It's Never too Late - By Tara Taylor Quinn Page 0,3

officially turned down the scholarship, she’d agree to marry him.

“What’s wrong with summer all year long?” Nonnie’s tone was strong. “I’ve never known you to have a problem with the heat.”

Yeah, well, he didn’t like to sweat. At least the kind of sweating she made him do.

“You’re good at what you do, Mark, but there’s so much more you could be doing. And you ain’t goin’ to get there from here.”

Nonnie quoted a familiar saying in their small West Virginia town.

Technically, wherever he went, Arizona included, he’d get there by way of Bierly. But...

Perching on the edge of the armchair across from Nonnie’s wheelchair, he leaned over, elbows on his knees, to face her head-on. “I’m not going to leave you, Nonnie. You can’t take care of yourself. They’re offering me money for living expenses, but there’s no money to hire someone to look after you, and even if there was, I wouldn’t do it. You took care of me from the time I was born and now it’s my turn. Period. End of story.”

He didn’t often use that tone of voice with her. Almost never. He didn’t use it much at work, either. Didn’t need to. But when he did, he got results. Always.

“Fine.”

He blinked. “Fine?” He’d been sweating over nothing? She’d never really expected him to accept the scholarship offer that had been delivered by the U.S. postal service the week before?

Nonnie must have written to this scholarship committee on his behalf. He sure hadn’t applied. But why would she have done that if she hadn’t expected him to go?

“I’m going with you.”

“What?”

She handed him a folder. It was half an inch thick, mostly stuffed with pages she’d printed off the internet. Glancing through it, Mark saw housing for rent in Shelter Valley, cost-of-living estimates and driving directions from Bierly, with a map. There were lists of local shopping establishments in the area—privately owned, nonfranchise places with one exception. And a couple of receipts.

“You rented a duplex for us?”

“Two bedrooms are more than we need, but the price was right in line with the scholarship allowance, and I liked the woman who owns the place. Caroline Strickland. She’s a Kentucky girl from right around the corner. Moved to Shelter Valley eight years ago and is a little lonely for her own kind.”

Nonnie probably knew the woman’s birth date and deepest fears, too. She just had that way about her.

“If she’s not happy there, how do you expect us to be?”

“She loves Shelter Valley! Says moving there is the best choice she’s ever made. She’s just glad to have us joining her.”

“You’ve lived in Bierly for eighty-one years. You were born in this house. And you expect me to believe you want to leave?”

“I want you to have this chance, Markie-boy.” She used the nickname she knew better than to utter outside their private communications.

Eyes narrowed, he studied the indomitable woman trapped in a frail body that was all sunken skin and brittle bones—helped along by the multiple sclerosis that had been slowly weakening her over the past fourteen years. “You wrote to the scholarship committee, didn’t you? You read about it on the internet and you wrote to them.”

“No.” Her chin lifted. Mark wasn’t going. He adored Nonnie, owed her, but he was a hands-on learner, not a classroom type of guy.

And she’d never survive the trip.

“What about Ella?”

“If she loves you she’ll wait for you.”

Four years was a long time to wait when you were in your childbearing years. So why hadn’t he been in a hurry to start a family before the scholarship offer had turned his life upside down?

“I have no idea what to study,” he said. “The scholarship says that I have to complete a four-year degree or pay the money back.”

Nonnie’s snort would have fit in better at the bar she used to tend than it did in the clean and pretty home she kept.

“You got ideas springing out your ears, Mark. It’s time someone besides me and the dinner table listens to them.”

“I just know what could be done better at the plant. And I know better than to shoot my mouth off down there.”

“You got life-altering ideas, Markie-boy. I’m old, but I’m not out of touch. Our world’s changing fast and the things you talk about, the way things are being redone so fast and the danger in those gases that aren’t being tended to, you know how to fix some of that. Look at all the work you’ve been doing