experience as her sister’s surrogate. There’s some romance woven in, but it is also not the main part of the story. Sarah finds a new purpose while she’s in Houston, and while this is a larger part of the story, it is not the main part either. This is more like a 12-month sister love story—how they drift under the stress of the situation and find their way back to one another, how they still grieve their mother who they lost as children, how they embrace (or don’t embrace) their father’s new love interest.
Center does a great job of creating easily visualized characters and locations. She tells a great story. One of the things I love about this one that I haven’t seen in her rom-coms is mini spoilers that Sarah tells us. While a lot of books build up to keep readers guessing and waiting for a reveal, this story gives things away. Sarah is telling us her story and making sure we don’t concern ourselves with “did they, or didn’t they,” “did she, or didn’t she.” Those aren’t anything we need to concern ourselves with because they’re not the focus of Sarah’s story.
And while authors typically hone their skills the longer they write, Center has clearly always been a master at dialog.
“I’m going to start collecting Blue Willow china. I’m going to learn to quilt and play chess. I’m going to get a better haircut and find a personal trainer and volunteer at the women’s shelter and glue that carrot-shaped salt shaker back together. I’m going to read that book everybody’s been reading about the rooster.”
“Cockatiel.”
“Whatever.”
“That all sounds great!” I said, aware that my voice was trying too hard.
“And take modern dance,” she added. “Maybe. If they don’t make me wear a leotard.”
“You’re an adult,” I told her. “Nobody can make you wear a leotard.”
If you’re a fan of Katherine Center, go back and check this one out. Just go in knowing it is not like her recent titles. If you haven’t read Katherine Center before, this is a great starting point. It’s a quick read, less than 300 pages, and totally worth your while.
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