Page 1 of So Close To Heaven
Chapter One
The wind blew across the open moor, cool and relentless, tugging at her jacket as Ivy Mitchell trudged along. The hills rolled out before her, a soft and endless green divided by low stone walls and peppered with the vibrant blooms of summer heather, while the air smelled of rain that hadn't fallen yet.
At the crest of a small knoll, she paused, taking it all in—the sweep of the hills, the muted light of an overcast sky, the open space—and for a moment, she felt something she hadn't experienced in a long time.
She felt close to heaven.
Not the heaven of sermons and hymns, not the bright, unreachable place painted in church windows as she’d known on Sundays with her grandparents, but the heaven she’d known otherwise as a child, barefoot in soybean fields under an endless stretch of sky in southern Indiana, the sun warm on her shoulders, the world vast and full of promise.
She felt now the same as she had then, that she was just a tiny little blip in a great big world, and that she was free to be who she was, or whatever she wanted. She’d only known that feeling while with her grandparents at their fourth-generation farm. At home with her thrice-divorced mother—who was as different from her salt-of-the-earth parents as corn was from cotton—Ivy knew little peace, and even less security. To this day, Ivy was forever grateful for how long it took her mother to find Husband No. 4, as that meant Ivy was dropped off at her grandparents’ farm every weekend while Daisy Mitchell was on the hunt. The saddest day ever was when her mother announced her intention to wed again, this time to Kurt Ledger—fittingly referred to as Junior, since everything about him was small, or lesser than: his brain, his ambition, his patience, and pretty much anythingelse that mattered. For several years before Daisy wed Junior, Ivy happily spent every weekend at the Four Corners Farm, showered with love and attention, with a sense of normalcy and constancy that she’d rarely known elsewhere.
Today, almost two decades later and thousands of miles away, Ivy had taken the train north on a whim, craving exactly this open space, the quiet in a world made turbulent once again. This would also be her last solitary hike in Scotland, as she was scheduled to board a plane in a few days and return home. Her boots crunched along the narrow trail winding up the hillside, the path marked only by a weathered wooden post that might have been standing for decades or even centuries,
She moved steadily upward, her hand drifting absently to her belly—one part of her recent turbulence. It was no longer small, though it could still be hidden under her jacket. The baby had grown enough that she’d had to purchase several pairs of elastic waist pants. She’d found a perfect pair of joggers, a good quality brand of organic cotton, and discovered that one size larger than her normal size four gave her plenty of room and comfort.
Seven months along already. She wasn’t sure how the weeks and months had flown by so quickly. The doctor said everything looked good—healthy and normal. She should have felt reassured by that.
She felt instead as if she was nine or ten again, and it was late Sunday afternoon and her mother was due to arrive at any moment to take her back home—to the chaos, the instability.
She felt, on occasion, that same dread. Subsequently, sometimes, she caught herself feeling a quiet sort of relief that her grandparents weren’t here to see her like this—alone, unwed, and knocked up on the other side of the world. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t have wanted them here. God, she would have given anything for one more day with them. But Ivy couldn’t help feeling she had somehow faltered, been careless when sheshould have known better, that she had more of her mother in her than she would have ever hoped or imagined. For that, at least, she was grateful her grandparents had been spared the heartache of watching her stumble. They would have worried for her, and hurt for her.
And yet...
"No baby is ever unwelcome," her grandmother had always said whenever whispers spread through their small town about another unmarried girl expecting.
Ivy certainly didn’t see her baby as a mistake. It was a life, and part of her life now.
And yet, it brought with it another sort of chaos.
What now?was wondered just as often as,How am I going to do this?
She had come to Scotland almost a year ago, a final-year veterinary student on a study abroad program she hadn’t been able to pass up—a semester of coursework, rural outreach, and hands-on experience working with the great draft horses and hardy cattle—the Highland coos—she’d only read about previously. It was supposed to have been a brief detour. Four months, maybe six, and then back to the States to finish her clinical rotations, sit her boards, and start the long road toward her dream of becoming a veterinarian.
Having found refuge at her grandparents’ farm in those dusty summers spent barefoot and sunburned, riding the backs of patient old plow horses, sneaking into the cool barns with a battered paperback and snacks in her pockets, Ivy had learned early that animals didn’t ask questions or take sides. They didn’t judge or use her as a pawn or weapon; they didn’t drink too much or shout down the walls in fits of rage. They were soft, gentle, welcoming, and exactly what Ivy had needed.
Becoming a veterinarian wasn’t only a dream. It was as inevitable as breathing.
Though her grandparents had left the Four Corners Farm to Ivy and not their daughter, Daisy—more chaos there— they had never meant for it to tie her down. They had always said she could have both: the farm and her dream. It was the farm, after all, that had made the dream possible. Without the inheritance they had left her, Ivy would never have been able to afford college, much less time studying abroad.
She hadn’t simply abandoned it, hadn't left the farm to fall apart. Four Corners was in good hands. Her grandfather had built a team over the years—people he’d trusted, people Ivy now trusted, too. Hal Whitaker, the old farm manager, knew every field and fence line better than he knew his own children. Maria Sanchez handled the books and logistics with a sharp eye and a sharper tongue when necessary. Nate Jensen and Brett Chojnacki kept the machinery running and the crops rotating like clockwork. Even in her absence, the farm had been and would continue to be planted, harvested, and cared for just the same as it always had been.
It was still home. It always would be. But for now, it was a home waiting for her to find her way back.
And yet...for so long she’d put it off.
Nothing about Scotland had felt temporary since the moment she arrived. Not the craggy hills, not the serene misty mornings, not the friendly people or even the rousing town life. And not the guy with the crooked smile and charming accent who had shown Ivy her first taste of true attention, and what she thought was genuine affection.
Itwasgenuine, she still believed; it simply hadn’t been the lasting kind.
Ivy picked her way carefully across a rocky patch, her boots scraping against stone.
She’d met David Newlands on her first Saturday night in Edinburgh. Despite the thrill of Scotland, she had beenexhausted, overwhelmed, and more homesick than she’d expected to be. Some classmates had dragged her to a small pub tucked off a crooked side street, a place with creaking beams, a low fire, and a cover band playing American-made music.
She remembered fumbling her way from the crush at the bar, balancing two pints awkwardly, when someone had backed into her hard. She’d sloshed half the beer down a bar patron’s back.
Mortified, anxious, she’d looked up as the man had turned around, ready to apologize—and found herself staring into blue-green eyes and an uneven but electric smile.
David had plucked the half-empty glass from her hand, handed it back to the bartender, asking for another, and had quipped to Ivy, “First round’s on me then."
