Read The Splendor of Ordinary Days for Free Online

­tell-­all of your enchanted youth?”
    â€œBradford, you are not getting anywhere near my journal.”
    â€œOuch, definitely hit a nerve there. Now I really want to read it.”
    â€œNo chance, Buckhead boy.”
    â€œHey, speaking of which, I have to run down to Atlanta sometime. All of my family furniture is in storage, and I want to get a few pieces moved up here.”
    I was an only child. When I was twelve, my parents died in an auto accident, after which I lived with Aunt Grace in her stately Buckhead home until she too died, the summer before I started med school. After I graduated, I signed a ­three-­year contract with Watervalley. In return for my services as the sole doctor, the town would pay off my med school debts. I was also provided with a furnished house only a few blocks from the clinic. But some of the furnishings were rather dated, and I had a huge inventory of heirloom furniture in storage, left from my parents’ estate and Aunt Grace’s house.
    â€œWhile I’m there,” I said, “I’ll try to locate my old journal. If I find it, we can swap.”
    Christine appeared unenthused. “I seriously doubt that would be a fair trade. What did you write about?”
    â€œHmm, mostly sports and girls.” I paused briefly and added, “And girls who were good sports.”
    â€œShocker.”
    â€œSo, did you and your mom find many things for the yard sale?” Every year around the Fourth of July, several of the churches and civic clubs in Watervalley sponsored a huge charity yard sale to help out some benevolent organization.
    â€œYes. A ton of things. I don’t think anyone has been up there in the five years since Daddy died. Lamps, an old sewing machine, tennis racquets, camping gear, and a bunch of my grandmother Cavanaugh’s vases and china that were packed away back in the sixties.”
    â€œAnd an old journal.”
    â€œAnd an old journal.”
    â€œI have to admit,” I said, “you’ve made me curious.” I leaned forward, propping my elbows on my desk. “Okay, Christine Ann Chambers, time to confess. What deep, dark mysteries are hidden in those pages?”
    Folding her arms, Christine eased back in her chair, wearing a flirtatious expression of stealth and amusement, her eyes full of secret warmth. “Not happening, Bradford.”
    â€œOh, I see. So that’s how it is, huh? Well, no matter.” I slumped back into my chair. “Actually, besides my journal, there are three pretty important things I want to find in the Atlanta storage.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œYep. There’s a box of old family photo albums and some of my mom’s jewelry that I want to bring back with me.”
    Christine nodded thoughtfully. “Your mother’s jewelry . . . hmm.” She unfolded her arms and tucked a strand of her long brown hair behind her ear. Given the intensity of our relationship, I was sure she was curious about the mention of my mother’s jewelry, but she was tactful enough not to ask. Her voice was tender and accommodating.
    â€œWell, that all sounds very sweet. I’m sure it would be nice to have some family photos and some things of your mom’s around you.”
    I stared at the bookshelves that lined the walls of my stately office, formerly the library of the antebellum home turned community clinic.
    Christine’s words conjured my best memory, my mother. Evelyn Bradford was a slim, tall, elegant woman with sandy hair and sky blue eyes, traits that I had ­inherited—­except perhaps for the elegant part. I remember Aunt Grace, my dad’s sister, once telling me that my mother had the prettiest legs she had ever seen. My mother was an only child and had come from a modestly wealthy family in Atlanta. Yet when my father, a doctor like myself, had set up practice in a rural Georgia community, she had willingly embraced ­small-­town life.
    In