Another Fitzgerald House offering, in which we get to know Nathan Forester, Daniel's twin. But those two men couldn't be more different. Nathan has suffered from dyslexia all his life, though his difficulties with reading and numbers hasn't been labeled as such. Instead, Nathan thinks he's stupid, that his brain just doesn't work right. When he meets single mother, Cheryl Henshaw, he'd love to get to know her better, but he's not into kids, and she has a very bright little boy.
Nathan is home to help renovate Fitzgerald House while his father engages in chemotherapy and tries to recover from cancer. It's a chance for Nathan to prove he, too, is capable of running the family construction business, but just as he's gearing up to do so, he's saddled with a little girl, Isabella, a former girlfriend claims is his daughter. That woman then disappears, without explaining why the child refuses to talk, and is frightened of noises and almost everything.
Unraveling the background of Issy's life might help Nathan to care for her, but taking her in scares him. How can he possibly do right by a child when he has so much trouble just doing what other people find so easy? He begs Cheryl to help him and she does, though with reluctance, at least at first. In doing so, her son's behavior toward Nathan turns nasty, but--surprisingly--Issy talks to Josh, which gives the adults hope that a breakthrough might be in the works. However, the attraction the adults have for each other can never move forward if Josh refuses to accept Nathan. Is his reaction something Cheryl should have expected, given their past when living with her abusive brother-in-law after her husband's death?
A complicated story that reflects the many threads of real life that so often include knots of problems in addition to the gradual unraveling of past hurts when placed in the light of love and real caring. A story I couldn't put down.