Page 1 of There I Find Patience

Chapter 1

She had just made a terrible mistake.

Pam Corrigan held the key that she’d been given at the closing in her hand.

What had she been thinking?

She sighed deeply and got out of her car, crossing the sidewalk and going up the steps to the duplex she shared with her best friend, Mark Shields.

Mark owned the duplex, and when Pam’s marriage had blown up ten years ago, Mark had offered to allow her to move in to the other side which happened to be vacant at the time.

Pam had moved out of Strawberry Sands when she got married, and hadn’t pictured herself moving back in. But with two teenage girls and nowhere else to turn, she’d taken Mark up on his offer, thinking it was only a temporary thing.

Temporary had turned into a decade.

“Good morning, Pam,” Miss Heather called over. Miss Heather lived in the large house across the street with her granddaughter and her husband and several other older ladies. It wasn’t exactly an assisted living facility, but it probably could have been.

Regardless, Miss Heather was a neighbor and a good one, and Pam turned, placing a smile on her face and waving across the street.

She hadn’t seen Miss Heather nor Miss Daisy sitting on the porch, enjoying one of the rare warm April days.

April was just as likely to be below freezing as above eighty in Western Michigan along the lake.

So, when a person got a warm, beautiful day like today, they needed to get out and enjoy it.

Or get out and go buy an inn, apparently.

Pam swallowed again. What had she done?

“It’s a beautiful day,” Miss Heather spoke across the deserted street.

“It sure is. Maybe I’ll be out later on my front porch, too.”

“Better hurry up. I heard there’s a cold front moving in, and we’re going to get some rain ahead of it,” Miss Daisy said, nodding sagely. “My bones agree with the weather forecast for once.”

“Thanks for the heads-up. I... I need to go inside for a bit. But I definitely want to enjoy this. Who knows when it’ll be nice out again.” She threw up her hand and waved before she hurried up the rest of the steps and opened the door to her side of the duplex.

Some duplexes had a wall down the middle of the porch, but no such thing separated Mark’s side from hers.

In the summer, occasionally his nieces had visited from Ann Arbor where Mark’s sister lived. They played with Pam’s girls, and they’d always use the whole porch.

Mark had been easygoing and a great neighbor, and Pam hoped she’d been the same.

They hadn’t been best friends when she moved in, but through the years, no one had supported her more.

If her girls needed a daddy to go to the daddy-daughter dance, Mark stepped in.

And if his nieces needed someone to bake cookies or be a room chaperone for their senior trip, Pam had naturally volunteered.

But now...what Pam had just done could ruin everything.

She threw her purse on the kitchen table as she walked through her duplex and out the back door.

Their backyard was large and fenced in, the entire thing. Again, no fence separated between her side of the yard and his side.

They had never needed a fence.

Sitting down, she held on tight to the key that she had seemed to be unable to let go of.