Rebecca Sloan was forty years old when she agreed to marry a man who walked with a damaged leg and a quiet heart. There was no whirlwind romance and no feverish passion in the decision. There was only the gentle exhaustion of a woman who had chased love for too long and found nothing but broken promises waiting at the end of each road.
For years, Rebecca had watched her friends marry, divorce, marry again, and speak of love as if it were a game of chance. She had tried it too, trusting charming smiles and poetic words, only to be discarded when novelty faded. Each disappointment left a thinner layer of hope inside her, until even hope grew tired.
Her mother often sat beside her in the small kitchen of their rented home in Maple Glen, a quiet town tucked between rolling hills and fields of wild grass. On evenings when loneliness pressed hardest, her mother would sigh and say gently, “Maybe you should stop looking for fireworks, my dear. The man next door, the one who repairs radios and computers, he has a good heart. He may limp, but he stands firm where it matters.”