Never Letting Go: A Sweet Small Town Romance (A Town Called Forgotten Book 5) by Rachel Branton

Author:Rachel Branton [Branton, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Women’s fiction, contemporary romance
ISBN: 9781948982405
Publisher: White Star Press
Published: 2023-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Natalie McColl felt awkward walking into the room at the local library where the estranged parents of adult children planned to meet. Someone had set out a table of refreshments, and a woman there urged people to grab a plate before sitting in chairs that formed a circle. There were only eight people there, with Natalie and her ride, a woman named Lois, making ten so far. Lois, a confident, dark-haired woman in business attire, was the group member who had first connected with her in the online group after learning she lived so close to Lincoln. She didn’t look like an abandoned mother. She didn’t seem to have the stamp rejected that Natalie felt on her own forehead.

The most awkward thing in attending this meeting was the fact that everyone in this room knew her own child had cut her off and walked away. They might not know that Joni had called her abusive and blamed her for every problem in her life, but they knew Natalie had been abandoned. She felt like a twisted deviant trying to fool the world into thinking she was normal.

At the same time, it was comforting to know that all these people also had children who had cut them off, often without an explanation, and it was this knowledge that made her brave enough to come.

I am normal, I am good, I am kind, I am enough. It was a litany she told herself so she could put one foot in front of the other instead of staying in bed waiting to die.

“Hungry?” Lois paused near the food table.

Natalie’s stomach churned too much to want snacks, though she’d barely eaten that day. “I don’t think I can eat.”

Lois smiled at her with compassion. “It gets easier. Why don’t you go sit down, and I’ll grab us something.”

Natalie took the first chair on the right side, where her back wouldn’t be toward the door. She wanted to make sure she could see anyone else who entered. During the time at the cancer center, she’d begun having second thoughts about attending tonight, wondering how healthy the group might actually be. A few of the parents seemed to be as entitled as they claimed their children were. Some posted screenshots of texts they sent to their children that curdled her blood because she’d never speak to someone she despised like that, much less a child she loved with all her heart.

As the wife of the police chief of Forgotten, she’d learned to be a peacemaker in town, and some words were simply fighting words. If a person shouldn’t say them to a stranger, why would they say them to an adult child? And yet those parents’ children would at least text back, usually cursing and wishing their parents dead, demanding money, or listing all their faults, but at least they texted. For months now, her Joni simply hadn’t answered. As if Natalie were so unimportant that she really didn’t care if she lost her forever.

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