Page 1 of An Unexpected Home

Chapter 1

I’m almost home, Leah, told herself as she passed the welcome sign for Cedarville.

Home.

A word that held a completely new meaning to her today than it had a year ago.

Home, she realized, was not just a place you slept or kept your things. It was more than that. It was a place where you felt comfortable and wanted. Even loved.

It was sad that at twenty-seven years old, she was just figuring out that sometimes home wasn’t where your family was.

And that was why she was on her way to Cedarville, Ohio at three in the morning.

She took a quick look at her phone to make sure she was still headed in the right direction; not that she needed to though. Cedarville was a small town and even though she had only been there twice, years ago, she had no doubt that she could find her way around.

Cedarville was surrounded by the huge Dragonfly Lake on one side and acres of woods on the other. The only way to get in or out of town was to take Main Street right through the middle. The first time Leah had visited the town had been during the summer after her freshman year of college. Her roommate, Carly, had grown up in Cedarville and invited her to visit. Leah had a few moments of culture shock when she had first driven into town. She was from New York City and while she’d been to places like the Hamptons many times, Cedarville was not the Hamptons. It was like nothing she had ever seen before except maybe on television.

Everyone knew everyone else or at least it seemed that way. And people were nice, like really nice. Almost nauseatingly so.

So nice apparently, that when her life had turned to shit, her friend and college roommate told her to get her ass to Cedarville ASAP. She swore to Leah that this was the place to hide out and reinvent herself.

And while Leah knew that hiding from her problems was not going to solve them, the idea that she could maybe reinvent herself is what had her packing up her car and heading out of New York.

Besides, her problems weren't really her fault. They were forced on her by her dad and uncle. A dad and uncle who assumed they were invincible and could get away with anything. The anything here being that they’d stolen money from their clients. Clients that they had had for years. The same people who came to her graduation parties and she’d gone to their kids’ weddings. People she considered family and thought her dad and uncle had too.

For years she’d thought that her dad and uncle’s financial firm was one of a kind. A true ‘for the people’ firm. And then last year, her world fell apart. The firm was accused of funneling funds from clients. But the kicker, at least for Leah, was that it was her mom’s best friend Charlotte who’d made the allegations.

Charlotte's husband, Brad, had passed away and Charlotte took over the family finances. When she found some discrepancies, she’d gone right to Leah’s dad. After months of her dad putting her off, Charlotte felt she had no option but to go to the authorities. Before she did that though, she confronted Leah’s mom and asked if she knew anything about it.

Leah’s mom had been dumbfounded and told her friend to do what she felt she had to do. And that was basically how both Leah and her mom, Helen, had ended up testifying against her dad and uncle.

They had both been blind to the things that were going on and as much as Leah had thought she had loved her dad unconditionally, there was no way she could sit by and let innocent people lose all their money.

They both felt that they hadn’t known enough to help convict them, but it turns out they unwittingly knew enough.

So now her dad and uncle were in prison for a minimum of fifteen years and her mom was a basket case who couldn’t figure out a way to live without money. She was used to the finer things in life and now that all the money was gone or frozen, she was forced to work. Perish the thought.

And Leah, well she was sick to death of the press and people thinking that she had to have known what her dad was doing. So sick, in fact, that she had been hiding out in her apartment for the last two months.

Until she got the call from her old friend and college roommate. Carly knew how hard this had all been for Leah. And knew that she could use a break. But when Carly asked her to run her new dance studio that she was opening, Leah felt like it would only cause problems.

Carly assured her that no one in Cedarville had probably even heard of her and even if they had, they wouldn’t assume that just because her dad was a thief, that she would be too.

Leah still hadn’t been sure but then that same day, the company she worked for let her go. They told her it was because of downsizing but she knew the real reason. And as much as she didn’t want to cause problems for her friend, she had no choice but to take Carly’s offer.

There was no way she would get another job in New York, at least not any job that handled money. And since she was an accountant, that left her out of options.

So here she was, more emotionally exhausted than she could ever remember being, driving down the main street of Cedarville. All she wanted was a bed and several hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Following her GPS’s prompts, she turned down a few side streets until she stopped her car in front of a big brick house.

This would be her home for the foreseeable future.

The house actually belonged to Carly’s childhood friend, Melanie. Melanie had inherited the house from her grandparents and both she and Carly moved into it together after college. When Carly offered Leah a job she also offered her a rent-free place to live which made it even harder to say no to her old friend.

Grabbing her phone and her handbag, Leah opened the car door and stepped out into the warm Spring air. It was only the end of April, but the weather was unseasonably warm. Taking only a small backpack that held her essentials from the back seat, Leah made her way to the front door.

Carly had said that neither she or Melanie would be there when she got in but there was a key under the mat on the porch.

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