A jar full of light
aveline book 2

Theresa Grant fled Aveline ten years ago, certain that she would never return. She was wrong.

When Theresa's teenage daughter, Maddie, pleads with her to come back to Aveline, Theresa can't say no. She finds herself packing up and driving back to the lake town of her childhood--back to the lake, the trees, and to an old friend who wants to rekindle their spark.

Will a new house, new friends, and her work as a potter be enough to keep her in Aveline? Or will old secrets drive her away?

A Jar Full of Light is the second book in the Aveline Series, a collection of inspirational romantic stories with quirky, lovable characters, set in a fictional lake town in California. Perfect for fans of Jan Karon, Katherine Center, or Elizabeth Berg.

Read on for excerpt.

A Jar Full of Light
Aveline Book 2
Prologue

“Mom?”

Theresa held her phone with trembling fingers, closing her eyes at the sound of her daughter’s voice. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes to look at the sky outside her kitchen window. It was showing off again with deep, luscious sunset colors—fuschia, purple and tangerine. Theresa tapped her fingers on the side of the sink and prayed that her voice would hold.

“Hi, honey,” she said. Her voice was quiet but steady, a relief after a few long days of not saying a word out loud to anyone. “How are things?”

There was a pause. “Pretty good,” Maddie told her. Her voice sounded the way Theresa’s heart felt, full of ragged edges and question marks. Lack of sleep. Theresa’s heart wanted to burst out of her ribcage and fling itself across the country to her baby. Maddie’s shoplifting and Theresa’s subsequent meltdown had led to Theresa sending her daughter to live with her grandmother, across the country in Aveline, Theresa’s hometown in California. 

“I finished writing my apology letters,” Maddie went on.

Theresa let her eyes drift shut as guilt washed over her in a hot wave. “That’s good,” she said. “That must have been hard to do.”

“It was. It feels good to have it over with. But Mom? I miss you.”

“I miss you too. Are you ready to come home?”

“I was wondering…” There was a long pause. Theresa readied herself for whatever Maddie was going to say. The last months had been good and hard. With Maddie gone, Theresa had dug deep into counseling, scheduling herself with two different therapists. She had made some breakthroughs and spent hours journaling, painting, and throwing pots. The months had been good for Theresa. But she was worried that she had given up too much when she sent Maddie away. Theresa’s mother hadn’t even allowed Maddie to come and live with her, sending her to Theresa’s little brother Sam, instead. Living with Sam had gone okay for Maddie, except for another shoplifting incident, something Maddie assured Theresa she would never do again. She was done with stealing for good.

But would Maddie ever want to come home, now that she knew what it was like to have a normal life? With normal people? Theresa steeled herself as Maddie went on talking.

“I don’t want to come back to Minnesota,” she said. “I don’t think it’s good for me.”

Pain bloomed somewhere near Theresa’s sternum, and she breathed, the way she had learned, trying to allow it to flow over her, rather than pulling her under its current. But Maddie wasn’t finished.

“I don’t think it’s good for you either, Mom. I miss you so much. Will you please move here? Then we can all live here together.”

Theresa’s eyes snapped open. She stared at the sky—now half swept over by the indigo night. She pushed away from the sink and walked to stand at the fridge, staring at the wedding invitation she had taped to the door.

Move back to Aveline?

Aveline still beat hard in her heart. Some part of it traveled with Theresa everywhere she ever went. She had never really become accustomed to the winters in Minnesota, though she appreciated the numbing of the cold.

“Mom?” 

Theresa shook herself. “I don’t know, honey,” she said.

“You’re coming, next month, though, right?”

“To the wedding?” Theresa traced the edges of the gold invitation with her fingertips. Sammy was finally getting married, and she was happy for her little brother. “I was thinking about it. Maddie, there were a lot of hard things in Aveline…”

“I think you need to believe that you can move past those hard things,” Theresa’s fourteen-year-old told her definitively.

Theresa snorted out a little laugh. “Oh, I’ve missed you so much, feisty girl.” 

She left the kitchen and opened the screen door to walk outside in the late summer evening. The air smelled of fields, of cut grass and sunshine. 

Maddie didn’t yet know that some hard things never let you go. Theresa shivered.

“I’ll come to the wedding,” she said. “And we can talk there. We need to live together, you and I.”

Maddie broke in. “And we can do that in Aveline. It’s so good here, Mom.”

Theresa didn’t need her daughter to tell her how good Aveline was. If she closed her eyes, she could see it, smell it, taste it. Home. The jewel of a lake. The smell of redwood needles underfoot. Sleepy afternoons, star-filled nights. Dancing on the shores of the lake. And… danger. Her arms prickled as she remembered. But she would do anything in the world to keep Maddie happy and safe.

“I’ll see you at the wedding, darling girl,” she said. “Do you have a dress yet?”

Maddie took a breath and launched into a long ramble about how she was a bridesmaid, and the dress was amazing, and the food was amazing, and everything was amazing. 

Theresa paced her backyard, listening to the change in her daughter, growing more and more sure that she was going to have to move back to a place she had thought she left forever.