Accidental Wife — M. Louise Smith

Estelle Fischer was a beautiful young debutante happily engaged to a rising NFL star quarterback, her childhood sweetheart. Everything changed in a horrific second one summer night when she became responsible for a gruesome accident that tragically injured one of the frat guys spending the summer in a condo down the beach. The injured was, unfortunately, the only son of a vindictive and powerful US senator. Fear of the senators wrath and her own distractive guilt brought her dreams to an abrupt halt. In a daze of agony, she found herself accepting a sacrificial life caring for the pompous man, now a hopeless cripple, by quietly abandoning her engagement to marry him.

A widow at sixty-three, she sells the family home in Colorado to return to the small compound of beach cottages on the Texas Gulf Coast where she spent her youth, a mile away from the scene of that long-ago accident. She hopes to recapture some of what has been lost over the tumultuous years by arranging a reunion of the old friends that she abruptly and painfully left behind. This includes her first love, now a hardened Vietnam vet; her abandoned fianc, a retired, disillusioned sports hero; and the girls, grown into troubled women. Perhaps a reunion of these friends from the past will open a path to forgiveness and understanding and even provide an opportunity to love again. The difficult thing is trying to prove to her selfish and angry children that she has not taken leave of her senses.