The One Who Stayed

She gave herself three months

De: Margaret Collins

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

THE ONE WHO STAYED: She Gave Herself Three Months

She gave herself three months. Millbrook had other plans.

Ellen Vandenberg hasn't been home in thirty years.

She left the small Michigan town the day after graduation and never looked back—building a career as a hospital executive, running on adrenaline and seventy-hour weeks, and telling herself that ambition was enough. That control was enough. That she didn't need the town, or the memories, or the mother she kept at arm's length for three decades.

Then her mother dies. And Ellen inherits a house she doesn't want, in a town full of people who remember the girl she used to be, and a garden so overgrown it looks like grief made visible.

Three months. Settle the estate. Sell the house. Get back to Chicago before the roots take hold.

She doesn't plan on Tom Brouwer.

Tom is steady where Ellen is restless. Rooted where she's always running. A widower who runs his father's hardware store and hasn't let himself feel anything in six years—not since he lost his wife and decided that keeping busy was close enough to being okay. He knows better than to fall for a woman who has one foot out the door.

But he can't help it. And neither can she.

What begins with a leaking roof and unsolicited advice becomes something neither of them expected:

• Long evenings on a porch that used to be her mother's
• A garden brought back to life, one stubborn perennial at a time
• A seventy-eight-year-old future mother-in-law who is already planning the wedding
• Friday night concerts and farmers' market mornings
• A man who sees her panic and her pride and her messy, complicated heart—and stays anyway

Then an email arrives with an offer that could take her back to everything she left behind. And Ellen has to decide if she's the woman who always leaves—or the one who finally stays.

The One Who Stayed is a warm, deeply emotional love story about:

✓ Coming home to a place you spent a lifetime running from
✓ Late-in-life love between two people who thought that chapter was closed
✓ Grief, guilt, and the slow work of forgiving yourself
✓ A small town that won't let you stay invisible
✓ The terrifying, beautiful risk of choosing to belong
✓ Learning that the life you were building was never the one you needed

Perfect for fans of:

• Robyn Carr's Virgin River series
• Debbie Macomber's heartwarming small-town stories
• Nicholas Sparks and Kristin Hannah
• Later-in-life love stories with emotional depth
• Women's fiction with a slow-burn romance at its center
• Clean romance with heart, community, and characters who feel real

What readers are saying:

Early readers are calling it:

• "I cried in the garden chapter and I'm not even sorry."
• "Tom Brouwer is the book boyfriend we deserve at this age."
• "I read it in two days and immediately wanted to move to Millbrook."
• "This is the kind of love story that makes you believe it's not too late."

Welcome back to Millbrook.

The same small Michigan town where seasons change slowly, neighbors know your name, and love has a way of arriving exactly when you've stopped looking for it.

This is the second book in the Millbrook series. Each novel stands alone with its own love story, connected by the same streets, the same diner booths, and the same quiet belief that it's never too late to begin again. You'll recognize a few familiar faces from Someone to Stay—but you don't need to have read it first.

If you've ever wondered what would happen if you stopped running long enough to let your life catch up with you—this book is for you.

The One Who Stayed is a full-length novel with no cliffhangers, no explicit content, and a guaranteed happily-ever-after.

Scroll up and click "Buy Now" to start reading today.