The Long Way Back to You

De: Margaret Collins

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

He built a house for two and lived in it alone for nine years.

Andy Dalton is a real estate developer who grew up hauling lumber on his father's job sites and playing double bass drums in smoky bars. He builds beautiful homes for other families. His own has a kitchen island with two stools—one has never been sat in. A master bath with double sinks—one has been dry for nine years. A reading nook by a window he's never once used.

He knows exactly who it was all built for. He just can't say her name.

She survived a marriage that tried to erase her—and walked out under her own power.

Michele Reeves was the punk rock girl with blue eyeliner who looked at a supe's kid with long hair and drumsticks in his back pocket and saw something nobody else did. When lies tore them apart at eighteen, she married a man who looked like Andy but was his opposite in every way that mattered. Twenty-five years, a devastating marriage, and a nursing career later, Michele didn't wait to be rescued. She rescued herself on a Tuesday night, walked out with clarity, and rebuilt her life from the ground up.

Now she's ready to find out what was taken from them—and why.

Twenty-five years. Two whole lives. One lie that changed everything.

When Michele reaches out after her divorce, Andy is forced to confront the truth about why they were torn apart—a truth that traces back to the people who were supposed to love them most. But reconnecting means more than nostalgia. It means reckoning with who they've each become: a man who filled silence with mowing and music, and a woman who learned to steal her own peace thirty minutes at a time.

This is not a story about being saved. It's a story about two people who learned to stand on their own feet—and then chose each other with open eyes.

The Long Way Back to You is a sweeping, emotional novel about second chances at forty, the lies families tell, and the difference between silence and quiet. It's about a woman who lets a cabinet door close at full volume because she doesn't have to be careful anymore—and a man who stops mowing in the dark because he finally has a reason to go inside.

For readers who love The Notebook but want the woman to save herself. For anyone who's ever looked at an empty chair and known exactly who it was waiting for.

Content note: This novel explores emotional abuse, manipulation, and mature themes within marriage. No graphic scenes. Low heat, high emotion. First-person male POV. Dual timeline.