Love and Other Lost Things

Jane McCaffrey left her hometown at eighteen with a secret about her family. She also left Nik, the boy she loved, and never told him why. A decade on, her father has died, and she returns to help her mother clear out the family house.

Nik is now the town's doctor. He has spent the years since she vanished wondering what went wrong, and her return puts them in the same small place again. Old feelings start to surface.

Jane is carrying something new that she cannot share. There is a fresh bruise on her cheek, and she is quietly trying to get out of an abusive relationship. Any attempt to rebuild what she and Nik had risks exposing the truth before she is ready.

The contemporary romance follows a second-chance course toward a hopeful ending, and it deals directly with domestic abuse and with trauma passed down through generations. Jane must look at the harm that shaped her family while she decides how much to tell the man she left.