Page 1 of A Good Egg

Chapter One

Maisie

The "Welcome to Starlight Bay" sign appeared like a mirage through my windshield, its faded blue paint peeling at the edges—not unlike my current state of mind. I eased off the gas, my ancient Subaru protesting with a wheeze as I forced myself to breathe normally. The late March sunshine filtered through budding trees, casting dappled shadows across the narrow coastal road I'd traveled a thousand times as a child.

I hadn't planned on coming back. Not like this, anyway—thirty years old, jobless, heartbroken, and clutching my dignity like the last egg in an empty carton.

"You're not running away," I whispered to myself, gripping the steering wheel tighter. "You're running home. Different thing entirely."

But the shame still clung to me like wet clothes after a storm. I'd left this sleepy Cape Cod town five years ago, following Brad and his big-city dreams to Boston. I'd packed up my culinary school diploma, chef's knives, and starry-eyed plans for our future. What an idiot I'd been.

The memory of yesterday morning ambushed me again: walking into our apartment early after my breakfast shift wascanceled, only to find Brad entangled with my so-called friend on our kitchen counter. The very counter where I'd baked him birthday cakes and anniversary dinners.

"It's not what it looks like," he'd stammered, fumbling with his unbuttoned shirt.

But it was exactly what it looked like. Five years of my life, scrambled beyond recognition in an instant.

I pushed the memory away as Main Street unfolded before me, surprisingly unchanged—Phillips' Hardware with its window display of gardening tools, Seaside Books with its crooked blue awning, The Saltwater Taffy Shop already preparing for the summer tourist season. In the town square, a small crew hung pastel Easter decorations from lamp posts. Life in Starlight Bay continued its gentle rhythm, oblivious to my personal catastrophe.

As I turned onto Orchard Lane, the back road leading to my grandparents' farm, my stomach twisted into increasingly elaborate knots. What would Gram say? She'd never liked Brad, had warned me with that uncanny intuition of hers. "That boy's not ready to be anyone's partner," she'd said at Christmas five years ago. "He's got wandering eyes and restless feet."

The old farmhouse appeared around the bend, nestled among apple trees just beginning to bud. The white clapboard exterior needed a fresh coat of paint, and the wraparound porch sagged slightly at one corner. The sight of it—imperfect but enduring—made my throat tighten.

I parked beside the weathered red barn and cut the engine, sitting in silence for several heartbeats. The farm had been in the O'Malley family for four generations. I'd grown up here after losing my parents in that terrible plane crash, raised by my grandparents in this house full of creaky floors and drafty windows. When Gramps died last year, I'd come for the funeraland left again too quickly, telling myself Gram understood my busy life in Boston couldn't stop for long.

Another lie I'd told myself.

The screen door squeaked open, and there she stood—Nora O'Malley, five feet of indomitable spirit in faded jeans and a floral apron, her silver hair pinned in its usual practical bun. She shaded her eyes against the afternoon sun, squinting at me as if I might be a mirage.

"Maisie Grace? Is that you?"

I gathered what remained of my courage and stepped out of the car. "Hey, Gram."

She hurried down the porch steps with surprising agility for a woman in her seventies, and before I could prepare myself, I was enveloped in an embrace that smelled of cinnamon and safety. I broke then, dissolving into tears I'd promised myself I wouldn't shed.

"There, there," she murmured, patting my back. "Whatever it is, we'll sort it out."

"I'm sorry," I hiccupped against her shoulder. "I should have called first."

"Nonsense. This is your home. Always has been."

We moved inside, where the kitchen looked smaller than I remembered. Gram put the kettle on—her answer to every crisis—while I slumped at the worn oak table, tracing my finger along a groove I'd carved with a butter knife at age seven.

"So," she said, placing a steaming mug of chamomile tea before me. "That city boy finally showed his true colors, did he?"

I looked up, startled. "How did you know?"

Her green eyes, so like my mother's, crinkled at the corners. "You wouldn't be here with that look on your face if things were peachy in paradise." She settled into the chair acrossfrom me. "Besides, I never trusted a man who wore cologne to a farm. It confuses the chickens."

A laugh escaped me, rusty but real. "He was... with someone else. In our apartment. My coworker, actually."

Gram clicked her tongue. "His loss. And a blessing in disguise, if you ask me. That young man was never going to make you happy."

It should have irked me, her instant dismissal of my first and only long-term relationship, but there was something comforting in her certainty. Gram had always possessed an earthy wisdom that cut through complications like a sharp knife through butter.

"I quit my job," I confessed. "Couldn't exactly keep working with Jessica after... you know."

"Of course not."

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