A Fresh Start
Happy New Year
Well, I’m back, and I hope to be ready to write a few more short stories in 2026. I didn’t come up empty for ideas any of the weeks in 2025, but I’ve had some close calls. Life, as everyone knows, can demand that you do something other than write.
As you know, if you follow me, I try to tell my readers where each story comes from. I’m saving that until the end this time. I hope you enjoy this one. If you do, please restack, comment, or whatever to let me know your thoughts.
2026, here we go!
Fresh Start
The start of a new year was supposed to offer a clean slate, and Maria Bandoni raised an imaginary glass of Champagne to the idea.
“To the fresh start I’ve needed for the last three hundred and sixty-four days.”
She smiled at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, still fogged from the shower. Through the haze, she saw the same familiar heart-shaped face—and the incongruous nose she’d inherited from her Italian father. Once, she’d thought about having the bump along its bridge smoothed away, but her father had been so wounded by the suggestion that she’d dropped the idea forever.
In profile, she resembled an emperor stamped onto an ancient coin. Noble, her father called it. Maria knew better. It was simply big, made more noticeable by her petite five-foot frame. She suspected it was the reason Jason had traded her in for the perky blonde from accounting with the perfect turned-up nose.
She walked away from the mirror. There was no sense in dwelling on that—not tonight. Her father was being released from the hospital tomorrow, and that mattered far more.
His bills are paid for the month.
“Check.”
There are meals ready in his fridge.
“Check.”
The caregiver is scheduled to start the moment he’s home.
“Check.”
And most important of all—“I must pick him up on time.” Her father had made her promise she’d be there at nine sharp. He wanted out of Stone Valley Medical as soon as possible.
Maria toweled off and slipped into her pajamas. Instead of attending the office’s New Year’s Eve party, she’d turn in early and set her alarm for seven. Plenty of time to get to the hospital. She wished it could happen right now. She missed him so much.
Skipping the party also meant avoiding Jason. Her heart was broken already; seeing him with his new girlfriend would have shattered it.
Thank God Papa recovered, she thought. She couldn’t lose him—not so soon after Mama, so soon after the man she loved had betrayed her.
As she slid beneath the covers, she murmured, “Goodnight, Papa. Tomorrow we start a new year.” She was certain he’d hear her and know she was thinking of him. They’d always had a close, almost mystical connection.
Usually, sleep came easily after long, boring days at the office followed by hours of visiting at the hospital, but tonight she lay awake, staring at the ceiling. Something felt…off.
It’s been a brutal month, she reasoned. Three employees had called in sick right before Christmas, backing up shipments during the busiest season of the year. Endless overtime. Then Papa—so ill, teetering on the edge for days. Maybe this was just the comedown from all of it.
She’d managed to drift off when the sharp jangle of her phone snapped her fully awake. Heart pounding, she fumbled for it.
“Yes?”
The voice on the other end was calm, practiced, and female. Maria recognized the tone instantly. This woman had made calls like this before.
Maria listened, but the words didn’t fit together. They didn’t make sense. She was supposed to pick her father up at nine tomorrow. He wasn’t gravely ill anymore.
“I’m so sorry, Miss Bandoni,” the voice said. “It was a sudden reversal. Although he received immediate care, there was nothing we could do.”
The phone slipped from Maria’s hand and landed soundlessly on the bed.
Six months earlier, a call just like this had taken her mother from her.
She sat frozen in the darkness as distant firecrackers sputtered and popped, ushering in the new year. Midnight had passed, but the fresh start she’d imagined had died minutes before it arrived.
There was nothing to be done until morning, but Maria dressed and returned to the medical center anyway, needing to be near him. In the dim hospital room, she studied his stillness, his face—so familiar, that unmistakable nose she’d inherited—so proud.
When pale sunlight finally leaked through the curtains, she rose and pulled them aside, staring out at a world that looked unchanged despite the catastrophe that was her life.
Then came the paperwork. The signatures. The quiet efficiency of death’s logistics.
When it was over, Maria stepped outside, hollowed and barely able to stand. She sank onto a nearby bench and bent forward, grief pouring out of her in silent sobs.
Image by Jerzy from Pixabay
She had been low before, but never like this. Today, there was no reason to get up. No reason to keep moving. Her parents—her anchors—were both gone. The man she loved had jilted her. Her job led nowhere.
The hospital doors slid open behind her. Footsteps crossed the stone entryway, and then there was the soft pressure of a hand on her back.
Whoever it was said nothing. They stayed only a short time and then walked away.
For a while, Maria remained as she was, but then slowly righted herself and lifted her face to the sky, bright with winter sun and darting clouds. The feeling of that stranger’s hand lingered warm on her back, the pressure of reassurance and simple human understanding still there.
You are a strong girl, Maria, her father’s voice said in her mind, as clear as if he stood beside her. That nose of your ancestors proves it. Go. Face the world. Start fresh. Make me proud as you always have.
Her first step was the hardest to take, but the second was stronger, surer, and the rest came easily.
She crossed the street on her way to a fresh start.
The End
So, about the genesis of this story: I heard someone talk about a day in her life when she was at her lowest, drained, and with no power to even take another step. While she was crying, her head down and cradled in her arms, a stranger stopped, pressed a hand at her back without saying a word, and then walked away. She never saw his or her face, but that simple touch of human understanding and connection gave that woman the strength to go on. That’s where this story came from.
I only had one person who left a request for Sudden Secrets in the comments, but I had ten others who emailed me. Thank you all for expressing interest. I closed my eyes and put my finger on…Andrea Stoeckel’s name. Congratulations, Andrea.
With pleasure, I am present at your writing, happy new year, may it always be the best.
Wishing you the best in 2026!