Sunday Snippet: The It’s Not All About Me, It’s Liz Flaherty Edition

And today, it isn’t all about me because as I’ve been saying all week–I’m kinda sick of me. Book promotion will do that to you… just sayin’.

So today, the snippet is all about my bestie, Liz Flaherty. One of my favorite of her books, A Soft Place to Fall is on sale for just 99 cents through August 31. If you haven’t read it, grab it.

When Liz rereleased this title, I couldn’t have been more delighted to go back into Early and Nash’s world. It is a beautifully told story of a marriage that got lost, a family that came apart when they weren’t even looking, and how two people found each other again. Early McGrath is a character full of depth and wisdom as she reconnects with her past, builds a new present, and learns to trust herself. Her husband Nash is someone you want to hate because of what he does to Early, but you see his heart so clearly, you can’t help but care about him. A touching, heartwarming story.

Liz’s writing sings as always, but this book will touch you in new ways.

A Soft Place to Fall

Early McGrath doesn’t want freedom from her thirty-year marriage to Nash, but when it’s forced upon her, she does the only thing she knows to do – she goes home to the Ridge to reinvent herself.

Only what is someone who’s spent her life taking care of other people supposed to do when no one needs her anymore? Even as the threads of her life unravel, she finds new ones – reconnecting with the church of her childhood, building the quilt shop that has been a long-time dream, and forging a new friendship with her former husband.
The definition of freedom changes when it’s combined with faith, and through it all perhaps Early and Nash can find A Soft Place to Fall.

Excerpt:

Susan Winslow’s death at the age of twenty-four was ruled an accident. A welfare representative came from the county seat to take Sarah with her, but Early scooped her niece into her arms and said that wouldn’t be either necessary or tolerated. Her gaze had been on Nash’s, even as her mother sputtered protests and the social worker voiced objections.

“We are her family.” Nash took the baby and stood tall beside his wife. “Who else will tell her that her mother swam like a mermaid and looked like an angel and that she loved Sarah as well as she could?”

After almost six years of marriage, that was the day Early had known beyond all doubt that she was in love with her husband.

Leaning back in her patio chair, sipping her coffee, she wondered when and if she had fallen out of love with him, when the relationship had become merely comfortable. Boring. She guessed, truth be told, she should be grateful to Nash for having the courage to end it, to say, “I think we need to get a divorce.”

She should be grateful, maybe, but she wasn’t. She liked being married, liked being the matriarch when the house filled with kids and grandkids and noise. For that matter, she liked Nash. He was her best friend. But he’d said that wasn’t enough and, even though hearing it had hurt like little else she’d ever experienced, he was probably right.

A breeze floated through the porch, ruffling the white knit of her nightgown and waking the loneliness she was still trying to get used to. She wondered, not for the first time, if finding someone else had been the catalyst for Nash’s departure. He’d said not, but that wasn’t something most husbands were truthful about, as far as she knew. She found it disturbing that even six months after the separation and with the divorce final, the idea of Nash with someone else was devastating.

She picked up the phone. She would call Evan first, she decided, and leave a message so that he would call her back in his own time. He was never home. Then Logan and Anna, then the girls. She’d never before realized that she always phoned them in order of birth—kind of like calling them in to supper when they were kids.

But when she punched in the memory dial of the phone, it was Nash who answered. “Are you busy?” she asked.

“Not too busy to talk to you,” he answered. “Let me go outside. I don’t need my dad eavesdropping when I’m talking to a girl. I think I’m a bit beyond that.”

“You’re just afraid he’ll ground you.”

“You bet.” His sigh was deep. He sounded tired. “How’s it going, Early?”

“Fine. The stuff’s all done inside the house, and Noah Walden and his dad are going to start on the outside tomorrow. I’ll bring Ben some carpet samples to look at.” She hesitated. “Are the kids all okay?”

“Yes, every one of them. Homesick, are you?”

The gentle mockery in his voice made her want to sniffle. “A little bit,” she admitted. “I like being back down here, but I kind of wish everyone else was here, too, at least part of the time.”

“They’ll be down over the weekend, making so much noise and mess you’ll be wishing them away again.”

“Probably.” Although she never did. She missed the noise and mess nearly as much as she missed the people who created it.

Silence fell between them, heavy and not quite comfortable. She didn’t know what she wanted him to say, but he wasn’t saying it. Early clutched the phone and thought of how often in their lives that had happened. How many times had she waited to hear the right words only to be disappointed? What in the world had kept them together for thirty years if they couldn’t even communicate on the simplest level?

“Well,” she said, “I’d better go. Goodnight, Nash.” Now, there, that’s communication. Idiot.

“Sleep warm, Early.”

“You, too.”

She disconnected the phone, but kept it close to her ear, as though she could still hear the sound of his voice as it said the wrong things.

There had been times, though. She smiled into the darkness.

“Your eyes remind me of spring rain. They’re so light gray and clear. Warm and cool at the same time and sometimes when I’m holding you they get downright hot, like a thunderstorm in April.”

Logan had been a newborn when Nash said that, and she’d held the words as close to her heart as she did the baby. If they couldn’t always have love—and Early was the first to admit they hadn’t always—they’d had poetry in the night and the most beautiful children.

When had the poetry died and the words dried up?

And why did she keep listening?

From Liz:

“I was always daydreaming as a kid, about living in elegant places where other people made your bed and dusted your furniture, wearing clothes that screamed triumphantly, “Liz Claiborne, size two!” every time I put them on, and writing blockbuster novels.

Instead, I live in a big old farmhouse back a dusty lane, where whoever is the last one out of bed makes it and no one bothers with dusting. My clothes mumble sheepishly, “J. C. Penney, buy a bigger size.” And my novels aren’t what you’d call blockbusters. What they are is stories about people like me and maybe like you, whose dreams have gone awry or simply withered up and died. It’s my job as a writer to take care of those dreams, either by straightening out the old ones or finding new ones. Either way, I love it, and I’d love hearing how you feel about how I’ve done that job. Email me at lizkflaherty@gmail.com“