She can’t have the man she loves...if it means losing her child!

Alexi Docker’s a widow trying to adopt the child she and her husband had taken in. Except her new rental home turns out to be a disaster reno...and she, now single, has to prove she can give the boy everything he needs. That includes a roof over his head, four walls and running water! If not for the absentee landlady’s cranky recluse of a brother, she wouldn’t have been able to cope. But now Alexi has to choose between a man she’s growing to love and the boy she needs to adopt...because Seth Greene has a past that could ruin the adoption process.

M. K. STELMACK writes contemporary romances set in Spirit Lake, which is closely based on the small town in Alberta, Canada, where she lives with pets who outnumber the humans two to one and with dust bunnies the size of rodents—because that’s what happens when everyone in the household prefers to live in their imagination or outdoors—but she can also be found on social media, where you can share your comments on her stories or her breathless one-sentence bio on Facebook or at mkstelmackauthor.com.

A Roof Over Their Heads

M. K. Stelmack

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08091-0

A ROOF OVER THEIR HEADS

© 2018 S. M. Stelmack

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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Her hand was suddenly in his hand. He held her fingers in his tight, full grip.

This was nothing like his handshake. This was the hold of a man who felt her pain and wanted to bring her through it. “I’ll do it,” he said, his voice raw. “I’ll help. Just—just don’t beg me. I don’t want you thinking that I’m anybody other than a guy with a hammer.”

What a strange thing to say. Anybody could see he was more than that. He cleared his throat. “Besides which, Matt’s a good kid. You don’t have anything to give me, but Matt—well, you’re the only one who can give him what he needs.”

For a solid year, she’d had to prove that to teachers, adoption caseworkers, neighbors, the police. And on the worst nights, she’d lain curled on her side of the bed, knees to chin, with only the light from the phone, wondering if maybe she was wrong. To hear it now from a man who hardly spoke and when he did, it wasn’t ever complimentary... She squeezed his hand back.

“Thanks,” she whispered.

He nodded once, released her hand and crossed to the stairs. “Hey,” he called to Matt, “let me show you how to make a knot that lasts.”

Dear Reader,

Thirteen years ago, my family moved to the house in the town where we still live and which has become the focus of my fictional town, Spirit Lake. Since moving here, the town has stretched, popped up a Walmart, Canadian Tire, Sobeys and—oh, the golden standard of an Albertan town having made it big!—a Tim Horton’s.

Tim Horton’s is wholly Canadian, our blue-collar alternative to Starbucks. Actually, that partly describes this story: a blue-collar Canadian romance about finding family. It stars a woman struggling to hold her family together and a man struggling to not surrender to yet another lost cause. The glue that sticks them together is a boy who longs for a father and for his grieving heart to heal.

Serious stuff, but everyone who’s read it so far has had plenty of LOL moments. Because that’s life, right? In telling this story, I had the pleasure of introducing the hero’s siblings, whose stories will appear later this year.

To peek at what’s happening with them, you are welcome to come to my website, mkstelmackauthor.com. You can also find me on Facebook at M. K. Stelmack.

M. K. Stelmack

In Memoriam

To Sheila.

I wish you were here to read your sister’s story of love and hope—your favorite kind.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Angela Spiller, who drew from her own experiences to share the emotional and bureaucratic journey of adoption, of cobbling together strangers, needing and worthy, into a family. Thanks also to Mark Matheson at the Red Deer office of community corrections for providing insight into how community service would look like for my hero.

Thanks to my editor, Victoria Curran, who gave my life a Point of No Return, and to Astrid Theilgaard, my tried-and-true critique partner.

With this book, I’ve gained a tribe in the form of the Heartwarming Sisters, who have filled me with the conviction that our stories matter.

May I dwell long among them.

And to the Holy Spirit, who daily drags me through my character arc, abiding and chiding through my every kick and complaint.

I am blessed.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Dear Reader

Dedication

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

Extract

CHAPTER ONE

SWEAT WAS A thin glue coated on Alexi Docker, sticking her T-shirt to the driver’s seat and her hot jeans to her legs, the slimy by-product of four hours on the road with no air-conditioning and a tire change in a highway ditch.

She crawled the van with the U-Haul trailer to a stop in front of the new home, and turned to her four kids in the back seats. “So, what do you think?”

Please, please like it. Or, at least, don’t hate it.

While three-year-old Callie, behind the front passenger seat, kept her brown eyes fixed on Alexi, the other three kids regarded the white split-level and attached garage with a kind of hopeful hesitancy, as if waiting for someone to throw open the front door and boom out a welcome.

When, not surprisingly, that didn’t happen, Matt said, “Cool.”

“Where’s the backyard?” asked eight-year-old Bryn from the bench seat he shared with six-year-old Amy. The big backyard was the prime selling feature for the kids.

“Duh. Behind the house. In the back,” Amy said.

Bryn unbuckled himself. “Okay, I’m going there.”

“How about I get a picture with—” Alexi began, but Bryn had already activated the side door and hopped out. Two more buckles unclicked, and Matt and Amy cleared the van with Bryn and were racing past the house, straight for the promised land of the backyard.

“Matt,” she called, as she rounded the hood. “Stay together, okay?”

Matt, her eldest at eleven, was the family border collie, patrolling boundaries and herding the strays. He nodded once and disappeared.

That had gone rather well. No outright mutiny, at any rate. Alexi stretched, a breeze wicking away her sweat and fanning her warm face. If a bit of fresh air could do this, imagine the powers of a dip in the lake.

“How about,” she said to Callie, unclicking her car seat straps, “we all walk down to the lake this evening? Play in the water. Watch the sunset. That would make a pretty picture, wouldn’t it? Whaddaya say?”

Callie stretched out her dark arms.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ Now, let’s check out our new home.”

With Callie tucked against her left hip, Alexi opened the passenger door and leaned across for her water bottle. She took a pull from it and drew in warm air. Empty. As it had been for the last sixty miles. As were all the kids’. She needed to refill their bottles fast because a run in the backyard was going to dry out the kids even more.

She pressed to her other hip the box of essentials—toilet paper, phone charger, soap—with the water bottles piled on top. Making for the door, she looked around as she matched reality with the emailed pictures from Connie, her landlady. She didn’t remember the lawn grass rising above her ankles and the front garden a solid green rectangle of weeds. Never mind, she could mow while the kids weeded. A family activity.

Inside an old work boot by the door she found the house key as planned and, juggling it, the box and Callie, Alexi opened the door.

Fresh paint fumes gagged her and Callie buried her face against Alexi’s neck. Alexi breathed shallowly as she lowered the box to the floor. If plywood counted as a floor. The stairs, the hallway and the living room were completely stripped. Alexi stepped across protruding nail heads and wet, coppery paint splotches to the kitchen. Or where it should’ve been. There weren’t any cupboards or appliances, not even a kitchen sink. Just a space with pipes, hoses, outlets hooked up to nothing.

Was she in the right house? The address and the pics of the outside matched. The key was in the right place. She hadn’t got the dates confused. She’d talked to Connie last week, and all was a go.

Was there even water?

She hurried to the hallway bathroom, which actually had a sink and a toilet, if not a tub. She turned on the faucet and heard sputtering and a great wheezing of air in the pipes. That was it.

Seriously?

“Right. Okay,” she explained to Callie, who still had her face rooted in Alexi’s neck. “All I have to do is go to the basement, find the main water valve and turn it on.”

But first—she looked out the kitchen window into the backyard. All three were there, though Bryn was fiddling with the latch on the fence gate. She started toward the back door but then heard Matt call from the fire pit, “Hey, Bryn. Look!”

It was a stick. Bryn loved sticks. Had invented a million uses for them, and sure enough he changed course for Matt, who’d always known not to run after someone ready to bolt.

Callie pointed to them.

“Do you want to go play?” Fixing the water would go a lot easier without Callie.

Callie squirmed to get down.

“Okay, hold on. Let me carry you across this yucky floor first.” The second Alexi opened the back door, Callie shot outside. The paint fumes must be near lethal for her to leave Alexi. A good thing for once that Callie wasn’t able to tell stories. Alexi didn’t want the kids, namely Bryn, alerted to the state of the house until she got the water running.

Alexi called to Matt to watch Callie, who was already toddling toward the others. Bryn was now holding the stick, an unusual one, smooth and tapered like a baseball bat. Bryn examined it, and then squatted to rummage through the pile of firewood. Good, that should buy her time. She headed for the basement stairs, placing a call that switched to voice mail as she started down the stairs.

“Connie, this is Alexi Docker. Your tenant. I just arrived at the house, and it’s—it’s unacceptable.” She resisted saying more. The situation demanded a face-to-face meeting. “Please call me. Immediately.”

In the split second she glanced from the steps to the phone to end the call, she slipped and stumbled down the last steps onto the concrete floor, the phone skittering across the cement, screen down.

No, no, no. Not the phone, not the phone. It held everything.

She scrambled after it on hands and knees, turned it over and—yes! A smooth screen wallpapered with a shot of the kids on monkey bars. She kissed it in relief.

She stood and nearly screamed from the sudden pain in her left ankle. Great, a sprain. All she needed. She limped around the basement until she found the furnace room with the copper water pipes.

Now, which valve and where? She tapped her phone against her chin and then realized a better use for it. After a quick internet search, she reached over and twisted a likely valve. There was a sucking pull and then—water.

She’d done it. Only when she stepped out of the furnace room did she hear exactly what she’d done. Water gushed and slapped against the upstairs floor. The other valves were already open. Alexi rushed back into the furnace room and cranked the main valve shut again.

She leaned her sweat-damp back against the concrete wall. This. Was. Insane. She’d moved to a place with a lake and didn’t have a drop to drink. She ran her tongue inside her dry mouth. Okay. Think. Figure out which pipe went where. She traced the looping paths of the hoses and pipes. Right. Another internet search.

First, time to check on the kids.

She hopped upstairs into the kitchen in time to see Bryn climb the deck stairs to the back door, stick in hand. He would flip out if he saw the inside of the house. She needed to prepare him.

Alexi intercepted him on the back deck.

“That’s a great stick.”

“Yes, I’m going to put it in my room.” He stepped to get around her.

Who knew what shape the bedrooms were in? She stepped with him. “How about I do that for you and you can look for more sticks?”

He shook his head. “I’m thirsty.” He shifted the other way. She followed.

“How about I bring out a pitcher of water while you get more sticks?” An offer she had no idea how to fulfill.

He frowned and ducked, caught her wide-open on her weak side and darted inside. When she joined him, he was standing stock-still, his feet glued to the floor...and perhaps, considering the condition of the plywood, that was actually true. He was doing a slow scan of the place, eyes wide, jaw dropped.

Alexi held her breath. It was a disaster for Bryn if the toaster was not square to the coffeemaker. She’d spent the past week showing him pics of the place (before it was gutted), explaining over and over how it would be the same. “We have a kitchen sink. The new place has a kitchen sink. We have a fridge. It has a fridge. You have a bedroom. It has a bedroom.”

Behind her, she heard the thumping of the other kids’ footsteps on the wooden deck stairs, and then they, too, were inside.

There was a collective, shocked silence. Callie clutched Alexi’s jeans, and Alexi automatically picked her up.

“What happened?” said Matt.

“I don’t know,” Alexi said. “I’ve left a message with the landlady.”

“The place stinks,” Amy commented. “It’s giving me a headache.”

“What are we going to do?” So like Matt to quickly move to solving the problem. Except she didn’t have an answer.

What was she going to do? She couldn’t cook, couldn’t keep food cold. Could hardly breathe. She couldn’t return to Calgary. New tenants were moving into their old place even as she stood in this disaster. What had she done?

At that moment, Bryn broke free of his trance and screamed, “I want to go home!” He shot out the back door, stick raised.

“Bryn! Stop feet!” she called after him and moved to follow, Callie’s legs banded tight around Alexi’s waist. Pain tore through her ankle. “Matt! Get the back gate.”

Matt was already on it. Bryn dropped his stick and stripped off his shirt. Matt darted past him to get to the gate first, flattening himself against it. Bryn registered that, grabbed his stick and swerved in the opposite direction to the front of the house.

“I’ll open the van for you,” Alexi called to Bryn from the back door. “Then we’ll go home.” If she could get him in the van, lock the doors, then she could talk him down.

If she could open the van before he got there.

She set down Callie and did a limping run to the front door, opening it, just as Bryn, now completely nude, stick in hand, reached the van. Where were her keys? There, in the box. She double clicked on the remote and threw open the front door. Too late. She watched Bryn reach the corner of the block, turn a sharp left and disappear from sight.

“Matt!”

He was there.

“My ankle is twisted. You go. Stay with him. I’ll get Amy and Callie, and follow in the van.” A real nuisance with the U-Haul still attached and a bum tire to boot. She was snapping Callie into her car seat when Matt came tearing back, fear stark on his face.

“Mom! A man stopped his truck and Bryn got in. Then he drove off!”

* * *

SETH GREENE HADN’T lived his entire life in a lakeside tourist town not to have seen his share of young sidewalk streakers with mortified mothers in pursuit. Usually it was closer to the lake, or right on the beach. This was the first time one veered across the street in front of his truck. He slammed on his brakes, and the kid took advantage of the stoppage to dive into the cab.

“Drive! Let’s go for a drive!” the boy ordered, waving about a long stick that Seth snagged inches before it hit the windshield. It looked familiar, and then he remembered. It was his, a baseball bat he and his dad had chiseled from an old fencepost when he’d been about the size of this kid. Which meant this boy lived in his old childhood house not three blocks away.

His sister had said she was going to rent it out, her second plan after first deciding she was going to move in.

His foot hard on the brake, Seth angled the stick toward the truck floor, the boy gripping the other end. “Here. Keep it down. How about I drive you home?”

The boy squirmed, easing his butt cheeks off the hot leather seat. Seth looked fully away, because he didn’t want the kid worrying that—

Crap. There, standing frozen on the sidewalk, was another boy, taller and older, staring wide-eyed at them.

Without looking at his naked passenger, Seth pointed. “Hey, that your brother?”

“Where?”

“There on—” But the boy was gone. Probably tore back to tell his mom about the abduction of his brother. Seth edged his truck to the curb and threw it into Park, before he reached into the back of the crew cab for the only piece of extra clothing he had.

“Look at this.” He held it up for the boy. “My team jersey. Brand-new.”

The boy’s brown eyes locked on to the bright blue-and-white jersey, emblazoned with the Lakers name, the bottom stroke of the L in a sweeping Nike-like check. “Put it on,” Seth said. “You can’t be naked in my truck.”

“Is that the way it works?”

“Yep.”

The boy took the jersey and examined the back of it. “Fifty-three. Why fifty-three?”

Not getting into that. “It’s my age,” Seth said, seventeen years off the mark.

That seemed reasonable to the boy, who nodded and wiggled into the jersey, tucking it under his butt. “To the lake!”

Seth saw an opening. “Good idea. We can get your brother and you two can play together.”

“Okay! But we have to include my sisters, too. And Mom. We can’t go to the playground without her. That’s the rule.”

Fine by him. The boy glanced from one side of the street to the other. “Wait! Where are they?”

Probably calling the police. “I know where they are.”

Seth pressed the child lock button—a feature he’d never used before—then lost no time turning the corners to pull up behind a U-Haul trailer. On the paved driveway were clustered the kids, and the mom on the phone. He could only hope she was talking to the dad who was looking for the boy.

The second Seth hit the release on the lock, the boy hopped out, and for a wild moment Seth considered driving off. He’d brought back her kid, nothing wrong had happened, case closed.

But if the mom had involved the police, Seth was known to them and doing a kind of drop-and-run wouldn’t look good.

This was his one chance to clear himself. He picked up the old bat the boy had abandoned and prepared himself for whatever might come out of left field.

CHAPTER TWO

AS SETH WALKED toward the family, the boy announced, “Come on, guys. We’re going to the lake!”

None of them moved. Then the boy who had been on the sidewalk earlier strode over and slapped his brother upside the head.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“For running off. Go tell Mom you’re sorry.” Attaboy. Any brother worth his salt kept his siblings in line.

A little girl with Asian features was the next to break from the bunch, doing a kind of hop-run with her right leg in a brace. She was hands-on with her runaway brother, too, except with a hug so hard it nearly knocked them both to the cement. The mom was close behind, a black girl with thick glasses riding on her hip, the phone still at her ear. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay...”

She slipped the girl down and reached for her lost boy, gathering him to her, his face mashed against her flat stomach. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

Seth couldn’t tell if she was talking to the person on the phone or the boy. Or, from the way her voice shook, herself.

She lowered the phone and bent her head, her hair—a big, dark, squiggly tangle—tumbling onto her runaway’s head. She kissed his spiky hair long and hard.

“Bryn,” she said, her voice steady now, “glad you’re back home.”

He mumbled something and she pressed him tighter against her. “It’s okay.” This time it sounded as if she believed it. “We’ll work something out. How about you go with Matt and Amy to the garden right there? While I finish up with this call? Matt has your shorts.”

Bryn followed the other kids, while the smallest stayed glued to the mom’s leg, her brown eyes behind the smudged lens monitoring Seth’s every move. The mom brought her phone back to her ear to resume her conversation.

No way. His turn. He stepped forward. “Hello there. Bryn’s your boy, I take it.”

She held up one long finger as if he were a number at a bureaucracy and spoke into the phone. “We found him. A...man brought him back.” She paused, and her eyes lifted to his. Her deep blue eyes. The color of the lake at the far shore. “The police want to know your name.”

Just what he didn’t want. “Seth Greene.”

Those blue eyes pinned him as she silently mouthed his name, the tip of her tongue flicking against her front teeth to form the th, her full lips puckering on the opening of his last name.

She repeated his name aloud into the phone. She listened, frowned and passed him the phone. “The officer wants a word with you.” She drew the girl against her leg even closer. This was rich. He’d brought back the kid she’d lost, and she doubted his integrity.

“Careful,” she said, “with my phone.”

And his ability to hold her phone. Seth switched hands with the bat to take it, and walked over to the semiprivacy of his truck before identifying himself.

“Hello there. This is Corporal Paul Grayson. I have a few questions.” Suppressed laughter made the words come out choked.

Seth blew out his breath in relief. And then, because it was Paul, again in annoyance. “I’ve got to get to a store before it closes in twenty minutes and then I’ve got to get back up on a roof and finish there so I can make it to the game. You remember the game, right? Do we really need to do this?”

Seth watched the mom edge to the front garden with a limp-swing to accommodate the child still stuck to her leg. Her very long leg. The other three kids were pulling out weeds up to their chests—couldn’t Connie pick up a hoe for once?—and whipping each other with them. The youngest broke free of her mom to pull up her own weapon.

Paul cleared his throat. “I have to confirm your identity. Not like you to offer rides to boys.”

Kid-free, the mom banded one of her arms across her middle and tapped her fingers against her mouth. Long fingers. Long legs. Long hair. And from the looks of it, having a long day.

“I didn’t,” Seth told Paul. “He crossed in front of my truck. I hit the brakes and he got in. Wanted me to take him to the lake.” Seth left out the part about the boy being naked. It would bring up a whole bunch of questions he didn’t have time for. He checked his own phone. Twenty-three minutes before Tim-Br-Mart closed.

“You were hijacked?” Again the choked-back laughter.

Seth clamped down on his back teeth. “Am I free to go, Officer?”

“How does the mother know Connie?”

“How should I know?” Seth knew what Paul was getting at, and made a decision. “She looks legit to me. She has four kids and—” he dropped his voice and turned his back to the mom, even though she was probably out of earshot “—all of them except for the oldest have one sort of disability or another. I think she’s flat-out busy with them.”

“Is a dad there?”

Something he’d like to know, too. The woman clearly needed help. “Don’t see one.”

Paul made a noncommittal sound, one that had gotten him through a few tense situations with Seth’s sister.

“Okay, then. Could you put the mom back on, please?”

Seth walked over and passed her the phone, trying to check for a wedding ring but she took it with her right hand, her left slotted into the front pocket of her jeans. As if it was any of his business, anyway. If he hurried, he might yet make it to the store. He turned to go.

Then, on his bare arm, the feather touch of her fingertips. Her left hand. No ring.

“Don’t leave, Seth.”

* * *

WHAT HAD SHE DONE? She’d reached for this near stranger as if she’d done it a hundred million times, as if he were— She snatched her hand away, snapped her attention back to the cop.

“...number of resources available to newcomers such as yourself. Are you aware...?”

As the officer’s advice rolled on, Alexi’s attention drifted as always to the kids. Just in time to see Callie whack Bryn square in the back with a weed taller than her, roots first. A splotch of dirt appeared on the 53 of Seth Greene’s bright blue jersey.

“Hey!” he called and strode toward them, his big stick in hand.

No. Callie.

“...the town office is probably the best place to start—”

Callie took one look at the big man with the stick and screamed as if on fire. She shot past him to collide against Alexi’s leg with enough force to throw her off balance.

Alexi hopped about on her sore ankle, sucking in the pain, and pulled the phone away from her ear. “Bryn, you need to give the shirt back to this man.”

Bryn crossed his arms and gripped the jersey sleeves. “But he gave it to me.”

Steady again on her feet, Alexi fought for a way to get through to Bryn. Seth beat her to it.

“I gave it to you to wear home,” he said to Bryn.

“You said the deal was I had to wear it. And I am.”

“Only while you were in my truck, bud.”

“But then I’ll be naked again.”

Alexi heard the cop. “Hello? Is everything okay, Ms. Docker?”

“Yes, yes, everything’s just fine. Mr. Greene is meeting the kids, is all.”

Seth closed the distance between them and motioned for the phone. From the downturn of his mouth, she wasn’t sure if she should. Then again, if he was talking to the officer, he wasn’t with the kids. She handed it over.

“Listen, Paul,” Seth said, “You need to let the mom get back to being a mom before the kid bolts again.”

There was a pause.

“No, she doesn’t need assistance. I’m here.”

He listened a few more seconds before rolling his eyes. “Later,” he said and ended the call. Clearly, Seth Greene and the cop were bros.

Bryn pointed at Seth. “You want my shirt and my stick.”

Seth stared at the odd-shaped stick in his hand as if he’d forgotten he was holding it. “Tell you what,” he said, “you give me my shirt and I’ll give you back your bat.”

“A bat?” Bryn asked, echoing Alexi’s thought.

Seth put a choke hold on the thinner end of the bat and swung it, only a little, but Callie suctioned even tighter on her leg. Seth stilled his swing and eased his grip into a limp hold. He looked at Bryn. “We got a deal?”

Bryn hesitated and then said, “Okay, but first I’m going to get water. I’m thirsty.” He headed to the house.

No, not a repeat of the last time he went inside. Alexi jumped—sore ankle, Callie and all—in front of Bryn. “How about I take you all for slushies?” She looked over to Amy and Matt. “All of you.” She switched back to Bryn. “But first you have to take off the shirt.”

Bryn gripped the back of the jersey to do just that, but Matt and Amy yelled the naked consequences of that move.

Alexi could feel Seth Greene taking all this in, drawing his conclusions, passing them on to his cop-buddy tonight.

“Bryn. Look at me.” She waited until his gaze connected with her collarbone. “Go to the backyard. Get on your clothes. Okay? Backyard. Clothes on. Bring me back the blue shirt. What are you going to do?”

“Backyard. Clothes on. Bring you the blue shirt.” He headed off and Amy followed. She’d make sure it happened. Matt lingered. A double helix of pride—that Matt would protect her and sadness that he felt he had to—twisted inside her. She depended on him far more than was healthy for a boy his age and with his background.

She extended her hand to Seth. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I haven’t thanked you for bringing back Bryn. Thank you. I—well—it’s been a day. There have been...a few problems.”

He looked at his truck, looked at her hand. The instant he took it, she wished he hadn’t. Her sweaty palm slimed his dry, muscled grip. Hot embarrassment flooded her already overheated body, cresting when he quickly released her hand. “How so?”

How so? She aimed for a light remark. Instead out poured, “The place reeks of paint. There’re no floors. No floors, no fridge, no stove. No kitchen sink. It’s what made Bryn run off.” She licked her lips. “Worse, no water.”

He straightened. “No water?” He was tall; she barely reached his shoulder. “You might need to just turn the valve. It’s by—it should be downstairs in the furnace room right against the far wall. Usually about a foot or two off the ground.”

“Did that. Only the valves to the taps weren’t shut off and water sprayed everywhere, so I have to figure out what goes where.”

“You called the owner?”

“Yes, but she’s not picking up.”

He hefted the stick in his hand and his thick arm muscles corded. Callie whimpered and Alexi lifted her into her arms. Seth glanced at the stick, walked to the garden, set it down and returned without a word. Alexi felt Callie’s body sag with relief against hers.

“Until you sort it out with her,” he said, as if there’d been no interruption to their conversation, “the outside tap runs—usually runs—through a separate pipe. You could try it.”

She’d never thought of that. “Of course.” She leaned to check the side of the house, Matt leaning with her. She couldn’t see anything.

“Might be on the other side,” Seth contributed.

Matt moved to check but halted at the man’s next words. “You on your own?”

Alexi stiffened. One act of kindness didn’t give him access to her life file. Besides, she wasn’t about to admit to a stranger that she and the kids were alone.

Before she could answer, Matt spoke. “Daddy-R died a year ago.” He swallowed. “A year ago today.”

He’d remembered. Alexi had hoped that the excitement of today would make the kids forget the anniversary. Matt lifted his eyes to her, deep brown eyes Richard had described as rock and wood and land, all things solid. Right now, they’d gone soft with unshed tears.

“I’m sorry,” Seth said. The standard words of condolence were low and distinct as if the man well and truly was sorry.

Matt squared his shoulders and gave a short nod. Putting on a brave face as usual.

“Thanks again for all your help,” she said to Seth. “Matt, could you check—”

Bryn came up the side of the house, twirling Seth’s jersey about his head like a lasso. Seth made a low grumbling noise, and Matt jumped to sort out the mess.

The jersey-for-bat exchange was made with few words and fewer movements. Alexi and the kids watched as the first person they’d met at Spirit Lake strode off and pulled away in a truck with the lettering Greene-on-Top Roofing on the doors.

Alexi turned to Matt, his face pale as he tracked the progress of the white Ford down the street. “You okay?”

Matt wiped his forehead, leaving behind a streak of dirt. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

His voice was sad and shaky. When Alexi leaned to kiss him, he tilted his head away and quickly said, “Hey, I was thinking that we could set up the tent in the backyard. Be just as comfortable as sleeping inside and it wouldn’t stink, either.”

Alexi let him have his evasion. The whole point of coming here was to start over. Time to get on with it.

“Why not? We deserve a little fun.”

* * *

UNBELIEVABLE. THERE WERE no baseball bats. Seth had reserved the diamond, answered obvious questions, posted all week to the Facebook group with reminders about the switch in dates from their regular Thursday meetup to today, Friday, and to bring bats and balls because he had neither. The result was thirty-three people, sixteen balls and no bats. And to think he had one in his hand not two hours earlier. Homemade, but enough to get the game underway.

Everybody arranged themselves on lawn chairs or bleachers, or leaned on trucks, content to have him deal with the consequences of their forgetfulness. Fair enough. He was responsible for—how did the legal wording go?—“generating, overseeing, implementing and attending all events associated with the recreational club, Lakers-on-the-Go.”

He was about to haul his own butt off a bleacher and shoot over to Canadian Tire for a couple of bats, when Ben texted to say he’d bring over his two.

Seth wondered if one of them was a girl’s bat.

Back when he and Ben were thirteen, they’d hiked across town to this same ball diamond with a bat and ball. Mel, when he wasn’t roofing with their dad, came along, but Connie, four years younger, had been too much of a pain. She’d pestered him to come, and so he told her that there was only one bat, it was his, and he didn’t want to share it with her. The next time they’d played, Ben had showed up with a pink-and-purple bat he said he’d share.

Seth learned then that Ben was a loyal friend unless Connie was involved.

That summer it had turned into the four of them. They’d start off taking turns pitching, hitting and fielding, but soon enough it would fall into the pattern of Connie pitching, him hitting and Mel fielding, with Ben rotating among the positions. When it had been Ben’s turn to hit, Seth always moved to the field with Mel. No need for a back catcher because Ben could hit whatever Connie threw at him.

Heavy footsteps sent quivers through the stretch of metal bleacher under Seth’s butt. He glanced up to see Mel plunk himself down beside him, deadening the vibrations. He carried the same box of Timbit donuts he’d had up on a roof this afternoon.

Seth jutted his jaw at the yellow box. “Aren’t those hard and dry by now?”

Mel looked offended. “These are good a week later.”

Mel opened the box for Seth. Seth took a plain bite-size donut ball. “How would you know? They don’t last the day around you.”

Mel took two sugared ones. “Sometimes they get away on me, and I don’t find them till later.”

Seth opened his mouth, then shut it. The less he knew, the better.

“Forty percent chance of severe thunderstorms tonight,” Mel reported. “Good thing Ben and me finished off the roof.”

“Yep.”

Like with little kids, Mel didn’t always need a lot of feedback to hold a conversation.

“Hot enough for it, humid enough, too. And it’s July. Anything can happen in July.”

“You bet.”

“You called Connie yet?” Mel said.

“Why should I?” Seth opened his phone to check his weather app. Maybe there was something nasty coming. Hot and humid, yeah, but electrical, too. Made people lazy and twitchy at the same time.

“Maybe she didn’t get the widow’s message. Maybe she doesn’t realize how much of a not-good situation she’s in, legal-wise.”

Seth’s thumb paused over the phone screen. He’d told Mel about the renovation disaster over at the house but he’d never considered that the mom might call a lawyer. She struck him as more of a problem-solver than a troublemaker. Then again, hauling his sister’s butt into court was one way of solving the problem.

He hit Connie’s number. He didn’t get through and he didn’t leave a message. Seth called again. And again and again.

Mel tipped the box toward Seth, and Seth shook his head. It was part of their ritual. Seth would take one, maybe two, of whatever Mel had on hand and no more, even though Mel would continue to offer.

Connie had her own ritual around not answering her phone. She seemed to think he really had to mean it. Or, as he suspected, she liked to have him riled right from the get-go.

After what seemed like the ninety-seventh try, she answered with, “What? What!”

“Your tenants moved in today.”

“They did? Today?”

“Yes. She said she left you a message.”

Connie’s tone switched from surprise to accusatory. “You talked to her.”

“Not by choice. I don’t even know her name.” He meant that last bit to prove how little he knew this woman, but to his ears it came out peeved, as if he’d missed out. Not that he was going to ask Connie because she would love to know he wanted something from her. Lord it over him, angle for something in exchange. He didn’t want her to know it mattered when it was already absurd that it did.

“For your information,” Connie said, “I called her, like, days and days, weeks ago to tell her not to come, but her line was disconnected.”

“It was working today.”

“I called her landline and I don’t have her cell number.”

“She called yours, so you do now.” Seth heard her draw breath, no doubt for another excuse, so he got to the point. “You better do something before you’ve got a tenant sic’ing lawyers on you. You’re in the wrong here, Connie.”

“Oh, when am I not?” she snarked. “Leave it to me, will you?”

Resentment rushed through Seth but he bit it back. “I want to leave it to you. That’s why I didn’t tell your tenant that you were my sister, because then she would start leaning on me to fix your problems. And I think both of us can agree that I’m through doing that.”

“And I think both of us can agree you have no business interfering. In case you’ve forgotten, it’s my house now.”

As if he ever could. “Then start acting like it is.”

Mel nudged Seth. “Tell her we’re having a pickup ball game. Tell her to come.”

“Tell her yourself,” Seth said and switched to speakerphone.

But Connie had overheard. “Tell him I’m busy tonight.”

Mel jabbed a finger at the phone. “No, you’re not. Ben ate at Smooth Sailing earlier and told me you weren’t working tonight.”

There was a hiss and splutter from Connie’s end. “What? Did he say— Never mind. I’m busy doing something else. Thanks for the invite, Mel.”

She ended the call before Seth had a chance to speak.

“I thought that went pretty well,” Mel said and popped another Timbit.

“Next time you call her,” Seth said.

“I can’t. I don’t have a cell phone,” Mel explained. “Oh, look. Ben’s here.” And in a clear-cut case of ducking the issue, Mel was off, abandoning his box. Seth peeked inside. Empty. Of course.

He picked up Mel’s garbage and carried it to the trash can at the edge of the field. He should be sorting everyone into teams but he needed a moment to calm down. He always had to after dealing with Connie. Tonight’s call had left him more than normally irritated. Thirty-two years old, and still acting like a teenager. Worse than a teenager, because at least then all her rebellions had been about making something of herself. Now she was messing around and messing up, creating havoc wherever she went.

The widow and her kids were only Connie’s latest victims.

Hard to think of the mom as a widow. She was too young—he doubted she was as old as him. And too beautiful. Too beautiful to have her face twist in sorrow when her boy let drop about his dead dad. Seth understood why the kid had said it. His own dad had passed twenty years ago, and he’d never forget the day it happened.

Seth cut over toward Ben’s truck to thank him for the bats. Sure enough, he’d brought the pink-and-purple one. Paul was using it to lob a long one into the outfield. Mel went tearing after it, like a dog playing fetch. But it was only when Seth was up close that he saw the second bat. It was the big old wooden one. Seth should’ve known.

There was a time when Ben might’ve gone from friend to brother. About two years ago when Ben loved Connie, and Connie had loved him right back. When she’d bought him the heaviest slugger she could source, Ben converted her pitches into home runs, and she watched with a silly grin as he circled the bases, circled her—just like they were kids again.

But then she’d cheated on him in plain sight, and Ben had been forced to see her for what she was. Seth avoided talking about her as much as possible in front of Ben.

Mel had no such discretion, it turned out. On their way to the diamond, Ben said to Seth, “Mel told me you called Connie. She tell you she’s in Las Vegas?”

Seth stopped cold. How was Connie going to help the widow from there? Answer: she wasn’t going to.

Next question: Who would help the widow?

Ben stopped, too. “She left Monday with that guy she’s with now.” He put a choke hold on Connie’s bat.

Trevor. A real piece of work. Of all the morons Connie had hooked up with since Ben, this one scared Seth with his level of pigheaded stupidity.

“She needs to come home,” Ben declared.

“You know what she’s like,” Seth said.

Ben stepped back and swung the bat so hard, it whistled. “No. You know what she’s like. I know what she can be like.”

Ben continued on to the diamond, putting distance between them. In another country and Connie could still screw up their lives.

CHAPTER THREE

ALEXI WOKE TO wind attacking the tent. The wall beside her buckled inward, and the nylon formed a cold suction over her face, then released as it was sucked outward. Thunder rumbled on and on, low and disgruntled like how she felt.

As if her day hadn’t been bad enough, now there was a night storm to endure. She hadn’t thought to check the weather since the evening had been so calm and cloudless.

Payback for making assumptions about how things ought to be. She fumbled for her cell phone. It was 1:17 a.m. And 2 percent battery. More payback for waiting on a call from the landlady that never came. She would’ve given up a lot sooner if she’d known the charger was missing. Payback again for not thinking ahead. After patting down the van seats and floor where it ought to be, she’d crawled into the tent, ankle and head throbbing, drawn a bath towel over herself as a blanket and passed out.

She shut off her cell just as the wind threw itself against the adjacent wall where the four cocooned kids slept, Matt on the far side. The wall pulled straight but the wind hit again, and this time tore out a tent peg, that part of the wall collapsing on the smallest cocoon. Callie.

Her small daughter thrashed about, her body caught inside her sleeping bag, ramping up her panic into train-whistle screams.

That snapped Bryn upright. “Bears! Bears!”

Alexi’s half hour of cuddling and low-talking at bedtime to convince Bryn that Spirit Lake was a bear-free zone was blown to pieces because she’d used a rock instead of a hammer, packed who knows where, to drive in the tent peg. Payback.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Alexi slurred. She flipped back the towel and tugged Callie away from the slumped tent wall. Another part of the tent dropped onto Alexi’s back like a predator. Great, the six-man tent was now four-and-falling.

“S’okay, Callie. Mommy’s here.” She held out her hands in the dark until Callie’s arms whacked them. She snapped her fingers around them and pulled Callie’s warm, vibrating body against her. “It’s okay. No bears. Part of the tent just came down.” She half dragged, half lifted Callie and her bag closer to Matt’s side of the tent.

The news was not comforting to Bryn. “We’ll all suffocate and die!”

“No, we won’t—”

A vicious shriek of wind smacked the tent, and a section slumped onto Bryn’s head. Now all four kids, Matt included, were screaming.

The dark form of Bryn bowled his way past Alexi to the zippered opening. “I’m dying! I’m dying! We’re all going to die!”

With Callie clamped to her, Alexi caught the back of Bryn’s pajama top, which threw him into more of a frenzy. She felt the cloth twist, Bryn stripping out of it. “No, Bryn, wait!” And he broke out of the tent.

“No!” Her cry was shredded in the wind, weak and useless. Cold air circled them. Icy air not right for a hot summer night.

The first hailstone bonked off the main pole.

The second, third, fourth thudded and rolled along the part of the tent still erect. And then the number was no longer distinguishable as hail descended in a hard torrent.

They needed to get to the house fast.

She reached for Matt, banded her fingers around his upper arm. “Take Amy. Run into the house. Stay there.” She groped for Amy who, good girl that she was, had already shimmied out of her sleeping bag. Alexi hauled a sleeping bag up and over their heads. “Okay. Hold it up. Keep together.” She widened the tent flap for them. “Go. Don’t stop.”

She didn’t wait to see if they made it. She needed to get Callie inside and then twice in one day, call the police for the exact same reason. A runaway. There would be a report this time. Payback, payback, payback.

At least she had enough charge to call. She tucked her phone down inside her bra, and using both hands, since there was no way on God’s green earth Callie would let go anyway, she settled her bath towel above their heads.

“Okay, Callie, on the count of three, I will run to the house and you just hold on tight to me with your arms and legs, okay?” Callie flattened herself even more against Alexi, the sides of her knees like hammerheads against Alexi’s ribs. “One, two, three!”

And they were off. The wind immediately snatched the towel from her hands, and hailstones pummeled her. She shaped one arm into an umbrella over Callie and hobbled double-quick. On the back stairs, her bare feet skidded on hailstones and she flung out her arms to grab hold of the railing.

Exposed to the ice chunks, Callie howled. Alexi hauled herself and Callie up the last remaining steps and to the door illuminated by the outdoor light.

It was flung open as she approached, but not by Matt.

“Bryn! You’re here!”

He hadn’t run off. Common sense or Matt had prevailed. Either way, it was a gift, a break, a win. She fell back against the door.

“Yep,” he said to the obvious.

The inside lights were turned on, so she could see that they were all safe and sound. And wet, their pajamas stuck darkly to their upper bodies. She’d left the windows open so it was every bit as cold as outside, but it no longer stunk as much. Not that they had a choice of accommodation.

She knelt, taking care with her hurt ankle. “Okay, guys, wait here. I’ll run out and get the sleeping bags and we’ll sleep here for the rest of the night. It’s dry here, there’s a roof over our heads. And in the morning—” she looked at Bryn “—we’ll figure out the rest.”

Callie stuck to her, a damp, flesh-and-bone magnet. “I want to go home.”

Alexi said what she’d been repeating all through the packing. “Home is where we’re all together, sweetie.”

Only the promise of a warm, cozy sleeping bag and the wheedling of the other kids persuaded Callie to loosen her grip on Alexi. Once free, she lost no time plunging back outside. The fall of hailstones had thinned but they were up to her ankles. The tent roof was so weighted down that she had to hunch as she wadded all the sleeping bags into hers.

She drew a deep breath, gave herself a one-two-three count and dashed back as fast as her hurt, numbed body would allow. She dumped the bags on the kitchen floor with quick instructions to Matt, and then plunged outside again to retrieve the pillows. When she got back, Matt was sitting cross-legged on the floor with Callie curled in his lap while the other two were laying the bags out.

This time, she arranged herself like a mother cat, the kids stretched out perpendicular to her, their heads against her belly side, all easy to reach in the night if she needed to. And like tired kittens they all fell asleep almost instantly, even Bryn.

Of course, now she was overtired and couldn’t sleep. She knew why. She hadn’t said good-night to Richard. Talking to him would completely drain the battery, leaving her unable to make even an emergency call. And hadn’t she moved, put herself and the kids through this whole ordeal, in order for them to start to construct a new life without him? Hadn’t she promised herself that to recognize the necessity of moving on she’d stop this self-destructive habit on the one-year anniversary of his death?

Except who could’ve predicted a day like today? God knows what she would’ve done if Seth Greene hadn’t come to the rescue. Tall and contained and so serious. Normal people greeted other people with a smile. He watched and, she was pretty sure, judged. Whatever. She had no reason to see him again.

Or anyone, for that matter.

Alexi felt a sudden fluttering in her chest that rose to a wild battering, like she’d swallowed a bit of the storm.

If she were to get through the night, and the next morning, she needed something—someone—to bring her a thin sliver of peace.

She slid open the phone and tapped to full screen Richard’s picture. Not the one she’d wallpapered with him at the playground rope hive with the kids hanging around him. This was the one she’d taken the morning after their wedding, fifteen years ago. She’d called to get his attention and he’d looked over his shoulder at her, a smile already in place. He’d smiled all the time.

What else is a man to do, he said, when he’s looking at you?

Seth Greene could’ve told him.

The battery icon slipped to 1 percent.

“Hi, Richard,” she whispered. “I tried not to do this but I can’t. Today has been...too much. I tried to do alone what we’d always done together. You and I moved to Calgary to make a home because we never had a real one. We’d made a family because we never had one. And it all made sense when you were alive. Now it’s me. Alone. With the kids, and Matt not yet ours. Or, I guess, mine. And today was rotten. The house is not a home. It’s not even a house. Tonight was worse. There was a hailstorm and—and—I think I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have moved the kids from our home in Calgary. I thought I could move on. But look at me. It’s been a year and I still don’t know how to get through without you. There’s going to be so many bad—”

The screen went black and the battery icon flashed on. Gone. “I don’t know how I’m going to get through this, Richard,” she whispered into the dark. “I really don’t.”

* * *

MATT WASN’T ASLEEP. He’d almost been there, warm and limp in the sleeping bag like a wiener in a hotdog, rain drumming his brain to mush, but then Mom’s whispers set up a steady drip on his senses, until all else sank away except for her voice.

She talked to Daddy-R every night. When he was working up north, her voice, low and breathy and inaudible, would drift down the hallway and put him to sleep. After Daddy-R died, she carried right on talking to him. Matt hadn’t known she was talking to a phone pic of him or exactly what she said.

Until tonight. Tonight he heard how sad and lonely Mom was. That all her smiles and peanut butter cookies were fake.

It was all his fault.

Before living with Mom and Daddy-R, he’d run away twice. Not the way Bryn ran, a sudden bolting and a quick corralling. No, he planned his escapes. The first time it was to get away from his mom and to his dad. The second time it was to get away from his dad to his grandfather. Then when his grandfather died and he was stuck in a foster home, it was to his new dad. He hadn’t known who his new dad was, only that his gut said he was at Walmart, so every day Matt walked along streets, across a field and a parking lot to the store and, while families shopped for cereal and lightbulbs, he shopped for a dad.

His gut was right. He found Daddy-R in the shoe aisle, buying running shoes for three kids, and Matt, spying through the racks in another aisle, watched him get his kids exactly what they wanted. With each kid holding their shoe box, he had said, Now. How about we find the most beautiful woman in the store and take her home with us?

The kids knew it was their mom, and Matt had trailed after them to where she was in the fruit section loading an already heaping cart with apples, oranges, strawberries, everything.

Matt had seen how Daddy-R kept his eye on her as soon as she was spotted, and he never stopped until he kissed her right there in the store. That’s when Matt’s gut had spoken. This one. Take this one.

When the other kids got into the van, he did, too. And once Daddy-R and the mom with the blue eyes understood he wasn’t getting out, he became part of their family.

Then Daddy-R had died, and he didn’t know what to do. Until two months ago his gut had spoken again as he’d stared at a map of Alberta one afternoon. There. Go there. His finger was on Spirit Lake. His head had argued with his gut. It was just a place where he’d built forts from sand and sticks on the beach. His gut kept right on sparking and glowing like a stirred fire no matter what he told it, so he gave in and prepared to go.

Except Mom had found his maps, his Greyhound bus ticket, his half-written letter to her. She’d hugged him, tears filling her eyes like bright pools, and asked him why. Because there was a sneaky little part of him happy she’d caught him and because it wasn’t the caseworker taking notes, he told her that even after all this time, more than ten whole months, it was so hard without Daddy-R. That there were bits of Daddy-R all over the place.

She’d looked over her shoulder toward her bedroom and he quickly said no, it wasn’t the urn. That would’ve been okay if all of Daddy-R had been poured in there. But he kept showing up everywhere—his snow boots in the storage tub, his Canadian Geographic magazines in the mailbox, his allergy medication in the cabinet.

Mom had said that it was the same for her, but he thought she was saying that to make him feel better. She told him, as she had told him a million times, that nothing had changed. She was going to make him theirs, hers and Daddy-R’s, just as it was planned. She would do whatever it took. If that was what he still wanted.

And he did still want that, he really did, only it was getting so hard.

She’d asked him where he was planning on going. And he’d told her about Spirit Lake, how it didn’t make any sense given that he was pretty sure he didn’t know anyone there. But that his gut wanted him to go there the same way it had pushed him to go to Walmart where he’d found them all.

Something sparked in her eyes and for once it wasn’t tears. Right then and there she made him a deal. If she and Bryn and Amy and Callie all ran away with him to Spirit Lake, would he stay? As soon as she said it, his gut felt warm and skippy. This was it. This was right for him...and his family.

Two months later, and exactly one year after Daddy-R was killed in a head-on crash, they were here in Spirit Lake. And his gut was flip-flopping like crazy.

He’d really thought the tent idea would work and he’d tried to help Alexi. But she’d had to find the tent and bend the poles into place and pound in the pegs. She’d done everything. He wasn’t Richard, wasn’t even a close substitute.

She needed somebody to help her, to be all the things he couldn’t be.

His gut stopped churning, calmed and spoke to him. Seth Greene.

He’d brought Bryn back and kept their family together for another day. The man had stood there with the bat that looked like a fence post and watched them all, but mostly he’d watched Mom. Let her be, but stepped in when he could help. He’d got rid of the cop, he’d persuaded Bryn to give back the shirt and he’d let Mom unload on him.

She’d talked to him, not all square-shouldered like when she was with the bank manager or caseworker, but with her hip jutted out and her hand mussing up her hair even worse, like she did when working out a problem with Daddy-R. Once, she’d touched his arm. And when Seth Greene had found out she was alone, he’d wanted to help. Mom had turned him down but...

His insides were settling now. No one could replace Daddy-R but someone like Seth Greene would work. That must’ve been why his gut wanted him to come to Spirit Lake. Because Seth Greene lived here.

Thunder vibrated through the wood and joined the beat in his gut. This was it. Things were supposed to go wrong so Seth Greene could make them right.

* * *

SPIRIT LAKE AT dawn was a kind of ground zero. As Seth drove the truck with Mel through the streets, the scene was of full-blown vandalism. A maple tree, a cloud of bright green leaves, had fallen across the street, and they detoured onto a different street where the truck tires crunched over twigs and broken glass and hail. They swerved around a kid’s lawn chair and an overturned flowerpot, pink blooms strangely intact, bumped over a flagpole and vinyl fencing. Holes in siding and punctured windows made houses appear like the target of gang warfare. Every single parked vehicle was dented, every single windshield busted. One big plus for the underground parking at the two-bedroom apartment he rented with Mel.

“Think of the roofs,” Mel crowed. “I bet there isn’t one in town that doesn’t need to be fixed, if not replaced.”

His brother was right. They’d hit the jackpot. Worst hailstorm in sixty years, according to the news. Worse than anything in his lifetime or even at fourteen years Seth’s senior, Mel’s. Their dad would’ve been a kid during the previous one. About the age of Matt.

There he was again, thinking of the boy for no reason. He’d woken last night, hail pelting against his bedroom window, and immediately wondered how the family was doing. Matt, he figured, would be listening to the thunder splintering the air, scared but not wanting to show it in front of the others, curled tight with his knees to his chin, blanket drawn so only a breathing hole remained, an animal playing dead. The other three had probably burrowed under the covers with the mother on her big mattress. Only the mattress, Seth had imagined as he lay alone on his king-size bed, because she probably hadn’t had the time to assemble the frame. She must’ve been bone tired. Hard enough to take care of four kids on a good day but on a moving day...at least on a night like this, he’d concluded, sinking back into sleep, they had a decent roof over their heads.

“After Tim Hortons, we’ll swing by the lumber store and place an order, okay?” Mel said. “There’ll be a run on materials, let me tell you.”

For Mel, a coffee was incidental to a trip to the coffee shop. It was all about the captive audience. Sure enough, as soon as Seth had them in the drive-through lane, Mel hopped out. “Get me my usual.”

Seth watched through his rearview mirror as his brother cut in behind the truck over to the driver’s side and went two vehicles down to a gray crew cab. It was Pete, owner of Pete’s Your Man. The handyman lived seven miles west of town and could give a detailed damage report. Seth eased the truck forward and the vehicles bumped along behind him; Mel walking beside Pete, their voices mingling with the idling motors.

Weather permitting, Mel scouted for information this way most days, and most days, Seth didn’t mind. It gave him a few minutes of solitude and satisfied Mel’s addiction to facts and figures, and every tradesman eventually got used to Mel’s tap on their window.

But today it felt...wrong. It was one thing to fix a roof at the end of its days, but another to profit off struggling folks, insurance notwithstanding. It wasn’t like Mel to feel so excited about making money off the misfortunes of others, yet he’d been raring to go from the second his feet hit the floor. Hadn’t it occurred to Mel that they’d have to work harder at a job Seth had long ago lost interest in?

Maybe that was it. Maybe the problem was him, not Mel.

Him lying awake, thinking about a nameless widow and her scared kids, instead of how to make himself some real money.

At the outdoor menu board, he placed the order. “One large coffee, dark roast, one cream.” Then he drew breath and let it rip. “Extra-large iced cappuccino. Half the ice. Double the sugar. Whipped cream. Caramel and chocolate swirl. Spoon, no stirring stick. And twenty Timbits. At least four need to be cream filled. None with icing sugar.”

To the clerk’s credit, she didn’t ask him to repeat it. Memorizing Mel’s morning order was probably part of national training to work at the chain.

Seth checked his mirror again. Mel was trotting over to another truck in the queue. Ron’s Siding read the lettering on the truck door. He and Ron had exchanged plenty of customers over the years. Seth rolled up the line and opened his Facebook to see pictures of golf ball–size hail in town and north, a grainery toppled south, a horse struck dead by lightning east eight miles.

And one person dead. Frederick Stephensson. Struck in the head by a hailstone the size of the baseballs Seth had tossed around last night. His niece had posted the news, and it had been shared and shared again until it was now in Seth’s feed. Seth didn’t know him.

But he knew the brother, Stephen Stephensson. He was the one who’d hired his dad to roof his house. The roof his dad had fallen from and broken his spine.

Now, twenty years later, there had been another death out there.

Seth was overcome by a sudden urge to get out. Get out of the truck, get out of the line, get out of the work piling up like the vehicles behind him. He pressed his fist to his temple. He started, stopped. Three more vehicles. Start, stop. Two more. Keep it together, Seth. This line will end, you won’t be trapped forever.

At the take-out window, Mel hopped back into the truck. “Isn’t just the town,” he said as he flipped open the box and examined the donuts.

“Hail’s flattened everything between here and Pete’s. Broke three windows and took out his wife’s garden. Ronnie said there isn’t a stalk of grain standing between here and his place. Some storm. Get this, they’ve both had calls this morning, people needing repairs done. Ronnie said we should keep in touch, work together. This could go big. You get any calls?”

Seth shook his head and swung out of Tim Hortons onto the street to Tim-Br-Mart. “Frederick Stephensson’s dead. You hear that?”

Mel stopped with his spoon of whipped cream halfway to his mouth. “Really?”

“Hailstone to the head. I saw it on Facebook.”

Mel stared out the windshield. “Isn’t that something?” He brought the spoon to his mouth. There must’ve been something revelatory in it because he smacked his lips and said, “You know, Stephensson’s roof will need redoing. Especially now that he’s selling.”

Seth braked the truck so hard Mel had to scramble to keep his donuts and drink. “What’s got into you? The guy has just lost his brother by an act of God. Two deaths out there and all you can think about is how to profit off him?”

Mel stared back as if Seth were the crazy one. “I don’t know where old Frederick died but it wasn’t on the farm. The two of them moved into town last winter. The farm’s been on the market ever since.”

Well. Mel would know. “At any rate, I will never get up on that roof again. Got it?”

In answer, Mel took out a cream-filled donut but didn’t start to eat it. “I was already thinking with all the extra work this summer we could buy a place. And if Stephensson sells—you know, him and Dad—”

So this was why Mel was so excited to make money. Their dad had once planned to buy the Stephensson place and was actually doing the roof at cost as part of the negotiating price. Twenty years on, Stephensson, for whatever reason, was only now selling...

Seth hit the gas with enough force for Mel to once again grab his food.

“Yes, I know about him and Dad. I’m not buying a place. Especially that one.”

Mel righted his food and spoke more softly than he had in a long time, “Didn’t mean you. I could. But it would be ours, you know that.”

That hurt. Hurt worse because Seth knew Mel was trying to be nice about it. After their mother died six months ago, Connie got the house, Mel got the money, and Seth got enough money to bury her. “Fact is,” Seth said, “the last thing I want to do is tie myself down to one more responsibility.”

Up ahead, he could see a truck turn into the lumber store. “How early do you have to be to get a jump on the day?” Seth said, hoping the question was enough to change the topic for Mel. Usually his half brother would’ve taken the bait but today he said, “What do you want?”

Not this. Not fixing old, broken, warping, leaking, crumbling roofs. Where you were exposed to whatever drops from the sky—bird poop, snow, rain, waves of blistering heat. Roofs that, once laid all new and solid, would be taken for granted until replaced two decades later—the time it takes for a baby to grow to an adult. Where one wrong step on the job can pitch you over the edge to injury—or worse. Where the only alternative is to wear a harness that ties you down, lets you swing like a monkey in a cage.

Seth parked the truck alongside two others and switched off the engine. “I want whatever I want, whenever I want.”

“Yeah, well, don’t we all? You need to be more specific.” Mel shook the donut box. “Which one do you think is cream filled?”

CHAPTER FOUR

ALEXI SAT WITH the kids in a semicircle in front of her, still in their pajamas, on or in their sleeping bags. She was divvying up the three remaining juice boxes, a small bag of plain potato chips and two slices of pizza from last night’s delivery among them. Breakfast. That and their bottles of water she’d filled from the outside tap.

She’d have to find a way to cook food today. Maybe she could get the fire pit working. If, she stretched a kink in her neck, she could get her body working first.

“Amy. Bryn. You share the apple juice. Amy, you go first.”

Amy took the box and gave a suck and swallow. Good enough for Bryn, who stripped the box from her hand and sucked it flat in four gasping gulps.

Amy kicked him with her prosthetic foot. She purposely used that foot when she wanted to avoid feeling the pain she was delivering. “Bryn! You were supposed to share.”

Alexi closed her eyes, stinging from lack of sleep. She’d kill for a coffee. “Amy. I know you feel wronged but kicking won’t make it better.”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes fixed on Bryn. “It does.”

“Well, I was thirsty,” Bryn said and raised his finger. Matt and Amy groaned. Once Bryn started ticking off arguments on his finger, he had to use all five before he’d stop. “Second, I couldn’t see the bottom so I didn’t know to stop. Third, it’s hard to stop when you get started. Fourth, fourth...”

Alexi handed Matt the second box. “Here. Share this with Callie.” He took it and smiled at her. A wide, relaxed smile she hadn’t seen for a year. Her breath caught. What had brought this on? Last night, he seemed so sad and tired...and small.

“You look happy,” she commented.

He jabbed the plastic straw into the box and held it out for Callie to sip first. “Yep. I am happy.”

They heard the front door suddenly open, followed by heavy footsteps.

Finally, the landlord. Except wouldn’t she have knocked? Alexi hadn’t thought to lock up last night after moving back inside. And from the kitchen it was impossible to see down the stairs to the entrance. It could be anyone. The kids stared at her like owlets.

“Hello?” A man’s voice.

“Seth Greene!” Matt jumped to his feet with the juice box and ran for the top of the stairs. Amy and Bryn followed, while Callie vaulted into Alexi’s arms. Alexi pulled herself to her feet and limped after them.

Seth stood there, looking up at them. In jeans and a T-shirt and wearing heavy boots, he looked ready for work. He also looked annoyed, his jaw tense, his gaze fixed up and away as if counting backward.

“You should’ve knocked first,” Bryn pointed out.

Seth still looked as if he were counting as he explained, “Habit.”

Perhaps it was falling unconscious on a wood floor or lack of liquids or the weight of another day starting bad, but he made no sense. His presence made no sense. She hefted Callie up higher on her hip. “It’s habit for you to walk into other people’s places without knocking?”

Seth tilted his head to where she stood a little off to the side at the half wall. His eyes narrowed, neither looking nor not looking at her.

“I lived here once,” he said.

“You did?” Matt said. “Cool!”

Seth turned to Matt, and his expression softened. Matt, in turn, smiled back. Alexi felt a flutter of panic. No way did she want Matt getting any false hopes about a man who’d no intention of sticking around. A man she didn’t want sticking around. She stepped behind Matt, put her hands on his shoulders.

“Strange you didn’t mention that yesterday,” she said.

His gaze rose past Matt to hers. “Wasn’t important yesterday. Thing is, I got some time this morning. Thought I’d come over and help. To be more specific,” he continued with an odd spitting emphasis on the last word, “I thought I’d see if I could get the water inside working for you. I know which hoses go where.”

Matt twisted to look up at her with his old happy grin. “That’d be awesome, wouldn’t it, Mom?”

No. It wouldn’t. “Thank you, but this is a problem the landlady needs to deal with. I’m not sure how it will affect our agreement if you come in and fix it.”

But come in is exactly what he did. He walked up the stairs, stepped into the kitchen, no doubt taking in the sleeping bags. He moved to the living room and strolled down the hallway, checking out the bathroom and bedrooms as he did. All the baseboards were gone and the floors were stripped to the wood, baseboards included.

He returned to where they stood in a tight group. “Your landlady already affected your agreement.”

“Yes, and so she should be the one to deal with it. I don’t want you involved. Though again, thank you.” Could she be any clearer?

“What are you going to do in the meantime? You can’t live in the tent.”

How did he know about that? The phone on his belt rang. He glanced at the screen. “Need to take this. Hello, Greene-on-Top.”

From Seth’s side of the exchange she gathered someone was inquiring about getting a roof repaired. Bryn and Amy dashed back in the kitchen and reappeared with pizza and juice boxes, resuming their place as if her conversation with Seth was a TV show they didn’t want to miss. Matt took three short sips from his box and handed the rest to Callie, his eyes on Seth the whole time.

After the call, Seth started to type a message. A good opportunity to get him turned around and out the door.

“Looks as if you’re busy from the storm,” she said. “I don’t want to keep you. I’m sure something will work out.”

He reattached his phone to his belt. “How do you figure that?” He looked at her, grimaced and glanced away, doing that looking while not-looking thing. Was there something on her face?

She was shifting Callie in her arms to check when Matt piped up. “But, Mom, the landlord won’t talk to us. Your phone is dead, anyway. And we can’t afford to fix it.”

Alexi felt her face grow hot. It was bad enough that a stranger knew she couldn’t afford a repairman, but that he had to learn it from her kid was even more shameful. It meant she couldn’t hide her poverty from her own kids.

“And Seth Greene offered to do it. This is the right thing to do.” He squared to her. “I feel it in my gut.”

Her own gut screamed something else. If Matt had got it in his mind that Seth was who they needed—heaven help them all. She needed this man out of her house now. But how? She couldn’t even call the police. And what did it matter? He was chummy with them, anyway.

He pointed to his temple. “What happened to your head?”

What? She touched her forehead and discovered a huge bump and, as she felt more carefully, a cut. Dried blood flaked onto her fingers. That explained his odd way of looking at her.

“I guess it was a hailstone. I—I was out getting the sleeping bags.”

“You didn’t know you got hit?”

“I felt something. It was dark. It didn’t hurt, really. I thought it was rain, not blood.” Why was she explaining this? She felt the wide eyes of the kids on her like bright bare bulbs. Why hadn’t they said anything? “It looks worse than it is, I’m sure. I bruise easily.”

“What were you doing in a tent with a storm forecasted?”

“It was my fault,” Matt interjected. “I suggested it because the place stunk so bad.”

“You suggested it, not decided it. Therefore, it’s not your fault,” Seth said.

Which implied it was hers. “You’re right,” she said, her voice squeaky with frustration. “I should’ve checked. It—it was a good thing it worked out as well as it did.”

Seth stared at the bruise on her head as if it were an enormous, hideous wart. “Why is your phone dead?” he said, jumping to another deficiency.

“The battery ran down and she can’t find the charger,” Matt explained.

Were there any more ways to display her incompetency? “I’m sure it’ll show up,” Alexi said.

Seth tipped his head down the stairs. “It’s in the box by the front door.”

There were ways. “I—I forgot that I’d brought it in.”

“I’ll go get it,” Amy said, running down the stairs.

“I get to plug it in,” Bryn said.

Callie slid down about to follow, then reconsidered and wound her arms around Alexi’s left thigh. Matt didn’t budge, and there was no subtle way of dismissing him.

Seth turned to her. “I hate—no, loathe—home renovations. Frankly I’ve got better things to do with my time.”

And she had better things to do than hear him gripe. “Then get doing them.”

Matt gasped, but she was beyond caring how rude she was. Could he think any less of her, anyway?

Seth merely shrugged. “I was until I saw your busted tent from the roof I was on. And I saw the roof here I’d put on three years ago, banged up but still good and I’d wondered why you’d chosen a tent over it. Then I remembered you saying it stunk inside and then I wondered if you got the water running. I’ll be making plenty from this storm. I figured I’d take a few hours to help out before it gets crazy. Like Matt said, it seems like the right thing to do.”

So. He saw her as a charity case. A victim in need of services. Exactly what she’d been for a third of her life. From age seven to the day she turned eighteen, she’d lived in foster care. Only when she’d married Richard had she been someone else. A wife. A mother. A full member of society. With him gone, she’d reverted to her childhood status.

Except now she had four children under her care. Their well-being, not her pride, was what mattered. As for how Matt’s proximity to an adult male would play out, well—well, no water was also a complication she’d have a hard time explaining, too.

She swallowed. “Okay, I do need help. I accept your offer. Thank you.”

“Yes!” Matt jabbed his fist in the air and tore into the kitchen, shouting the news to Amy and Bryn. The solid pressure of Callie disappeared as she broke away to join her brothers and sisters.

Seth grimaced at her swollen temple, and she touched it self-consciously. “A man died last night from a hailstone,” he said quietly. “Him and my dad...knew each other. So when I see you like that—” He broke off. “It can end so fast.”

Old familiar pain, the never-healing bruise on her heart from Richard’s death, swelled inside her. No, this was not the time, not the place and definitely not the person. She looked him in the eye. “I know that.”

He went still, then worked his jaw from side to side, shifted on his feet. “I don’t think I caught your name.”

He hadn’t? Had they overlooked introductions yesterday with everything happening? No, she’d learned his name and then not extended him the same courtesy, the man who’d brought Bryn back, kept her day from crossing into a living nightmare. Now he was here again today, willing to help someone he didn’t know the name of from the goodness of his heart. His grumpy heart, but still...

She dropped her hand from her temple to hold it out to him. “Alexandra Docker. Alexi, for short.”

“Alexi,” he said and gave her hand a quick, hard squeeze before letting go. His own hand felt warm and solid—and gritty, like a sandpaper block.

“Alexi,” he repeated and then added what made no sense at all given that he was the one doing her a favor. “Thank you.”

* * *

SETH RESTED THE drainpipe against his shoulder as he wrestled to get the fitting on, one shoulder brushing against a stud, his head bent to clear a copper intake pipe that ran across the utility room. This was a two-person job really, but the only handy person was Alexi Docker and she was the last person he wanted to face.

Literally, to face. Seeing her all banged up had rattled him, and then when he’d heard how it had happened, it felt like the fresh death of Stephensson was there before him, and he’d come off—well, a little harsh. He’d made it worse with his boneheaded comment about losing others suddenly. She’d shut down just like yesterday when the subject of her dead husband had come up. No room there to explain that he understood how she felt, that his own father had died unexpectedly, too, even if it was twenty years ago, not one.

“Hello?”

At the sound of Alexi’s voice, he jerked, which shot the pipe out of place.

“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” She stood at the entrance to the utility room, her long legs set apart enough for Callie with her pink-framed glasses to peep through. The second Seth made eye contact she slipped from view. That one was either really shy or she didn’t like the looks of him, or both.

Alexi pointed to the pipe. “Can I help?”

It made no sense to refuse her, now that she was standing right here. Right here in a T-shirt that fit real well. He snapped his focus back on the job at hand. “Yeah, actually. Could you hold this pipe here? I need to put on a fitting and cut the pipe to the right length.”

She angled in beside him and steadied the pipe exactly where he wanted it.

“Thanks,” he said, for the second time in this visit. At least this time, it made sense.

“It’s me that should be thanking you.”

That was true.

“I didn’t know it would be so involved,” she continued.

Anything involving Connie got way more complicated than necessary. “Turns out that I just can’t clamp off the valves,” he explained. “Looks as if the entire waterworks is getting revamped so I have to install a drainpipe first.”

“Oh, I heard you leave. You went for supplies?” Was there reproach in her voice, as if he should’ve checked in with her?

“I didn’t know I was supposed to tell you.” Despite his attempt at politeness, he could hear belligerence in his voice.

Her eyes were on the pipe as she replied coolly, “I didn’t know I was not supposed to wonder where you went. After all, wondering about us was what brought you here this morning.”

He didn’t answer because she’d made a couple of good points he wasn’t about to concede. He chalked a line on the pipe.

“Excuse me. I need to use the cutter,” he said instead. Rather than let her back out and exit before he followed with the pipe, he tried to edge past her, which forced them into shuffling around each other, dodging pipes and each other’s body parts.

Could his time with her be more awkward? Free of the tight quarters of the utility room, he headed straight for the cutter he’d had to rent, but that would be a conversation with Connie, and fired it up. Two minutes of noise and he was done. This time Alexi gave him plenty of room to get around her, but that didn’t stop her from following him in. Callie lingered at the entrance.

“Since I am in a wondering state of mind,” she said, steadying the pipe for him again, “I was wondering if, since you lived here before, if you know the number of the landlord. I got her cell number but she’s not answering. I thought there might be a landline I could use.”

Seth took his time lining the pipe up with the fitting to buy himself a few seconds of fast thinking. “Landline won’t do you much use. She’s in Las Vegas.”

“Las Vegas? Are you sure?”

“Very.”

She looked over her upraised arm and pinned him with her full blue gaze. “How do you know this?”

Seth fiddled with his end of the pipe. “How do I know this?”

“Yes.” The faint hiss at the end of her one word conveyed her opinion of his delay tactic.

“I was at a ball game last night and a guy there knows Connie. Said she was in Vegas.” There, not a word of a lie. He slipped the fitting over the freshly cut end of the pipe. Perfect.

He slid his hand along the pipe to hers. It was a beautiful hand. Large and capable and smooth, like his favorite hammer and with a good heft to it. “I got it,” he said.

She dropped her hand and it immediately strayed to her back pocket. She’d already done that three times since coming downstairs. Strange habit. “I will have to find out what my rights are,” she said. “I didn’t sign up for this. I should’ve asked the officer what I could do when I had him on the line.”

It would serve Connie right if Alexi took legal action. Hadn’t he warned Connie just last night? But if history was anything to go by, his sister would go down dragging as many as she could grab hold of—like Mel and him. “She might come around yet.”

Alexi shoved her beautiful hands into the tangled heap of hair. “Meanwhile, what am I supposed to do? What about the kids? I can’t go back. And I’ve nowhere else to go.”

She clamped her mouth to a thin line and looked away. If he was anybody other than being a practical stranger to her, he could’ve hugged her, told her everything was going to be all right. If he was anybody other than who he was, he could make things right. As it was, he stood there, holding the pipe, clueless about what to say or do. No, he knew what to do: attach the other end of the pipe, but he wasn’t about to restart another round of shuffling that would bring him alongside her body parts.

Her hand went to her back pocket again, and it dawned on him what she wanted. Her phone. That’s where she carried her phone, which was charging now. The world was addicted to phones but her case was severe.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s not your problem, and you are being so kind.”

Kind? Hardly. He didn’t want to lie to her. It made her think she had to be grateful to him and from the way her voice had gone tight, she hated depending on him. He understood; he didn’t want her to depend on him in any way, shape or form. He decided to set the record straight. “Not doing it for you. It’s for Connie.”

She frowned. “For the landlady?” Her eyes widened. “I mean—of course. I didn’t realize you and she might be...” She trailed off and took a step backward, which brought her up hard against a stud.

He now had room to move to the other end of the pipe but no way did he want Alexi thinking he actually chose Connie. “She’s my sister.”

“Your sister?” Her eyes narrowed. “So yesterday, when you asked about the landlady, you were really asking if your sister had contacted me?”

He took his time to get to the other end of the pipe. “Yep,” he said, his back half-turned to her. “I didn’t want to get involved in her business.” He shoved the other end of the pipe into a fitting. It went in easy and straight. Good. So long as he used his hands and not his mouth, things went well. “Still don’t, but she’s a bad habit.”

He felt her slide behind him and out of the room. At the door, she paused. “You think helping others is a bad habit?”

Seth had long ago lost track of the number of people he’d been obliged to help during the past couple of years, all because he had helped the wrong person. “Yeah,” he said, “I guess so.”

A smile played at the edge of her mouth. “So you’re saying that I shouldn’t feel guilty that you took time out of your schedule to help me?”

Guilt. He knew too much of that. “You can only be guilty for your own choices, and it was my choice to come here today.”

It was the truth. He’d really done what he wanted, when he wanted.

Her hand moved and he supposed it was going to her phantom phone. Instead it rose to her cheek, her hair, to wrap around the back of her neck, as if she didn’t know what to do with it.

“Thanks,” she whispered. “I needed to hear that.”

Whaddaya know, Seth thought, he’d made her feel better. His bad habit had finally done some genuine good.

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