Where Luck Meets Trust, Miracles Can Happen

Christy Haviland served eight months in prison, giving birth behind bars to the child of the man who put her there and might yet destroy her. Now she’s free again, but what does that mean? As smart as she is, a learning disability has kept her from learning to read. And that’s the least of her hurdles.

Georgia Ferguson, talented educator, receives a mysterious charm bracelet that may help her find the mother who abandoned her at birth. Does she want to follow the clues, and if she does, can reticent Georgia reach out for help along the way?

Both women are standing at a crossroads, a place where unlikely unions can be formed. A place where two very different women might bridge the gap between generations and education, and together make tough choices.

Somewhere between the townships called Luck and Trust, at a mountain cabin known as the Goddess House, two very different women may even, if they dare, find common ground and friendship.

Praise for the Novels of

“Complex characters, compelling emotions and the healing power of forgiveness—what could be better? I loved One Mountain Away!”

—New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods

on One Mountain Away

“Richards creates a heart-wrenching atmosphere that slowly builds to the final pages, and continues to echo after the book is finished.”

—Publishers Weekly on One Mountain Away

“Haunts me as few other books have.”

—New York Times bestselling author Sandra Dallas

on One Mountain Away

“This is truly a marvelous piece of work.”

—New York Times bestselling author Catherine Anderson

on One Mountain Away

“Richards stitches together the mystery of a family’s past

with the difficulties and moral dilemmas of the present

for a story as intriguing as the quilt itself.”

—Publishers Weekly on Lover’s Knot

“Richards’s ability to portray compelling characters who grapple with challenging family issues is laudable, and this well-crafted tale

should score well with fans of Luanne Rice.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on Fox River

Somewhere Between Luck and Trust
Emilie Richards

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Dear Reader,

Setting a series in places that really exist is interesting for a novelist. How accurate must I be? If I create a restaurant that doesn’t exist or, in this case, a town, will my readers go in search only to find they’ve been misled?

Obviously no author wants to brand an entire town as a scene of long-standing corruption, as I did here. So don’t grab your map to find Berle, North Carolina, for a visit, because it won’t be there, nor will any of its landmarks. However, I can recommend the lovely town of Burnsville in the very real Yancey County.

Blue Mountain Pizza in Weaverville really exists, and I had a wonderful dinner there myself. Limones, which is only mentioned, is also real, and I can guarantee that Georgia and Lucas, along with Samantha and Edna, had a fabulous meal the night they went.

Most important, the townships of Luck and Trust really exist, right where the book sets them. And The Trust General Store and Café is not only a fun place to stop, but filled with good folks who were more than happy to answer all my questions. I think Cristy would be in good hands there.

Literacy is an ongoing, staggering problem in our society. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 30 million Americans over the age of sixteen can’t perform simple, everyday literacy activities. The United Way estimates that the cost of illiteracy to businesses and taxpayers is $20 billion a year. Imagine the joy of helping one person like Cristy overcome her reading problem so that new doors open to her! Almost every community is looking for volunteers. What a wonderful way to spend our free time.

Have questions or comments? Please visit me at www.emilierichards.com or at my Facebook author page at www.facebook.com/authoremilierichards. And watch for another Goddesses Anonymous novel next summer.

Good reading,

Emilie

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter One

SOME DAYS WHEN the morning light stole softly through the window behind Cristy Haviland’s bed she believed, just for the moments before she came completely awake, that she was still a girl in the Berle Memorial Church parsonage. Sunlight filtered through pink organdy curtains had always given her childhood bedroom a rosy glow, and so many mornings she had lain quietly and watched the color warm and brighten the room until her mother came to wake her.

There was nothing rosy about the room where she awakened now. The concrete-block walls were a dingy beige, and the windows had no curtains. Nothing about her life was rosy now, but for that matter, her childhood hadn’t been rosy, either. How many times had she wished she could tear down those ruffled curtains, throw open the window and drop to the ground below to begin a new life anywhere else?

Now she knew that, sometimes, wishes came true.

Although some occupants of the room were beginning to stir, the woman on the bunk above Cristy’s was still sleeping. From the shaking of the bed and the groans, Cristy knew her bunkmate was having a nightmare. Nightmares were as ordinary here as the sobs that punctuated the darkness and the angry words that punctuated the daylight. It wasn’t possible to jam thirty-six women together and force them to share narrow bunks and lockers, not without outbursts. Add day after monotonous day, when heat, hunger and exhaustion drained away whatever humanity had been left them, then put it all together and that was life in the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women.

Fully awake now and all senses in gear, Cristy sat up quickly. Another woman was approaching her bed, sliding her feet along the floor like a skater. When the woman’s face came into view, Cristy went limp with relief. She made room beside her, and Dara Lee, who slept against the far wall, heaved her considerable bulk onto the mattress.

“You remember you be leaving today?” Dara Lee asked.

Cristy gave one shake of her head. “Not when I first woke up. I kinda feel like I’ve lived here all my life.”

Dara Lee had a rich, throaty laugh. She was dark-skinned, dark-haired and plump-cheeked, a cheerful face marred only by a jagged scar that went from the corner of her left eye to the corner of her mouth. Even early in the morning she smelled like prison-issue soap and the precious jasmine-scented oil she used to condition her hair.

“You just passing through, girl. You been here, what, six months?”

“Eight,” Cristy said.

“You’da been here less, you acted a lot sorrier. You my kind of girlfriend.”

Cristy had to smile at that. Had the word “girlfriend” been uttered by some of the women in this dorm, it might have struck fear in her heart. But Dara Lee had befriended her in her first months in prison for what seemed like no good reason at all. Cristy had her theories, though. Maybe after taking one look at the new, fresh-faced white girl, Dara Lee had known that Cristy needed a few lessons in survival. Or maybe Dara Lee just missed her own daughter, who was twenty-two, like Cristy, and hadn’t been to visit for years.

“You gonna miss it here?” Dara Lee asked.

“I’ll miss you for sure.”

“You say that, but you’ll forget all about me before long. I seen it happen over and over. If you remember your friends, then you got to remember this place. And maybe it’s not so bad, but maybe it’s not so good, either. It’s for sure not a place you want to think about when you’re outside.”

“How much longer do you think you’ll be here?”

“Long enough to get gray and lose all my teeth.”

That, like so many things here, seemed profoundly unfair. During an episode of particular brutality at the hands of an abusive boyfriend, Dara Lee had shot and killed the man who had fathered her two children. The abuse had been chronic. Ten years later she still wasn’t sorry for anything—except not getting away before the police had arrived.

“You’ll be out before then,” Cristy said. “Just don’t get into fights. Don’t hang out with the wrong people. Do your job, and say please and thank you to the officers.”

Dara Lee hoisted herself off the bed. “You write me, you get a chance.”

Cristy watched Dara Lee glide away. As hard as it was to believe, Dara Lee, who was the only friend Cristy had made in prison, had never caught on to the obvious. Cristy wouldn’t be writing her. Cristy didn’t write anybody. That was just part of who Cristy was.

* * *

The first thing Georgia Ferguson did when she arrived at the Buncombe County Alternative School campus was to back her car into her parking space. Rank came with privileges, and as principal, her space was close enough to the front door that she could easily haul in the never-ending boxes of books and other supplies that were destined for shelves and file cabinets.

Six months into the school year she was still finding things to bring in. Today she had boxed up information about similar schools all over the country. She had done the research at home. BCAS was a new addition to the Asheville school system, but there was no point in reinvention. She wasn’t above using other people’s ideas. She even hoped one day somebody might use hers.

BCAS, pronounced “because” by everyone connected to the school, was a low-slung redbrick building that sat on a three-acre campus off the Leicester Highway west of Asheville. The facility wasn’t new; in fact it was considerably older than Georgia’s forty-eight years. Before a long, sad vacation, the school had housed elementary, then middle school, students. Then last year, when it seemed doomed for demolition, the school board had voted to turn the building into an alternative school for middle and high school students. Renovations had brought it up to code, but little else. Money was tight, and a new school was a brave venture.

At the front door she set down the box to find and insert her master key in the lock, but their youngest custodian, Tony, who was doing a dance step down the hallway, saw her through the window and came to help. He was wraith-thin, with blond dreadlocks and a red soul patch that looked like a strawberry sprouting from his chin.

Once she was inside, Tony lifted the box out of her arms and followed her as she headed halfway down the corridor to her office. “You’re here early, Mrs. F.”

“So are you.” That was the real surprise. Tony was rarely where Georgia thought he ought to be. Tony had framed their first months together as a test of her leadership abilities. The next phase had been an attempt to “educate” her about the real meaning of his job description. Most recently he seemed bent on ingratiating himself.

Tony had finally realized that not only was his new boss not a pushover, she was also perfectly capable of having him fired if necessary.

“I unlocked it already.” Tony stopped outside the school office, and Georgia pushed open the door.

The first thing that greeted visitors was a banner strung over the reception counter printed with the school’s motto. Because You Can. Because You Will. The second greeting was the smell—part mildew, part decay. The offices weren’t yet ready to give up old habits.

She preceded Tony and wound her way behind the counter toward the far wall.

“I wanted to get the kitchen floor mopped before the lunch ladies get here and mess it all up again,” he said, glancing at her to calculate her reaction.

Tony sucking up was an improvement over earlier behavior, but at least partly dishonest. The cafeteria staff were as tidy as surgical nurses, and Georgia suspected that sometime in the past twenty-four hours they had cornered the young man and insisted he do a thorough mopping or his head would roll. They were the only staff members in the school that Georgia was afraid of, too.

“You’re in charge of cleaning my office, aren’t you?” she asked.

“I’m the lucky guy.”

Of the four full-time custodians, she’d picked the winner. “A good vacuuming after school this afternoon, please. And I don’t think my trash has been emptied this week.”

“I been meaning to get to that.” He shook his head and blond dreadlocks flopped in emphasis. “It’s on my list.”

“High on your list, because it’s going to happen today, while I’m at the faculty meeting.”

“It sure is.”

Georgia unlocked her office door, gesturing for him to go first.

“Where’d you want me to put this?”

Because it had been one of those weeks, Georgia’s desk was piled high. She yearned to have an hour without anything more pressing, so she could file and toss papers. With luck she would have an hour like that sometime in the late twenty-first century.

Georgia pointed to an empty space, one of the few. “Stick it on the bookshelf over there, thanks.”

He obliged her. “Unless you need something else, I’d better go finish the floor.”

“You’d better,” she agreed. “The lunch ladies get here early.”

He boogied out the doorway, and the sound of his whistling grew fainter until eventually she couldn’t hear it at all.

Georgia unsealed the cardboard flaps and began to remove files. She liked the silence of an empty school building. Sometimes she even thought she heard laughter from former students echoing through the hallways.

And sometimes...

She stopped and listened. Something besides laughter seemed to be rattling along this particular hallway. She wondered if Tony was dragging the wheeled mop bucket from the storage room to the lunchroom. But the sound was louder, and seemed to pass quickly, growing quieter, then louder again a few moments later.

She tried to remember whether Tony had locked the front door behind them and couldn’t.

Her cell phone rang, and once she’d rummaged through her purse a glance told her the call was from her daughter.

She put the phone to her ear. “Hey, Sam.”

“Mom, just checking to make sure we’re still on the same page today?”

The rattling in the corridor began again. She forced herself to concentrate.

“Taylor’s going to drop off Edna this afternoon, and hopefully my faculty meeting will be over when she gets here. If not, Marianne will let her wait in my office, and she can do her homework.” Marianne was the office manager, who always stayed late. Edna was Georgia’s twelve-year-old granddaughter.

“Great, we’re all set then.”

“Are you already on your way to Raleigh?”

“About an hour out of Asheville. The roads are clear.”

Georgia knew it was too late to change her daughter’s plans, but she had to ask. “I know we’ve all been over this together, but you still feel settling this young woman at the Goddess House is the best idea?”

“We don’t have any guarantees, but I think it’s the right thing to do. She doesn’t have anyone, Mom. And she needs to be near Michael.”

“Michael?”

“That’s what she named the baby.”

“She’s still not planning to bring him with her, then?”

“For now he’s settled with her cousin in Mars Hill, but she’ll be close enough to visit. She has a car. It’s already parked at the Goddess House. Taylor and I drove to Yancey County and got it, along with her clothes and everything else that had been stored for her. There wasn’t a lot. I don’t know if I’ve ever met anybody who has so little to show for her life. She’s so alone.”

Georgia knew exactly how that felt, although for three decades now, she hadn’t been alone herself. She had Samantha and Edna, and in the past year, she had developed strong friendships with a small group of women who had banded together to see what kind of difference they could make in the world. The difference was extraordinary, but nobody who had faced the world without support ever forgot how frightening a place it could be.

She was nodding, which she realized didn’t help. “Then get her settled, and Edna and I will drive up after school. We’ll bring groceries.”

“I like her,” Samantha said, just before she hung up. “Cristy’s hard to get to know, and she shares as little as she can get away with. But there’s something about her.”

Georgia dropped her cell phone back in her purse just as the noise in the hallway began again. Shaking her head she made her way through the tidy outer office, lifted the pass-through at the end of the counter and headed out the door, just in time to see Dawson Nedley skateboarding toward the front entrance.

She stood in the middle of the hallway, arms folded, and when he turned and started back, he saw her.

For a moment it looked as if Dawson planned to simply scoot to one side and continue to the other end without so much as a hello, but at the last moment he jumped off the board and grabbed it before it could continue the trip without him. He jammed it, wheels still spinning, under an arm and cocked his head, as if to ask, Is there a problem?

“There are so many things wrong here,” she said.

He shrugged. Dawson, a junior, was dark-haired, dark-eyed and tan from hours working on his family’s farm. On the rare occasions when he smiled, he was a pleasure to look at, lean and strong and growing taller every day. She imagined he would easily top six foot this year and just keep going.

Most of the time, though, Dawson’s scowl was the most noticeable aspect of his face. Lots of teenagers were angry, for a variety of reasons, some of them as mundane as curfews or zits. Dawson took anger to a new level, or at least he seemed to. To look at him, anyone would think the boy’s fury was about to boil over into something destructive. Today no one who walked through school doors anywhere had forgotten the lessons of Columbine.

Georgia knew better than to be taken in by appearances. She believed, backed up by psychological testing and the careful monitoring of his teachers, that Dawson was only a threat to himself. Not that the boy was suicidal. There was no hint of that. He was simply determined to destroy any possible hope for a satisfying future.

Dawson’s IQ was in the genius range. He read voraciously and could, if it suited him, quote long passages from Sartre and Camus, as well as Bob Dylan and entire episodes of South Park. When he wasn’t harvesting hay or feeding chickens, he was teaching himself Latin or Chinese for fun. His parents were pleasant, churchgoing people who wanted the best for him, but so far nobody had been able to get through to him. Dawson sabotaged every effort. He refused to turn in papers or homework. He never completed projects. If a test seemed silly, he turned in a blank page. He was determined to ruin his life.

The skateboarding was an excellent example.

“How did you get in?” Georgia asked.

“The way I always do.” He paused, and when she didn’t respond, he elaborated. “Through the front door.”

“Our fault, then. But what are you doing here so early?”

“You know us farmer types. Up with the roosters.”

“There are no roosters in this hallway.”

“I figured if I got here early, my father couldn’t find anything else for me to do at home.”

That, she suspected, was the truth.

“So you came complete with skateboard?” she asked.

He shrugged again.

She held out her hand. “No skateboards at BCAS.”

“The rules here get dumber and dumber.”

“Don’t hang yourself on this one.”

“Who am I hurting, anyway?”

“Dawson, it’s clear to everybody at this school that you try to deflect your bad behavior by arguing. I won’t play that game, and neither will your teachers. Hand me the skateboard.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I’m going to store it for you until the end of next week, when you can petition me to get it back.”

“Are you fu—” He caught himself. “Are you kidding me?”

“Pay attention. I don’t kid.”

She watched him debate with himself. She imagined the colorful conversation inside his head. The boy was rapidly going through all the alternatives and consequences, and he wouldn’t miss a one.

Scowling, he held out the board.

“Here’s an alternate solution,” she said when the skateboard, scuffed and well used, was tucked under her arm. “Tony, the custodian, is mopping the kitchen. I’m sure the lunchroom could use a good mopping, too. Ask him to bring out another mop, and the two of you can finish the job together.”

“If I wanted to do stupid chores, I would have stayed home.”

“If you want to get your skateboard back a couple of days earlier, you’ll make the effort. Otherwise I’ll escort you outside now, where you can wait until the doors open officially.”

“It’s cold out there.” He was wearing a thin flannel shirt. If he had a jacket, he’d left it in the pickup he drove to school.

“Then I’d factor that into my decision,” she said.

“You don’t like me, do you?”

“What have you shown me that I could like?” She asked the question without rancor.

“Don’t they pay you for that?”

“They pay me to educate you.”

“I—”

She held up her hand. She’d let Dawson engage her when she shouldn’t have. The boy was a master, but she was back on track.

“We’re done here,” she said. “Make your decision.”

Muttering, he started toward the hallway that bisected this one and led to the kitchen. She considered following to be sure he arrived at his destination, but she decided when she saw Tony later in the day, she would ask him.

Hopefully when he was emptying her trash.

The clock overhead claimed it wasn’t yet 7:00 a.m. She’d had two confrontations, and the day ahead of her promised more. But her day wouldn’t be as difficult as Samantha’s, or for that matter, the young woman Cristy’s, who would be leaving the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women after eight months. She wondered what Cristy was thinking now. She wondered what Samantha had seen in Cristy that had convinced her that living at the Goddess House would be the right thing to help the girl heal.

She wondered if Cristy Haviland felt any remorse for walking out of a jewelry store in Yancey County with a diamond engagement ring concealed in her shopping bag. Had giving birth to a son in prison, a son quickly taken away from her, helped her see that the straight and narrow might be a better path through life?

Were the women who laughingly referred to themselves as the anonymous goddesses about to make their first real mistake?

She turned back toward her office. The day was going to be a long one, with a long weekend ahead. All she could do was put one foot in front of the other and hope for the best.

Chapter Two

SAMANTHA FERGUSON WAS sorry the prison hadn’t transferred Cristy to a facility closer to Asheville before her release. Even though she’d had to leave home early, she hadn’t minded the drive to and from Raleigh to pick the girl up. With the help of a travel mug of dark coffee and CDs of Beyoncé and Tim McGraw, she’d made good time.

Unfortunately, by now Cristy would already be exhausted and edgy, and a shorter trip to the Goddess House would have been preferable. Undoubtedly the world was going to seem like a very different place after the months of incarceration, and the young woman would be on emotional and mental overload. In the next weeks she would need rest, good food and good company if she asked for it.

Most of all she would need a chance to begin reassembling the tragic jigsaw puzzle of her life.

A friend on staff at NCCIW had briefed Samantha on today’s procedure. Early rising, breakfast and good luck wishes from the other prisoners in her quad, then transfer to the area where she would be strip-searched before she was allowed to shower and change into the clothing she had arrived in eight months before. She would complete paperwork, take the bag with her belongings and wait outside with one of the officers while Sam pulled around to pick her up.

Finally, after one last stop at the booth where the gate officer would remove the final barrier, Cristy would be free. Her sentence served. Her debt to the good people of North Carolina paid in full.

Her future a question mark.

Samantha had arrived fifteen minutes ago. She had popped the trunk of her car and allowed a hyperactive German shepherd a quick sniff inside, opened the rear doors to show there was nothing on the seat, then waited while a cursory search had been conducted in the front. Now a guard in an official blue uniform motioned for her to get back in to enter the grounds. She knew the routine better than most, because she had helped conduct classes here in the fall.

“She’ll be waiting,” he told her. “They say she’s all set.”

She thanked him and got in her car, pulling it up in front of the gate to be admitted. When the fence swung open, she drove through, ignoring the creeping sensation along her forearms and the way the hair at the back of her neck threatened to rise in protest. She was a law-abiding citizen, the mother of a twelve-year-old honor student, the respected director of a maternal-health clinic in Asheville. But she could never quite silence the voices that reminded her that she, too, could have ended up here. Thirteen years ago if a judge had sentenced her to prison instead of community service, or if she hadn’t heeded the stern lecture he had administered as she stood trembling at the front of the courtroom, she might know firsthand what Cristy Haviland was going through right now.

She could never quite shake the fear that once she was inside the gates, someone would discover a mistake had been made, and she would be required to do hard time after all. Starting immediately.

She pulled to a stop at the appropriate doorway and turned off the engine. When the door opened and Cristy and one of the corrections officers came out, Sam got out and went around to open the passenger door.

She smiled at Cristy, who was sheltering a white plastic bag against her chest. “Let’s ditch this place.”

Cristy, hollow-eyed and unsmiling, gave a brief nod. She turned to the officer and nodded again. “Thank you.”

“Good luck to you.” The woman, bulky enough to be taken seriously, snapped her hand in the air, as if in salute, and stepped back as Cristy got in.

Sam returned to the driver’s seat and started the engine, making a U-turn in the lot to start back toward the gate.

“You can put the bag on the backseat if you’d like.”

Cristy didn’t speak, but she continued to clutch the bag the way a starving woman might clutch a loaf of bread. Samantha waited for the guard to release the gate again. Once it had slid completely open, she touched the gas pedal, and they were outside at last.

She glanced at Cristy. Her wheat-blond hair was a mass of natural curls scrunched on top of her head. Her skin was deathly pale, and her blue eyes were brimming with tears.

Samantha accelerated until they were out on the road and driving away.

“I know it’s hard to believe,” she said, once she was safely in the flow of traffic, “but that part of your life is finished now. You served your time. There’s no mistake.”

Cristy wiped away tears with the tip of her index finger. “No mistake?”

“You’re free. They aren’t going to change their minds.”

“But there was a mistake,” the girl said softly. She turned to look out at the pine-forested scenery, as if to hide more tears.

Samantha wasn’t sure what she meant. “Was there?”

“I just spent eight months in prison for a crime I didn’t commit. And I can never, never get them back again.”

* * *

Cristy was glad when Samantha Ferguson pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot and glided to a space near the door. An hour had passed and they’d said very little to each other. Of course she didn’t blame Samantha for not knowing what to say. What choices had Cristy left her? I’m sorry you were unfairly imprisoned and we’re going to make sure the real thief is caught and punished. Or worse? Unless you admit your guilt and say you want to make amends, I’m not going to be willing to help you after all.

“I’m not an advocate of fast food,” Samantha said, “but if I’d been locked away from it for eight months, I’m pretty sure I’d be yearning for a burger and fries.” She glanced at Cristy and seemed to read the doubt in her eyes. “And hey, I can use the break. It’s my treat.”

Cristy tried to remember the last time she had really felt hungry. Four or five months ago, at the end of the pregnancy, perhaps, when even the prison food had tasted good, and the baby growing inside her had needed calories. But once she had delivered, nothing had appealed to her, and she had rapidly lost not only the baby weight but extra pounds, too, because now the clothes she’d worn to prison hung from her thin frame like a scarecrow’s.

Samantha got out and Cristy knew that she had to, as well. She carefully set the plastic bag at her feet and joined Samantha outside. She was surprised at the burst of noise, at the way cars screeching in and out of the lot throbbed against her eardrums, how, once inside the restaurant, she was blasted with air-conditioning, even though the temperature outside was only in the sixties.

The restaurant had an indoor playground, and as they passed it, she averted her eyes so she wouldn’t have to watch toddlers enjoying themselves as their parents looked on.

“What would you like?” Samantha moved toward the front counter where lines had formed.

Cristy stared up at the menu on the wall, as if deciding. But the words swam in front of her.

“I don’t know,” she said quickly. “I...I’m not really hungry. You go ahead.”

“Why don’t you find us a place to sit then?”

Cristy began to panic. She was used to being told exactly where to go. Here some of the empty tables were littered with paper or trays containing half-eaten food that hadn’t been cleared away. If she sat at one, would employees come to clear it, or would they think the mess was hers and ignore it? Should she take a seat by the window, or would that make somebody angry because those seats were the best? Was it okay to take a table next to one that was occupied, or to avoid the appearance of eavesdropping, should she try to move off to the side, where the tables were smaller, less desirable and mostly empty?

“Try to get us one in the sunshine if you can,” Samantha said, when Cristy didn’t move. “It’s cold in here. How about that one?” She pointed.

Cristy moved in that direction, hoping nobody would beat her to the table. Would Samantha be disappointed if she failed? She had already embarrassed the woman by tearfully proclaiming her innocence. By the end of their trip, would Samantha be so disenchanted she would ask Cristy to find another place to live?

Then where would she go?

She got to the table and gratefully fell into a chair. Around her everyone was going about their business. No one knew her. To them she was a shabby, weary-eyed young blonde. No one knew she had just completed a prison term, or that she was the mother of a son she’d never held.

No one could tell by looking at her that she had fallen so deeply into a well of secrets and lies that she would never find her way out of it.

She could see Samantha placing an order, then stepping to one side to wait. She watched for just a moment. Samantha was a beautiful woman, probably a mixture of races or ethnicities, although Cristy had certainly never asked the particulars. She had a mane of curly, dark hair that fell past her shoulders, more-cream-than-coffee skin, and a narrow, delicately featured face that made Cristy think of the illustration of Pharaoh’s daughter in the Old Testament picture book she’d loved as a child. Samantha was tall, slender and graceful in faded jeans and a dark purple sweater, with a smile that could disarm any enemy at ten paces.

To Cristy she looked like someone who had never known a moment of sorrow in all the twenty-five or thirty years she had lived on earth.

By the time Samantha approached their table and set a tray in the middle, Cristy had turned away from a view of cars zooming through the parking lot to see a wealth of food.

Samantha sounded apologetic. “I have a daughter who just turned twelve, and she’s always hungry. I’m afraid I ordered like she was here with us. You’ll help me eat it?”

Cristy had become an expert at recognizing subtext, one of the things she was taking away from her months behind bars. Samantha had guessed she was hungry, guessed she wanted to eat and guessed that Cristy hadn’t known how to make that happen.

“You’ve already done so much for me,” she said.

“And what good will any of that be if you waste away? How much weight did you lose after the baby?”

Cristy shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I bet you can do justice to some of this. I really, really hate to waste food.” Samantha began to unload the tray, pushing a red carton toward Cristy. “Big Mac, fries and a Coke. If you want a shake or a smoothie, I’ll get you one, but I thought that might be a bit much with a long car trip. And please, no matter what, when you meet Edna, don’t tell her what we had for lunch.”

Cristy opened the carton and stared. Her mouth began to water.

Samantha opened a similar one and unveiled what looked like a chicken sandwich. She held it out. “I’ll be happy to trade.”

“You’re so nice, and I don’t know why.”

Samantha didn’t look surprised. “And considering where you’ve been and what you’ve learned these past months, you know better than to take anything at face value. I get that. I’d feel the same way in your shoes. I’ll explain the whole thing someday, in detail, I promise. But for now, here’s the gist. I’m friends with a group of women, and we received a bequest when a mutual friend died. She left us a beautiful old log house right between the townships of Luck and Trust in Madison County, the one I told you about in our phone call. She asked us to use it any way we saw fit.”

“Any way?”

“Any way that matters. Specifically as a way to reach out to other women who can use the help. After we met in class, I asked about you, and I was told you needed a place to go when you were released, someplace close enough to Mars Hill that you could visit your son. I realized the Goddess House—that’s what we call it—would be a good place for you to land for a while.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah, essentially, it is.” Samantha began to eat.

“Why Goddess House? What kind of organization is it?”

Samantha chewed a while and sipped some of her drink before she answered. “It’s not. Not an organization, I mean. We’re just a group of friends.”

“But why goddess? It sounds like some kind of cult.”

“No, there’s just a beautiful story about a Buddhist goddess named Kuan Yin, who died, and on her way to heaven—or whatever Buddhists call heaven—she heard the cry of all the suffering people left on earth. So instead of going to heaven she turned and came back to be with them. She said she couldn’t leave until all their suffering had ended. The story says she’s still with those who need her, an anonymous goddess who helps whenever and whomever she can. Without fuss. Just helps. We’re not that good or selfless. We aren’t saints or goddesses, just women like a million others who find ways to stretch out a hand. But there are things we can do and we try to.”

“And I’m going to be your project.”

Samantha didn’t seem put off by her word choice or tone, which even to Cristy’s ears had sounded rude.

“No. I hope you’re going to be our friend.”

“Why did you ask about me? When you were teaching the class?”

“I honestly don’t know. Maybe because you just seemed more alone than the other women.”

The class had been required for pregnant inmates, dealing with prenatal care, changes in their bodies, what to expect during labor and delivery. Cristy knew that Samantha had volunteered to run it on the nights she was in Durham taking classes at the university to keep her nursing certification current. Cristy didn’t know why, though.

She unwrapped her sandwich and took a tentative bite before she spoke. This hamburger didn’t taste like anything she’d eaten in the past months. In fact, she didn’t want to swallow and lose that initial burst of flavor.

She did swallow finally, then reached for a French fry. “Why were you there in the first place? Were you getting credit for teaching our class, too?”

Samantha smiled a little. “No credit, except maybe with myself. I’ll tell you the story if you’re interested.”

Cristy nodded.

“I had a rough adolescence. I went to a fancy private academy in Asheville where my mom was the headmistress—you’ll meet her this evening—and I hated everything about being there. I was one of three minority students, and that was only one of the many ways I felt different. I reacted by rebelling big-time, notably by drinking. My poor mom tried everything to help, but I was beyond intervention and a great liar. One night I sneaked out and went to a party in the country with a guy I’d met on another night when I’d also sneaked out. You see a theme here, right?”

Cristy felt herself relaxing. She nodded again.

“It was some party. I drank. He drank. We both drank some more. On the way home he kept falling asleep at the wheel, so I made him pull over, then I got in the driver’s seat. I guess I was weaving back and forth and driving too fast, because a cop saw us and tried to pull me over. I remember thinking that was hysterical. So I thought it would be even more fun to see if he could catch me. We raced up and down mountain roads for maybe as far as ten miles. Then I ran off the road and into a drainage ditch and nearly killed the guy I was with. They say he had ninety stitches, on top of internal organ damage and three broken bones.”

Cristy didn’t know what to say. Something was required, though, maybe something that sounded as if she understood, which she did. “I hated high school, too. I quit the moment I could.”

“I know you did. It must have been a hard time for you.”

“What happened next?”

“Speeding to elude arrest is a Class H felony. Luckily for me, my passenger eventually recovered, or things would have been different. But the courts can, if they choose, discharge first offenders under the age of eighteen. I was seventeen when this happened, and even with my many problems, I’d never been arrested. So I was given a year’s probation, otherwise known as a wake-up call. I did community service, started going to AA meetings, finished high school somewhere else and kept out of trouble. Eventually all record of my offense was expunged.”

“You got off then. What does that have to do with teaching at the prison?”

“It wasn’t that simple. My mother lost her job over it, something I still can’t forgive myself for. But I got off, Cristy, because I was lucky. Pure and simple. Not because this was a little infraction, or because I’d been a model citizen. I screwed up big-time, and somehow I was given a chance to have a normal life anyway. It’s been a good life, too, but you know what? I still feel like I owe the universe. I figure teaching at the prison is a way to show I’m thankful for not being a resident there. And a way to give back to everybody who wasn’t as lucky as I was.”

“Like me.”

“Like you.”

“I was twenty-two when I was arrested, and I had a prior conviction.” Cristy chewed on a French fry, then another before she added, “I deserved the first one.” She wanted Samantha to know that, to see she was willing to take responsibility when she should.

“Shoplifting?”

“I was still in high school, right before I dropped out. There was a group of girls I liked, girls like me who didn’t really fit in, and they had this unofficial club. They called themselves the Outsiders. To join I had to go into the hardware store down the street from school and shoplift something. Anything, it didn’t matter, except it had to be over a dollar. One of them waited outside to make sure I didn’t go up to the counter and pay first.”

When she didn’t go on, Sam asked, “So you went along with it?”

“I was a preacher’s kid. By then my parents thought I was beyond redemption, but I’d never done anything illegal, not anything like that. So I was scared but determined.”

“And you got caught?”

“I took the cheapest thing I could find on the aisle farthest from the counter. It was a little pocket tape measure. I figured I would go in later when nobody was watching and tell the clerk I’d walked out by mistake without paying for it, and give him the money. I thought that would make it okay. I stood there for ten minutes trying to make myself slip it in my pocket, and finally I did.”

Samantha waved a French fry. “Uh-oh.”

“Turns out the manager had been watching me. He had figured out what the Outsiders were up to, and he’d noticed the girl waiting outside. So they stopped me when I had one foot out the doorway and called the sheriff. I think they hoped nobody else would try to shoplift after that. As small as it was, it was still on my record when...” She didn’t go on.

“When you were arrested the next time.”

Cristy nodded. “It didn’t help.”

“I guess not.”

They fell silent. Cristy finished half her hamburger, but she realized that was the best she could do. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can eat the rest of this. Thank you for buying it for me.”

“You’re very welcome.” Samantha flashed her extraordinary smile, and for a moment Cristy felt warmed by it.

“I noticed a Target in the strip mall over there.” Samantha nodded toward the far door. “That’ll give us a chance to stretch our legs before we get back on the road. You’re going to need some new clothes until you gain back some of the weight you lost. Let’s do a little shopping.”

“I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it. You’re being so nice to me. And you have no reason to.”

“Reason?” Samantha considered. “Here’s my reason, Cristy. We’ve just determined that I was lucky and you weren’t. So let me make a little good luck for you now. It’s as simple as that. Don’t you deserve it?”

Cristy didn’t know. She honestly didn’t know what she deserved anymore. And because she didn’t, she just didn’t answer.

Chapter Three

EVERY DAY AT BCAS was “one of those days.” Georgia knew she was lucky to thrive on variety and problem solving. Even so, by the time the afternoon faculty meeting drew to an end, all the blood had been leeched from her body.

The faculty had come with the job, which Georgia had gotten after the committee’s first choice left the school board high and dry. Unfortunately that woman had also gifted the school with a handful of teachers who saw BCAS as a demotion, even a punishment for infractions they had committed in their lengthy careers.

Passive-aggressive behavior reigned. In classrooms that needed constant stimulation to engage students’ attention, these teachers inevitably showed videos, or assigned long passages to be read silently. They used lesson plans that probably hadn’t worked in former classrooms, and talked about not coddling students. In the future Georgia might be able to replace them, but this year, for better or worse, they were hers. Boring students to death was not a good enough reason to send a teacher packing.

Now, at meeting’s end, she stood to stop one of the worst teachers in the middle of a monologue that was putting the rest of the faculty to sleep. Jon Farrell, a man tantalizingly close to retirement, was moonfaced and pink-cheeked. What was left of his gray hair was trimmed in an old-fashioned flattop stiffened with wax. Jon’s educational theories were of the same vintage.

“Thank you, Jon,” she said. “But I’ve got to cut you off now.” She saw gratitude on the faces of teachers across from her. She insisted the faculty sit in a circle so they could see each other. It wasn’t a popular decision with some, but others appreciated the more democratic approach.

“I’m cutting you off,” she continued, “because I think it’s clear from things that have been said here today that our mission is still a mystery to some of you. I want you to consider carefully what I’m about to say.”

She got to her feet and began to walk around the circle, speaking slowly and deliberately, making eye contact with each willing person there.

“We’re here so students who have no chance in a regular classroom will prove they can excel in ours. We’re not here to teach down to them. We are here to teach up to them. Some of these students are extraordinary. They’re gifted and creative. If we can get through to them, in the not too distant future they’ll be the names we see on award-winning movies and books. Among them might well be the person who finally finds a cure for cancer.”

She stopped, because she was at the end of her round. The room was silent.

“Did anybody think to interrupt me just then?” she asked.

The teachers looked puzzled.

“Did you have time to pass a note or engage in conversation with your neighbor? Did you have time to check your cell phone or text a friend?”

No one answered.

“You didn’t, because I was in your face. I was right there watching you. Not standing over you, but engaging you, right? We locked eyes, at least most of us did. And because we did, you listened harder. You knew listening was important, because most likely whatever I said was going to come up again.”

Jon Farrell’s sneer was reflected in his voice. “You want us to walk in circles?”

“I want you to interact, Jon.”

“None of my kids are going to cure cancer, I can tell you that for sure. Most of them have failed at everything they’ve done. That’s why they’re here.”

“Maybe that’s true of some of our students, but it’s my job as principal to be absolutely certain it’s not true for any of our teachers.”

She glanced at her watch as she let that sink in, then she looked up, her gaze sweeping the room. “Nobody has to stay. If you’re unhappy, or you feel the energy and innovation required here are too much to handle, then we can talk privately. But those who continue? Evaluations are about to begin. I’ll be visiting classes in the next few weeks, along with our parents’ committee and the students elected to accompany them. The evaluation process should be a good one, a chance to receive helpful feedback and new suggestions. Just be prepared. Try your best ideas and see what happens. See you next week.”

She nodded in dismissal.

Jon was the first out of the room, and Georgia was glad to see he could still move quickly when the occasion called for it. One of her favorite teachers, Carrie Bywater, a young woman with almost no experience but loads of vitality, waited until the room emptied.

“May I walk you back to your office?”

“No problem,” Georgia said. “Something you need to talk about?”

“Someone. Dawson Nedley.”

“If we start right now we might finish before midnight.”

Carrie pushed light brown hair behind one ear. The hair was collar-length and straight, and she wore black-rimmed glasses that eclipsed the pale green of her eyes. Even Georgia, twenty-four years her senior, wore contacts and regularly had her rust-brown hair layered and shaped so it would fall naturally around her face. Carrie’s lack of interest in her appearance was a fashion statement of its own.

“He’s really a talented writer,” Carrie said. “When I can get him to turn in assignments, they’re always the best. But it’s like he’s trying to make some kind of point by not turning in most of them. I’ve done everything but beg. I’ve tried to discuss it with him. I’ve asked if he needs to talk to somebody else, like the guidance counselor. He just says he’s a simple farm boy and he doesn’t need to understand Shakespeare to toss hay bales on a truck.”

“Hay bales are a recurring theme with Dawson. He’s not a happy boy.”

“I don’t know what to do. I’m not going to let him get sucked under by something I don’t understand.”

Georgia wished all the BCAS teachers had Carrie’s attitude. She was afraid Jon hoped all his students would get sucked under in one horrific natural disaster.

Carrie was waiting for help, and Georgia made a stab at it. “Have you thought about offering him an independent study? Something he wants to do on his own?”

“Is that a good idea? He doesn’t do what he’s supposed to when he is being supervised. What would he do if he wasn’t?”

“I don’t know. If nothing else, it’s the complete opposite of what he expects. That might get him thinking.”

They had arrived at the office door. Carrie seemed to be considering Georgia’s idea. “We could set up weekly meetings to discuss his progress. I just wonder if there’s anything out there that would interest him enough to do the necessary work.”

“I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

Carrie was nodding. “I’m going to think about it.”

“You’re doing a good job. The enthusiasm shows.”

“I hope it makes up for the lack of experience. It’s too bad Jon and I can’t merge. His years and my energy. What a team.”

When Georgia entered the office, Marianne was sitting at her desk and got up to speak to her. She was sixtyish, with champagne-blond hair lacquered into a bubble, and a ready smile that gave the impression she liked her job. Marianne appreciated their small campus and limited student body.

“Edna’s been waiting about ten minutes. She said she was going to do her homework.”

Georgia had no doubt that Edna had been as good as her word. She tried not to see her granddaughter through a grandmother’s lens, but she wasn’t the only one who thought Edna was remarkable. The girl was intelligent, reliable, a natural leader. Samantha, who at Edna’s age had been surly and defiant, was doing a wonderful job of raising her only daughter, and it showed. But then the adult Samantha was a wonderful person.

Georgia alerted Marianne to a couple of items that had come out of the faculty meeting, then she headed to her own office to find her granddaughter.

Edna was sitting at Georgia’s desk, rocking back in her comfortable desk chair. She didn’t look up, too busy examining something in her hands.

Georgia stopped in the doorway. “What do you have there?”

Edna looked up and grinned. “A bracelet. It’s pretty. Is it yours?” She held it up.

“No.” Georgia thought back to her day. She’d had a handful of students in the office for one reason or another, including two girls. “Where did you find it?”

“On your desk.”

Georgia guessed one of the girls had probably lost it. Maybe the clasp had opened and it had slipped off her wrist. “Just leave it there, sweetheart. I bet the owner will come in on Monday to see if it’s here.”

“It’s got all kinds of little things on it. Animals and houses and other cool stuff.”

“They call that a charm bracelet. They were popular when I was a little girl, and I guess they still are. You buy a bracelet, then you buy or ask for charms that relate to things you do. It’s kind of a record of your life.”

Edna reluctantly set the bracelet on Georgia’s desk. “I’d like one.”

“If you’re still interested at Christmas, that might be a good thing for your Santa list.”

Edna grinned. Of course she hadn’t believed in Santa Claus since she was five, but she liked to play along.

Georgia had been at the school for too many hours, and she was ready to leave before anything else happened. “Did you do your homework?”

“I did most of it at school. I just had a little more, so I’m all finished.”

“Then let’s blow this joint.”

Edna collected her backpack and a fleece jacket she’d tossed on a chair. “Mom’s going to be at the Goddess House when we get there?”

“I have to stop by my house first, so probably. She said she’d make dinner for us.” For the first time Georgia noticed that her office had actually been cleaned. The rug looked freshly vacuumed, and her wastebasket had been emptied. Even the shelves and the uncluttered portions of her desk looked as if they had been dusted.

Apparently Tony had begun to take her seriously, which was a nice insight to take into the weekend.

“Can we stop on the way up the mountain and look at the view?” Edna asked.

Georgia put her arm around her granddaughter’s shoulders. The girl strongly resembled her mother. Same dark hair and olive skin, but green eyes instead of the golden-brown of Samantha’s, and a straight, sloping nose.

As she sometimes did, Georgia wished she knew where those green eyes had come from. Her own eyes were the color of her daughter’s. Samantha never talked about Edna’s father; his identity was the one secret she held close. But she had told Georgia that he had brown eyes, like her own.

Quite possibly the green was at least partly due to an ancestor in Georgia’s own family, but that was a secret, too, one Georgia would never have the answer to. She had no information about her parents, at least nothing she wanted to know. She’d come to terms with that years ago, but sometimes? Sometimes when she looked at Samantha and Edna, she yearned to be able to tell them exactly who they were.

Other than her beloved daughter and granddaughter.

“We’ll stop at the overlook,” she said, smoothing Edna’s wild hair back from her oval face. “Maybe we can get a good photograph or two before the sun starts to set.”

Edna gave her a quick hug, and Georgia forgot everything except how glad she was to be this child’s grandmother.

Chapter Four

WHEN SHE WAS growing up, Cristy’s father would often make her sit in a corner of the parsonage basement as punishment. While he paced back and forth in front of her, shaking his head, she would unsuccessfully squirm to find a comfortable spot on the unforgiving wooden chair. Then, just as she was certain her father had forgotten she was there, he would ask why she had done something—or sometimes, why she hadn’t. He would listen to her halting explanations, and finally hand her a sheet of paper and tell her to list everything she had done wrong, and what she had learned from the consequences.

The child Cristy had tried to cooperate, but in later years the teenager had refused. The Reverend Roger Haviland had never touched his daughter in anger, but when Cristy couldn’t or wouldn’t do what he wanted, he’d always left her there to consider her sins until bedtime. Had he ever asked what she’d learned from this “ritual,” she would have told him that after thinking about it, she had concluded that all sins were best committed after dinner.

But he had never asked.

Today, as she got out of Samantha’s car and gazed up at the old log house that was home until fate tossed her elsewhere, her father’s question sprang into her mind. Not why she had done what she had, since that was irrelevant, but what she had learned.

Standing under the shade of a massive oak tree at the bottom of a rock-crusted hillside, she realized she had carried away two things from her eight months in prison. One, that trusting anybody, no matter how nice they seemed, was foolish. And two, that there was no point in fighting for justice, because the world wasn’t a just or fair place. You were either lucky or you weren’t.

Samantha walked around the car, stretching her arms over her head. “Long trip. How are you doing?”

Cristy’s stomach was tied in a million knots. She was sorry she had eaten lunch, because even now, hours later, she wasn’t sure the hamburger was going to stay down. After lunch and shopping she had napped most of the way here, but the sleep hadn’t relaxed her.

She felt Samantha watching and met her eyes.

“I say we take a walk,” Samantha said. “Just a short one. Once everybody gets here you’ll be bombarded. My mom. Edna. Fresh air might be a good transition.”

Overhead a bird was chirping in rhythm, as if practicing feathered Morse code, but otherwise the clearing was silent. No noise from the road, no hunting dogs in pursuit of some small, terrified creature. The silence seemed to thrum with foreboding.

“It seems so...” Words eluded her. “Large,” Cristy finished at last.

“The house?”

“The outside. I could walk and walk and nothing would stop me. If I came to a fence, I could just step over it or walk around it....”

“They call that freedom. It’s going to take a little getting used to.”

“We were outside a lot in Raleigh. There were places to walk, unless you were in the segregation unit. But it wasn’t like this.”

“Yeah, we’re short on razor wire at the Goddess House. And we got rid of the guard tower last week. It messed up the view.”

Samantha was pointing out that she no longer had to worry about prison officials, but Cristy didn’t know how to respond. There was no razor wire or guard tower, but she still felt imprisoned by fear.

Samantha started along a path leading toward what looked like an old barn in the distance. “Since we had to get it last week, we put your car in the barn. Let’s take a peek, then I’ll show you around a little more.”

Cristy was afraid to venture off with Samantha and more afraid to go up to the house alone. What she could see of it looked foreboding, too, as if the long front porch sheltered glass-paned eyes that were watching and waiting for her to make a mistake. Reluctantly she fell into step.

“The house is really off by itself, isn’t it?” Cristy said.

“If you follow this path a ways you have neighbors. Bill and Zettie Johnston live maybe a quarter of a mile over the crest of the hill. Really nice folks. I’m sure you’ll meet them. By the road you’re not far from the Trust General Store, and there are people all up and down these hills. There’s even a community center down the main road a bit, what used to be the local school before they consolidated, and from what Zettie says, they schedule events there from time to time.”

Cristy realized she had better sound more confident, or Samantha might be afraid to leave her alone. “I hope that didn’t sound like I was complaining. I like silence. My little house in Berle...” Her voice trailed off.

“I’ve been there. Your employer’s daughter stored all your things in her attic, but Taylor and I—you’ll meet Taylor and her daughter, Maddie, one day soon—we drove to the flower shop to pick up some florist tools she hadn’t packed. I saw your house behind it and peeked in the windows.”

Cristy already knew that Samantha and the other woman, Taylor, had driven to Berle to pick up her belongings and car, but now she thanked her again.

Samantha hesitated. “The house where you lived has been for sale for a few months. No one’s living in it now.”

“I guess Betsy’s Bouquets will be sold, too.”

“Betsy’s daughter wants to sell, but it’s not a good time to sell anything. She sent you some things that belonged to Betsy. She said nobody else would appreciate her mother’s tools the way you would.”

Cristy was so touched that for a moment she couldn’t speak. Betsy had hired her when she dropped out of high school, and when her angry parents told her to pack her bags, Betsy had given her the little house behind the shop to live in. The arrangement had been mutually beneficial. Betsy had believed in Cristy as no one else had, and when she had suffered her first heart attack, she’d gratefully turned over much of the work to her young employee, supervising and instructing from a comfortable chair in the workroom. In turn Cristy had gotten the best possible education in floral design, as well as a roof over her head and a loyal friend.

Then, while Cristy was in the county jail waiting for trial, sixty-four-year-old Betsy had suffered her second heart attack. Cristy hadn’t been allowed to attend the funeral.

“How long did you live in the house?” Samantha asked.

“Almost five years. Betsy couldn’t afford to pay much, so the house was part of my salary. I fixed it up myself.”

“You sure did. It’s adorable.”

“Betsy didn’t care if I experimented. I tried anything I thought of. I rescued furniture from the trash and bought things at yard sales.”

“Some of us could do that and end up with a mess. I kept expecting to see an HGTV film crew come up the walkway.”

Cristy told herself to be careful. Compliments were wonderful, but that was what had brought her to this place in her life. “I won’t mind being out here,” she said. “I know how lucky I am you offered this chance.”

“We’re about an hour from Mars Hill.”

Cristy was wearing a light jacket Samantha had bought her, but the air was colder here than it was in Raleigh, crisper and more penetrating. She shivered.

“Do you want to talk about your son?” Samantha asked. “Or shall we stay away from the subject?”

Cristy found it odd to be asked her preference, but it was refreshing, too. “I guess you know Michael’s with my second cousin, Berdine Bates, and her husband, Wayne. I thought that was better than sending him to live with strangers.”

“I know you must have felt they would give him a better home than your parents could.”

“My parents didn’t want anything to do with him, or me. Not even before...” She turned her hands toward the sky. “Anyway, I wouldn’t have let them take him. They aren’t good with children. And they’re living in Ohio now. When I was arrested, the deacons told my father to start looking for a church somewhere else.”

She didn’t add that this was probably the sin her parents found most unforgivable. Not that she had shoplifted or had a child out of wedlock, but that her behavior had caused her father to be demoted to a smaller church in another state at the end of his career.

“I’m glad you found someone you trusted.”

“Berdine’s a full-time mom. They have two girls, almost teenagers now. I guess Berdine and Wayne always wanted a boy, too, but Berdine couldn’t have any more children. They’ve always been good to me. When I was growing up I spent as much time with that part of the family as I could, but not nearly enough.”

“Did Berdine contact you when she heard you’d gone to prison?”

“She sent me funny cards to cheer me up.” She didn’t add that Berdine was one of the few who had sent her anything. “She came to visit, too. Twice. She told me she would do anything she could to help me. I took her up on it.”

“So she was willing.”

Cristy had trouble with the next sentence. “When I asked, she said it would be an honor to keep my son until I was able to take care of him myself.”

“She sounds like a winner. And you like her husband?”

What wasn’t there to like about Wayne? He was a big teddy bear of a man, funny and irreverent. Cristy’s mother thought he was unforgivably rough around the edges, and her father disliked him because he didn’t take the world seriously. Those had been recommendations enough for Cristy.

She listed the important points. “Wayne hunts and fishes and works on the house when he isn’t on jobs. He has a small construction company, and he’s teaching his daughters everything he knows about building houses. He’s a man’s man who makes room for women, too.”

“I like the way you put that.”

“He’s a great dad. If Michael needs something, he won’t back down for anybody.”

“They won’t mind you visiting?”

She debated, then decided to tell the truth. “They suggested I come on Sunday, after I had a chance to rest up. In fact, they asked me to move in with them.”

“I didn’t know that. You don’t want to?”

“I’m sorry, I guess I should, but I’m not ready.”

Samantha nodded, as if she understood, but Cristy wanted to be sure she really did.

“Not ready to be Michael’s mother,” she finished.

Samantha didn’t question that, either, although it must have sounded strange. “You’ve been through a lot. You’ll be close enough here to visit him whenever you want to. This’ll be a good place for you.”

“You haven’t asked about the baby’s father.”

“You’re right.”

“Don’t you want to know?”

“Not unless you want to tell me.”

Cristy stopped walking. “My baby’s father is a man named Jackson Ford, and he’s the one who put me in prison.”

Samantha didn’t respond, so Cristy continued.

“I don’t want Jackson to see or hold or speak to Michael. Not ever. Because a man who could do what he did to me is a man who wouldn’t hesitate to hurt a child.”

“Does he know where Michael is?”

“I’m sure he does. Jackson can get anything he wants.”

Samantha didn’t try to soothe her fears. Cristy was surprised that she seemed to believe her. Instead Samantha asked, “You’re not worried about the baby’s safety?”

“Wayne will be sure Michael stays safe. He’s not a violent man, but he does believe in country justice.”

“Country justice?”

“You live outside town, the law’s not there to take care of you or make sure things are fair or right. Out in the country people take care of themselves, and they don’t put up with a lot.”

“Then Wayne’s watching for trouble?”

Cristy told Samantha one of the few things in life she was still convinced was true. “Wayne Bates will never let trouble sneak up on him. And because he won’t, he and Berdine have my son.”

* * *

Georgia knew that her daughter disapproved of fast food and didn’t feed it to Edna, at least not very often. Samantha knew her mother would respect that decision, so on the rare occasions when she didn’t, neither of them made a big deal out of it.

Which was why a happy Edna was just finishing a chocolate shake and a small order of fries as they finished the climb up Doggett Mountain to the Goddess House.

Between sips Edna was delving into philosophy. “How can something that makes me feel so good be bad for me?”

“That’s a question you’ll ask yourself a million times in the next ten years, kiddo. Just remember that something that makes you feel good in the short-term might be a problem in the long-term. That’s why you have to think things through.”

“Like I could gain too much weight or my cholesterol could go up, only worse.”

“Exactly.”

“I wonder if taking the diamond ring made Cristy feel good until they put her in jail.”

Georgia and Edna had already talked about Cristy Haviland. Samantha had told her daughter the facts—that Cristy had been caught shoplifting a very valuable ring. She had served time in prison for it, and now that she was out, she needed a place to stay.

“I think, in that case, justice was pretty swift. I think your mom said she was caught outside in the parking lot. So I doubt she had any time to enjoy what she’d done. In fact, I imagine the moment she did it, she was terrified somebody would catch her.”

“But why didn’t she figure out ahead of time that she was going to get caught? It seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know. Does it?”

“A ring’s not like a pack of gum or a candy bar. If something is valuable, it’s sure to be missed immediately.”

“Then it sounds like something she did on impulse, don’t you think? Without thinking or planning?”

“Maybe it was just a mistake. Maybe she set the ring on the counter and somebody knocked it into her purse, or wherever they found it when they searched her.”

Georgia wasn’t sure whether Edna wanted to think the best of Cristy, or whether for her this was just an interesting mystery to solve.

“I imagine the authorities considered that possibility and discarded it,” she said. “They must have had a pretty good idea she did what they accused her of before they took the case to trial.”

“I don’t know.” Edna didn’t sound convinced. “I guess we’d have to know her to figure that out. I mean, I know people who always do impulsive things. Like they blurt out whatever they’re thinking, and afterward you can tell they wish they’d stayed quiet. There’s this one kid in my class who’ll take any dare, even if it’s impossible, and he’s always getting in trouble. Once he got stuck in a tree on the playground, and the custodian had to bring the longest ladder in the school to get him down.”

“Maybe that kind of behavior’s been a problem for Cristy.”

“Maybe so, but if it hasn’t? Isn’t stealing a ring when you’re sure you’ll get caught more than impulsive? Maybe it’s...what do they call it? A cry for help?”

Georgia could tell Edna wasn’t going to let go of this. She was reaching the age when the things she did or would do really mattered, and she knew it. Her mother had almost destroyed her own life at seventeen, something she candidly discussed with her daughter, and while Edna was only twelve, she was mature beyond her years. So Cristy, and what she had and hadn’t done, had made an impression on her, even though they hadn’t yet met.

“I can tell you this much,” Georgia said. “If she needs help, we’ll try to be sure she gets it.”

“Mom said she had a baby when she was in prison. I don’t know which would be worse, going to prison or having a baby you can’t keep.”

Georgia thought of her own mother, whoever she was, who hadn’t given birth to her in prison. That her mother had given birth in a hospital was one of the few things Georgia did know about the woman.

They fell into an easy silence for the rest of the trip. It was past five when the twisting road straightened and dipped, and they followed swiftly flowing Spring Creek into the township of Trust.

Township was another word for nowhere. Trust was nothing more than a spot where two roads met, where an attractive general store with a part-time restaurant had sprung from the foundation of an old one, where a covered bridge gave ammunition for jokes about the “bridge” of Madison County. Some grateful soul had built a thimble-size roadside chapel here and dedicated it to St. Jude. But other than houses nestled on gravel roads and plenty of fresh air, there wasn’t much else to the place. As they turned toward Luck, an even smaller destination, Georgia tried to imagine what it would have been like to grow up in this part of the state.

The Goddess House was located somewhere between the two townships. Theoretically it might be inside one and not the other, but nobody really cared. Analiese Wagner, who was a minister in Asheville, had decided that the house was at the crossroads, and everybody liked that, although no roads actually crossed here. But the women they hoped to help would probably be standing at very real crossroads in their own lives, so what was more fitting? Trust was vital. And luck? Well luck never hurt, either.

The road up to the house was unpaved and required second gear. Georgia took her time. Since becoming trustees of the house, the goddesses had made sure to have the approach graded twice, and she suspected that spring rain was going to necessitate another go at it soon. Luckily there were lots of people in the vicinity with big tractors and time before planting season, and none of them charged much.

Once they parked, Edna was the first out of the car, and Georgia knew she was off to find her mother. There was so little to get, just a small rolling suitcase and Edna’s backpack, that she got them as her granddaughter disappeared up the hill and into the house. She was just about to carry them up the steps when Samantha hailed her from the hillside behind her, where a small family graveyard had been created.

Since Edna would quickly discover her mother wasn’t inside, Georgia turned toward the hill and left the backpack and suitcase beside the car.

The small family plot had special meaning for the women. Charlotte Hale, whose family home the Goddess House had been and who had left the house and land in their care, was buried here. She was fifty-three when she’d died, but she had left large footprints for them to fill.

Samantha met her mother halfway down the hill, and after a quick hug they stood there to chat.

“Your daughter’s looking for you,” Georgia said.

“She’ll find me. You look tired. Long day?”

“Not as long as yours. That was a lot of driving.”

“I’m whupped,” Samantha admitted. “And Cristy’s napping, I hope, unless Edna wakes her up.”

“She won’t. Unless she’s sleeping on the sofa?”

“No, I gave her the big room in the back. I figure she needs privacy, and if we’re coming and going in the next months, which we will be, she can shut herself in that room when she needs peace and quiet.”

“That’s what I would have done.” Georgia realized the sun was well on its way to setting, and she turned so they could start toward the house. “How did the trip go?”

“I’ll tell you all about it, but first I want to tell you something more important, something that was confirmed on the trip.”

Georgia verbalized her fears. “That the girl needs a lot of help? That she’s going to need supervision while she’s here, and we need to find somebody willing to do it?”

“She does need a lot of help, but not the kind you’re envisioning.” They had almost reached the car now, and Samantha stopped beside it. Georgia knew in a moment Edna would come running down the steps to find her.

“What kind of help?” Georgia asked.

“The kind you’re best at.” Samantha shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe what she was about to say. “I am absolutely sure that Cristy can’t read. I had my suspicions before, when she was in my class, but now it’s clear. She couldn’t read the menu when we ate lunch, so she pretended she wasn’t hungry. She couldn’t read the signs at the store when we shopped. If she reads at all, it sure wasn’t apparent today. If she’s ever going to get out of this hole she’s in, she’s going to have to learn how—and quickly.”

Samantha rested her hand on her mother’s arm in emphasis, not quite digging in her fingertips to hold her there, but close. “I think you know what I’m leading up to.”

“I’m afraid I might.”

“Nobody in the world has a better chance of teaching that young woman to read than you do. Please think it over. If we’re really going to help her, this is where we have to start.”

Chapter Five

CRISTY LAY ON one side and stared out the wide windows just beyond her bed. Mountains were forming in the midst of haze, cinder-gray peaks deepening slowly to a smoky purple as the landscape warmed. She knew the sun itself would emerge later in the morning, that the very mountains she was admiring would hide it from view until it burst forth in glory.

During her stay in Raleigh she had yearned for mountains. The world had seemed as flat as ancient explorers had believed, and she’d felt dizzied by that, as if the moment she ventured outside, she might slip off the rim.

Mountains anchored the earth, gave it form and definition. But sometimes, as now, they simply menaced the horizon. These mountains, whose names she didn’t know, reminded her she was a stranger in this house, this place, and that Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi, would never be her mountain again.

She turned onto her back and stared at the slatted ceiling. She hadn’t known what to say when Samantha had led her to this room and told her it was hers for the duration of her stay. The room was the largest in the old house and the most private. Cristy had tried to tell her this felt wrong, discordant somehow, but Samantha had said that giving Cristy the biggest only made sense. She would be spending every day here, while the other women who were trustees or guests would come for only short stays.

Cristy wasn’t to worry. Didn’t she deserve to be treated well? And didn’t she deserve a little space and privacy after what she had endured?

Cristy didn’t know what she deserved, but she did know what she felt. Last night had been difficult. Samantha’s mother, Georgia, had arrived with Samantha’s precocious daughter. Georgia was more reserved than Samantha, an attractive middle-aged woman, fit and trim. The cinnamon color of her hair was probably real, since she had a redhead’s pale skin. Her eyes were nearly the same warm brown as her hair, and while she had a nice smile, it only rarely appeared. Cristy, who knew she was feeling particularly vulnerable, had sensed that Georgia was watching, even judging her. In response she had tried to melt into the background.

Edna, on the other hand, was much like her mother, warm and open, even thoughtful in a way Cristy hadn’t expected of a twelve-year-old. Her maturity and natural warmth had made Cristy shrink even further into herself. She’d been afraid to accept the obvious offer of friendship. By the time she’d excused herself to go to bed, Cristy had felt like a heifer at the county fair. Admired, petted and sadly counting the hours until she was sold for hamburger.

In her head she went over the weekend schedule, which Samantha had explained during their trip here. Last night only Samantha’s little family and Cristy had stayed at the house. Samantha had cooked spaghetti and made a salad, and Cristy had been able to eat very little of either. Sometime today another of the five trustees would visit, too. A woman named Harmony would be up after breakfast with her baby daughter, Lottie.

Harmony was a little younger than Cristy and lived on a farm at the foot of Doggett Mountain on the road down to Asheville. She helped the couple who owned it with everything from child and animal care to tending a half-acre vegetable garden. Lottie had been born three months ago and officially was named Charlotte Louise after the woman who’d bequeathed them this land. Cristy didn’t know anything else about her, except that Samantha seemed to think they would quickly become friends.

Cristy was already counseling herself to make sure that didn’t happen.

She dreaded the day ahead, but she dreaded tomorrow even more. Tomorrow she was supposed to drive to the house where her own baby was waiting for her. And what would she find when she got there? What new and terrible things would she learn about herself?

There was a soft knock on her door, and she bolted upright. Her heart was pounding. “Yes?”

The door opened a crack, and Samantha, in a gray track suit, peeked in. “I just made a pot of coffee and I brought you a cup if you’re interested.”

Cristy didn’t know what to say. She hesitated, then she nodded thanks. “But you don’t have to wait on me.”

“I wanted some, and I figured you’d be up early because I hear that’s what you’re used to.”

Cristy couldn’t remember ever being served coffee—or anything, for that matter—in bed. As a child she’d been required to go to the table for meals even when she was sick. Her mother had been a big proponent of “cleanliness is next to godliness,” and had waged a constant battle against crumbs and spills.

And Jackson? Jackson had seen bed in a completely different light.

Samantha crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, turning the handle of a pottery mug so Cristy could grasp it. “I added sugar and cream. I figure if you don’t normally drink it with both, you won’t mind it this once. But if you do drink it this way, you’d hate it black.”

Cristy could feel herself smiling. “I only started drinking coffee in Raleigh. It was the best way to get going, but I always add everything I can.”

“This is part decaf, so you won’t get going too fast, but that’s all my mother will drink.”

“Edna looks so much like you, but you don’t look like your—” Cristy stopped herself, aware she might offend Samantha.

“Like my mom? I know. People are usually surprised. They want to know if I’m adopted, but I’m not. My father was half African-American, half Korean. So I’m an all-American mutt.”

“You’re a showstopper.”

“It took me some time to love myself, but I’m happy to be me.”

“That must feel good.”

“It’s something you have to work at.” Samantha got up. “Everybody’s stirring, but take your time. We’re not on a schedule. There’s cereal and toast for breakfast, and plenty of fresh fruit. Just help yourself whenever you’re ready to come down. If we’re not around, we’ll be off on a walk. Mom loves wildflowers, and she brought her guide. It’s a little early in the spring at this elevation, but she notes dates and location when she finds something new. We’ll probably be scouting the woods for spring beauties and trout lilies.”

Cristy watched her go, the mug of coffee warming her hands.

* * *

Everybody was already downstairs before Cristy dared take a shower; then she spent what was probably too long in the bathroom, luxuriating in hot water, privacy and no one telling her that time was almost up. She washed her hair and combed it away from her face. Her hair was longer than she’d worn it before prison, inches below her shoulders when it was wet, but she’d had no desire to let another inmate in “cosmo,” the cosmetology courses at the prison, sharpen their skills on her. Curly hair was difficult to cut and manage, and she hadn’t wanted to end up feeling worse about herself than she already did.

Back in her room she sorted through her new clothes. In addition to the jacket, Samantha had paid for two outfits a size smaller than she’d worn before NCCIW, and now she changed into the most casual, jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. By the time she was ready to go downstairs, the hike was about to begin.

“We can wait if you want to come along,” Georgia said, after greeting her with a nod and one of her rare smiles. “We’re in no hurry.”

“You go ahead. I’ll eat, if that’s all right.”

“It wouldn’t be right if you didn’t eat.” Samantha finished zipping a light jacket. “Make yourself at home. If Harmony and Lottie arrive, introduce yourself.”

Preparations complete, the trio left, and the house was suddenly silent. Cristy realized they had just sauntered off and left a convicted felon in their house alone. Of course, what would she make off with? Crockery from the kitchen? Pillows on the sofa? It wasn’t the kind of place where valuables were kept. She supposed they’d felt perfectly safe.

And wasn’t that a thought unworthy of all the generosity they had shown her?

The kitchen was well equipped with sensibly arranged basics. Cooking utensils standing in a wide-mouth canning jar beside an electric stove. Knives on a magnetic strip along the wall, pots and pans hanging from an iron rack overhead. A cupboard was filled with canned goods and jars. Another held staples, mixing bowls and measuring cups, and brightly colored dishes were visible on open shelves. Cooking wasn’t one of the things she did well. She had worked in the kitchen at the prison, but her job had involved scrubbing and cleaning after others did preparation. She had never asked to be moved up the line. She had carefully avoided any job that required following a recipe.

An open box of Cheerios waited on the table beside a half carton of fresh blueberries. She poured some of both into a bowl and added milk from the refrigerator. There were bread and butter on the table, too, but she carefully put them away.

She ate and cleaned up, enjoying both. The kitchen was a cheerful place that looked freshly painted. She liked the pale lemon color and the framed vintage pictures of women on one wall that looked as if they had come from old magazines. Someone had added words, decals in flowing script, as if in comment. She wondered what they said. She tried to sound one out but after a moment gave up with a shrug.

She knew she should probably do something useful while the others were gone, something to show she was going to be a tenant they could count on, but the house was dust-free. She peeked outside, then ventured out to the porch, but even that didn’t need sweeping. She perched on an old metal glider and gave a tentative push with her feet. It creaked cheerfully, and she settled against mismatched cushions to slide back and forth.

On the porch she didn’t feel as overwhelmed as she had yesterday on the walk. She felt contained by the pillars and roof, even protected. She wondered when or if she would begin to feel like the woman she’d been before prison. Back then she had loved to hike. Outdoors, with a million different things to look at and examine, she had felt just like everyone else. When she had lived behind the shop she’d regularly brought home leaves, pretty stones, moss-covered sticks, and arranged them on her bedside table or her living room shelves. Sometimes she had used her finds in arrangements when a client had wanted something more natural or interesting than a dozen red roses or daisies dyed blindingly bright colors that Mother Nature had never considered. Betsy had encouraged her to find her own style.

She would tramp the woods again, she supposed. She would do a great number of things in the years to come. Unfortunately those days seemed far in the future.

She heard a car and got to her feet. A pale green SUV came into view, a small one, but it took the steep driveway with ease and came to a stop next to Georgia’s and Samantha’s cars. As she watched, a young woman got out, blond hair swinging over her shoulders as she opened the rear passenger-side door and leaned in. A few minutes later she emerged with a small bundle and a bag she slung over her shoulder. A large shaggy golden dog emerged next; then together they started up the wide terraced steps to the house.

Cristy wasn’t sure how to greet this visitor. She knew this had to be Harmony. The baby—who was certainly at the center of the warmly wrapped bundle—was carried tenderly against her chest.

Cristy rose and went to the porch steps, but not down them. The dog had stopped at the bottom to sniff the bushes. “Hi,” she said shyly. “Are you Harmony?”

“That’s me. You must be Cristy.”

Cristy smiled, although it didn’t feel natural. “Do you need help?”

“I have everything. I don’t need much for a day. Just wait until she has to have her favorite toys and blankets and food and whatever else these little tyrants require. I guess we edge slowly into that, and mothers don’t notice some little person has turned them into a pack animal.”

Cristy didn’t know what to say. The last time she had been near a baby, it had been her own. She had never been particularly comfortable with children, and the smaller they were, the less comfortable she was. This one seemed particularly small.

Harmony dropped her bag beside the glider and sat down. “Join me? Or are you in the middle of something?”

“I was just...” She thought about what to say and discarded “worrying.” “Enjoying the view,” she said instead.

“It’s so lovely here. I come whenever I have the chance, just to breathe. The air down below’s just fine, and I live out in the country. But there’s something about the air higher up.” She nudged the blanket away from the baby’s face and cradled her tiny head in the crook of her left arm. “Lottie here seems to like it, too. She’s always quieter, but maybe it’s the trip. All those twists and turns probably put her in a trance. And Velvet—that’s the sniffer down there—loves to find out what critters passed this way in the night.”

Cristy peeked at the baby. She had a sweet little pointy chin and surprisingly long eyelashes, like feathers against her cheek. Her hair was the palest brown, not quite blond like her mother’s, and there wasn’t much of it, just enough to be seen.

“She’s lovely,” Cristy said.

“Especially when she’s asleep, although now that she’s beginning to smile, I think she could win a beauty contest.”

“When do they start to smile?”

“Little smiles really early, but at about three to four months they last longer, and she smiles when she’s responding to something she likes.”

“She’s three months?”

“Thirteen weeks.”

The baby opened her eyes and blinked a few times, as if she was trying to focus. Then she closed them again, as if all that blinking wasn’t worth the effort.

“She’ll wake up for sure in a little while,” Harmony said. “And she’ll be hungry. She’s always hungry.”

“I’ve never spent much time around babies.”

Harmony nodded. “I never had, either. I did a little babysitting and didn’t like it. It’s different when it’s your own. Marilla—she and her husband, Brad, own the farm where I live—she says she didn’t like children at all, not one bit, until she had her first. Then she fell madly in love. She has two adorable little boys, and I’m with them so much I’ve fallen in love with them, too.”

Cristy wondered if this was just the way things happened. Would she feel that way after she spent time with Michael?

“It sneaks up on you,” Harmony said, as if she were reading Cristy’s mind. “But it must have been hard for you to have your son taken away after he was born.”

Cristy wasn’t surprised Harmony knew her circumstances. “Sure,” she said, with little conviction in her voice. “Only I knew from the start I wouldn’t be able to keep him with me.”

“That seems wrong. You should have been allowed to bond with him.”

“And then have him taken away?”

Harmony met her eyes. “I’m sorry. You’re right. And maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, only I wanted you to know maybe I understand a little of what you had to go through.”

As nice as Harmony seemed, Cristy doubted that.

“I need a glass of water and a bathroom break. Would you like to hold Lottie while I’m gone?”

Cristy didn’t want to, but she knew Harmony was offering her a gift. Her own son wasn’t there to hold, but she could hold Harmony’s daughter, a substitute to practice on. And didn’t offering the baby show that Harmony trusted her, ex-con and all?

She nearly said no, but she knew staying here might be dependent on the goodwill of all the trustees, including Harmony. She held out her arms.

Harmony carefully transferred the baby. “She should sleep right through this.”

Cristy was surprised at how light the baby felt, and how sweet the little bundle smelled. She adjusted the blankets so that Lottie’s face was clear of them.

“Nothing feels quite like a sleeping baby,” Harmony said. “I’ll be right back.”

Cristy hoped so. Because sitting here, holding Harmony’s baby daughter, was the last place on earth she wanted to be. Nearly the last. Because the real last place would be at her cousin’s house holding Michael.

* * *

The day didn’t drag. Cristy had to admit that much. The others returned from their walk, and everyone worked on lunch together, which was clearly intended to be the big meal of the day. They had leftover spaghetti and salad, a vegetarian minestrone that Harmony had brought along, homemade bread and jam, courtesy of Harmony’s employer Marilla Reynolds, and brownies that Edna and Samantha had baked, claiming unconvincingly that they’d just wanted to take the chill off the kitchen.

Everybody took turns holding the baby, who was clearly a favorite. Everybody cleaned up, as if they’d done this enough to know how to work together. Harmony fed her daughter and rocked her to sleep, with the dog, who treated Cristy like a long-lost friend, asleep at her feet. Samantha set up her computer on the kitchen table to do a little work. Edna and Georgia played Monopoly, first inviting Cristy, who declined and took a nap instead.

By late afternoon everyone was ready to go, but they suggested a walk around the grounds first, just to stretch their legs before the trip back down the mountain.

Cristy didn’t want to go, but again, she felt obligated. She’d felt tense and out of place all day, but now that everyone was about to leave, she felt more so. What would it be like to be here alone? She didn’t know her neighbors and wasn’t even sure how to find them, despite a map Edna had drawn. She had her car, but there was nowhere to drive. And if she left, would she be able to find her way back? Especially in the dark?

They walked toward the barn again, Harmony carrying her daughter in a soft baby carrier strapped in front of her so Lottie was facing out and could watch the world go by. At a fork in the path they turned and started up a rise.

“It’s time to plant the spring garden,” Harmony said, “but between the baby and the garden at Marilla’s, I don’t see myself doing much here.”

“What have you planted down at Capable Canines?” Georgia asked.

“Marilla raises service dogs,” Harmony explained. “That’s the name of the kennel. In fact, Velvet produced several good litters of puppies for her, then I took her when Marilla retired her.”

“Maddie has one of Velvet’s puppies,” Edna said. “Vanilla.”

“You’ll meet Maddie and Taylor soon,” Samantha said. “They’ll be up to visit.”

Cristy was just as glad they hadn’t come today. She was already overwhelmed.

Harmony answered Georgia’s question. “Peas, lettuce and we just put in a whole plot of potatoes. Also onions, carrots. I guess that’s it so far. We’re still working on it. Marilla’s doing some of the work now. She’s improving fast. She’s just using a cane.”

“Marilla was in a car accident,” Edna explained.

They stopped at an area fenced with both rails and chicken wire, and Samantha opened the gate. The area was spacious, much larger than the word garden had conjured for Cristy.

“Wow.” She stepped in after the others. The garden wasn’t exactly abandoned. But clearly nothing had been done inside this fence for some time. “They must have grown a lot of their food here.”

“Charlotte said she and her grandmother grew and canned most of what they ate,” Harmony said. “She wasn’t much of a gardener after she left here, but Ethan—he’s Charlotte’s husband—made sure the house and land were rented and taken care of. The tenants kept up the garden.”

Cristy thought this was the most peaceful place on the property. Maybe it was the fence that separated her from all that space beyond it. But in here she felt comfortable, even safe. She could feel herself relaxing.

“What are you going to do with it?” She wasn’t sure where to aim the question. Everyone seemed to think and answer in turn.

“I think it’s a work in progress,” Georgia said. “Without much progress.”

“I could help.” Cristy heard herself volunteer without thinking about it, but as the words emerged, so did enthusiasm. “I haven’t done a lot, but when I was little I helped a neighbor with her garden. She paid me in Hershey bars and potato chips. It was our secret.” She smiled a little.

“I’d be glad to come up when I can and help you get things started,” Harmony said. “But it’s going to need to be tilled. Maybe some manure worked in. I’ll ask Marilla. She’ll know. I bet she’d come up and give us advice.”

“Don’t count on me,” Georgia said. “Plants wither when they see me coming.”

Samantha warned Edna to be careful of snakes in a tangle of blackberry brambles in the corner where she was exploring. Then she joined in the conversation. “I’ll do what I can, but it won’t be a lot of help, I’m afraid. I’m swamped at work.”

“Taylor and Maddie might help,” Harmony said. “But maybe this year we can just do a small piece of it, to get things started.”

Cristy was way ahead of that, envisioning a thriving garden, vegetables, herbs and, best of all, flowers. All kinds of flowers for bouquets. Flowers she could sell to make a little money.

“I’d like to try,” she said. “It would give me something to do while I’m here. When I’m not looking for work,” she added, afraid they would think she was planning to take advantage of them.

“Don’t worry about that right away. There aren’t a lot of job possibilities around here,” Samantha said. “Just use this time to figure things out, if you can. Get yourself settled in. If you want to do some work in the garden because it sounds like fun, please do. We’d better get back. We’ll walk you to the house and get our things.”

As the others chatted, Cristy kept to herself. All day she’d wished for silence and space, but now that they were leaving, she was gripped with fear. What would it be like to live here without company? There were locks on the doors, and a telephone. There was even a television set, although reception was nonexistent, but there was a DVD player.

Still she wasn’t home. She didn’t even know what that meant anymore. For a moment she yearned to be back in the quad surrounded by other prisoners. At least there she had known who she was. And in a perverse way she had known she was safe.

At the house she watched as everyone gathered their things. Harmony, Lottie and Velvet were the first to leave, followed by Georgia. Samantha and Edna lingered longest.

“My number’s right by the phone,” Samantha said. “And everybody else’s numbers are on the wall behind it. You can call any of us anytime, and we’ll be up the mountain as fast as we can get here. But you’re going to be all right. And if you’re not, we’ll find a better place for you.”

Cristy knew she had to sound confident. She managed a smile. “It might feel a little strange at first, but I know I’ll be fine. Thanks for letting me stay.”

Samantha hugged her before Cristy realized what she intended. Being enfolded, even briefly, in somebody else’s arms felt alien. She blinked back tears.

“You call,” Samantha said. “Nobody expects you to be a good soldier. If you need us, call.”

Cristy watched them leave. Samantha and Edna had been gone for almost ten minutes before she went inside.

She locked the door behind her, and turned on the living room lights because the room was beginning to darken. Then she stood in the doorway of the kitchen, where the telephone sat on a small end table, and considered what she was about to do. She’d planned this all afternoon, and as the day dragged on she’d been more and more sure she would make the call. But now that she could, she was hesitant and unsure.

In the end she picked up the phone and dialed the number she had carefully memorized. No one picked up on the other end. Cristy could imagine her cousin’s family enjoying the sunset view from their deck. She remembered doing just that with Berdine two years ago. Before her world disintegrated.

An answering machine picked up, and she waited for her chance to speak. Then she left her message.

“Berdine, this is Cristy. I won’t be coming tomorrow. I’m busy settling in, and I just don’t think it’s a good idea to leave so soon. I’ll call you and set up another time to see Michael. You all have a good night, now.”

She hung up and realized she hadn’t given Berdine her new phone number.

She wasn’t sorry.

Chapter Six

ON MONDAY GEORGIA and three teams of parents and students made rounds of BCAS classrooms to observe and give feedback. She had met with the parent-student teams for six weeks, devising and honing an evaluation form, but the form was a diving platform, and she hoped everyone would dive deeper and search harder for those who were drowning and those who were saving lives.

By the end of a long day, having sat in on as many of the sessions as she could, she was both exhausted and invigorated. Her instincts had been correct. The teams were already proving to be perceptive and thorough. Those teachers willing to listen would gain additional insight on how to become more skilled in the classroom. Those like Jon Farrell, who thought the idea of parents and students instructing the teachers was ridiculous, would, at the very least, learn their opinions might not be a good fit here. If she was lucky they would request a transfer without a sharp nudge from her.

As Georgia headed to her office for the first time since hanging her jacket on the coat rack that morning, Carrie Bywater fell into step beside her. Every time they walked by a classroom, Georgia could hear rain coming in waves beyond the windows—not a gentle spring shower but a sullen winter storm.

“I just wanted you to know I suggested the independent study to Dawson. He said he’d do it if he can study tattoos. He wants to get one.”

“Tattoos, huh? I was hoping for the French Revolution or maybe quantum entanglement theory.”

“I thought about it, and actually, it’s not as bad as it sounds. He can look into things like the history, cultural and anthropological significance, the specific graphic design elements, how tattoos related to fashion through the centuries.” Carrie sounded more enthused as she went. “The health aspects, like HIV infection, ink allergies. Psychological implications. I’m sure he’ll come up with more if he tries. I’m getting together with him tomorrow after school. I’m going to let him know we aren’t talking about a five-page report on the best tattoo parlors in Asheville.”

“Well, if the best way to a student’s mind is through the back door, maybe this time it’s the back door of the tattoo parlor.”

“It’s nice to work with somebody who doesn’t freak out every time we think a little differently.”

Georgia was warmed by the compliment and returned it before Carrie peeled off to head to the teacher’s lounge.

The praise carried her almost to the office. Once there she had to resist slamming the door and barring it with her body for a few moments of privacy.

The secretaries had gone home for the day, but Marianne came out of her office, took one look at Georgia and clucked maternally. “You’ve been gone almost all day, which is too long. Water’s hot. I can make tea, then you should brave the rain and go home.” She nodded to the table with a small coffeepot and an electric kettle.

“Thanks, but I’m just going to clear off the worst of my desk before it implodes and takes the building down with it.”

Marianne’s eyes flicked to something behind Georgia. Georgia turned and saw that a man had entered the office after her.

“May I help?” Marianne said, trying to head him off so Georgia could flee to her office, but the man shook his head and addressed Georgia instead.

“Are you Mrs. Ferguson?”

Georgia felt the long day tugging her down. She was tempted to say no. Sorely tempted.

“I am,” she said instead. “And you are...?”

“Lucas Ramsey.”

She tried to match the last name to a student. He was the right age to be somebody’s father—late forties, early fifties, about her age. His dark hair was turning gray, but not quite there yet. He had eyes of such a deep blue they were startling, and strong features to go with them. He’d dressed for this occasion in a crisply ironed, striped dress shirt and slacks. She liked what she saw and then put that brief flare of attraction swiftly behind her.

“Do you have a son or daughter here?” she asked, as pleasantly as fatigue would allow.

“No, but I’d still like to talk to you about a student. Can you spare a little time now, or would you rather I made an appointment?”

“Which student?”

“Dawson Nedley.”

Had it been anyone else, she would have turned the man over to Marianne, who would have been happy to make the appointment. But Dawson was of such immediate concern that Georgia knew better than to put this off.

“Let’s go in my office,” she said.

She led him there, then stayed on her feet until she could close the door. Her desk was piled so high she knew better than to sit behind it. There was no sense in trying to establish authority with a tower of paper between them.

She motioned him to a love seat in the corner and took the armchair beside it. Outside her windows the sky was gray, and she noted his umbrella was dripping on the carpet. “Before you say anything—I can’t give you information about Dawson, not without his permission and his family’s.”

She was taller than average, but even seated, Lucas Ramsey had to look down at her. “That’s fair enough, but if we need it, they’ll probably give it to you. His mother knew I was coming. And I told Dawson I planned to drop by. It’s no secret.”

“Would you like to tell me why you’re here?”

He flashed a smile that cut straight through her exhaustion. “I’m his neighbor. I think he’s a great kid, maybe even a brilliant kid. But I know he’s not lifting a finger at school. I’d like to help any way I can. He should be college bound.”

She pondered this; she pondered him. She pondered how tired she was and how slowly her brain was processing information.

He seemed to sense the latter. “Long day? You’re clearly wiped.”

“I came in at six, and I’ve been running ever since. I’m not surprised it shows.” She sat back because she was too tired not to. “We ought to do this another time. It sounds important.”

“How about tonight over pizza?”

She stared at him. The invitation had come straight out of left field and still, somehow, seemed exactly right.

He held up his hands, as if to say the request was completely innocent. “Nothing fancy. Pizza, beer if you drink it. And some brainstorming. You don’t have to reveal a thing about how he’s doing. Just help me come up with some way to prop him up a little.” He hesitated and his eyes flicked to her left hand. She wore no wedding ring—hadn’t since a year after Samantha’s father’s death—and he seemed to note that with a glance.

“Of course, the weather’s awful, and somebody’s probably expecting you at home,” he said. “I’m being presumptuous.”

“That’s not it.”

“I hate to see this kid ruin his life.”

She was too tired to be tactful, and too thrown off balance. “Why do you care?”

“I’m new here, but there’s a little place in Weaverville, not that far from my house, that makes everything from scratch. I can tell you the whole story while we eat. Outside this building you’ll feel more like listening.”

He seemed to understand exactly how she was feeling, and he didn’t even know her. For a moment that, coupled with her visceral reaction to Lucas Ramsey, seemed like enough reason to say no. But Dawson’s future was too important to play games with.

“Nobody’s expecting you?” she asked, since he’d brought up the subject.

“I’m more or less a stranger here. I live alone. There’s a stray cat I feed, but he comes by late.”

She thought about the ground they’d covered in a few sentences. Her exhaustion had drifted away, and something like anticipation was filling the void.

“Tell me where, and I’ll meet you there,” she said at last. “Six, seven?”

He got to his feet. “Six. I think you need the pizza transfusion sooner than later. And if this storm continues, you’ll want to get home early.”

She couldn’t help herself. She smiled.

He smiled, too; then he told her where to meet him. In a moment he was gone.

She got up and stretched, aware she was already looking forward to dinner. If she went home now she would have just enough time to shower and change and maybe close her eyes for a few minutes before it was time to go. She decided to skim the top papers on her desk and put them in her briefcase. After pizza tonight she would sift through them so the rest of the stack wouldn’t be so unmanageable tomorrow.

She got her briefcase and began to scoop, then she stopped. Under the first pile she saw the bracelet that Edna had admired on Friday afternoon. It was right where her granddaughter had left it, only an avalanche of white had covered it. Sighing, she went to her doorway. Marianne was getting ready to leave for the day.

“Did a student stop by today looking for a bracelet she left in my office?”

Marianne shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

Georgia thought maybe the attendance or instructional secretaries had intercepted the request. If either of them had checked her desk, they wouldn’t have seen it without disturbing her papers, and who would risk doing that?

“Well, if somebody comes looking tomorrow, I have it,” she said. “We can send it to lost and found if nobody claims it by week’s end.” Lost and found was a jumbled cardboard box in the gym office, and she was hesitant to relegate it there quite yet.

Georgia went back to her desk and picked up the bracelet to drop it in her drawer for safekeeping. It was, as she’d told her granddaughter, a charm bracelet, and not an inexpensive one. It was heavy with charms—gold, not less expensive sterling silver—and the chain was delicate but sturdy, finely crafted.

She gazed at the bracelet thinking about the girl who had lost it and how upset she must feel. She tried to remember who had been in her office the day it had appeared, but she was too tired.

As Edna had said, there were a mixture of charms. Animals. A cat, a horse and something more stylized. She held it closer. The head of a scowling bulldog, but not just any bulldog. This dog wore a familiar cap with the letter G emblazoned on it.

The mascot of the University of Georgia.

For a moment she stood perfectly still, then she reminded herself this was simply a student’s bracelet. Perhaps the owner had a boyfriend at UGA, maybe a brother or sister, or perhaps she was simply hoping the university was her destination after high school.

She opened her drawer to drop it in, but stopped when she noticed an envelope with her name on it right where the bracelet had rested. The envelope must have been under the bracelet all along, or, at least, it might have been. She couldn’t be certain Edna had replaced the bracelet exactly where she had found it.

Frowning, she opened the envelope and took out several sheets of yellowed newspaper folded four times to fit inside. There was no note, nothing included with them. She carefully unfolded the paper and read the headline of the article on top.

Sweatshirt Baby’s Life Still Touch-and-Go.

She stared at the paper a moment, then she refolded it without leafing through the other sheets and carefully placed them inside the envelope again.

She didn’t have to read the top article to know exactly what it would say. No one knew better than she did. Georgia herself had lived the story.

Chapter Seven

ON MONDAY AFTERNOON at the Goddess House, rain fell in great silver sheets that washed the porch floor. The rain would have saturated the glider cushions if Cristy hadn’t dragged them inside an hour before when the wind had picked up. A gloomy morning had changed to sullen, and now, in the late afternoon, to hostile. Through the window she could see trees bending under punishing winds. Even though the sun didn’t officially set until sometime after six, there was no sign the sun remembered.

When it had become clear the storm might be significant, she had hunted for candles and flashlights, since losing power seemed like a good possibility. She had found both, plus an oil lantern filled and ready in case of emergencies. A larger problem was what to do with herself.

Even with electricity the day had inched along like molasses in January. Yesterday she had inventoried the cupboards and refrigerator. Samantha had made sure she knew all the food was to be eaten, and there were a variety of canned and packaged foods as well as fresh vegetables and fruits, frozen hamburger and chicken.

Samantha had left cash, as well. While living and working in Berle, Cristy had saved what she could, but every bit of it was gone now, spent for necessities at the prison canteen, along with the extravagant forty cents a day she had earned working in the kitchen. She didn’t want to use Samantha’s money, but she knew she would have to dip into it until she found some way of earning her own. If nothing else, she had to have gas to make trips to see Michael.

Thinking about Michael had the same effect on her spirits as the storm.

She could have gone to see the baby yesterday, as planned. Her son was already four months old, older than Harmony’s Lottie. Berdine had sent photos while she was in prison, but Cristy had only glanced at them, not willing to look closely. What hair he had seemed to be an indeterminate color. His face wasn’t shaped like hers, and his eyes were brown, like the Reverend Roger Haviland’s.

And Jackson’s.

If she waited too long to visit, Michael might be frightened to let her hold him. She knew babies often developed something called stranger anxiety. She had paid attention in Samantha’s class, although being there hadn’t been her choice. But she was used to listening, used to paying attention to everything that was said to her and around her. She remembered almost everything she heard, and most of the time she could recite whole conversations verbatim.

Not that having that talent had done her much good on written exams.

She was out of prison now. She had paid her so-called debt to the citizens of the great state of North Carolina, but she was still the loser she had always been, only this time, she was a loser with a baby she was afraid to see.

This morning she had cleaned the house from top to bottom, although there had been little to sweep or wipe away. Then after lunch she’d tried to watch a DVD, but she hadn’t been able to concentrate. Now she tried to nap to soft music from the CD player, but when she found she couldn’t, she leafed through a couple of fashion magazines from a neat pile on an end table. The clothes looked as if they belonged to women from a different planet. After prison’s blues and pale greens, the variety, the colors, were overwhelming, and she was sure the prices were, as well.

In a cabinet in the living room she found a stack of jigsaw puzzles and pulled out what looked like the hardest. She wondered if all the pieces were in the box, then wondered why she cared.

She hoped tomorrow would be sunny. She might not feel comfortable outdoors by herself, but she had to learn to be. She would make herself take a walk, make herself take her car from the barn and park it below the house.

She had to get out. She had to try. But for whom? For what?

Right now a real life seemed as unattainable as a pardon. She had no high school diploma, no skills except floral design, no money except what a kind young woman had given her. She would scour the immediate area for a job, but even if such a thing existed, she was still an ex-con, a felon who had tried to steal a diamond ring. What business would feel confident allowing her to operate a cash register or work on a sales floor?

And so many jobs were beyond her skills, anyway.

She dumped the puzzle on a small table by the living room window and began to turn over the pieces so she could see what she had. Outside the wind howled and the sky grew darker, until lightning briefly illuminated the landscape. She rose to retrieve one of the flashlights, just in case, and to turn off the CD player and unplug it. Then she settled herself again with the flashlight at her fingertips.

She found the straight-edged border pieces and set them around the perimeter, and easily found the four corners, which seemed like a good sign. After she’d hooked half a dozen pieces together, she got up to make some tea, adding just a little milk so the carton in the refrigerator would last longer. Back at the table she glanced outside. She froze when she saw a figure silhouetted against the tree at the base of the path up to the house. She blinked in disbelief and stared harder into the storm, but now she couldn’t make out a thing.

Nobody would be outside in this weather, at least nobody with any working brain cells. She held her breath and waited for the next flash of lightning, but when it finally came, nothing looked out of the ordinary. She told herself she just wasn’t comfortable in the house, that her first days here had taken a toll and she hadn’t yet slept well. She seated herself and began to move puzzle pieces back and forth.

Until somebody banged on the front door.

Her heart thundered, and she leaped to her feet. Frantically she tried to think of something to do. Before she could, the door opened and a figure in black slipped inside.

The door closed behind him, and a familiar male voice cut through the silence. “They didn’t teach you anything in prison? Don’t you know better than to leave a door unlocked when you’re in the middle of nowhere, Baby Duck?”

Cristy didn’t speak. She didn’t even chide herself for forgetting to lock the door after dragging the cushions inside. For once in her life there was no time to remind herself she was worthless. She was too busy figuring out how best to survive this encounter.

“Now, is that any way to greet me?” Jackson Ford stripped off a dark hooded jacket, then he stamped his boot-clad feet, as if to shake off the worst of the rain.

She made herself speak and hoped she could sound as calm as her words. “Isn’t there usually a pause between knocking on a door and trying the doorknob?”

“I figured if you didn’t want a visitor, you would be locked up tight. You have to be careful of the messages you send. Didn’t your mommy and daddy teach you that?”

He stepped out of the doorway and into the glow of a floor lamp. His black hair was slightly longer than she remembered, but not unkempt. Of course that made sense, since Jackson paid close attention to the way he looked. The stubble on his cheeks was carefully trimmed to appear rugged but neat, and he was tan enough to look as though he spent time tramping through the woods or casting flies in a mountain stream. He wasn’t thin, but there wasn’t any useless padding, either. Jackson started every morning with fifty push-ups, and even though he had only lasted one season on an Atlanta Braves farm team, he was still the star pitcher in an amateur baseball league.

He was strong and quick and, if he wanted to, he could hurt and even kill her without breaking a sweat.

“I’d like you to leave,” she said. “The unlocked door was a mistake, not an invitation.”

“Oh, I will. Maybe not right away, but I can take a hint. First tell me how you’re doing? I came all this way through that storm just to find out.”

She didn’t challenge him. She knew how foolish that would be. “How did you find me?”

He laughed a little, almost fondly. “Cristy, come on, I could find you anywhere. Streets of Shanghai, some Aborigine’s cave in the outback. Makes no difference.”

Jackson looked as though he was enjoying himself. She was sure he knew how unstrung she was by his sudden appearance, and she also knew any outward reaction would make him that much happier.

“I’m settling in,” she said.

“Are you planning to move back to Berle eventually? Come back to the old hometown where you were so well liked?”

“I don’t have any plans to move back, no.”

“And the baby? He’s doing all right with your cousin?”

Jackson knew everything, and he was here to make that clear. Where she lived. Where their son lived. Who was taking care of him.

She steeled herself. “He’s doing fine. You met my cousin’s husband. You know Wayne’ll make sure the baby’s got everything he needs.”

“A good choice, I’d say. Considering you had so few, what with you going to prison for all those months. Were you glad it was a boy?”

She shrugged.

“Michael—that’s a good name. You have my vote on that one.”

She took a deep, shaky breath. “You should go, Jackson. The storm’s only going to get worse, and you know how treacherous mountain roads can be.”

“Oh, I’m in no hurry. I’ve been driving roads like these my whole life.”

He moved closer as he spoke. She was glad the table was between them, except that she knew it wouldn’t help if Jackson lunged.

“What do you really want?” She was surprised there was only the faintest tremor in her voice. “You know if you try anything, you’ll be the first person they suspect. Everybody knows our history. Even you can’t cover up everything you do like it never happened.”

He stopped at the table’s edge. “I don’t know why you’d say something like that. Me? I’m an open book. It still hurts that you tried to frame me for stealing that ring. You got caught with it, and what did you do? You blamed it on the man who’d been thinking about buying it for you. Did you have time to think about that while you were in prison? Did you wonder if I would have stood by you if you hadn’t told those cops who grabbed you in the parking lot that I was the one who dropped the ring in your shopping bag?”

The scene hadn’t happened that way. At first Cristy hadn’t even considered that Jackson had put the ring in her bag. She’d been sure it was an accident, that someone had unknowingly brushed it off the counter, and it had fallen into the shopping bag filled with socks and dish towels from the Dollar General. Then, when that had seemed like too much of a stretch, she’d blamed the incident on the sales clerk, who must have hidden the ring there for some dark reason of his own. Later, though, with nothing but time to face everything that had happened, she had realized how hard that would have been for the clerk, how nearly impossible from his side of the wide display case.

Only then, sometime later in her first full day in jail, had she finally faced the truth. And only after a sleepless night had she realized that she had to tell the truth to everybody who would listen.

Jackson had never intended to marry her, even though he’d known she was carrying his child—something she had tearfully told him the previous morning. He had taken her to the jewelry store to look at rings, and then he had used her enthusiasm against her. While she had been trying on one ring, he had swept another off the counter, then easily slipped it into the bag she carried, since he was standing right beside her. He had wanted his pregnant girlfriend out of his life.

And now, months later, she finally understood all the terrible reasons why.

Her hand closed over the flashlight she’d set beside her. As a weapon it was probably useless, but the barrel was something to grip and steady her.

“There’s nobody here to hear this conversation except us,” she said. “We both know what happened. But it’s over. I’ve paid the price and it’s behind me.”

“It just confounds me, that’s all. After everything we were to each other, that you could do something like that...” He shook his head slowly. “And now I have to ask myself how I could make so many big mistakes choosing my friends. You, Kenny...” He shook his head again, as if he really couldn’t believe he had ever been such a fool.

Cristy knew better than to respond, but her hands began to shake. That he would use Kenny Glover’s name so calmly, as if it meant nothing that his best friend since childhood was about to stand trial for the murder of another of Jackson’s closest friends. Kenny, a sweet, goofy country boy who’d been known to miss a clear shot at a five-point buck just because the deer looked him in the eye.

Kenny, the man who would have given his right hand without flinching if Jackson had ever said he needed it.

“Please go,” she said.

“I just want to understand, that’s all. How I could have been so wrong. How you could have tried to destroy my name in my own hometown. How you could have thought you might get away with it.”

“That’s the hardest part for me to understand, too,” she said. “I really should have known nobody would listen.”

“But you went ahead and said those things anyway. And now sometimes I think people look at me different, you understand? Like they’ve lost a little respect. Of course maybe that’s just because they know you and I had a little fling before you got thrown in jail. And that lessens me in their eyes, because they know I made such a bad choice.”

“A little fling?”

“I never promised you anything, did I? You call it whatever you want to, Baby Duck.”

“How about a stupid mistake?”

Jackson’s brown eyes narrowed a little. She’d known women at NCCIW who had that same ability to mask their feelings, women with curiously unlined faces because they were so often expressionless. Jackson always looked pleasant, happy, even engaged. But now she saw what she hadn’t been able to see when she was so hopelessly in love with him. Jackson couldn’t show feelings he didn’t have. He could look sad, even contrite, if necessary. But on those occasions he was simply an actor demonstrating emotions for his audience.

He did feel rage, though. She’d seen that more than once and knew that rage, at least, was real for him when someone dared to cross him. A cold, thoughtful rage that was the most frightening kind of all.

With one swipe of his hand, the puzzle pieces she’d so carefully laid out fell to the floor, but his expression didn’t change. “We can talk about mistakes,” he said, as if measuring his words. “You getting yourself pregnant would be one of them. A real classic, wouldn’t you say?”

“I didn’t get myself pregnant.”

“Yeah, I guess you had a little help from somebody or other.”

Anger shot through her, but caution won. She forced herself not to respond.

“I can’t help wondering whose baby that little boy of yours is,” Jackson said. “I’ve even thought about asking for a paternity test. You ever come back to Berle for any reason, I might just have to. Seeing him everywhere, like I would, that could surely make it hard to ignore the possibility he’s mine.”

Now she knew exactly why he had come, but she had to ask, to hear him finally say the words. “Why would you do that, Jackson? Then you would have to be responsible for child support.”

“Oh, if I found out he was mine, I’d have to let a judge decide a lot of things, that’s for sure. Like who he should live with, for starters. A felon like yourself, or the son and heir of Pinckney Ford, with everything the Ford family has to offer a boy?”

And there it was. The real threat, worse than Jackson’s presence here, a threat to the child they had created together. If she ever returned to Berle, if she ever told anyone what she knew about the murder of Duke Howard and the evidence against Kenny Glover, if she ever tried to incriminate Jackson in any crime again, she would lose custody, and he would turn the boy into a copy of himself.

The entire conversation was a sham. Jackson knew Michael was his. He knew he was the only man she had ever had sex with. And that was what it had been. Not making love, as she’d believed at the time. Sex, manipulation, lies.

“I am not coming back,” she said.

He gave a short nod, as if it pleased him to hear it. “So what will you do instead? Where will you go? Because this place?” He gestured to the room around him. “It’s nice enough, I guess, considering where you’ve been these past months, but it’s kind of dangerous, don’t you think? You out here so far away from any neighbors? A stranger in the area, too. And I guess you can’t get a gun to protect yourself, you being a felon and all. Besides, we know you don’t like guns.”

Her throat constricted. She couldn’t answer.

He went on, as if she had. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Maybe I’m just worried about that boy of yours. People around me keep dying. You know, like Duke, then Kenny? I mean, Kenny might as well be sitting on death row already. And I’m guessing you didn’t hear about that pretty Nan Tyler who managed the Dairy Queen out on Freygale Road? She got killed in a car accident not too long ago. I knew her pretty well.” He grinned. “Had for some time, as it happens. What a shame that was.”

She tried to swallow, but nausea welled inside her. She felt as if she might get sick right there.

“You just make sure you make provisions for that little boy,” Jackson said. “You just never know what the future could hold.”

The blast of a car horn from somewhere below coincided with a huge clap of thunder. Cristy jumped at the noise, then she bolted around the table and stumbled toward the kitchen and the bathroom beyond. She would not be sick in front of Jackson.

She vomited into the toilet, bending low and growing faint as she did. Tears welled in her eyes. When she finally and slowly straightened, wiping her face on the hand towel behind the toilet, she fully expected to find Jackson standing behind her. And what would he do? Torture her more? Make additional not-so-subtle threats? Stop playing cat and mouse and simply do his worst?

But Jackson wasn’t there. She was alone. She ran water in the sink and splashed it on her face. When he still didn’t appear, she considered locking herself in the bathroom, but that would infuriate him, and he could make quick work of the lock on the door anyway.

She peered into the kitchen, but he wasn’t there, either. She wondered if he had come to the house with somebody else who had gotten tired of waiting. Maybe Jackson was down at the car now, explaining he hadn’t finished harassing her—or worse. Maybe she had time to lock the front door.

She crept through the kitchen and into the living area. She was halfway to the door when it opened again. The man standing on the porch this time wasn’t Jackson Ford. He was taller, lankier and certainly not smiling.

But as her father had so often told his flock, the devil’s closet holds endless disguises.

Chapter Eight

GEORGIA KNEW SHE was in trouble when she spent more than five minutes trying to decide what to wear for dinner with Lucas Ramsey.

The rain was a factor, of course. With it had come a blast of Arctic cold, so she wanted to stay warm and dry. Pizza meant jeans or khakis and a sweater, but her favorite sweater needed to be washed. When she realized she was dithering, she settled on a creamy Aran knit she’d bought on a trip to Ireland and brown corduroy pants. But even while she pretended this was all about the weather, a no-nonsense voice in her head pointed out that she had nylon athletic pants and a windbreaker that would do the job perfectly.

The truth was she was hoping to make a better impression than that.

Her own tiny house was in Woodfin on the road between Asheville and Weaverville, although both towns were part of the greater metropolitan Asheville area. Woodfin was a town of about three thousand, and Weaverville was somewhat smaller and more picturesque, although she usually traveled into Asheville proper for shopping and dinner, because that was where Sam and Edna lived.

She parked on the street just down from the restaurant and grabbed her umbrella. She hadn’t eaten at Blue Mountain Pizza, but she knew the place by reputation. Usually it would be crowded, but on a Monday night in the pouring rain, she suspected they would have their pick of tables.

Lucas was waiting at a corner table and stood when she entered. The room was friendly, with lemony walls and cozy dark woodwork and bar. Although it probably wasn’t as busy as usual, it was still crowded, with the tables pushed close and people laughing. Best of all, it smelled heavenly. Garlic, oregano, freshly baked pizza crust. Fatigue melted away and anticipation ignited.

She took the chair across from Lucas and smiled, glad the place was noisy and casual. “The perfect antidote for a long day and too much rain.”

“I’m looking forward to warmer weather and outdoor seating. They have live music tonight, but we’re a little early.”

She removed her raincoat and settled in, stilling her hands when she realized they were fluttering along a coat sleeve like a girl on her first date. “I don’t live far away. I just never seem to make it up here.”

Their server, a young man in a black T-shirt sporting the restaurant logo, came to take their drink order. Lucas ordered a local beer, and Georgia asked the server to make it two. After consultation Lucas added an order of garlic knots as a starter, a delicacy for which the place was well-known.

She was glad she didn’t have to wait until the pizza arrived. She’d missed lunch entirely.

“So you’re new to the area?” she asked after the server left.

“I’ve been here about two months. I live over the hill from the Nedley farm. My house belongs to a friend, who uses it in the summers. He’s out of the country for a year, so he’s renting it to me.”

“What brought you here?”

Their beer arrived before he could answer, along with a promise that the garlic knots would be out soon. Lucas held up his mug in toast, and she tapped hers against it.

“I’m a journalist,” he said. “In Atlanta, although these days I’m just a guest columnist. Newspapers are hanging on by their fingernails.”

“So your job was...compressed?”

He smiled at her word choice. “It was compressed, but that was my choice. I’m also a novelist. I write a mystery series about an Atlanta cop. The books have done surprisingly well, and I decided that’s what I wanted to concentrate on.”

She was embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I don’t read mysteries, so your name’s not familiar.”

“What do you read?”

“Nonfiction mostly. Biography, memoir, psychology.”

“And education, I bet.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Don’t worry. Police procedurals aren’t everybody’s cup of tea. But I started out in the Metro section and spent so much time in police stations trying to get the real scoop that finally my main character, a detective named Zenzo Brown, just came to life and started making demands.”

“That must be pretty amazing. Like having an imaginary friend. My daughter had one of those for years, until third grade. Then Marigold just up and left. I think I missed her more than Samantha did.”

“So you have kids?”

“Just one, and she’s thirty. But I have a fabulous granddaughter.”

“And no husband.”

Lucas had changed into jeans and a sage-green sweatshirt over the shirt he had worn earlier, and if anything, he looked even more attractive. They had to lean forward to be heard, and their noses almost touched. She tried to remember the last time she’d sat this close to a man who wasn’t on the BCAS faculty.

She tried to remember the last time she had wanted to.

“I had one,” she said. “He died a long time ago. In Beirut, when the marine barracks were bombed. I haven’t wanted another.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. He was a good man, and he was cheated out of watching his daughter grow up.”

“I was married, too. She didn’t want kids, but she didn’t tell me until we were a couple of years into it. I come from this strange Scots-Italian family, and all my siblings have at least three. I thought I’d have the same. The marriage dissolved somewhere between ‘I never want to have children’ and ‘I’ve met somebody who can give me a better life.’” He gave a wry smile. “I was easily fooled back then, but three years of marriage and a decade and a half in the newspaper biz took care of that.”

She supposed the intimacy that had developed so quickly between them wasn’t too surprising. It was some odd kind of shorthand, like a more mature form of speed dating. Get past the preliminaries quickly, and move on...to what?

“Why are we telling each other all this?” she asked, since the question intrigued her and all her filters seemed to have disappeared. “We’re supposed to be talking about Dawson.”

“We’ll get to him.”

The garlic knots arrived with marinara dipping sauce. They conferred for a moment and, before their server disappeared again, ordered a large Carolina Dreamin’ pizza to share.

“I need to be honest with you. I actually know more about you than I’ve let on,” Lucas said. “Before I approached you about Dawson, I wanted to know who I was dealing with. So I looked you up online. I can’t seem to help myself. It’s my journalist genes.”

She set down her mug, not all that surprised, but definitely disappointed. “Please tell me my life has nothing to do with a story you’re planning.”

He looked sympathetic. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

She decided he was being honest and hoped her instincts were good.

“The Sweatshirt Baby,” he said.

Georgia thought of the article she’d pulled out of the envelope a little more than an hour ago. “It’s surprising how that still comes back to haunt me.”

“I imagine you got used to it somewhere along the way.”

“No, there was actually a long period of time when nobody pieced together the sad story of my birth with the one about a young widow working on her doctorate in education.”

“Then you were made the headmistress of the most exclusive private school in the Asheville area, and somebody dug a little and made the connection.”

“And it came up again when I got this new position.”

His gaze was warm and locked with hers. “I didn’t mean to invade your privacy.”

“I have no privacy. Not since the morning a woman gave birth unexpectedly and left a premature baby in a hospital sink wrapped in a University of Georgia sweatshirt. There was very little chance I’d be left alone after that.”

He didn’t offer sympathy, for which she was grateful. “It was a lot more than I expected to find. All I wanted was some hint on how to approach you. Your educational philosophy, maybe.”

That struck her as funny, and she gave a low laugh, which broke the tension. “I’m sorry my history is so overwhelming.”

“I’m sorry it is, too,” he said with feeling. “But you’re the model for every kid who’s facing his own problems and doesn’t believe he’ll ever be able to make a success out of his life.”

“I gather the ‘he’ is meant to be Dawson?”

“Don’t you have a whole school full of Dawsons?”

“Well, not all of them are quite so recalcitrant.”

He sat back, as if the hard part was over. She appreciated that he’d been honest with her, and thought how unusual that was. He could so easily have pretended not to know anything.

“The story’s pretty old,” she said. “Exactly what did you ferret out?”

“What you just said. That you were left in a sink in a sweatshirt and nearly died of exposure before somebody heard you crying and found you.”

“Forever after to be known as the Sweatshirt Baby. That’s obviously where the name Georgia comes from, too. The shirt. You got that, right?”

He smiled as if he was relieved she wasn’t angry. “I did. Someone had a sense of humor.”

“I think they just called me Georgia at first as a kind of shorthand, and the name stuck. Later somebody put it on my birth certificate. It was the only legacy my mother bequeathed me. Other than leaving me in the sink instead of on the floor of a toilet stall, and wrapping me tightly in the sweatshirt, which probably saved my life.”

“They never found her?”

“Never did. It was a cause célèbre for a long time. Newspapers, magazines, cops, psychics. Everybody looked, but nobody was successful.”

She thought about the articles on her desk and the charm bracelet. “Nobody cares anymore,” she said, without the level of certainty she would have managed before that discovery. “Now when they trot out the story, it’s to show what a person can survive if she has the fortitude.”

“What did you survive?”

“Well, first I survived being more than two months premature and abandoned. Then I survived surgery to repair a faulty valve in my heart. By then most of the offers of adoption had waned, and the one that didn’t was from a couple with no experience raising children, much less a child who’d spent the first year and a half of her life connected to monitors and machines. They returned me to the state when I turned five.”

“That’s hard to fathom.”

Georgia couldn’t imagine it, either, but her fuzzy memories of those years weren’t happy, and now she thought she’d been lucky her adoptive parents had given up trying to raise her.

“After that I went to foster care and treatment programs because nobody had done me any favors emotionally. At eleven the state placed me on a farm with an experienced foster mom with four special-needs kids. Arabella was seventy-two, if you can believe that, and still full of energy. She sat me down and told me to make a list of all the things I planned to do to make her life miserable, so she could tell me why none of them would work. Then she said the only way I’d leave that placement was if she left first in a coffin, and she wanted me to know she would be watching her back.”

“Some woman.”

“Arabella saved my life. She had a gift for giving comfort and attention when it was needed and ignoring all of us when that was needed, too. She kept me so busy that I didn’t have the energy to run away or cause trouble. Eventually, for the first time, I felt safe. No one tried to smother me with pity or love. Arabella and the other children took whatever affection I could manage, and they didn’t expect anything more. From the moment I arrived, I was treated like I belonged there. Before long I did.”

Georgia realized how much she’d just said. She also realized that Lucas had wanted to hear it all, that her life actually interested him.

He affirmed her theory. “I’m betting that Arabella was the driving force behind your desire to help children with problems. What a role model.”

“Let’s talk about you. Are you up here because Asheville’s a good place to work on another novel?”

“But my life is so boring in comparison.”

“Let me be the judge.”

He gave a slight shrug and reached for another garlic knot. “The beginnings of another novel, yes, but something more interesting, too. A cookbook.”

“You cook, too? You write, you research, you cook?”

“My cop cooks. Zenzo’s a gourmet chef. When he’s not solving unspeakable crimes, he’s in the kitchen. My publisher got so many requests for Zenzo’s recipes they asked me to produce them.”

“You must cook, too. Surely they aren’t asking somebody who can’t boil an egg to write a gourmet cookbook. They would use a ghost writer.”

“I cook. Actually I cook well. I’m looking forward to cooking for you.”

Deep inside she could feel how quickly everything was proceeding. Yet as cautious as she normally was, she had no desire to put on the brakes. She was old enough, confident enough, to take a chance now. There had been men in her life since Samuel, but the relationships had, for the most part, been superficial. One, which had lasted nearly a year, had never reached the intimacy she felt tonight with Lucas. Not only was she entranced with the way one dimple creased his cheek and the way his hair swirled back from a slight widow’s peak, she was moved by the way they had simply slid into each other’s life stories. No fuss, no bother, no tension.

“I’ll look forward to your cooking,” she said. “But I won’t return that favor unless you’re a fan of grilled cheese and tomato soup.”

“Dawson,” he said, as if he was reminding both of them. “Let’s get him out of the way right now. I know you can’t talk about how he’s doing in school, but his mother’s talked to me. He’s ripping her heart to shreds. Nothing they do at home is making a difference. The thing is, I don’t think they’re doing the right things. They just clamp down harder and harder on him. His father only cares if he gets a diploma, then he wants him to work full-time on the farm.”

“Dawson has mentioned that,” she said, carefully.

“They lost their older son in Iraq two years ago. He wanted to be a farmer. He was suited for it, and he loved the place. He and his dad had all kinds of plans for the future. Dawson is somebody else entirely, but I don’t think his father sees that. He thinks Dawson’s being willful and hard work will straighten him out.”

“If only life were that easy.”

“I think Dawson has a superior IQ. He’s interested in a million things his father thinks of as affectations. The Nedleys love that boy. No mistake about it. They just don’t understand him.”

So far there was nothing Lucas had said that Georgia could disagree with. She had picked up on the tension, although she hadn’t known about the soldier brother.

“What are you proposing?” she asked.

“I’ve befriended him. I like this kid a lot, and he’s always glad to be at my place away from his father’s constant demands. But it would help me if I knew a little more about what’s happening at school and how I could encourage him to hang in there and finish strong. Is there any way we can work that out without breaching confidentiality?”

“I’ll call his mother. I assume she’s the more flexible of the two?”

“She’s torn between Dawson and his dad. But she doesn’t want to lose another son.”

“If I get her permission—and Dawson’s, too—we’ll find a way to work together.”

“Together. I like the sound of that.” The lone dimple deepened.

Despite a lifetime of caution, she was afraid that she liked it, too.

Chapter Nine

“MA’AM, ARE YOU all right?”

Cristy wasn’t all right. Her stomach was still churning, despite having nothing left inside it, and her legs were threatening to buckle.

She stood her ground anyway. “Why are you here?”

Deputy Jim Sullivan, the same Jim Sullivan who had arrested her last year, didn’t move forward, although Cristy could see rain gusting across the porch in his direction. “Are you all right?” he repeated.

She was absolutely certain she would never be all right again.

“Did you come with him?” she demanded. “Did you come to torture me, too?”

Then a new thought occurred to her. Was it possible Jackson was still in the house? Had he slipped upstairs while she was in the bathroom? Was he waiting until he could be alone with her?

“I came by myself, not with Ford,” he said. “I came to be sure you’re all right. Are you?”

She didn’t know how to answer. She couldn’t think. As incongruous as it seemed, was she being flanked by a pair of sociopaths? Would Jackson sneak up on her any moment and attack from behind?

The deputy obviously saw her distress. He stepped inside, but he didn’t close the door, as if he knew that would send her over the edge.

“Look, I know you got out of prison on Friday, and your sister told me you were up here somewhere, although she didn’t have an address. I figured Ford had learned where you were, so I decided to keep an eye on him over the weekend. This afternoon when he took off in this direction, I followed him up here. I could see what was going on from down below, enough of it, anyway, to think maybe somebody ought to break it up.”

“Did you?”

He cocked his head in question and frowned. Jim Sullivan, Sully, as his friends called him, was a serious young man, and the frown looked right at home on an otherwise ordinary face. He had been perfectly serious about arresting her in the parking lot of the local jeweler close to a year ago now, and perfectly serious about making sure his idea of justice was served.

“Did I what?” he asked, when she didn’t elaborate.

“Did you break it up?” She lowered her voice. “Is Jackson...gone?”

“Right after I honked, he came out of the house and drove off. I came in my own car, so I doubt he figured out who I was, but he wasn’t taking any chances.”

Sully wasn’t in uniform today. He wore faded jeans, a heavy canvas jacket with a hood, and athletic shoes that were probably soaked. Even if they had passed on the path, it was probable Jackson wouldn’t have recognized him.

She had to sit before she collapsed. She made it to the sofa and dropped to the farthest corner.

“Did he hurt you?” Sully asked.

“I don’t get it. Why would you care?” Her voice was trembling now, and so was she.

“It’s getting cold in here. I’m going to close the door, okay? But I’m not here to hurt you. Can you give me that much credit?”

She was trying so hard not to cry that she couldn’t answer. She put her face in her hands and took deep breaths.

“Here.”

She lifted her head and saw he was three feet in front of her, an afghan that had been draped over a nearby chair in one hand. He held it out to her, but he kept his distance.

She snatched it and wrapped it around her, too cold, too miserable, to pretend she didn’t need the warmth.

“It was dark outside, and the lamps were on in here. It looked like he was threatening you,” Sully said. “You could file a complaint.”

“Oh, right. I have such influence with law enforcement.” She pulled the afghan tighter. “He didn’t hurt me. At least not the way that would worry somebody like you.”

“Good.”

She looked up at him, finally focusing on what he had said earlier. “Clara? You’ve been talking to my sister about me?” Clara was in school in Oklahoma training to be a missionary. Unlike Cristy, she had found solace and comfort in their father’s religion.

Sully pulled down his jacket hood, and his short brown hair glistened with rain. “More like she’s been talking to me about you. Calling every day or two. We were in school together. She’s worried about you being up here all alone, and she wanted me to find you. She’s no fan of Ford’s.”

“Really? You mean there’s another person in the universe who doesn’t think Jackson Ford ought to run for president?”

He didn’t answer.

Cristy still wasn’t thinking straight. Nothing he’d said rang true. She started with the obvious. “So my sister says she’s worried about me, and all of a sudden you’re keeping an eye on Jackson? A year ago I told you and Sheriff Carter that Jackson framed me when he put that ring in my bag. Neither of you paid a bit of attention. So you’ll have to excuse me, but I’m having problems believing a word you say.”

“Look, it makes sense, doesn’t it, that if Jackson came looking for you, his intentions wouldn’t be the best? You said it yourself. Last year you pointed the finger of guilt straight at him. Of course he’s not going to be happy about that. I’m not even on duty today, but when I saw him heading out of town, I just figured I’d better follow, in case he was coming up to see you and got violent. Now that I’ve seen for myself that he knows where you live, I’m going to tell him to leave you alone.”

She tried to imagine Sully “happening” on Jackson driving out of town, then following him here on a whim. It didn’t make sense.

“You tell Jackson anything you want to,” she said. “He won’t listen.”

“Then maybe you’d better find another place to go.”

“Right, I have so many choices.”

“Clara says she’ll buy you a ticket to Oklahoma to be with her. She would tell you herself, but she doesn’t have your phone number.”

She felt a pang of guilt for not calling the moment she had arrived, but Clara was always sure she knew what was best for her little sister. Cristy knew if she was ever going to stand on her own two feet, she had to figure things out on her own.

“Clara already made that offer while I was still in Raleigh,” she told Sully. “I have a baby living in North Carolina. I can’t leave the state.”

“You would be safer.”

“Jackson will find me if he wants me. He told me as much today.”

He moved over to the chair he’d taken the afghan from and perched on the edge of the seat. “What else did he tell you?”

“I’m not under any obligation to report it.”

“I know. But if something happens up here...”

“If something happens? Like he tries to kill me—or does? You’d like to know if he warned me that he planned to?”

He didn’t answer.

She studied him. Jim Sullivan was older than she was, but a little younger than Jackson. He had been a few years farther along in school than she was, although she’d been held back a year, in the days when teachers still thought they had a chance of getting through to her. If he’d graduated in Clara’s class, he was probably twenty-six. She remembered that back then he’d always looked underfed, rangy, even gangly, and that he had played basketball, maybe even been a star, although she’d hated school so much she hadn’t gone to any activity she hadn’t been forced to attend.

The present-day Sully wasn’t really good-looking, but he had the bone structure of someone who would age well, the kind of face an artist lives to draw, the kind of face she had liked to draw before her father decided art classes were a privilege she didn’t deserve. Under better circumstances she might have thought Sully had nice eyes, too. But she had learned that eyes were not the window of the soul.

She didn’t know why she answered, but in the end, what difference did it make, except to encourage him to leave?

“Jackson made it clear I’d better not come back to Berle,” she said. “And he made it clear if I did, or if I said anything bad about him to anyone, that he might just take a paternity test so he can get custody of my son.”

“Could he do that?”

“What, take the test? Anybody can take a test. Will it say he’s the father? What do you think?”

“What I think doesn’t much matter.”

“I only wish it weren’t true. I wish anybody, anybody, else was Michael’s father, but it’s a little late for that.”

“The baby’s not here with you, I take it.”

“He’s with my cousin in Mars Hill.”

“That’s a long way to go to see him.”

Cristy shrugged.

“He’s doing okay?”

“I hear he is.” Then to keep him from asking, she added, “I haven’t seen him yet. Which is my business, so stay out of it.”

He switched the subject so quickly she wondered if he had planned to anyway. “Did Jackson threaten you physically?”

She gave a bitter laugh. “He’s not stupid. You don’t know him at all, do you? He just talked about Kenny—”

“Kenny Glover?”

“You do work for the sheriff’s department, right? You know Kenny Glover, Duke Howard and Jackson used to be best friends?”

“I know some, yeah.”

“Then you should figure out why he mentioned Kenny.”

“I know just about the time you were arrested, Kenny Glover killed Duke Howard in a fight in the woods, and Duke’s body wasn’t found until a hunter stumbled on it a couple of weeks later. I know Kenny admits he beat up Duke in a fight out there, even if he doesn’t admit he shot him. I don’t know what that has to do with you.”

She knew reminding Sully that Kenny, who had not yet stood trial, was innocent until proven guilty would only make things worse. Her credibility was already in tatters.

“What did he say about Kenny?” Sully asked, when she didn’t go on.

“That too many of his own friends were dying. Okay? Duke’s gone, and now Kenny’s probably going to end up on death row.”

“So that’s all he said?”

Cristy wanted this to be over. “He mentioned some woman named Nan. Probably a girlfriend I didn’t know anything about. He said she died in an accident. He was dredging up sad stories to make his point, to let me know that all kinds of people die young.”

Sully sat stone-faced. She was sure he didn’t see how any of this added up to a real threat against her life.

“So now you know the whole pitiful tale.” Cristy gestured toward the door. “He didn’t touch me. He didn’t tell me outright he would hurt me. He didn’t even threaten our son, not the usual way. He just said if I moved back to Berle, and he had to see Michael every day, he might have to ask for custody, seeing as how he’d be feeling all paternal.”

“And after all that, you’re planning to stay on here?”

“I’m going to stay away from Berle for good, and if I’m lucky, Jackson will return the favor and stay away from me.”

“Doesn’t sound like you think you can count on it.”

“Doesn’t matter. I need to stay close to Michael, and I’m in no position to take him right now and raise him on my own. The people who own this house have been kind to me.”

He got to his feet. “Then you’d better find a way to protect yourself.”

She wondered what he thought she should do. Sleep with a butcher knife? Nail all the windows shut?

“North Carolina’s made absolutely sure I can’t do that,” she said. “Jackson reminded me himself. Felon plus gun equals a return trip to prison.”

“It was more luck than anything else that I followed him here today. I’ll try to keep an eye on things, but I can’t make any promises.”

“Why should you? What does it matter? So you happen to know my sister, and she bugged you into checking on me. Knowing Clara didn’t stop you from thinking I stole that ring.”

“That was last year,” he said cryptically.

“Right. A year I lost.”

“A year is better than a life. Be careful. Keep the doors locked, the windows closed, the telephone handy.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a pad of paper, jotted something on it and handed it to her. “This is my cell phone. Call me immediately if he harasses you.”

She didn’t take it. “You have a good night, deputy.”

He met her eyes. He continued to hold out the paper until she sighed and took it. Then, shaking his head, he went to the door. When he got there, he turned. “Lock up.”

“You really don’t know Jackson Ford, do you? Not if you think the puny lock on that door would make a difference.”

He closed the door gently behind him, but she realized he was waiting on the porch for her to follow his order. She got up and locked the door, which she would have done without his advice. The lock wouldn’t stop Jackson, but at least she would know he was coming in before he got there.

Only when the bolt turned with a sharp snap did she hear Sully’s retreating footsteps.

Chapter Ten

BY FRIDAY AFTERNOON, no student had stopped by to claim the mysterious charm bracelet, and a thorough search of Georgia’s desk hadn’t turned up anything else out of the ordinary. There was no note or letter to go with the bracelet and newspaper clippings. Whoever had left them had not included an explanation.

Casual inquiries of office staff—she hadn’t wanted to stir too much curiosity—had turned up nothing new. The school office was a busy place, and papers were transferred from desk to desk as a matter of course. In addition student assistants came and went each period. No one, staff or volunteers, remembered the charm bracelet.

Georgia knew she could do one of two things. She could relegate the bracelet to lost and found, where she was almost certain it would never be claimed. Or she could face the obvious. Somebody had left the bracelet for her to find. Somebody who thought she should have it.

Somebody who wanted her to search for her mother.

The conclusion had taken days. She had rejected, then rejected again, the possibility that somebody, possibly even her mother, was playing cat and mouse. But the articles and the bracelet had appeared together, one as discordant as the other. And a more careful look at the bracelet had confirmed that it wasn’t a new one. Two charms were dated. One, an open Bible, had 6-15-59 inscribed on the back. Another, a heart—the only silver charm on a gold bracelet—said Forget Me Not on the front and 5-17-63 on the back.

Georgia had been born in 1965—on today’s date.

Staring at the bracelet after a grueling, mysterious week, she looked up from her desk when voices began a familiar song.

She smiled at her daughter and granddaughter, who were singing from the doorway.

“Happy birthday to you...”

Neither Edna nor Samantha was a talented musician, but the sentiment was welcome. She rose and held out her arms, and Edna got there first.

“Happy birthday, Grandma!”

“Now it is,” Georgia said, giving her granddaughter a warm hug.

“You didn’t think we forgot, did you?” Samantha asked. “We have such plans.”

The day hadn’t gone uncelebrated. At noon the office staff had brought in a cake, along with silly cards and a bouquet of tulips that were happily shedding petals on her desk now. But with the advent of Samantha and Edna, the big event seemed real.

“Next year I go into mourning,” Georgia said, embracing her daughter, too. “So let’s celebrate the heck out of this one.”

“Fifty is nifty,” Samantha said, “but I think you ought to end your forties in style. I’m making your favorite dinner.”

“How do you know I don’t have plans?”

“I’m sneaky. I asked Marianne to peek at your appointment calendar.”

“That was sneaky. You could have asked.”

“Well, I didn’t want you to feel obligated, in case something or someone better came along.”

She knew Samantha was referring to Lucas Ramsey, who Georgia had unwisely mentioned, and who hadn’t called or dropped by since their pizza dinner. She had hoped to talk to him about an idea she had proposed that morning to Dawson, a school literary magazine, but when she hadn’t heard from Lucas, she’d forged ahead without his input.

With some disappointment.

She ignored Samantha’s hint and moved on. “Let me get my things, then I’m out of here.”

“Hard week?”

Georgia hesitated. “An interesting week. I’ll tell you about it over some of your fabulous tea.”

“Do you want to go home and change, or can you follow us back?”

Georgia opted for the latter, and twenty minutes later she was parking in the circular driveway that took up the front yard of her daughter’s brick bungalow. The house was the smallest on the block, as if it had been squeezed in by taking slivers of the yards surrounding it. There was no place back or front for Edna to hang out with her friends, but there was a playground not too far away as a substitute. The neighborhood was safe and quiet, and the rent was cheap, virtues that had kept Samantha from looking for something larger.

Samantha and Edna emerged from their bright yellow VW, and the three women went inside together. Georgia laughed when she saw that the tiny living room had been festively adorned with streams of red-and-blue crepe paper and clusters of balloons.

“You went to so much work!” She hugged Edna again, sure this had been her granddaughter’s idea.

“I love birthdays.”

“And people will love you for making them special.”

“Take off your jacket,” Samantha said. “And I’ll make tea. Edna made some goodies to have with it.”

Georgia settled herself on Samantha’s comfortable couch. Her daughter had surprising talent as a seamstress, and she had made wonderful slipcovers and cushions to hide and dress up the unfortunate orange upholstery that had made the couch affordable. The slipcovers were a tweedy camel, and the cushions were rainbow-hued in different patterns and sizes.

Georgia had no idea where her daughter’s talent had come from. She herself had trouble threading a needle, and not because she couldn’t see. Samantha’s father had been an adoptee, so his birth family’s special abilities were a mystery.

Now she wondered if someone in her own family, some distant blood relative, had unknowingly passed on her talent with a sewing needle to Samantha. And, of course, that brought the charm bracelet to mind. Because one of the charms was a sewing machine.

Samantha brought in two glasses of iced herbal tea sweetened with honey and fragrant with lemon. Edna, who loved to cook, came out to serve something she called “devils on horseback,” which were dates wrapped in bacon, broiled and served on toothpicks. Along with them she’d made a cheese ball, which she served with crackers. Edna looked for recipes online the way most girls her age searched for news of their favorite boy band.

“I am impressed,” Georgia said. “This is amazing.”

Happy with the praise, Edna went back into the kitchen to work on something else she was creating for dinner, while her mother and grandmother enjoyed the first course.

“I made the main dish, but she wanted to do everything else,” Samantha said. “This week she’s talking about becoming a chef.”

Georgia thought of Lucas. “She can be anything she wants. Personally I’m voting for a brain surgeon who gives fabulous dinner parties for relaxation.”

“Sometimes I don’t know where that girl comes from.”

Georgia knew better than to point out that Samantha was the only one who did. Edna’s father was a mystery she never discussed. But the statement was a great lead-in to the subject she’d wanted to talk to her daughter about.

“I have something to show you. Something odd. Edna’s seen it already, but she doesn’t know how odd it really is.”

Samantha looked intrigued. Georgia reached for her purse and brought out the charm bracelet. She left the newspaper articles for later. She held out the bracelet, and Samantha took it.

“Is this yours?” Samantha examined the bracelet, charm by charm, then she looked up when Georgia didn’t answer. “I’ve never seen you wear it.”

“I found it, or rather I should say Edna did. Last week before we went out to the Goddess House. She was playing with it when I finally got back to my office. She said she’d found it on the corner of my desk.”

“Do you know how it got there?”

“I don’t. Nor this.” She took out the envelope and handed it to her daughter.

Samantha dropped the bracelet in her lap and carefully opened the envelope. She unfolded the articles and scanned the top one. Then she looked up.

“This is beyond strange.”

Georgia had been sure Samantha would see it that way, too.

“The thing is, if you look closely at the charms, you’ll see that one of them is the University of Georgia bulldog. And there are two dates before I was born. This wasn’t accidentally left by a student, as I first thought. I think it was left there for me. I think it may have belonged to my mother.”

“Whoa...” Samantha frowned. “Kind of an odd way of dropping back into your life after forty-nine years, wouldn’t you say?”

“Odd and unforgivable. All these years later to contact me with no way for me to contact her back?”

“There was nothing else with it?”

Georgia explained everything she had done so far to figure out where the bracelet had come from. “I can’t ask more questions,” she finished. “I don’t need a bunch of amateur sleuths digging into my past.”

Samantha thumbed through the other articles, then she folded them and put them back in the envelope. “Somebody went to too much trouble for this to be a prank.”

“These clippings have seen better days. They’re originals. And who would do something like this, anyway? It’s not a threat. It’s not like somebody could blackmail me with the story of my birth. It’s already out there. So, now what do I do?”

Samantha was examining each charm for a better look. “What can you do?”

“I can wait for whoever did this to reveal themselves. Maybe they’ll contact me directly, or maybe they’ll leave my mother’s diary or childhood photo albums on my desk.”

“This was strange enough, although maybe they will contact you. Maybe this was just to get you in the mood to hear the truth.”

“It’s been a week now. I think if they were going to contact me directly, they would have.”

Samantha looked up, having gone through all the charms. “So waiting’s probably not going to answer your questions.”

“I can try to find her myself.”

Samantha nodded, as if she was waiting for more.

“You know I’ve never looked. There was no reason I’d be more successful than the pros who looked at the time.”

“But now you have this. A bracelet of clues.”

“A good way to put it. Although are they good enough clues? And do I want to know?”

“I can’t answer the first question, and I don’t think you can, either, until you try to follow the trail. But can you answer the second? Because you’re the only one who has to.”

“It’s been years since I wished I knew the full story. Whoever left me in that hospital sink was probably young, probably terrified and definitely self-centered enough to worry more about what might happen to her than what would happen to me. She wasn’t checked in as a patient, so the experts guessed she came to the hospital in the final throes of labor, and from all signs, she had me in the same room where she abandoned me. I decided that’s all I ever really needed to know. But now?” She took the bracelet out of Samantha’s lap.

“Now your curiosity is piqued.”

“I look at you and at Edna, and I wish I could warn you about all the minefields in my family’s past. Wouldn’t you like to know if diabetes or breast cancer are common in the family so you can be extravigilant? Or a hundred other things? We can never know about your dad’s biological family, but maybe we could solve half the equation.”

“It would be nice, sure, but is that what’s most important? Don’t you need to put this first chapter of your life to rest? You say you have, and I think you’ve done everything you could. But now you have another chance to learn what you need to know, once and for all.”

“Then you think I should pursue this?”

“As long as you realize it might be a dead end. It’s not much to go on. But if you did discover something important, wouldn’t that be the best birthday present you could give yourself?”

Edna came to the doorway. “Your timer’s going off.”

Georgia realized she could hear beeping from the kitchen.

“Would you turn off the oven?” Samantha asked her daughter. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Edna disappeared again.

“Thanks,” Georgia said. “I’ll give it more thought.”

“Nothing can top the bracelet as a subject, but before everything else gets away from us, have you given any more thought to teaching Cristy to read? If she’ll let you?”

Georgia was surprised her daughter had waited this long to ask, but Samantha was a patient woman. “I’m not sure she’ll be willing. She’s very closed off to the world right now.”

“That makes sense, don’t you think? The world closed her off, for a crime she says she didn’t commit.”

“Sam, don’t you think that’s what most inmates say? It’s part of a pattern. If they don’t admit to a crime, they don’t have to take responsibility.”

“I do know that, of course. But there’s more to this story than we know. She admits to one shoplifting offense as a teenager, but not to the one that landed her in Raleigh.”

“Whether she did it or she didn’t, do you have any real sense she wants her life to change?”

“Who can say but her?”

Georgia asked the question that most puzzled her. “What did you see in this girl that convinced you to help her? You told all of us the facts, but I don’t think you ever got down to the heart of it.”

Samantha laughed softly. “Nothing like a mother.”

“It might help me decide.”

Samantha hesitated, then she rested her hand on her mother’s knee. “I saw me. I looked into Cristy’s eyes and I saw a girl at the crossroads, just the way I stood at that same crossroads in my own life after I ran that car into a ditch. The feeling, the impact—they’re not something you ever forget. And I’ll tell you truthfully, I didn’t necessarily see that in the eyes of the other inmates I taught. But I sure saw it in hers.”

“Mom!” Edna shouted from the kitchen.

Samantha got to her feet. “You’ll think about it?”

“No,” Georgia said. “I guess I’ll do it. I’ve stood at a few crossroads myself. Cristy will need all the help we can give her to figure out which direction to go.”

Chapter Eleven

BY SATURDAY JACKSON hadn’t returned. Cristy still didn’t feel secure—she wasn’t sure she would ever feel secure again—but she had stopped jumping at every noise. Each evening since his visit she had checked windows and doors to the point of obsession, and now she slept on the sofa in the living room, where she would know immediately if someone tried to break in.

Despite her fear she was praying that, having delivered his message, Jackson was confident he had scared her into both submission and silence. Also, if Sully really had warned him to leave her alone, Jackson would know the deputy had his eye on the situation, making it more difficult to come after her.

The rain had slowed on Tuesday, and by Wednesday she had ventured out for her first walk alone. As a child she had been fearless, escaping the parsonage as often as possible to explore the streets and fields of Berle. In those days she had always trusted her ability to find her way home, but now she had to force herself to range a little farther every day. She kept busy on the walks gathering interesting dried weeds and grasses, using stem cutters Betsy’s daughter had sent, and arranging the cuttings in a motley assortment of vases and pots.

On Friday she managed to pull her car out of the barn and drive a few miles on the rural road, the smooth pull of the steering wheel under her hands a reminder of Jackson.

The first time she had met the man who’d almost destroyed her, she had been visiting his father’s “pre-owned” car dealership. Pinckney Motors was a rite of passage for Berle teenagers, an expansive lot just outside the city limits where everyone went to buy their first car.

Cristy’s first had come years later than most. Passing the written driver’s test had been a significant hurdle, which she had finally surmounted by asking for an oral one, despite a realistic fear that the word would get out. The next hurdle had been saving enough money to buy a car outright, since once she quit school her parents had washed their hands of her, and she had no credit to get a loan. She was almost twenty-one before she managed to save enough to buy something reliable. Until then she had used Betsy’s delivery van, but buying her own car? That was a dream come true.

The minute she stepped onto the lot, one of the older salesmen grabbed her to extoll the virtues of every car in her meager price range, none of which had looked like a good bet to her. Then he fell silent, and she looked up to discover that a younger man had waved him away.

The new man, with a blinding white smile and eyes so dark the pupils were lost, was Jackson Ford, son of Pinckney, who owned not only the car lot, but the General Motors dealership, the Buy-Now Supermarket, the two Laundromats that flanked a four-block stretch of Main Street, and the road construction company that got the contract for every stretch of asphalt in the county. Jackson had been just old enough that Cristy hadn’t known him at school, and after graduation he had gone away to college before dropping out a few years later to give professional baseball a try.

Immediately she realized that Jackson was planning to sell her more than a car. He listened to her requirements with respect and interest, asked about her preferences for foreign or domestic, automatic or stick shift, and somehow, as they discussed cars, he discovered everything that was most important about her.

By the time Cristy went home that day, she had promises that the late-model Subaru she liked would be hers, and that when she picked it up, every dent, speck of rust and rattle under the hood would be gone.

She was only able to afford the car because Jackson nonchalantly slashed the price by a third.

He had been as good as his word, and once the papers had been signed, he had taken her out on the town to celebrate. By the end of the next week he had taken her to bed.

While she was in prison, Cristy had fully expected the car to be towed back to Pinckney Motors due to some technicality. When it came right down to it, she had no idea what she’d signed that Friday evening in Jackson’s office. Betsy had offered to come with her, but Cristy hadn’t wanted to be embarrassed in front of a man she’d already begun to dream about, so she’d bravely—foolishly—signed the papers without reading a word, and hoped for the best.

Apparently the papers, at least, had been bona fide. The man himself had been a different matter.

The car was still in surprisingly good shape, thanks to Betsy’s daughter, who had parked it behind her own house and driven it weekly to make sure it continued to run. Cristy just wondered if she would think about Jackson and the real price she had paid every time she got behind the wheel.

By Saturday midmorning the weather had cleared and warmed enough that she dragged the cushions back to the porch and took a glass of lemonade to the glider to make plans. She couldn’t continue this way. She needed to see her son. She needed to find both a way to support herself and a place to live that didn’t depend on the goodwill of others. Her mental list was short but depressing. Even now that she’d proved she could drive again, she couldn’t make herself call Berdine and set up a visit. And supporting herself and finding another place to live seemed as far away as the moon.

An hour later she was still trying to figure out a first step when she saw a car snaking its way up the steep drive toward the house. She didn’t know what Jackson was driving these days. He had access to almost any car at his father’s dealership and liked to switch often, but she imagined that this one, a dated and inexpensive sedan, had never been on his wish list.

Even knowing that, she was relieved when a woman emerged a minute later and began the climb. She was lovely and young, although as she drew closer, Cristy could see perhaps not as young as she’d assumed. Thirties, probably, dark-haired and slender in a simple green dress, with a smile she aimed at Cristy now that she’d almost reached the porch.

“I’m Analiese Wagner,” she said, as if she understood Cristy needed to know that right up front. “I’m another of the trustees. Most people call me Ana, and you must be Cristy.”

Samantha had given Cristy a brief description of each of the “goddesses” who were responsible for the decisions made here. Cristy had yet to meet Taylor, the daughter of Charlotte Hale, whose family home this had been. The only other woman she hadn’t met was Charlotte’s minister, and while the woman’s relative youth was a surprise, her appearance at the house was not.

Cristy had been half waiting for the minister to show up and insist she confess her sins and beg for forgiveness.

Despite a surge of distaste she knew something was expected of her; after all, this was one of the women who had reached out to help her. She nodded politely and held up her glass. “May I get you something to drink? I’m drinking powdered lemonade.”

“Not a thing.” Analiese joined her on the glider. “I had an unexpected break in my schedule, so I thought I’d pop up to meet you. Yesterday was Georgia’s birthday.” She paused. “We’re bombarding you with new faces. Do you remember which one of us is Georgia?”

Cristy tried not to be offended. “Yes, of course.”

“Her daughter threw a surprise party last night. A bunch of us showed up after dinner for cake and ice cream. It was pretty last-minute, but Sam hoped you could come down for the festivities. I guess she tried to get you by phone, but you weren’t answering. She’s a little worried.”

Cristy felt a stab of guilt. The telephone had rung yesterday—several times, in fact. But fearing that Jackson had gotten the number, or even Berdine or Clara, she hadn’t answered.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I... Well, it just didn’t occur to me it might be Samantha.”

Analiese drew a pillow behind her back and kicked off black flats with a thin gold band around the top. “I’ve been known to avoid phone calls if I’m afraid somebody I don’t want to talk to is on the other end of the line.”

Cristy was sorry to see the other woman making herself so comfortable. “I’m fine. Really. Nobody has to worry.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.