At forty-two, Shelley Marino desperately wants a child. Though she and her older husband, Martin, have tried during the course of their marriage, their only hope now is adoption. Martin, who has seen his share of heartbreak, can't reconcile what Shelley wants with what he knows about the world, and as the father of two grown children from a previous marriage, he is not sure he can bear the emotional challenge of fatherhood again. To love is to risk loss and Martin suddenly decides that is a gamble he can't afford to take.
The pain of great loss is something that Mai, a woman who emigrated from Vietnam more than twenty years ago, knows all too well. Though Mai has attained all of the accoutrements of the American dream—a healthy business, an SUV, a house of her own—she has not allowed herself to forget the family tragedy that forced her to leave Vietnam. She has distanced herself from her life and from everyone around her—until she meets Shelley. Their budding friendship forces Mai to make a decision that will put her face-to-face with the world she left behind so long ago. And in the course of the journey the two women must make together, Shelley, too, confronts choices that will reverberate for the rest of her life.
Lyrical and moving, If You Lived Here takes the reader on a journey as well, from loss to love, and shows how new beginnings can heal old wounds.
Chapter One
Shelley
I'd guess that Marinos have been burying Rivenbarks for seventy years. I can't compare funeral customs here in Wilmington, North Carolina, with funeral customs anywhere else, but I can tell you that Rivenbarks usually ask for the minister from First Baptist, flowers from Will Rehder, and an open bar. Sometimes they read Psalm 23 and sometimes they read Psalm 121. It's hard to know what they'll request for a burial like this one, though, because there's nothing routine about the death of a child. This afternoon, on the first really beautiful day of spring, four-year-old Oscar Rivenbark fell from the third branch of the magnolia tree in his backyard. The ambulance managed to get him to the emergency room within about fifteen minutes, but he died before the paramedics could wheel him in.
My husband, Martin, and I run Marino and Sons, the biggest funeral home in the area. Between the two of us, we have over forty years of experience. Still, we struggle when a child dies. Outsiders probably imagine that my world is all catastrophe, but most ... read full excerpt from: If You Lived Here ebook
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