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Harriet in Waiting: A Small Town Women's Fiction Novel (Lost and Found 1)Ebook: Paperback: |
SHARP, FUNNY, AND UNEXPECTEDLY MOVING, HARRIET IN WAITING IS FOR ANYONE WHO’S EVER WONDERED IF IT’S TOO LATE TO BECOME WHO THEY WERE ALWAYS SUPPOSED TO BE.
Harriet Langley spent fifteen years waiting for her life to begin. She just didn’t expect it to start with a separation, a smug ex-husband, and his little sister showing up at her door.
Settling into La Jolla’s salt air and a king-sized bed she finally owns, Harriet is cautiously optimistic—until her husband, Alex, announces he wants the kids every second weekend—and that’s it. Suddenly, she’s not the carefree woman she imagined, but a full-time parent, the primary everything, while Alex develops an infuriating post-separation glow. And then there’s his younger sister, Charlie: crop tops, zero filter, endless opinions, and absolutely no plans to leave.
Rebuilding a life is hard enough without someone watching. But Charlie sees Harriet in ways she’s spent years carefully avoiding seeing herself, which might be the most inconvenient part of starting over.
Who it's for
Recognize yourself in the characters:
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THE CONTROL ARCHITECT
You don't micromanage because you're difficult. You do it because you've discovered that if you color-code the grocery list, label the meal prep containers, and schedule the week by Sunday evening, the world holds together. You alphabetize your kale chips and call it self-care. You iron everything—including situations—before they wrinkle. And when someone walks into your perfectly ordered kitchen and suggests you might be avoiding rather than coping, you pour their tea down the drain and smile about it later. The real question isn't whether your systems work, it's what you're afraid will happen if you put the planner down. Because the order was never really about order...it was about surviving something that felt survivable only because you were the one running it. THE WOMAN WHO NEEDS A CLEAN HOUSE TO SURVIVE A MESSY LIFE You know it's not about the counters. You know that wiping them for the third time in an evening is a form of prayer, a negotiation with chaos: if this is clean, maybe the rest of it will be too. You fold laundry when you can't control your marriage. You meal-plan when the teenagers won't talk to you. You organize the fridge when someone you trusted just told you a lie that rewrites the last year of your life. People call it a quirk. It's not a quirk. It's the one area of your life where cause and effect still behave the way they're supposed to. Give yourself that. Just also notice when the compulsion tips from coping into hiding. THE WOMAN WHO DIDN'T CRY FOR FIVE MONTHS You know it's over, so why aren't you falling apart? You're too busy being functional: packing lunches, running meetings, signing papers, holding everyone else together. You tell yourself this is a strength. You tell people you're fine with the exhausted confidence of someone who's said it so many times they've almost convinced themselves. And then one evening your teenage daughter explodes in the kitchen, and something in you cracks open, and your sister-in-law quietly pushes a box of tissues across the table, and you finally let it out. Not because you're weak, but because you're human, and the dam had been holding back years, not months. The crying isn't falling apart...it's the first honest thing you've done in a long time. THE WOMAN WHOSE FRIENDS DISAPPEARED WHEN THE MARRIAGE DID You didn't lose them all at once, but in increments: the coffees that stopped being suggested, the Instagram posts from the café you used to share. You weren't uninvited so much as simply not included anymore. And when you reached out, bravely, awkwardly, you got one polite non-answer and one silence that told you everything. They were his friends by proximity, and you were an inconvenience now that there was no couple to socialize with. You've started to understand that the friendship was never really about you. |
THE WOMAN WHO LOST HERSELF IN THE MARRIAGE
You know the exact moment it started. The Saturday mornings that became his Saturdays. The hobby you set down for a weekend and then a year and then a decade. The way you stopped playing tennis, or painting, or dancing, or writing, because he found it dramatic, or boring, or inconvenient, and eventually you agreed. You told yourself it wasn't a loss, just an evolution. You didn't realize you'd handed your whole identity to someone else until you were standing alone in a closet that still smelled like his cologne, asking the empty room: What do I even do now? The racket is still in there somewhere. Pick it up. THE WOMAN MANAGING HER ANXIETY WITH EVERYTHING EXCEPT ADDRESSING IT You know the signs by now. The tingling hands, the heat climbing your neck, the particular dread of a certain person's name on your phone screen. You've gotten quite good at talking yourself down without ever asking why it keeps coming back. Someone told you it was all in your head, so you learned not to talk about it. You learned to keep moving, keep organizing, keep laughing, because stillness was when it catches up with you. And late at night, when the house is quiet and the TV is on, you finally start to wonder: what would it actually feel like to rest? THE MOTHER THE KIDS ARGUE WITH INSTEAD OF THE ONE THEY NEED You show up. Every single time. You're the one making the breakfasts nobody thanks you for, sitting outside the closed bedroom door, resisting the urge to knock. You are the safe one...which means you're the one who gets the slammed doors and the "you don't get it" and the accusations that you're the reason everything is broken. Your child turns to her friends, her aunt, literally anyone who isn't you, because you come with too many expectations attached. And the cruelest irony is that it's precisely because you love them so completely that you've become the target. You're not failing. You're what they're allowed to rage at because they know, on some level, that you're not going anywhere. THE WOMAN WHO DOES IT ALL AND STILL FEELS LIKE SHE'S DOING IT WRONG You have a color-coded calendar, a meal plan, a work deadline, a teenager in trouble, a sister-in-law sleeping in your master bedroom, and a lawyer's voicemail you haven't returned. You are, objectively, managing. And yet, your daughter won't talk to you, and your son won't explain himself. Your boss might be punishing you for telling the truth in a meeting, and the people you thought were your friends have moved on. You are doing everything right, and yet you are so profoundly, inexplicably tired. Not because you're failing, but because you've been doing everyone else's emotional labor for so long you've forgotten to do your own. |
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