Chapter 1

Felicity Whitfield had been driving for over 2 days. She had everything she owned in the back of her car and was leaving her sleepy Illinois town for the first time in her 24 year old life. Sure, she had visited other places before, but this would be the first time she had ever lived somewhere besides her parents' sprawling colonial.

She had dreamed of attending college out of state, but when her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer her senior year of high school, she felt as if she needed to stay home and care for her. Her father was the mayor of their small town and it seemed that even when her mother was at her sickest, he was always at work.

When her mother passed away right before Christmas last year, she felt as if she couldn't take any more pain. She was wrong. Her father began a deep descent into alcoholism, and in June, Felicity came home to find him hanging from his closet. Although Felicity's relationship with her father had been troubled at best, it was still almost unbearable to lose both her parents less than 6 months apart. What was even worse were the constant stares from members of their small community.

Felicity's family had been prominent members of their town, and everywhere she went she was met with pity and she was tired of it. She needed to get away and begin fresh, so she emailed her resume to a variety of different elementary schools all over the country. Since she wasn't officially licensed in any state but Illinois, she wasn't able to find a job in any of the bigger cities, but she did receive an offer to teach Kindergarten from a small town called Charming in California. Felicity knew nothing about Charming except for the fact that it would be sunny and no one there would know her name. In other words, it was perfect. Her plan was to teach there for a year and then be able to officially get her California teaching license and hopefully move on to a bigger school in a place like Los Angeles or San Francisco.

This is what brought Felicity to sell all of her possessions and leave town without telling a soul. She was absolutely terrified, but there was an excitement in the terror. A thrilling feeling completely different from anything she had felt before. She felt as if she had always been boring and predictable, if not a little quirky. She certainly had never done anything like this before. She had enough money from the sale of her parents' house to make the trip and hopefully find a small house to rent when she got there. Other than that, all she really knew was that she was to start work in about a month, which hopefully would give her enough time before to start exploring her new home and settle in.

Lost in daydreaming, Felicity hadn't even noticed the check engine light that came on in her little red Mercedes. Definitely not a car she could have afforded on her teacher's salary alone, but it was a college graduation present from her parents, and something she knew her mom had pushed for her father to buy, perhaps as a way to ease her guilt over denying Felicity the typical college experience due to her sickness. Felicity pulled out her iPhone and typed in "Mechanics". There was a shop in Charming called "Teller-Morrow" that had good reviews and one that was about 15 minutes away in the town she was driving through currently. After a second of internal debating, Felicity decided that she could make it with the engine light on for about another hour so she could finally reach her destination. That way, if she needed a rental car she could have it pick her up at the auto shop, and perhaps the Charming mechanics might even be able to recommend some things for her to do in town, or at least let her know where a grocery store might be. Felicity clicked on the Teller-Morrow destination and hit "get directions". It was 53 minutes away. Felicity felt a rush of excitement thinking that she was only 53 minutes from finally seeing her new home. Little did she know how drastically her life would begin to change once she reached her destination.