Songs of the Heart Series · Book One

When Love Finds You

by Anna Hayes

“Love has a way of finding us when we are brave enough to let it in.”

Clean fiction  ·  275 pages  ·  Published 2026  ·  Hayshack Press

Willow Creek woke up slowly, the way a person does when they have nowhere urgent to be.

First came the light — a soft, unhurried gold that crept along the tops of the oak trees lining Main Street and spilled down over the storefronts like warm honey. Then came the sounds: the distant toll of the bells at First Community Church, marking the hour even on a Tuesday morning, as though the town itself needed the reminder to pause and breathe. A dog barked somewhere on Elm Street. A screen door swung shut on its hinges. The smell of someone’s fresh coffee drifted out through a half-open window and mixed with the cool, damp scent of autumn settling in along the riverbank.

This was Willow Creek. This was how it always began.

The town hadn’t changed much in the thirty years most of its residents could remember. The same brick storefronts lined Main Street, their hand-painted signs weathered just enough to look distinguished rather than worn. Mitchell’s Hardware still had the wooden barrel of rakes and shovels standing on the sidewalk out front. The Willow Creek Diner still hung its specials on a chalkboard in the window, the handwriting a little lopsided but always cheerful. The post office still had a cracked step that everyone stepped over without thinking, even the newcomers, as though the town quietly passed down that knowledge through some invisible inheritance.

And at the far end of Main Street, standing a little taller than everything around it, was the Willow Creek Theater.

It was the kind of building that made you look twice. Built in 1924 with pale limestone and arched windows trimmed in dark wrought iron, it had survived every decade the town had moved through with a dignity that newer buildings rarely managed. The marquee out front still lit up on event weekends, its letters arranged by hand, and the double doors beneath the arched entrance were painted a deep burgundy that had been refreshed so many times the color had become part of the building’s identity. On ordinary weekday mornings the theater simply stood there — quiet, patient, present — like an elder who had seen enough of life to stop needing to prove anything.

For most people in Willow Creek, the theater was a place of occasional evenings out, a backdrop to birthday celebrations and school performances and visiting musicians passing through.

For Jessica Lawson, it was something harder to name.

She drove past it every morning on her way to school, and had for a year now, ever since she’d taken the weekend cleaning job that helped keep the electricity running and the pantry stocked. She never looked at it the way a tourist might, with admiration or nostalgia. She looked at it the way you look at something that has become part of your survival — with a quiet, complicated gratitude that didn’t quite feel like fondness but wasn’t resentment either.

It was just part of the life she was building. Carefully. One manageable piece at a time.

This particular Tuesday morning, Jess had already been awake for an hour and a half by the time the oak trees on Main Street were catching their first light. She’d made lunches before the sun came up — a peanut butter sandwich with the crusts cut off for Annabelle, a cheese and turkey wrap for herself that she probably wouldn’t eat until two in the afternoon. She’d signed a permission slip she’d found tucked under a crayon drawing on the kitchen table, located two matching socks for Annabelle — which felt like a minor victory — and managed to get herself dressed, her dark hair pulled back into a low knot, before her daughter had even come padding down the hallway in her pajamas.

Now they were in the car, three minutes behind schedule, and Annabelle was talking.

Annabelle was always talking.

“Mom, do you think fish remember things?” She was belted into the backseat, her backpack wedged beside her, dark curls still slightly wild despite the braid Jess had wrestled them into twenty minutes earlier. One purple ribbon was already half-undone.

“I honestly don’t know, baby,” Jess said, checking her mirror and turning onto Cedar Lane.

“Because Mrs. Patel said they only remember for three seconds but Tyler Greer said that’s not true and it was actually a myth and I think Tyler might be right because our fish at school — the orange one — I think he remembers me. He comes to the glass when I walk up.”

“Maybe he does.”

“Do you think animals can tell when someone loves them?”

Jess glanced in the rearview mirror. Annabelle was looking out the window with her forehead nearly pressed against the glass, watching the houses go by with that particular intensity she brought to everything she observed. Six years old and already asking the kind of questions that could send a philosopher in circles.

“I think they can,” Jess said. “I think they feel it, even if they can’t say so.”

Annabelle considered this with a small nod. “Like how Grandma’s cat always sits on you even if you don’t usually like cats.”

“Exactly like that.”

Jess pulled into the drop-off lane and shifted into park.

“All right, my love. Have a wonderful day.” She turned around and reached back to press Annabelle’s ribbon into place, knowing full well it would be loose again within the hour.

Annabelle leaned forward and pressed a warm, slightly sticky kiss to Jess’s cheek. “Love you to the moon, Mom.”

“Love you back to the moon and all the way home,” Jess said, and felt the particular ache of that phrase — the one she and Daniel had made up together, the one that was now hers alone to carry.

She watched Annabelle hop out of the car, adjust her backpack with a practiced shrug, and immediately turn to wave at someone across the path. Within seconds she was already in conversation with two friends, hands moving animatedly, the purple ribbon trailing loose. She didn’t look back.

Jess stayed a moment longer than she needed to.

She did that sometimes. Watched her daughter the way you study a flame — not because you fear it will go out, but because you are grateful it is still burning.