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Adamsville State Penitentiary
Death Row

With the man’s first step, the others on the Row began a slow tapping on their cell doors.

The tiny procession reached the end of the pod, and the rest of the way through security and all the way to the death chamber was lined on either side with corrections officers shoulder to shoulder, feet spread, hands clasped behind their backs, heads lowered. As the condemned reached them, each raised his head, snapped to attention, arms at his sides, feet together.

What a tribute, he thought. Who would ever have predicted this for one who had, for so much of his life, been such a bad, bad man?

October, seventeen years earlier
Touhy Trailer Park

Brady Wayne Darby clapped his little brother on the rear. “Petey, time to get up, bud. We got no water pressure, so . . .”

“Again?”

“There’s a trickle, so give yourself a sponge bath.”

“Ma already gone?”

“Yeah. Now come on. Don’t be late.”

At sixteen, Brady was twice Peter’s age and hated being the man of the house—or at least of the trailer. But if no one else was going to keep an eye on his little brother, he had to. It was bad enough Brady’s bus came twenty minutes before Peter’s and the kid had to be home alone. Brady poured the boy a bowl of cereal and called through the bathroom door, “No dressing like a hoodlum today, hear?”

“Why’s it all right for you and not for me?” “Whatever.”

“Straight home after school. I got practice, so I’ll see ya for dinner.”

“Ma gonna be here?”

“She doesn’t report to me. Just keep your distance till I get home.”

Brady rummaged for cigarettes, finally finding five usable butts in one of the ashtrays. He quickly smoked two down to their filters, tearing open the remaining three and dumping the tobacco in his shirt pocket. Desperately trying to quit so he could stay on the football team, Brady couldn’t be seen with the other smokers across the road from the school, so he had resorted to sniffing his pocket throughout the day. If he couldn’t cop a smoke from a friend after last class and find a secluded place to light up, he was so jittery at practice he could hardly stand still.

Brady grabbed his books and slung his black leather jacket over his shoulder as he left the trailer, finding the asphalt already steaming in the sun. Others from the trailer park waiting for the bus made him feel as if he were seeing his own reflection. Guys and girls dressed virtually the same, black from head to toe except for white shirts and blouses. Guys had their hair slicked back, sideburns grown retro, high-collared shirts tucked into skintight pants over pointy-toed shoes. Oversize wallets, most likely as empty as Brady’s, protruded from back pockets and were attached to belt loops by imitation silver or gold chains.

So they were decades behind the times, even for rebels. Brady—an obsessive movie watcher—was a James Dean fan and dressed how he wanted, and the rest copied him. One snob called them rebels without a clue.

Brady scowled and narrowed his eyes, nodding a greeting. The fat girl with the bad face, whom Brady had unceremoniously dumped more than a year ago after he had gotten to know her better than he should have in the backseat of a friend’s car, sneered as she cradled her gigantic purse to her chest. “Still trying to play jock?”

Brady looked away. “Leave it alone, Agatha.”

“More like a preppy,” one of the guys said, reaching to flick Brady’s schoolbooks.

“You definitely don’t want to start with me,” Brady said, glaring and calling him the foulest name he could think of. The kid quickly backed off.

Brady knew he looked strange carrying schoolbooks. But the coach kept track.

The trailer park was the last stop on the route, and the yellow barge soon drifted in, crammed with suburbia’s finest: jocks, preppies, and nerds—every last one younger than Brady. No other self-respecting kid with a driver’s license rode the bus.

In a life of endless days of open-fly humiliation, this boarding ritual was the most painful. Brady took it upon himself to lead the group. They could hide behind him and each other, avoiding the squints and stares and held noses as they slowly made their way down the aisle looking, usually in vain, for someone to slide over far enough to allow one cheek on the seat for the ride to school.

“Phew!”

“. . . brewery . . .”

“. . . smokehouse . . .”

“. . . B.O. . . .”

Brady neither looked nor waited. His daily goal was to find the most resolute rich kid and make him move. Today he stared down at the short-cropped blond hair of a boy who had been trying to hide a smile while pretending to study. Brady pressed his knee against him and growled, “Move in, frosh.”

“I’m a sophomore,” the kid huffed as he made room.

On the way home, Brady would ride the activities bus. There he would for sure be the only one of his type, but football earned him his place among the jocks, cheerleaders, thespians, and assorted club members. Wide-eyed at first, they seemed to have grudgingly accepted him, though they still clearly saw the trailer park as a novelty. One evening as he trudged from the bus, Brady had been sure everyone was watching. He turned quickly, only to be proven right, and felt face-slapped. At least the trailer park was the first stop at the end of the day. 11 a.m.

First Community Church
Vidalia, Georgia

Reverend Thomas Carey knew he would not be getting the job when the head of the pastoral search committee—a youngish man with thick, dark hair—dismissed the others and asked Grace Carey if she wouldn’t mind waiting for her husband in the car.

“Oh, not at all,” she said, but Thomas interrupted.

“Anything you say to me, you can say to her.”

The man put a hand on Thomas’s shoulder and spoke softly. “Of course, you’re free to share anything you wish with your spouse, Reverend, but why don’t you decide after you hear me out?”

Grace assured Thomas it was all right and retreated from the sanctuary.

“You tell her everything?” the man said.

“Of course. She’s my—”

“She knows we saw you at your request, not ours, and that we didn’t feel you warranted a visit to hear you preach?”

Thomas Carey pressed his lips together. Then, “I appreciate your meeting with us today.”

The committee chairman pointed to a pew and leaned against another as Thomas sat. “I need to do you a favor and be frank with you, Reverend. I can tell you right now this is not going to go your way. In fact, we’re not going to bother with a vote.”

“That doesn’t sound fair.”

“Please,” Dark Hair said. “I know these people, and if I may be blunt, you rank last on the list of six we’ve already interviewed.”

“Shouldn’t you poll the others on their—?”

“I’m sorry, but you have a three-year Bible college diploma, no real degree, no seminary training. You’re, what, in your midforties?”

“I’m forty-six, yes.”

“Sir, I’ve got to tell you, I’m not surprised that your résumé consists of eight churches in twenty-two years—the largest fewer than 150 members. Have you ever asked yourself why?”

“Why what?”

“Why you’ve never been successful, never advanced, never landed a church like ours . . .”

“Surely you don’t equate success with numbers.”

“Reverend Carey, I’m just trying to help. You and your sweet wife come in here, I assume trying to put your best foot forward, yet you look and dress ten years older than you are, and your hair is styled like a 1940s matinee idol.”

Dark Hair extended his hand. “I want to sincerely thank you for your time today. Please pass along my best wishes to your wife. And be assured I meant no disrespect. If it’s of any help, I’m aware of several small churches looking for pastors.”

Thomas stood slowly and buttoned his sport jacket. “I appreciate your frankness; I really do. Any idea how I might qualify for a bigger work? I don’t want to leave the ministry, but our only child is in her second year of law school at Emory, and—”

“When there are many Christian colleges that would give a minister huge discounts?”

“I’m afraid she would be neither interested in nor qualified for a Christian school just now.”

“I see. Well, I’m sorry. But the fact is, you are what you are. None of your references called you a gifted preacher, despite assuring us you’re a wonderful man of God. If you cannot abide your current station, perhaps the secular marketplace is an option.”

5 p.m.
Head Football Coach’s Office
Forest View High School

Brady hadn’t even thoroughly dried after his shower. Now he sat in Coach Roberts’s cramped space with his stuff on his lap, waiting for the beefy man. Every player was listed on a poster on the wall, his place on the depth chart and his grade in every class there for all to see. Brady knew what was coming. He should have just skulked out to the bus and, by ignoring the coach’s summons, announced his quitting before being cut.

But he knew the drill. Never give up. Never say die. Keep your head up. Look eager, willing.

Finally Roberts barreled in, dropping heavily into a squeaky chair. “I gotta ask you, Darby: what’re you doing here?”

“You asked me to come see you—”

“I mean what’re you doing trying to play football? You’re a shop kid, ain’t ya? You didn’t come out as a frosh or a soph. I smell smoke all over you.”

“I quit, Coach! I know the rules.”

“We’re barely a month into the year, and you’re makin’ Ds in every class. You’re fourth-string quarterback, and entertaining as it is for everybody else to watch you racing all over the practice field on every play, we both know you’re never gonna see game time. Now, really, what’re you doing?”

“Just trying to learn, to make it.”

Brady couldn’t tell him he was looking for something, anything, to get him out of the trailer park and closer to the kids he had despised for so long. They seemed to have everything handed to them: clothes, cars, girls, college, futures. No, he wasn’t ready to dress differently; he took enough heat from his friends just for carrying books and playing football.

“Listen, your teachers, even the ones outside of industrial arts, tell me you’re not stupid. You’re a good reader, sometimes have something to say. But you don’t test well, rarely do your homework. What’s the deal?”
Brady shrugged. “It’s just my ma and my brother and me.”

“Hey, we’ve all got problems, Darby.”

Do we? Really? “Like I said, I quit smoking, and I’m trying to get my grades up.”

“Look, I want to see you succeed, but frankly you’re a distraction here. I rarely cut anybody willing to practice and ride the bench—”

“Which I am.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t working, and I don’t want to waste any more of your time.”

“Don’t worry about wasting my—”

“Or mine. Or my coaches’. If you’re determined to get involved in some extracurricular stuff, there’s all kinds of other—”

“Like what?”

Coach Roberts looked at his watch. “Well, what do you like to do?”

“Watch movies.”

“Don’t we all? But is it a passion for you?”

“You have no idea.”

“You want to be an actor someday? study theater?”

Brady hesitated. “Never thought of that, but yeah, that would be too good to be true.”

“Now see, with that attitude, you’ll never get anywhere. If you want to try that, try it! Talk to Nabertowitz, the theater guy. See if there’s a club or a play or something.”

“There’s rumors about him.”

“Do yourself a favor and keep your mouth shut about that. Those artsy people can be a little flamboyant, but the guy’s got a wife and kids, so don’t be jumping to conclusions, and you’ll stay out of trouble.”

Brady shrugged. “I’d be as new there as I was here.”

“Oh, I expect you’d be a sight among that crowd, though there’s all kinds of behind-the-scenes stuff I’ll bet you could do. But I need to tell you, football is not your thing.”

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The prison was in the middle of nowhere; at least that was how it seemed to me. Not many property owners must want a facility like that in their backyard, even one for women. So there were no crops of housing developments taking up farmland around here the way they seemed to everywhere else. Not that I thought much about farmland, even having grown up in the middle of it. The only green cornfields I’d seen since I’d left for college were from an airplane as I jetted from one end of the country to the other.

“Are you here for the Catherine Carlson release?”

I looked up in surprise as not one but a half dozen people seemed to have appeared from nowhere. I’d noticed a couple of vans and cars farther down the parking lot but hadn’t seen any people until now. My gaze had been taken up by the prison, a forlorn place if ever I saw one. Even the entire blue sky wasn’t enough to offset the building’s ugliness. Block construction, painted beige like old oatmeal. If the cinder walls didn’t give it away, the lack of windows made it clear it was an institution. The electric barbed wire fencing told what kind.

Two men in my path balanced cameras on their shoulders, and in front of them a pair of pretty blonde journalists shoved microphones in my face while another thrust forth a palm-sized recorder. One on the fringe held an innocuous notepad.

My first impulse was to run back to my car and speed away. But Dilly was waiting. I clamped my mouth shut, gripped the strap of my Betsey Johnson purse, and walked along the concrete strip leading to the doors of the prison. There was an invisible line at the gate that not a single reporter could penetrate. But I knew they’d wait.

At the front door, a woman greeted me through a glass window. Dilly was being “processed,” she told me, then said to have a seat. I turned, noticing the smell of inhospitable antiseptic for the first time. Hard wooden benches were the only place to sit. Evidently they thought the families of those in such a place needed to be punished too. I’d have brought a book if I’d known the wait was going to be so long; there wasn’t even a magazine handy to help me pass the time.

Only thoughts. Of how I would make up for my failures. I’d told Mac, my best friend—and somehow it seemed he’d become my only friend—that this was the first step in fixing things. Keeping a broken past in the past. Dilly’s . . . and mine.

I remembered the day our parents brought my sister home from the hospital just after she was born. The excitement was as welcome as the warmth of the sun shining through the bare trees that early March afternoon. Everyone smiled, and even though Mom was moving kind of slow up the stairs to our farmhouse, she smiled too. It was the kind of excitement you see when there’s a new and hopeful change, like at weddings.

I was five, and even at that age I knew my parents had waited a long time for my sister. I heard Mom say once that she’d envisioned a houseful of kids, but the Lord hadn’t seen fit to bless her with a productive womb. I think I wondered, even then, what my mother would have done with a bunch more kids when I seemed to be in the way of other things she did: lunches with friends she’d known all her life; making decorative quilts and pillows she sold at fairs; canning fruits, pickles, and jam; or endless work on the farm. In retrospect maybe it was a surprise they’d even had me and Dilly; she must have been so tired at the end of the day.

I wondered later if everybody was happier because things you wait for seem better once you finally get them. But in recent years I thought everybody in town might have been relieved there weren’t a whole slew of kids born into our family.

“Go take a seat, Hannah,” Dad had said to me after Mom told us I couldn’t hold the baby unless I was sitting down.

I skipped over to Aunt Elsie on the couch and hopped up next to her, holding out my arms as my mother made the careful transfer. It wasn’t like holding one of my dolls, even though the blanket was made of the same soft material my plastic babies enjoyed. Unlike my dolls, my sister was warm and squirmy. Dad told me not to hold her too tight, so I put her on my legs and pulled back the cover to get a good look at her.

Her eyes were closed, and she wore a pink cotton bonnet. Even then, the straight lines of her brows had been drawn, which later filled in so well. Her cheeks were splotched red and white and her arms and legs moved in four different directions. When she opened her mouth, I saw her flat gums, no hint of the teeth to come someday. I thought she was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen.

“She’s a dilly,” I whispered to Aunt Elsie, who’d taught me her favorite word for the things she liked. It came from a song called “Lavender Blue,” and while my parents spent so much time at the hospital in those last couple of days, that was what my aunt and I had been doing—going about farm chores singing of things being dilly.

The name on my sister’s birth certificate was Catherine Marie Williams, but neither Catherine nor Cathy nor even Marie ever stuck. She was Dilly from that day on.

Nearly thirty years later, here I was, ready to bring Dilly back home to our farmhouse.

Finally I heard something other than the distant sounds of an institution. Closer than the clatter of plates somewhere, something nearer than the echo of a call down a corridor. I heard the click of an automatic door lock, followed by the swish of air accompanying a passage opening.

Dilly. Instead of prison orange, she wore regular street clothes. Was it possible she was taller? Did people grow in their twenties? She was still short, having taken from the same gene pool I’d inherited, but I was barely an inch taller now. Spotting me right away, she dropped her black leather suitcase on the floor. For a moment the case looked vaguely familiar, but that thought was lost when I noted a shadow of someone standing next to Dilly. My eyes stayed on my sister. She flung herself at me before I had the chance to go to her.

“Thanks for coming,” she said, and her voice was so wobbly I knew she was fighting tears. I choked back my own.

“Thanks?” I repeated. Thanks? How could I not come?

“It’s a long way from California.”

I laughed. “Yeah, another galaxy.”

The woman beside Dilly stepped closer and I couldn’t ignore her any longer. She was tall and thin, dressed in jeans but with a more formal black jacket that somehow didn’t look misplaced over the denim.

I pulled myself away from Dilly and accepted the woman’s handshake.

“I’m Catherine’s social worker, Amanda Mason. We just finished our exit session and she’s all set to go.”

Dilly held up a folder. “Probation rules, contact names, phone numbers.”

“Formalities, Catherine,” Amanda said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

It was always something of a surprise to me that others outside of our hometown knew my sister by any name but Dilly. She certainly looked ready to go home, wearing a spring jacket I hadn’t seen before, carrying a suitcase I now recognized as one I’d left behind when I headed to college so long ago.

“I didn’t know you’d have luggage,” I said when she picked up the black leather case. I didn’t know what else to say.

“The women are allowed to purchase certain necessities during their stay. Clothes, mostly.”

I knew that, because Mom had told me I could send Dilly money—no cash, just cashier’s checks or money orders, no more than fifty dollars at a time—but somehow I never connected that money with actual purchases. It wasn’t like there could be a regular store inside a prison.

“Socks,” Dilly said with a grin. “My feet still get cold.”

When we were little, we shared a full-size bed, before our parents finally bought a set of twin beds. I still remember her icicle feet in winter. “You have a suitcase full of socks?”

“Just about. They never let me keep them all in one place till today. Guess I didn’t know I had so many.” Then she turned to the other woman and set the suitcase down again. “Thanks, Amanda. You—” Something caught in her throat, and she stopped herself. “You did so much for me.” She put both of her hands on the woman’s forearms, and the social worker didn’t even flinch.

Amanda shifted her arms to take Dilly’s hands in hers. “I haven’t done enough,” she said. “Not nearly enough.”

They hugged and I watched, wondering if the prison movies I’d stopped watching since Dilly’s arrest had given me the wrong impression. No hint of inmate animosity toward those in power here.

“Keep praying, though, will you? I won’t stop needing that.”

“You don’t even have to ask.”

Then Dilly slipped away and I had to turn and follow her or be left behind.

Prayer. That was what Dilly had asked for. All our life we’d been told to pray. On our knees, right after we got up, right before going to bed, and as often as possible in between. I might have had faith as a child, but by the time I was in high school, I began wondering what I was praying to. Some light in the sky that saw all the suffering in this world and didn’t lift a finger—a supposedly all-powerful finger—to do something about it?

I’d given up prayer years ago; spiritually, long before I left home for college. Physically, once I stepped foot outside my parents’ home. I eyed Dilly, trying to see if she’d been serious about the request or said it because that was what the other woman wanted to hear. But Dilly was looking ahead, walking out the door.

The reporters were still there when we stepped outside. I meant to warn Dilly, to make some sort of plan about getting to the car as fast as we could, telling her in advance which way to go.

But when Dilly came upon them, instead of hustling past, to my amazement she stopped. For a moment she looked to the ground, then to me, and I thought I saw a hint of uncertainty before she took an audible breath. “I just want to say one thing.” Her voice trembled slightly, and she paused long enough to look down at the sidewalk again, then at each one of the reporters.

“When I did what I did so long ago, I didn’t have any hope. When I stepped into this place, I didn’t have hope. But that’s all changed now because of the Lord Jesus.”

I stared, aware of the silence that followed as the reporters waited to see if she was finished. But that wasn’t why I couldn’t find words or even the gumption to pull her along to the car. What was she talking about? Between this obviously rehearsed statement and the request for prayer, it was as if she’d “done found Jesus,” as Grandpa used to say.

A barrage of questions shot from the reporters.

“Are you going to see your daughter?”

“Are you going to try to regain custody?”

“Has your husband forgiven you for what you did?”

Dilly didn’t answer a single question. Instead, she looked at me, then toward the parking lot. It took the briefest moment for me to realize she didn’t know where to go, which car was mine, so I led the way. I pressed the keyless remote to unlock her door before she reached it. She struggled a moment to get her bag into the rear seat, then settled herself just as I slid behind the wheel.

One of the reporters, the one I’d mistakenly believed harmless because the only technology he held was a pad of paper, had followed us to the car. He tapped on the window. I saw Dilly reach for the button, but quicker than her, I touched the window lock.

“I was only going to crack it,” she said.

“Do you really want to hear what he has to say?”

He was yelling now, his young, impassioned face nearly pressed to the glass. “Did it take prison to teach you you’re not the one to take matters into your own hands? that your daughter’s life is just as important as anyone else’s?”

Dilly and I exchanged glances. I put the car in reverse; there was something militant about the young man that made me want to get away from him, spare Dilly from anything else he had to say. I’d seen judgment in people’s eyes before and I was sure Dilly had too. This guy might be a reporter, but he wasn’t an unbiased one. If such a kind existed.

Dilly stared at him, the brows everyone noticed on her, so thick, so dramatic, now drawn. A moment ago she’d found the courage to speak about something most people kept to themselves: faith. Now she looked like the Dilly I’d known when we shared the same roof. Timid, malleable. Maybe hoping I would take her away as fast as I could.

I backed out of the spot even as a thousand questions came to my mind too. I wanted to resist asking, though, unlike the guy with the notepad. His emphasis had been all wrong. He’d asked about the effect of prison, unconcerned about what Dilly really believed these days.

I still felt awkward after being away from her so long. But even that wasn’t enough to keep me quiet. Once an older, wiser sibling, always so. I figured it gave me the right to be nosy.

“Did you mean what you said back there?” Since I was navigating out of the now-busy parking lot, I had to focus on driving, avoiding the need for eye contact.

“About Jesus?” She looked behind us at the reporters now packing up. “Wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t.”

“What did you mean?”

“Just what I said.”

I didn’t know how to rephrase the question to get an answer I could understand, so I found the silence I probably should have stayed with. Once we pulled away from the prison grounds, Dilly touched my forearm much as she had the social worker’s. I spared a quick glance, keeping both hands on the wheel.

“I’ve changed, Hannah. God changed me.”

I wasn’t yet sure I believed her. I wasn’t the only one who’d grown up in a house where rules were more important than people, work more important than any kind of play, keeping up an appearance of holiness more important than living a holy life. We’d both vowed never to set foot in a church once we moved out of our parents’ house, and I’d kept my end. I thought Dilly had too. I knew she’d stopped going to church after she got married. But lately . . . Did they even have church in prison?

“Since when has God done anything for either one of us, Dil?” I asked.

“I wanted to write you, tell you all about it—”

“Right.” Even I heard the cynicism. I’d received exactly three letters from her the entire six years she’d been in prison, despite the hundreds I’d written. Well, one hundred, anyway. That first year. After that I just sent money orders as I made my plans. True, I’d made those plans without input from her, but I’d made them to benefit both of us.

Her eyes, brown like two spots of oversteeped tea, shone with sudden, yet-to-be-shed tears. “You know me, Hannah. I’m a talker, not a writer. I tried a thousand times to write, but every time I did, my brain froze. I can’t explain it on paper. It’s something I wanted to tell you in person.”

“What about last Christmas? I visited you then.”

She let out something that sounded a little like a Ha! but not quite as cynical as me. “In front of Mom and Dad? Are you kidding? I couldn’t explain it with them there.” She sat back in her seat, and laughter squeezed out one tear, leaving her eyes dry. “Not that everybody wouldn’t have liked to see a good argument—from Mom and Dad about what grace and forgiveness really mean and from you about . . . about everything. The inmates would’ve laid bets for a winner, except if nobody drew blood they wouldn’t have been able to figure out who won.”

I didn’t know if she was being sarcastic or not, since our family didn’t argue. We hid all our resentment and anger, especially from each other. Even now I held my tongue. For a moment I felt like I was back home, preparing to listen to one of Dad’s endless sermons at the family altar he’d set up in the corner of the living room.

I sucked in a breath. “Okay, let’s have it, then.”

But Dilly didn’t reply. She shook her head, her whole body facing me instead of the dashboard. “I will tell you, Hannah. Everything. But not right now. Not yet. I need to know something first.”

I glanced at her again, prepared for the questions I knew she’d ask.

“Have you seen Sierra?”

I nodded. “Yesterday.”

“They let you? Nick’s mother let you—you know, in the same room? You talked to her? How is she?”

I shook my head. “I went to her school. They wouldn’t let me into her classroom, but they told me she was there. That she’s all right. Then I waited outside until the buses came, and . . .” I was tempted to lie, to tell her I’d seen Sierra close enough to prove what the school receptionist had said, that Dilly’s daughter was okay. “I saw all the kids get on their buses, and they looked happy.”

Whatever joy, whatever light I’d seen in Dilly’s eyes since the moment she mentioned her daughter’s name began to fade before I’d even finished talking.

“So she wouldn’t let you see her?”

There was no way I’d describe the phone conversation I’d had with Nick’s mother; I didn’t use that kind of language. Nick had never really taken charge of his own daughter’s care, but his mother had taken full responsibility for Sierra. One thing she’d stipulated: no visits from anyone in our family.

“I’ve got to see her,” Dilly said, so low I barely heard her.

I knew seeing her daughter was only the beginning. I knew what she really wanted, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted. Did I really want a fight to restore everything to the way it used to be or should have been? What if we won?

But I reminded myself that when determination was greater than fear, people could do just about anything, even take charge of someone like Sierra.

All I had to do now was make sure that determination stayed stronger than my fears. All I had to do was convince myself, and then Dilly, that I wouldn’t let my fears stand in the way.

Because if I knew Dilly—and I still did, even when she seemed different—my guess was that our future held three of us together. Somehow, in some way.

Me, Dilly, and her daughter, Sierra.

But not God.

AWAKENING

The alarm barely penetrated David’s sleep. He fumbled with the unfamiliar hotel clock, found the button, and pressed.

Ten minutes later, another alarm blared at him from across the room. Although he had set it himself, he threw back the covers and stamped toward the sound, slammed it quiet, then burrowed back into his pillow.

An hour later, morning sunlight through the sliding glass door played on his face. He opened one eye. Outside, aspen and birch leaves filtered the light. A swallow flitted by. He sat bolt upright and looked at the clock beside him.

Already 6:30! He only had one day here, and now he had wasted the best hour.

David had wanted to rise before dawn, to inhale these surroundings as the trees and lake became visible. He loved rising at dawn to see the sunrise and feel some control over his day, though he hadn’t done so in years. Now the sun was already bright in a blue sky.

He felt little control over his life these days. The communications company where he worked had downsized, firing half his colleagues. Maybe he’d be next.

To make matters worse, he felt betrayed by his boss, Frank, who had persuaded him to give up a very good job to take his current position. Now David realized Frank had known all along that his company was in trouble, that David’s strengths would enable him to function with fewer people. It was particularly galling that Frank had lured him not with money but with a mission he knew David believed in—providing hope to mentally ill children. David cared deeply for children and had been willing to swallow a reduced salary. He had accepted the deal but now would have to do the work of at least two people and as a result had come to detest Frank.

Twisting his body toward the window and putting his feet on the floor, he reached over to pick up a photo of his wife, Marcia. It was his favorite—she was looking out from under a beach umbrella with an impish grin. At least Marcia wouldn’t let him go.

David stood, ran his fingers through his reddish brown hair, pulled his jeans on, and buttoned them over his flat belly, the result of careful eating and no-nonsense workouts. He had always brought passion to whatever he did and drove himself to be self-disciplined and to make a difference in the world. He inserted the coffee bag into the cabin’s little Black & Decker coffeemaker and filled the carafe only halfway. Lately he wanted his coffee stronger and stronger. He felt like he had been an ice skater pumping full-bore through life and gaining speed but had suddenly hit a line of dirt and crashed.

Marcia had arranged this cabin for him. “Get away—at least for one day,” she had said. “Go up north this Sunday. Take all day in the woods. Decompress!”

Thank goodness for Marcia. He hated making her feel bad; he wanted to match her enthusiasm for life as he always had. But Frank’s treachery and David’s own career slump made his drive and dreams of significance seem a farce.

The two mugs of black coffee were just enough to wash down the big sweet roll he had bought the night before. Now he was wired, but he sat quietly, staring at the woods and lake. His parents had often brought him here as a child to explore this lake and the trails through the woods. Now he longed for that uncomplicated joy, for the solitude and wonder of sighting a hawk floating above or being startled by the warning snort of a deer. Once he had come upon a doe in a meadow with two speckled fawns, one nursing at her side. He had scarcely breathed as he watched until the fawn pulled away and all three walked slowly into the woods.

Finally David slid open the glass door and walked down to the lake. At water’s edge he watched five seagulls skimming the surface, rising, plunging, soaring in their spontaneous choreography. Two mallards dipped toward the lake and gracefully hit the water.

In that instant, magnificent music erupted into David’s world, resonating throughout his body, music of unknown instruments lifting and inspiring. At the same moment he saw the blue sky shattered by a kaleidoscope of colors and vivid images pulsing from horizon to horizon. On the lake, shimmering, cascading light illumined the waves, reflecting purples, magentas, and greens.

A sliver of something like joy rippled through him and then evaporated. Fragrances filled his nostrils, odors he found so delightful he involuntarily breathed deeply to capture more.

All this happened in a moment and was gone. The extraordinary phenomenon that was forever imprinted on his memory was over in a moment, leaving every sense of his mind and body jolted, tantalized, drawn into the strange, celebratory dynamics, as if his entire being was made for them.

A few years before, David had happened to look out his window during a storm just as a bolt of lightning had struck a nearby tree. It had sheared off half the trunk, and David had been stunned at both the blinding light and the force—like a giant sledgehammer of light that had slammed into his yard.

Now, standing at lake’s edge, he felt the same extreme of force, but far more than a sledgehammer of white light. It had captured the sky with colors and shapes and had reverberated like cannon fire. Yet like the lightning hitting the tree, the mysterious phenomenon was over in seconds. What had it been? Could it actually have lasted just moments, all that grandeur, all that force and image and fragrance already vanished?

He looked around. All was as it had been. No broken trees. No breaks in the lake’s perimeter. Just clear sunlight shimmering on the waves. He scanned the sky. Only a few white clouds in the expanse of blue. He sniffed the air. Nothing but the scent of pine. He looked behind him to the hotel. No one in sight.

He stood on the sand by the lapping water for long moments, letting all the elements of those extraordinary seconds flow through his consciousness.

As he slowly sat down on a bench, the shapes and sounds and emotions still resonated in his trembling body. He could make no sense of what he had just experienced. He felt like a man on a raft in rapids, plunging and spinning through waves, spray, rocks, and logs, not knowing what might befall him next. At the same time, nibbling at the deep pools of his angst was a wondrous elixir of the scents and sounds and images . . . and a tantalizing element of peace.

The mallards flew off. The gulls had settled across the lake, five white, bobbing specks on the waves. Yet the serenity around him did nothing to soothe his inner turmoil. What was happening to him? He looked down at the white pebbles of the manicured walk beside his feet. Everything was perfect, lovely, “decompressing”—yet within him, a maelstrom of weariness, confusion, and desires.

David trudged the pebbled walk to the resort office, his eyes probing every bush, brick, and branch. He picked up a fat pinecone and felt its perfect ridges in his hand. Everything was the same as when he’d awakened this morning, yet in some strange way, his world had changed.

In the office he asked the woman at the counter, “Did you hear that loud sound out at the lake? About half hour ago?”

Cocking her head and scrunching her angular features, the woman looked up from counting restaurant receipts. “Nope.” She looked back down, her fingers still working the receipts.

“It was a strange sound,” he said, “and a huge flash of colorful light. Someone must have heard or seen it.”

She shrugged.

He watched her moving fingers and squeezed the pinecone till he felt a little stab of pain. “I was hoping someone besides me had heard it.”

“Sonic boom!” The hearty voice from behind startled him, and he whirled around to face two older men lounging in captain’s chairs. They wore flannel shirts under battered fishing hats. “Happens up here, young fella,” one of them declared.

The man was sitting back in his chair, eyes on David as if to appraise this city boy. His authoritative tone rankled David.

Despite himself, David put a sarcastic edge on his response. “Not a sonic boom! I’ve heard sonic booms. And there were brilliant, strange lights.”

The man edged up in his chair as if savoring this new development. “Strange, eh?” He turned to his companion. “Hear anything or see anything strange, Ed?”

Ed, heavyset and sunk in his chair, smiled, shook his head, and said, “Naw, Pete. Not today.”

Both men looked at David with amusement. David squeezed the pinecone in his hand so hard he could feel it etching little ridges in his palm. Turning his head toward the woman, David saw she had set aside the receipts, her full attention on the little drama, mouth crinkling toward a smile.

Disdain. The old man’s face was eloquent in showing his contempt, with just a trace of triumphant grin. His expression reminded David of an action movie scene he remembered: the hero, with that same look of disdain, had silenced a bragging Nazi youth, staring him into humiliation.

This old guy with the same look was no movie hero. He was pudgy and looked a little like David’s boss. In fact, the man reminded David far too much of Frank, and he felt rage growing in his chest. He thought of all sorts of cutting responses, yet he sensed more verbal jousting would most likely result in his being humiliated even more.

David looked over at the woman at the desk. Her smile masked a hint of gloating satisfaction. She slightly raised her eyebrows as his eyes met hers and then, maddeningly, she winked at him.

Instead of responding, he turned abruptly and stepped outside. Halfway back to his cabin, he flung the pinecone in a high arc toward the lake.

Copyright © 2008 by Harold Myra. All Rights Reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Camy Tang is a FIRST Family Member! She also is a moderator for FIRST Wild Card Tours. She is a loud Asian chick who writes loud Asian chick-lit. She grew up in Hawaii, but now lives in San Jose, California, with her engineer husband and rambunctious poi-dog. In a previous life she was a biologist researcher, but these days she is surgically attached to her computer, writing full-time. In her spare time, she is a staff worker for her church youth group, and she leads one of the worship teams for Sunday service.

Sushi for One? (Sushi Series, Book One) was her first novel. Her second, Only Uni (Sushi Series, Book Two) was published in March of this year. The next book in the series, Single Sashimi (Sushi Series, Book Three) came out in September 2008!

Visit her at her website.

List Price: $12.99
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Zondervan (September 1, 2008)
Language: English



AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:

ISBN-13: 978-0310274001 ISBN-10: 0310274001

Single Sashimi
By
Camy Tang

Chapter one

Venus Chau opened the door to her aunt's house and almost fainted.

"What died?" She exhaled sharply, trying to get the foul air out of her body before it caused cancer or something.

Her cousin Jennifer Lim entered the foyer with the look of an oni goblin about to eat someone. "She's stinking up my kitchen."

"Who?" Venus hesitated on the threshold, breathing clean night air before she had to close the door.

"My mother, who else?"

The ire in Jenn's voice made Venus busy herself with kicking off her heels amongst the other shoes in the tile foyer. Hoo-boy, she'd never seen quiet Jenn this irate before. Then again, since Aunty Yuki had given her daughter the rule of the kitchen when she'd started cooking in high school, Jenn rarely had to make way for another cook.

"What is she cooking? Beef intestines?"

Jenn flung her arms out. "Who knows? Something Trish is supposed to eat."

"But we don't have to eat it, right? Right?"

"I'll never become pregnant if I have to eat stuff like that." Jenn whirled and stomped toward the kitchen.

Venus turned right into the living room where her very pregnant cousin Trish lounged on the sofa next to her boyfriend, Spenser. "Hey, guys." Her gaze paused on their twined hands. It continued to amaze her that Spenser would date a woman pregnant with another man's child. Maybe Venus shouldn't be so cynical about the men she met. Here was at least one good guy.

Trish's arms shot into the air like a Raiders' cheerleader, nearly clocking Spenser in the eye. "I'm officially on maternity leave!"

Venus paused to clap. "So how did you celebrate?"

"I babysat Matthew all day today." She smiled dreamily at Spenser at the mention of his son.

Venus frowned and landed her hands on her hips. "In your condition?"

Trish waved a hand. "He's not that bad. He stopped swallowing things weeks ago."

"I'm finally not wasting money on all those emergency room visits," Spenser said.

"Besides, I got a book about how to help toddlers expect a new baby." Trish bounced lightly on the sofa cushion in her excitement.

"And?" It seemed kind of weird to Venus, since Trish and Spenser weren't engaged or anything. Yet.

Trish chewed her lip. "I don't know if he totally understands, but at least it's a start."

A sense of strangeness washed over Venus as she watched the two of them, the looks they exchanged that weren't mushy or intimate, just . . . knowing. Like mind reading. It made her feel alienated from her cousin for the first time in her life, and she didn't really like it.

She immediately damped down the feeling. How could she begrudge Trish such a wonderful relationship? Venus was so selfish. She disgusted herself.

She looked around the living room. "Where is -- "

"Venus!" The childish voice rang down the short hallway. She stepped back into the foyer to see Spenser's son, Matthew, trotting down the carpet with hands reached out to her. He grabbed her at the knees, wrinkling her silk pants, but she didn't mind. His shining face looking up at her -- way up, since she was the tallest of the cousins -- made her feel like she was the only reason he lived and breathed. "Psycho Bunny?" he pleaded.

She pretended to think about it. His hands shook her pants legs to make her decide faster.

"Okay."

He darted into the living room and plopped in front of the television, grabbing at the game controllers. The kid had it down pat -- in less than a minute, the music for the Psycho Bunny video game rolled into the room.

Venus sank to the floor next to him.

"Jenn is totally freaking out." Trish's eyes had popped to the size of siu mai dumplings.

"What brought all this on?" Venus picked up the other controller.

"Well, Aunty Yuki had a doctor's appointment today -- "

"Is she doing okay?" She chose the Bunny Foo-Foo character for the game just starting.

"Clean bill of health. Cancer's gone, as far as they can tell."

"So that's why she's taken over Jenn's domain?"

Trish rubbed her back and winced. "She took one look at me and decided I needed something to help the baby along."

Jenn huffed into the living room. "She's going to make me ruin the roast chicken!"

Venus ignored her screeching tone. "Sit down. You're not going to make her hurry by hovering." She and Matthew both jumped over the snake pit and landed in the hollow tree.

Jenn flung herself into an overstuffed chair and dumped her feet on the battered oak coffee table.

Venus turned to glance at the foyer. No Nikes. "Where's Lex?"

"Late. Where else?" Jenn snapped.

"I thought Aiden was helping her be better about that."

"He's not a miracle worker." Spenser massaged Trish's back.

"I have to leave early." Venus stretched her silk-clad feet out, wriggling her toes. Her new stilettos looked great but man, they hurt her arches.

"Then you might not eat at all." Jenn crossed her arms over her chest.

Venus speared her with a glance like a stainless steel skewer. "Chill, okay Cujo?"

Jenn pouted and scrunched further down in the chair.

Venus ignored her and turned back to the game. Her inattention had let Matthew pick up the treasure chest. "I have to work on a project."

"For work?"

"No, for me." Only the Spiderweb, the achievement of her lifetime, a new tool that would propel her to the heights of video game development stardom. Which was why she'd kept it separate from her job-related things -- she didn't even use her company computer when she worked on it, only her personal laptop.

A new smell wafted into the room, this one rivaling the other in its stomach-roiling ability. Venus waved her hand in front of her face.

"Pffaugh! What is she cooking?"

Trish's face had turned the color of green tea. "You're lucky you don't have to eat it. Whatever it is, it ain't gonna stay down for long."

"Just say you still have morning sickness."

"In my ninth month?"

Venus shrugged.

The door slammed open. "Hey, guys -- blech."

Venus twisted around to see her cousin Lex doubled over, clenching her washboard stomach (Venus wished she could have one of those) and looking like she'd hurled up all the shoes littering the foyer floor.

Lex's boyfriend Aiden grabbed her waist to prevent her from nosediving into the tile. "Lex, it's not that bad."

"The gym locker room smells better." Lex used her toes to pull off her cross-trainers without bothering to untie them. "The men's locker room."

"It's not me," Jenn declared. "It's Mom, ruining all my best pots."

"What is she doing? Killing small animals on the stovetop?"

"Something for the baby." Trish tried to smile, but it looked more like a wince.

"As long as we don't have to eat it." Lex dropped her slouchy purse on the floor and walked into the living room.

Aunty Yuki appeared behind her in the doorway, bearing a steaming bowl. "Here, Trish. Drink this." The brilliant smile on her wide face eclipsed her tiny stature.

Venus smelled something pungent, like when she walked into a Chinese medicine shop with her dad. A bolus of air erupted from her mouth, and she coughed. "What is that?" She dropped the game controller.

"Pig's brain soup."

Trish's smile hardened to plastic. Lex grabbed her mouth. Spenser -- who was Chinese and therefore had been raised with the weird concoctions -- sighed. Aiden looked at them all like they were funny-farm rejects.

Venus closed her eyes, tightened her mouth, and concentrated on not gagging. Good thing her stomach was empty.

Aunty Yuki's mouth pursed. "What's wrong? My mother-in-law made me eat pig's brain soup when I was a couple weeks from delivering Jennifer."

"That's what you ruined my pots with?" Jennifer steamed hotter than the bowl of soup.

Her mom caught the yakuza-about-to-hack-your-finger-off expression on Jenn's face. Aunty Yuki paused, then backtracked to the kitchen. With the soup bowl, thankfully.

"Papa?" Matthew's voice sounded faint.

Venus turned.

"Don't feel good." He clutched his poochy tummy.

"Oh, no." Spenser grabbed his son and headed out of the living room.

Then the world exploded.

Just as they passed into the foyer, Matthew threw up onto the tiles.

Lex, with her weak stomach when it came to bodily fluids, took one look and turned pasty.

A burning smell and a few cries sounded from the kitchen.

Trish sat up straighter than a Buddha and clenched her rounded abdomen. "Oh!"

Spenser held his crying son as he urped up the rest of his afternoon snack. Lex clapped a hand to her mouth to prevent herself from following Matthew's example. Jenn started for the kitchen, but then Matthew's mess blocking the foyer stopped her. Trish groaned and curled in on herself, clutching her tummy.

Venus shot to her feet. She wasn't acting Game Lead at her company for nothing.

"You." She pointed to Jenn. "Get to the kitchen and send your mom in here for Trish." Jenn leaped over Matthew's puddle and darted away. "And bring paper towels for the mess!"

"You," she flung at Spenser. "Take Matthew to the bathroom."

He gestured to the brand new hallway carpet.

Oh no, Aunty Yuki would have a fit. But it couldn't be helped. "If he makes a mess on the carpet, we'll just clean it up later."

He didn't hesitate. He hustled down the hallway with Matthew in his arms.

Venus kicked the miniscule living room garbage basket closer to Lex. "Hang your head over that." Not that it would hold more than spittle, but it was better than letting Lex upchuck all over the plush cream carpet. Why did Lex, tomboy and jock, have to go weak every time something gross happened?

"You." Venus stabbed a manicured finger at Aiden. "Get your car, we're taking Trish to the hospital."

He didn't jump at her command. "After one contraction?"

Trish moaned, and Venus had a vision of the baby flying out of her in the next minute. She pointed to the door again. "Just go!"

Aiden shrugged and slipped out the front door, muttering to himself.

"You." She stood in front of Trish, who'd started Lamaze breathing through her pursed lips. "Uh . . ."

Trish peered up at her.

"Um . . . stop having contractions."

Trish rolled her eyes, but didn't speak through her pursed lips.

Venus ignored her and went to kneel over Matthew's rather watery puddle, which had spread with amoeba fingers reaching down the lines of grout. Lex's purse lay nearby, so she rooted in it for a tissue or something to start blotting up the mess.

Footsteps approaching. Before she could raise her head or shout a warning, Aunty Yuki hurried into the foyer. "What's wron -- !"

It was like a Three Stooges episode. Aunty Yuki barreled into Venus's bent figure. She had leaned over Matthew's mess to protect anyone from stepping in it, but it also made her an obstacle in the middle of the foyer.

"Ooomph!" The older woman's feet -- shod in cotton house slippers, luckily, and not shoes -- jammed into Venus's ribs. She couldn't see much except a pair of slippers leaving the floor at the same time, and then a body landing on the living room carpet on the other side of her. Ouch.

"Are you okay?" Venus twisted to kneel in front of her, but she seemed slow to rise.

"Venus, here're the paper towels -- "

Jenn's voice in the foyer made Venus whirl on the balls of her feet and fling her hands up. "Watch out!"

Jenn stopped just in time. Her toes were only inches away from Matthew's mess, her body leaning forward. Her arms whirled, still clutching the towels, like a cheerleader and her pom-poms.

"Jenn." Spenser's voice coming down the hallway toward the foyer. "Where are the -- "

"Stop!" Venus and Jenn shouted at the same time.

Spenser froze, his foot hovering above a finger of the puddle that had stretched toward the hallway. "Ah. Okay. Thanks." He lowered his foot on the clean tile to the side.

Aiden opened the front door. "The car's out front -- " The sight of them all left him speechless.

Trish had started to hyperventilate, her breath seething through her teeth. "Will somebody do something?!"

Aunty Yuki moaned from her crumpled position on the floor.

Smoke started pouring from the kitchen, along with the awful smell of burned . . . something that wasn't normal food.

Venus snatched the paper towels from Jenn. "Kitchen!" Jenn fled before she'd finished speaking. "What do you need?" Venus barked at Spenser.

"Extra towels."

"Guest bedroom closet, top shelf."

He headed back down the hall. Venus turned to Aiden and swept a hand toward Aunty Yuki on the living room floor. "Take care of her, will you?"

"What about me?" Trish moaned through a clenched jaw.

"Stop having contractions!" Venus swiped up the mess on the tile before something worse happened, like someone stepped in it and slid. That would just be the crowning cherry to her evening. Even when she wasn't at work, she was still working.

"Are you okay, Aunty?" She stood with the sodden paper towels.

Aiden had helped her to a seat next to Lex, who was ashen-faced and still leaning over the tiny trash can. Aside from a reddish spot on Aunty Yuki's elbow, she seemed fine.

Jenn entered the living room, her hair wild and a distinctive burned smell sizzling from her clothes. "My imported French saucepan is completely blackened!" But she had enough sense not to glare at her parent as she probably wanted to. Aunty Yuki suddenly found
the wall hangings fascinating.

Venus started to turn toward the kitchen to throw away the paper towels she still held. "Well, we have to take Trish to the hospital -- "

"Actually . . ." Trish's breathing had slowed. "I think it's just a false alarm."

Venus turned to look at her. "False alarm? Pregnant women have those?"

"It happened a couple days ago too."

"What?" Venus almost slammed her fist into her hip, but remembered the dirty paper towels just in time. Good thing too, because she had on a Chanel suit.

Trish gave a long, slow sigh. "Yup, they're gone. That was fast." She smiled cheerfully.

Venus wanted to scream. This was out of her realm. At work, she was used to grabbing a crisis at the throat and wrestling it to submission. This was somewhere Trish was heading without her, and the thought both frightened and unnerved her. She shrugged it off. "Well . . . Aunty -- "

"I'm fine, Venus." Aunty Yuki inspected her elbow. "Jennifer, get those Japanese Salonpas patches -- "

"Mom, they stink." Jenn's stress over her beautiful kitchen made her more belligerent than Venus had ever seen her before. Not that the camphor patches could smell any worse than the burned Chinese-old-wives'-pregnancy-food permeating the house.

At the sound of the word Salonpas, Lex pinched her lips together but didn't say anything.

Aunty Yuki gave Jenn a limpid look. "The Salonpas gets rid of the pain."

"I'll get it." Aiden headed down the hallway to get the adhesive patches.

"In the hall closet." Jenn's words slurred a bit through her tight jaw.

Distraction time. Venus tried to smile. "Aunty, if you're okay, then let's eat."

Jenn's eyes flared neon red. "Can't."

"Huh?"

"Somebody turned off the oven." Jenn frowned at her mother, who tactfully looked away. "Dinner won't be for another hour." She stalked back to the kitchen.

Even with the nasty smell, Venus's stomach protested its empty state. "It's already eight o'clock."

"Suck it up!" Jenn yelled from the kitchen.

It was going to be a long night.

***

Venus needed a Reese's peanut butter cup.

No, a Reese's was bad. Sugar, fat, preservatives, all kinds of chemicals she couldn't even pronounce.

Oooh, but it would taste so good . . .

No, she equated Reese's cups with her fat days. She was no longer fat. She didn't need a Reese's.

But she sure wanted one after such a hectic evening with her cousins.

She trudged up the steps to her condo. Home. Too small to invite people over, and that was the way she liked it. Her haven, where she could relax and let go, no one to see her when she was vulnerable --

Her front door was ajar.

Her limbs froze mid-step, but her heart rat-tat-tatted in her chest like a machine gun. Someone. Had. Broken. Into. Her. Home.

Her hand started to shake. She clenched it to her hip, crushing the silk of her pants. What to do? He might still be there. Pepper spray. In her purse. She searched in her bag and finally found the tiny bottle. Her hand trembled so much, she'd be more likely to spritz herself than the intruder.

Were those sounds coming from inside? She reached out a hand, but couldn't quite bring herself to push the door open further.

Stupid, call the police! She fumbled with the pepper spray so she could extract her cell phone. Dummy, don't pop yourself in the eye with that stuff! She switched the spray to her other hand while her thumb dialed 9 - 1 - 1. Her handbag's leather straps dug into her elbow.

Thump! That came from her living room! Footsteps. Get away from the door! She stumbled backwards, but remembering the stairs right behind her, she tried to stop herself from tumbling down. Her ankle tilted on her stilettos, and she fell sideways to lean against the wall. The footsteps approached her open door.

"9 - 1 - 1, what's your emergency?"

She raised her hand with the bottle of pepper spray. "Someone's -- "

The door swung open.

"Edgar!" The cell phone dropped with a clatter, but she kept a firm grip on the pepper spray, suddenly tempted to use it.

One of her junior programmers stood in her open doorway.

Copyright (c) 2008 by Camy Tang
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

Today's Wild Card author is:

Karen Kingsbury

John Baxter had dreaded this day with everything in him, but the knock at the door told him the time had come. It was the last Tuesday in January, Christmas far behind them and long past time to take this step. He’d made the decision more than a year ago, and now he needed to carry through with it.

“Coming . . .” He walked from the kitchen to the front door and opened it.

“John.” Verne Pick nodded. He was a friend from church whose kids were involved with CKT, and he had a reputation for being one of the best, most thorough Realtors in Bloomington. His expression told John that he knew this was going to be a rough day. “You ready?”

He steeled himself. “I am.” He opened the heavy wooden door and welcomed the man inside. “Let’s move to the kitchen table.” John had brewed a pot of coffee, and he poured cups for both of them.

They made small talk, and after a few minutes, Verne pulled a folder from his briefcase. “We have a standard questionnaire we need to deal with first.”

John blinked, and a memory came over him. When Elizabeth died, it had taken every bit of his strength to walk through the planning of her service. But he remembered this one detail: The young woman from the funeral home who helped him with the process had presented every question couched in concern, as if she wanted to apologize for each step of the ordeal. That’s exactly how Verne was now, his brow raised as he waited for a response.

John motioned to the two closest chairs. “Let’s get the questions out of the way.”

“Okay.” Verne opened the folder and took out the document on top. He drew a long breath. “I guess we better talk about the fire first. It’s bound to come up.”

“Right. Just a minute.” John went to the next room and found a folder on the desk. He brought it back and set it on the table in front of his friend. “The garage has been completely redone, and all the repair work was signed off. Everything’s in the folder.”

“Good.” Verne lifted his chin and sniffed a few times. “No smell of smoke?”

“Not at all.”

“The place is really something.” Verne’s smile was tentative. “Should have it sold by summer, I’m guessing.”

“Yes.” A bittersweet sense of pride welled in John’s chest. “It’s a great house. Held up well through the years even with the fire.”

Verne settled in over the paperwork. “I’ve got some of this filled out already. Let’s do the basics first.” He lifted his gaze, pen poised over the top sheet. “Number of bedrooms?”

John pictured them the way they’d looked twenty years ago. He and Elizabeth in the large room at one side of the house upstairs. Brooke and Kari across from each other at the south end of the hall, Luke in the next bedroom on the left, and Ashley and Erin sharing a room at the north end. He pushed away the memory. “Five.” He took a quick sip of coffee. “Five bedrooms.”

The interview wore on, each question stirring another set of memories and reasons why he couldn’t believe he was selling the place. When they reached the end of the document, Verne bit his lower lip. “The tour comes next. I need to measure each room, get an official square footage.”

“The tour?” John looked toward the stove, and he could almost see Elizabeth standing near the kettle. “John’ll give you the tour,” she would say when company came over. “He’s so proud of the place—I like to let him do it.”

“Sure.” John gave his friend a smile. “Let’s start in the living room.”

They worked their way from one part of the house to the next, and as they went, Verne pulled out his measuring tape and captured the length of the walls.

John remained quiet. He wasn’t seeing his friend taking matter-of-fact measurements of the house he so loved. He was seeing Elizabeth, rocking their babies, Ashley learning to walk, Brooke bringing in a bird with a broken wing, and Kari screaming because she thought it might attack her. He could hear the piano, filling the house with hour after hour of not-quite-perfect songs during the years when the kids took lessons, and he could see the grandkids gathered around their tree each Christmas.

Whatever the square footage of the house, it couldn’t possibly measure what these walls had seen or the memories housed here.

They finished the final room, and Verne closed the folder. “Well, that’s about it. Just one more thing and I can get back to the office and list it.” He walked toward the front of the house. “I’ll get what I need from the car.”

John followed him into the entryway, and when he was alone, he slumped against the doorframe. For a heartbeat, he felt like he was no longer attached to his body. What was he doing, selling the house? Certainly one of his kids should’ve wanted it, right? He had six of them in the area, after all. But John had already asked each of them. Brooke and Peter liked the house they lived in because it was easy for Hayley and comfortable. “We have our own memories here,” Brooke had told him. “The Baxter place would be much too big for us.”

Kari had felt the same way about having her own memories. Ryan had designed the log house they lived in, and it had a sort of rugged lodge feel both Kari and Ryan loved.

Ashley had been a possibility at first. She had told him a number of times that she would love to raise the boys here, where she’d grown up. But she wasn’t painting enough to bring in regular money, and the mortgage on the house would be far beyond what Landon could afford, especially with their growing boys.

Once John had even considered calling Dayne, because it would’ve been nothing for him to loan Ashley and Landon the money—maybe at a lower rate or for a longer period of time.

But Ashley had begged him not to. “I don’t want Dayne to think of us like that, using him for his money.”

John could’ve argued with her, but there was no point, really. Ashley was right; the situation would have been awkward.

As for his other kids, Luke and Reagan needed to be close to Indianapolis for Luke’s job, and things were still very shaky between them. They’d found a nearby church, and John was encouraging them to get counseling at a local center. There was no way they’d be interested in moving again.

Last there were Erin and Sam. At first, when Erin called to announce that they were moving back to Indiana, John thought he had his answer, a way to keep the house in the family. But Sam worked long days, and Erin was busy with the kids. Upkeep on a house with acreage was more than they were willing to take on even for the sake of nostalgia. So they were out.

John wandered into the front room and peered through the window at Verne out front. Way down at the end of his driveway, his friend had taken a large For Sale sign from the back of his car. John’s heart swelled with frustration and futility as he watched Verne position the sign not far from the road. The Baxter house . . . for sale. John gritted his teeth and looked away. This was where he’d wanted to live out the rest of his days, so maybe he was wrong. Maybe this was all a mistake. He looked out the window again and narrowed his eyes.

No, there was no mistake in what he was doing. Living in this house into his twilight years meant sharing it with Elizabeth, and since she wasn’t here, the house could go. It had to. He and Elaine Denning were moving ahead with their plans to marry, and they needed a new place to begin their life together and—

The echo of a mallet against a stake resonated deep within him. It was barely loud enough to hear, but John knew the sound. He took a few steps closer to the window as Verne hammered the sign into the ground.

Why, God? Isn’t there some way to save the place?

In response there was only the sound of another blow, another strike of the mallet.

John winced as Verne finished the job. Yes, his years in the Baxter house were over. The time had come to move on, and with God’s help that’s what John would do. He gripped the windowsill and breathed in deeply the familiar smell of his home. He would survive letting go of this place, because he had no other choice.

Even if it all but killed him to say good-bye.

***

Ashley Baxter Blake flung open the bathroom window, braced herself against the sink, and stared at the mirror. Her hands trembled and her heart raced as she glanced at the clock on the bathroom counter—9:31 a.m. Okay, here goes. . . . She marked the second hand and stared at the mirror again. The next minute was bound to drag, and Ashley couldn’t make it go faster by watching the clock.

How could she have lied to herself for so long? She leaned closer, studying her look. Her makeup didn’t cover the dark circles under her eyes. She was dizzy and weary, drained from another morning of dry heaves, and no amount of fresh air staved off the nausea.

Through Christmas she had given herself a dozen reasons why she might be late—busyness and excitement during the holidays, running after Cole and Devin almost constantly, and the heartache of missing baby Sarah. It could take a year after losing a baby before her body found its normal routine of cycles. That’s what her doctor had told her. A year. It hadn’t been nearly that.

But she’d had just one period in the last four months, and finally Ashley had done what she thought about doing weeks ago. She bought a test, and now in less than a minute she’d know the truth. Not that she needed the test at this point. She touched her fingers gently to her abdomen. It wasn’t exactly bulging, but it was slightly rounded and firm, the way she’d always felt when she was in her first few months of pregnancy.

The difference was that every other time she had been ecstatic about maybe being pregnant, ready to rush to the drugstore for a test the moment she suspected sh