The Garden of Second Chances
My name is Catherine Williams, and I am 67 years old. For the past fifteen years, I have lived alone in a small cottage on Maple Street in a quiet town where everyone knows everyone else’s business, and most people have opinions about how others should live their lives. What they didn’t know was that my solitary existence was about to change in ways none of us could have predicted.
The cottage had been my refuge since my husband James passed away from complications following heart surgery at the regional medical facility. We had bought the house during our second year of marriage, dreaming of filling it with children’s laughter and holiday gatherings. The children never came—a source of quiet sadness that we learned to carry together—but we had filled our home with love, books, and James’s woodworking projects that still occupied every corner.
