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Chapter One
Harp Cove, Maine
April
The only sure thing about luck, Delaney Poole's mother always said, is that it'll change.
Delaney was starting to believe that was, true.
After a year of bad luck — wherein she'd endured an unhappy relationship; lived with parents who barely spoke to each other, let alone her; and worked for peanuts as a resident in a busy innercity hospital emergency room — it looked as if it might all turn around.
First, she'd dumped the guy. Then she'd gotten her own apartment. And now she was up for an assignment in the most beautiful place she'd ever been: Harp Cove, Maine.
As she stood across the street from a bar called the Hornet's Nest, Delaney couldn't help but smile into the darkness. She loved this town. Loved itwith the excitement of a kid getting exactly what she wants for Christmas.
This backward little two-stoplight town, bathed in sea salt and populated with eccentrics, was exactly what she had in mind when she checked "Rural" on her National Health Service Corps questionnaire. No high-profile, big-city emergency room for her. No sprawling suburban hospital with professional hierarchies and stepladders to success. Sure, they offered an intense form of professional stimulation, but they couldn't give her what she really wanted: community.
She wanted to work somewhere she felt needed. Not by the staff or administration, but by the people, the neighborhood, the town.
And here it was. Harp Cove. Population 5,000. In the winter, thatwas. In summertime, that number probably tripled, but it was still a friendly, manageable town. A town in need of a doctor who, in a little over a year, would be fresh out of residency with state-of-the-art medical knowledge.
Music from the bar thumped across the April night, stumbling through the air like a clumsy drunk, begging her to revel in the teeming energy of the only watering hole in town.
Delaney tilted her head back, hugged her arms around her middle, and looked up at the stars. The sky was carpeted so thickly with them they looked like shattered glass, splintered and bright. So different from the dim sparks visible through the murk of a D.C. night. She breathed in slowly. Salt, pine, soil. Intoxicating earthy scents.
Harp Cove.
She imagined herself telling people back home, when she returned for the occasional visit. "lt's just a tiny town on the coast of Maine," she'd say, smiling wistfully, "but I love it."
And they would picture her in some wild, dramatic setting, resourcefully saving lives with pinecones and twine. Pioneering.
Delaney laughed. As if she cared what the people in D.C. thought of her life. Most of them were just people she worked with anyway. Between med school, her internship and residency, she'd lost touch with most of her old friends. And she'd really only dated one guy since college — the disastrous Lonnie she'd gotten rid of six months ago.
So now she was free — free to start life fresh, in a brand new place. And this was the place she wanted. This odd, mystic, northern town, so unlike the predictable suburbs and myopically driven city she'd known all her life.
She smiled and realized she was happy. Irrationally, deliriously so. She couldn't remember another time in her life when she felt so hopeful. It was the most centered feeling she'd ever had. And it was because she knew exactly what she wanted to do, and where she wanted to do it. Odd, she thought, how the place instantly made her feel as if she'd been lost her whole life, until she happened to come here.
She just had to get this assignment.
Delaney had been in Harp Cove for four days, exploring the town in which she hoped to be assigned to work by the National Health Service Corps, the organization that had paid most of her med-school tuition. NHSC required one year of service for every year of tuition they paid, so, since Delaney had saved and paid for the first year herself, she could be in Harp Cove for three years. More, if she chose.
Granted, she had one more year of residency to go — in the frantic hustle and revolving-door busyness of a D.C. hospital — but after she finished up next June she might be here, living her dream of being a country doctor. And all it took was four years of med school, one year of internship, and three years of residency.
She smiled to herself. The end was in sight. Soon, she told herself, soon she would be a real, certified doctor. Not a student, not an intern, not a resident, but a doctor.
Chances were good she would get the assignment. Apparently most people those locations in warm climates, or towns not too far from a major city. This town — nearly four hours up the coast from Portland — was too cold and too remote to interest anyone but her. She hoped.
If she got it, she would start in July of next year. Perfect timing for this northern clime. She imagined herself moving in, unpacking her boxes, and getting to know her neighbors. They would be happy to have a doctor so close, she thought. And she would be happy to be the one these kind, quirky folk came to when they needed help.
Delaney's whole body quivered with anticipation. She wished she was already settled here and this was her first weekend as a resident. She wishedthat, instead of leaving tomorrow to home for another year, she was going to start work at the clinic here in town. She wished the waiting were over and it was all starting now, because up to now it seemed she'd done nothing but prepare for life.
But here...here she would live it.
