 
# Pine Mountain Secrets

Book 1 in the Pine Mountain Estates series

by

Emily Josephine

Copyright 2019 by Emily Josephine.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

Distributed by Smashwords.

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## Table of contents

Prologue

Last chapter of novel

Note to my readers

More books by Emily Josephine

About Emily Josephine

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# Prologue

So cold. Arianna had never been so cold. On the run for the past two days, she hadn't had a chance to hear the weather forecast, but she knew a cold front was moving in. As she stumbled through the dark woods, her numb toes and fingers told her it must be below freezing.

She knew she should have sought shelter in the barn she spotted alongside the road around three in the afternoon. But she'd been afraid that someone would find her. She couldn't let anyone find her. If they did, they would turn her over to the authorities. And the authorities would give her back to _him_.

Besides, as she'd stood there wondering about the safety of the barn, the sound of a car roaring toward her on the rural highway had frightened her into the nearby woods. And she'd kept running.

But now...she stumbled over an unseen rock and fell. Her arms instinctively shot out to break her fall, but when her hands hit the ground the half-frozen muscles immediately gave way, causing her face to smash into the ground. At least the pine needles and leaves provided some cushion. Still, as she pushed herself upward she knew she'd sustained some scratches.

How she wanted to let herself lean against a tree and just cry! But then she might never find shelter in time, and she might die.

And if she died, _he_ would win.

The thought propelled her forward. But now her knee hurt, and she couldn't move as fast. At least she was wearing jeans and not one of those ridiculous skirts he always made them wear. Anyway, if she kept up this pace much longer she would either have a heart attack or she would dash her head against a tree. Why did it have to be cloudy and moonless tonight, of all nights?

As quickly as she could – but not nearly as quickly as she wanted to – she continued through the woods. She'd been going uphill for the past few minutes, which likely meant she was getting farther from the road. She wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Not too much later, she decided it was a bad thing. She was now dragging her feet to get them to move, and shivering uncontrollably. If she had been caught by the authorities, at least she would have spent this miserable night in mid-January inside and had half a chance of escaping, perhaps with warmer clothing and on a warmer day.

She was going to freeze to death, she just –

She gasped as she unexpectedly stepped into a clearing, mere yards away from what looked to be a large shed. Stopping, she peered around the area, straining to see any signs of life. She couldn't be found. She just _couldn't._

She might have spent a few minutes searching around the perimeter of the building to make sure it was empty and no other signs of human life were near, except in the next moment a strong gust of frigid wind tore through the weave of her acrylic sweater, the only thing close to outerwear she had on. She didn't want to endure another moment of this cold.

She took a step toward the shed. Then another. On the third, her left foot slipped into what felt like a hole in the ground. Losing her balance, she began to fall forward once again. Fiery pain shot up into her lower leg as her left foot twisted at the ankle. That would have been bad enough, but the forward momentum of the fall yanked on her twisted foot.

Until that moment, she thought she was too exhausted to make a sound, her lungs too cold to support anything above a whisper. But as her foot finally flew out of the hole as Arianna landed on her right side, she cried out in pain.

Then tears flooded her eyes as she realized what this incident meant. If she'd broken her ankle, she would have to seek out help. And even if it was just a strain, she wouldn't be able to go anywhere for several days.

She could die, either of exposure or starvation.

She allowed herself the luxury of three sobs, then with a deep, ragged breath forced them to stop. Crying would get her nowhere. At the very least, if she could drag herself into the shed, she could escape from the bitter wind that bit at her face.

But...how to get to the shed? She knew it was useless to even try to stand up. She could try crawling on all fours, but how would she keep her injured foot from hitting the ground?

Finally, she sat down with her back to the shed – trying not to think about all the possible wild creatures she might also be turning her back to – and crossed her left foot over her right leg. After blowing on her hands to try to warm them in order to better prepare them for the arduous task ahead, she began pushing herself backwards. As she lifted her bottom, her hands and right foot pushed against the ground to move her body backward. Every time she had to bend her right foot to continue the crab-walk, her left ankle shifted and she had to bite her tongue to keep from crying out in pain.

Reaching the shed door, she turned herself so she was on both knees, facing it, then reached up with both hands for the door handle which she could barely see. The icy feel of the steel handle that shocked her also brought her relief; it meant that her numb fingers hadn't really been completely frozen. Not yet, anyway.

With the little strength she had left, she pulled herself up to standing, wincing when her left ankle moved positions. Somehow, after opening the door she managed to hop inside with a minimum of pain.

The first thing she noticed was that it was warmer. Whether that was due to the lack of wind, or whether the actual ambient temperature in the building was higher than that of the outside, she couldn't be sure. But her body shivered a little less.

The second thing she noticed was the dark. She thought that if she got inside, some of her fear would dissipate. It didn't. It might have intensified. This was too much like the cramped quarters she'd been forced to sleep in for the past few years. If it wasn't the floor of a van, it was a small motel room with most of the children sleeping on the floor. When they weren't traveling, her "bedroom" was a kind of shed much like this one. Always crowded, never quite enough blankets, always too cold or too hot, always a stale smell, never quite clean.

She much preferred the freedom of outside. But she also didn't want to freeze to death. If she could just find a light...would there be a light in a place like this? Oh, why hadn't she stolen an extra battery? The flashlight in the small bag she'd been carrying around her waist had given out a couple of hours ago. Maybe it was her punishment for stealing it. After all, Mr. Brent was always telling them that the bad things that happened to them were God's way of punishing them for their sin.

Scoffing at the thought, she groped on either side of the doorway for a light switch. She refused to believe in God anymore. Not after everything she'd been through. At sixteen, she'd figured out that the whole God thing had just been Mr. Brent's way of manipulating and scaring the children into doing what he wanted them to do.

No light switch, but now her eyes were adapting to the inner darkness. It didn't look completely black anymore, and she could make out shapes just in front of her.

Reaching out her hand to what looked like a table, she made contact with a hard, smooth surface. She used it as a kind of crutch to enable her to hop further into the shed without risking a fall. With every movement, a stabbing pain seared up her lower left leg and she hissed several times as she moved around the place.

The table was long, with a couple of boxes and a few other items sitting on top of it. Next to it seemed to be a tall shelving unit, crammed full of things. Hopping by it, she bumped her right shin into what seemed to be a raised platform of some sort. Moving her hands just a couple of inches onto the platform, she encountered something soft. Was it – yes, it was! It was a pillow! And another, and another!

Further exploration revealed a quilt hidden underneath the pillows which seemed to serve as seat cushions. The discovery froze her heart just as the wind had been trying to freeze her fingers a few minutes ago. Was this actually somebody's home? It wasn't common for Americans to live in shacks, but in her home country many people lived with their large families in small, one-room structures. So it was perfectly within reason for her to think that at any moment, the owner of this abode would come through the door.

She swallowed. If someone lived here, surely there would be some kind of wood stove or electric heater keeping it warm. And it seemed to be more of a storage space than anything else.

A quilt, and a mattress to call her own. She was going to have to risk it.

After pulling the quilt out from under the pillows, she rearranged the pillows by feel. Then and only then did she allow herself to breathe out a heavy sigh as she sat on the side of what was either a bed or a sofa. With great care, she removed her tattered sneakers from both her feet, crying out with pain several times as she worked on the left shoe.

At long last, she was lying down on the sofa-bed, the large quilt doubled over her and her face toward the shed door. She shivered once, twice, three times.

Then her muscles relaxed and she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

# Chapter One: Allie

"It's a good morning for some cooked buckwheat with hot chocolate." I stroke Belle, my terrier who is slowing down and seeming to need more attention in her old age, as I hold her in my arms.

Watching through the window at the snow flurries drifting to the brown grass, I shiver even though the temperature inside the house is sixty-eight degrees. The predicted low was supposed to have been nineteen degrees. Even though the forecast was usually a few degrees cooler than whatever the actual high or low turned out to be, I'm not looking forward to taking Belle out for her morning walk.

I shake my head and smile at myself, knowing that my dad would laugh at me for my aversion to this weather. Growing up in southeast South Dakota in the 1970's, I would play outside with my siblings in the snow in below freezing weather. But at forty-seven years of age, I've now lived in the South three years longer than I lived in the North, and it hadn't been more than ten years into my Southern life when I began to despise daytime temperatures below fifty degrees.

Turning around, I take the four steps from the window to the couch and set Belle down onto its soft cushions where she circles around, lies down, and curls into a ball. On the way to the kitchen, I have to stop and yawn. Today is going to be a two-nap day, I can just feel it. As it is, I woke up almost an hour later than usual. Instead of my usual seven and a half hours, I got almost nine.

Darn crazy hormones. Although today, I could just as easily blame the weather as perimenopause.

I measure out water into the saucepan, then turn on the burner of the butane stove. As I am opening the food-storage cabinet to grab the buckwheat, the lights go out and the house falls silent.

Not that the house is usually noisy, but the humming of both the freezer and ceiling fan stop. A whimper from the couch lets me know that I'm not the only one who has noticed the sudden change in atmosphere.

"Looks like the power's out, Belle." The good news is, I can still cook my breakfast. The bad news is, the propane space heater – not to mention the canister of propane itself – are both in the Tuff Shed.

Although we've never had a power outage that lasted longer than three hours during the past twelve years living here, three hours is long enough, on a day like today, to drive the temperature inside the house down three or four degrees without a heater running. If I could count on the sun shining in the south-facing windows, I wouldn't worry about it. But it's going to be cloudy all day, with off-and-on "wintry mix" falling from the sky.

I stare down at the space heater sitting as far out from the wall as its cord length will allow, willing it to turn back on. But the bright orange glow that emanates from it when it's on has faded almost into nothing.

With a sigh I turn to flick off the stove burner. "I'm going out to the Tuff Shed," I inform Belle as I go over to the coat closet near the couch and pull my winter coat off its hanger. "Want to come with?"

She lifts her head to meet my gaze for a few seconds, then with another whimper tucks her head even closer to her body.

Exactly what I feel like doing. But even if I was going to go back to bed, I'd want the house to be toasty warm when I got back out of it. Which isn't going to happen unless I go get the other heater.

"I take that as a no." I shrug into my coat, then after zipping it, give Belle a couple of pats. At the door I waver for a second, wondering if I should call the electric co-op to report the outage. No. They might already be working on it, and if so the power could be back on in a few minutes.

On the other hand, if I don't call them now and the power _isn't_ back on in a few minutes, I will have to make a second trip outside to make the call. The house is earth-sheltered, made of thick concrete walls and buried on three sides, so without a $600 cell booster I can't make or receive cell phone calls inside the house. As none of us ever used the phone that much, we never wanted to spend money on the booster.

Making my decision, I walk over to the nightstand on the opposite end of the room from the only exterior door, pull open its drawer, and retrieve the cell phone from its usual resting place. I also grab a flashlight. Though it's starting to get light out, the inside of the Tuff Shed will still be pretty dark.

Once outside, I jump lightly on my feet while making the call, shivering whenever a gust of wind blows snow flurries against my cheek. Of course, I get, "The outage in your area has already been reported," so after turning off the phone, I shove it into my pocket and run toward the shed. Despite the wool socks I am wearing, my toes are already beginning to feel cold. Crocs aren't the greatest shoe for real winter weather, but I've been wearing sandals and minimalist-type footwear for so long, my feet can no longer stand the feel of the artificial soles of regular shoes and boots.

Just before grabbing the handle of the Tuff Shed door, I realize that I'll need the dolly to tote the propane tank. While I'm fit enough, I've never been all that strong. Turning around and running to the tool shed, a much smaller building at around sixty square feet, I silently berate myself for not bringing the spare heater – as well as the propane – into the house at the beginning of last month.

Finally, I have the dolly standing next to the Tuff Shed. Now my hands are starting to freeze, and I wonder what I was thinking, coming out here without gloves or mittens. Because I wouldn't have been able to make the phone call if my hands had been so burdened, I guess. A lousy excuse, in hindsight.

I twist the door handle, step inside the shed...and throw my hand up to my mouth to muffle the shriek that pushes its way out of my throat. As the figure that's been lying on the bed bolts upward, I step to the nearby shelving unit, and a second later am brandishing the machete that lives on the top shelf.

"No! No! Ow! Please, don't hurt me! I have no weapon! Ooh."

In the dim light of the shed, I can't tell by sight whether the person on the couch platform is a man or a woman, but the throaty, heavily accented English sounds female. I can't be sure, though, because the voice isn't high enough for me to identify it positively either way.

"Stay where you are." I do my best to make my shaky voice sound threatening as I fumble for the flashlight inside my coat pocket and click it on.

Before me sits a girl with skin black as the night sky and wide, dark chocolate eyes that flash a mixture of pain and terror. Her black hair is coiled in tight braids around her head, and I would guess her to be somewhere in her teens. She is sitting with her right foot on the floor, and her left near the edge of the bed, but still on the platform.

Two things register in my brain: one, she has just moaned in pain. She's hurt somehow. Two, by the violent shivers that begin to rack her body, she might be near hypothermia.

I take a moment to pray. A feeling of peace and an inner knowing communicate to me that she means no harm, so I toss the machete onto the old computer desk to my right and take a step toward her. "You're hurt. What's wrong?"

Bringing her right foot back onto the bed, she pushes herself back against the wall, eyes growing even wider.

I plant my hands on my hips. "Look, I threw the machete down. I'm not going to hurt you. You obviously need help and I really don't want to spend the morning in here trying to convince you to trust me because number one, I'm already halfway to half-frozen and number two, I'm starving and I really want to eat and unless I miss my guess, you could use a good breakfast." I pause to take a breath, wondering if she even understood me. "Now, tell me where you're hurt."

The girl's expression relaxes along with the rest of her body. "M-my ankle." She dips her head toward her left foot. "I maybe b-broke it last n-night. M-maybe a sprain, but it hurts b-bad."

Just listening to her teeth chatter makes my body temperature drop five degrees. I need to get her inside the house as quickly as I can. But she's probably taller than my five-foot-three, and she is definitely stouter than I am.

I take another step toward her. "The main house is about 100 feet away. You're going to have to let me be your crutch as we walk over there. But don't lean on me too hard, or we'll both end up in the snow."

She shakes her head. "No. I –"

"Girl, you want something to eat or not?" Glaring at her, I use my stop-annoying-your-mother-and-do-what-I-say tone.

One second, and her eyebrows rise in surprise. Another, and the slightest hint of a smile plays at her plump, brownish-red lips. "Yes, ma'am."

I smile back, help her to her feet, and somehow we manage to hobble back into the house without falling. On the way, I tell her my name is Allie Whitlock, and she tells me her name is Arianna. I don't pry for a last name; neither do I probe for the reason she came to be in my shed. I have a feeling she doesn't want to tell me, and I'm not sure I want to know. I won't be surprised if she disappears without a trace as soon as she can walk on her ankle.

Ten minutes after getting her inside the house, Arianna is lying on the couch with her left foot propped up on pillows, covered by a quilt, a comforter, and Belle. The little dog at first whimpered when I moved her to the floor to give Arianna room, then quivered and sniffed excitedly as I helped the girl get comfortable. When I finished tucking Arianna in, Belle put her front paws up near Arianna's head. I was just about to pick her up and move her to my bed, but Arianna chuckled and, without asking or hesitation, picked Belle up and set her on her chest.

At least I won't have to worry about whether Arianna and Belle will get along. But I _do_ have to worry about the heat. Because the power is still off, and since it's been off for at least twenty minutes it's likely to remain off for at least the next hour.

I take a few seconds to study the girl while lifting up another silent prayer. The answer is a good feeling about her, a feeling that, among other things, I can trust my mysterious guest. So with a brief explanation to her, I head back to the Tuff Shed. On my first trip I bring back the propane canister, and on the second come back with the propane space heater.

After getting that set up, I turn on the burner to heat the water once again, then go over to Arianna to check out her ankle. "I think it's just sprained, not broken," I tell her. I base my assessment on past experience with other people who ended up at the local clinic with badly sprained ankles. "But I think you should get it X-rayed, just in case. I'll pay for it," I add quickly as I see the protest rush into her face. "They know me, and they won't charge me much, and I don't mind helping you out."

Arianna regards me with a furrowed brow, then shakes her head. "I – can we wait three days and see if my ankle is doing better then?"

Her reluctance to seek medical help leads me to believe she's running from someone. At some point today I am going to try to get some answers from her, but warming and feeding us both is the higher priority right now. Besides, she needs to see that she can trust me before she'll open up to me, which means I need to take care of her for a little while first.

I nod my consent with her request. "But we at least need to ice your ankle, ten minutes on, twenty minutes off, for a few hours."

She turns her gaze to where her hand strokes Belle's back. "That's okay."

"When did you last eat?"

Her chin dips toward her chest. "I – I can't remember."

Just as I suspected. "Toast and almond butter sound good?" The buckwheat will take a good twenty minutes to cook, and I don't want to make her wait if she's that hungry.

Her gaze snaps over to me as her eyes widen. "Oh, please. Thank you."

I fix Arianna a plate of sprouted grain toast with almond butter and fruit spread, set up the portable plastic table next to the couch, and help her sit up. She groans in pain, then laughs when Belle begins sniffing with interest in the direction of her plate.

"Belle, no." I glare at the dog. She knows not to beg for food, but I have no idea if she might try to take advantage of a stranger. With a whimper, she settles back down in Arianna's lap.

I flick a glance at the girl. "Do me a favor and don't feed her anything, no matter how much she begs."

Arianna gives Belle another stroke, smiling. "I won't."

As I pour the almond milk into a saucepan on the second burner, an idea slaps me upside the head. I turn on the burner, walk over to the coat closet to grab my coat, then tell Arianna that I'll be back in less than five minutes.

I glance at her to gauge her reaction, and am surprised to see that she has finished off more than half of one of her two pieces of toast already. Her eyes are closed as pleasure hovers over her face while she chews, and her only response is a slight nod.

Another trip to the Tuff Shed. Up the ladder and into the loft. Along with the portable table I've just set up for Arianna, the pair of crutches I find are items I've been hanging onto and not really knowing why. The thought that I've been saving them for a good purpose eases the pain of the memories the crutches bring into my mind.

I am not at all surprised to find the power still out when I return to the house, but I am surprised that Arianna has finished all of the toast. She twists her neck to look at me when I open the door.

I hold up the crutches with a smile. "Do you think these will be helpful?"

She raises her brow. "Maybe. Did you break your leg once?"

My heart twists as I step towards her and lean the crutches against the couch. "My son sprained his ankle pretty badly a few years ago. He was..." I have to swallow down the emotion blocking my throat. "He was about your height at the time." I send up a silent prayer that there will be no more questions.

Arianna's lips quirk upwards. "That's why you're so nice to me. You're a mama."

Grief constricts my lungs. Turning away, I remove my coat and hang it up.

As I step back toward the kitchen to check on the milk and water I'm heating, she asks, "They all move away? Your children?"

I stop, set my hands on top of the Windsor chair in front of me, and squeeze my eyes shut. I really don't want to explain. Hearing the reference to my children is painful enough. No need to make myself relive the pain any further by making myself tell the story to someone who will no doubt be out of my life again in a heartbeat.

I open my eyes again to blink back the tears that suddenly flood them. "Yes. My son moved away."

For several ticks, only the quiet sound of the propane heater permeates the awkward silence. Deciding the milk is hot enough, I pour it into a shake bottle, add cocoa and stevia, and begin mixing it all together.

When I finish, I can barely hear Arianna's timid voice. "You miss him, ma'am? You sound sad."

I turn to look at her over the two low bookcases that separate the living room area from the rest of the great room. I force a smile onto my face. "Yes. Yes, I miss him." I pivot back around to retrieve two mugs from a cabinet, then measure out and dump the buckwheat into the now boiling water in the other saucepan. After turning down the burner, I divide the hot chocolate in the shake bottle into the mugs and carry them over to the living room.

"I hope you like hot chocolate." I set one of the mugs in front of Arianna on the table, and the other on the glass-topped side table next to the rocking chair, where I then sit. "I thought it was a good morning for a hot treat." The snow is coming down a bit faster now, and the wind seemed colder when I went out for the crutches than when I discovered the girl.

Arianna stares at me for several seconds, glances down at the mug, then back up at me. "You – you fixed me chocolate?" She whispers the words in a reverent tone, as though I've performed some huge miracle.

I lift a shoulder. "I was going to drink some for breakfast. Thought it would be rude not to offer some to my guest."

Her forehead crumples. "But...but...you didn't have to –"

I wave away her protest, her awe both surprising and warming me. "You do like chocolate, don't you?"

A nod. "Yes, ma'am."

"Allie, girl, Allie." My smile widens without me trying. "I know I look old to you, but this 'ma'am' business really makes me _feel_ old."

Arianna frowns. "But...that doesn't sound very respectful. You're an adult. I feel like calling you by your first name is too...I don't know."

"Familiar?" I supply.

She nods.

I cross my feet at the ankles. "How about _Miss_ Allie, then? Can you be comfortable calling me that?" I certainly hope so. I'm more comfortable with that than with "ma'am" or "Mrs. Whitlock."

Another nod, and a smile. "Okay. Miss Allie." She glances down into her mug before returning her gaze toward me. "I sho' do like chocolate. Have not had any in I don't know how long. Thank you."

We sit in silence for a while, sipping our drinks. Every couple of minutes I get up to make sure the buckwheat water isn't about to boil over. I have just turned off the buckwheat to let it soak when Arianna lets out a loud gasp.

Whirling around, I see that her gaze is fixed on something outside. Has it begun snowing in earnest? I turn my head in the direction of her gaze to see a man with a scraggly white beard coming up the stone walk.

Jeb Mitchell? I do a double take. Yes, it _is_ him. My stomach clenches. What is _he_ doing here?

Arianna mutters something in what I guess to be her native tongue, then reaches over for the crutches. Easing her left foot down off the couch – she's in between icings right now – she pushes herself to her feet with a groan. "Miss Allie, I got to hide till that man leaves. Case he's lookin' –" She cuts herself off with a grimace, either from pain or from the realization of what she's just said. As if she didn't mean to speak the thought aloud.

So, someone _is_ looking for her. I can only hope I'm not harboring a runaway.

I stand as well. "He's just a...a neighbor." I force the words up through my suddenly dry throat, then swallow.

A neighbor? Some neighbor. And I know I heard that his farm was going up for sale. The news had brought me some relief; if the land was sold when he got out of prison, I wouldn't have to see him ever again.

I close my eyes shut, hard, then open them again, hoping my imagination is playing tricks on me.

No. It's Jeb. He's close enough to the house that I can't mistake it now. He walks with stooped shoulders, and a limp he hadn't had before his conviction.

Guilt twists my insides. But in the next heartbeat, a surge of anger overwhelms the guilt. How dare he show up at my door, unannounced and without invitation? What could possibly be his motive?

Unless...somehow, he found out? About -

Fear slams into the anger.

"Please, Miss Allie." The girl's voice pulls me out of my dark mental wanderings, and I glance her way. The apprehension in her eyes matches my own emotion.

I consider arguing with her. Once upon a time, I liked Jeb Mitchell. Unless prison changed his personality, Arianna has nothing to fear from him.

But I'm not in the mood to argue. Besides, I don't want to make the girl feel uncomfortable in my house. In case I can help her, I don't want to give her any more reason to flee than I have to.

So I point to the room that used to be Jared's bedroom, which is right next to the living room. "Get in there and close the door."

My gaze returns to the window, adrenaline flooding my system as my insides become a cauldron of emotions. Emotions I have worked hard to bury – even believed I had worked through – crash into my psyche with the ferocity of a tidal wave.

Hardly knowing what I'm doing, I rush into my bedroom, which adjoins the kitchen. Heart pounding and nearly gasping for breath, I snatch up the rifle that my husband insisted we keep on hand just in case. Not that I would shoot Jeb. But I want him to leave faster than he came, and he may need some encouragement to do so.

# Chapter Two: Jeb

I must be crazy, walking up to Allison Whitlock's door. What was I thinking? That she'd greet me with open arms and invite me in for coffee?

Not that I came here for coffee. I just wanted to make sure she was okay. You know, do the neighborly thing during a power outage.

Tell the truth, old man. I have an ulterior motive. Three times while serving my sentence I wrote her a letter, asking for forgiveness. Three times, the letter came back marked, "return to sender." Each time, despair and sorrow carved a larger and deeper hole in my heart.

I don't know why I should expect her to give me what I want – no, need – in person, when she couldn't give it to me by letter.

There's another lie. I'm hoping that if she sees I still care for her as a friend, even if she hates my guts till the day I die, she'll soften the least little bit necessary to forgive me. I ain't asking her to forget. Neither of us will ever forget. But maybe by taking a small step toward reconciliation, the memories will lose some of their pain?

As I approach her door, I have to fight a sudden onslaught of related memories, memories of conversations with Allie and Jason, of wrestling with their sons in the very yard that surrounds me.

Wrestling sessions that can never happen again. Not in this life, no-how.

My steps slow, my feet dragging against the snow-dusted stone walkway. I shouldn't have come. This was a mistake. The confidence and determination that drove me here a few minutes ago drain right out of me like oil from a busted engine.

I want to turn around and go home. Make the rumors come true and sell off my land and move far away from here. But I'm a few feet from the door now, and I see movement through one of the windows. Which probably means she's seen me.

Which means I'd look like a dadgum fool if I turned back now.

Swallowing hard, I step up to the door and knock. Several long beats pass. Has she decided to ignore me? Hope I'll just go away?

Then, the door opens. Just a few inches. Wide enough for me to see a woman with shoulder-length, reddish-brown hair holding a twenty-two in front of her.

Allie. Blue-green eyes flashing fury, lips pressed so tightly together they're turning white.

I take a step back, raising my hands. Last I heard, she didn't know one end of a rifle from another, but who knows what skills she might have picked up during the past five years. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay. With the power outage and everything."

"I'm fine." Her voice is colder than the sleet that suddenly starts to fall. "Now, get out of here. And don't come back."

She disappears from view as the door shuts in my face. I sigh. Can't say as I blame her.

Turning, I take a step back down the stone path. As I do, the sleet starts coming down in sheets, stinging my face and poking icy claws into my bare hands. I would pick up my pace, but the sore place on my knee keeps me from going very quickly.

"Jeb! Jeb, come here!" Allie's voice from behind is full of angry resignation, but at this point in time it might as well be angels singing. The house is about 300 feet back from the main road, where I parked my truck, and I wasn't exactly looking forward to the walk in this icy downpour.

I turn back toward the house. She stands in the doorway, gesturing with her arm for me to come in that direction. As I take the few steps necessary to return, I note with some relief that she is no longer holding the rifle.

Allie opens the door wider when I have reached the spot where I stood not a minute before. "You can at least wait out this crazy storm." She steps aside so I can come in, then closes the door with a firm click behind her.

Like she's afraid of catching the plague from me, she nearly jumps away as soon as the door is closed, then steps over to the double burner on the counter. With a sigh, she removes the saucepan sitting on the larger burner, sets it on a nearby hotpad, and opens up the cabinet above the counter.

I fold my arms over my chest, wishing I'd just dealt with the sleet and gone on home. Not only did I seem to have interrupted a hot breakfast, but the silence between us is at least as cold and sharp as the weather outside.

I turn my head up to look at the dome ceiling. I still remember when the Whitlocks had this house built. Concrete trucks – by the dozen, it seemed, though I know that wasn't true – first poured the foundation, then filled the large, hollow metal forms that created the walls. Finally, the builders jacked a large dome-shaped form up to the top edges of the completed walls, and poured concrete all over it.

I remember how excited Allie and Jason's boys were throughout the process, how Allie and Bev talked up a storm the whole time.

For a second, I'm living that moment from eleven years ago. Then my brain snaps back to the present, and my heart squeezes.

Most of the people in that scene are gone now. Thanks to me.

I drag my eyes down to stare at the bathroom doors, and I see myself counseling Jason about how exactly to frame them.

I was right. It was a mistake, coming here. If I had known that ghosts would haunt me from every corner...

I begin turning to Allie to make my apologies and leave, but something in the living room grabs my attention. A plastic folding table has been set up by the couch. Did Allie decide to eat breakfast there this morning? Then I see them – two empty mugs, one on the plastic table, one on the small glass-topped table between the rocking chair and arm chair.

"You got company?" The words tumble out of my mouth before I have a chance to think, just as a loud sneeze sounds from Jared's bedroom.

Jared. Don at the gas station told me yesterday that he'd never come back. Yet another thing for me to feel guilty about.

Unless...could that be Jared in the bedroom? Had he come back, and the locals just ain't heard about it yet?

Allie whirls toward me, though her eyes are on the closed bedroom door. "Uh, friend of a friend. Was passing through and didn't want to drive out in the storm." She clears her throat and glances my way. "Said she had a headache, so I told her to lie down in Jared's bed."

The mention of her elder son's name makes me flinch. I step toward her. "Listen, I heard what –"

"I don't want to talk about it." Allie glares at me. "I especially don't want to hear any more 'sorries' out of your mouth." She turns to face the pine board wall next to the bathroom, but not before I see tears glimmering in her eyes.

Mistake, mistake, mistake. I step back to the door, put my hand on the doorknob, and twist it. At the same moment, the ceiling fan comes back on and the dehumidifier by the coat closet beeps its return to life.

"Looks like I worried about you for nothing, anyway," I mumble as I open the door. In a louder voice, I say, "Thanks for the warm-up. Looks like we got more snow than sleet coming down now."

This is the truth, but even if the sleet was coming down harder than before, I would leave. If Allie says anything in reply, the words are lost in a gust of wind that passes by as I exit the house.

# Chapter Three: Arianna

"He's gone. You can come out now." Miss Allie's voice is shaky, lacking the confidence I had heard in it up until now.

Sniffing, I open the bedroom door and hobble back toward the couch. As I sit down, Miss Allie hands me a paper towel. "Sorry, I use cloth handkerchiefs for my nose, so I don't have any Kleenex on hand."

I mumble a thanks, blow my nose, then watch Miss Allie's back as she returns to the kitchen, wondering if I dare ask the question that's on my mind. She lifts the lid off the saucepan, nods, and reaches into the open cabinet to pull out two bowls.

I clear my throat. "You said he was your...neighbor, right?"

Miss Allie glances over her shoulder as she replies with a curt, "Yes."

"You don't like him?" Because if she doesn't trust her neighbors, I will not. And that means I'll need to get out of here sooner rather than later.

Turning around, she sets the two bowls on the cart a few feet away from the counter and begins dishing up the hot cereal into the bowls. But she says nothing, her head turned down with the scraping of metal on metal being the only sound breaking the silence between us.

I've given up on her saying anything when she sighs, lifts her head to look at me, and says, "We used to be friends. But..." Her head dips down again, and she slams the lid back onto the saucepan. The sound startles me, making me jump – including involuntarily lifting my left foot.

I cry out in pain.

Miss Allie is at my side in the next second. "Are you all right? I'm sorry. I startled you, didn't I? I'm so sorry." Her gaze flits from my face to my injured ankle, back to my face, her own face riddled with guilt and remorse.

"I don't think it's any worse." I take a deep breath. "I'm fine." I want to ask her why talking about her neighbor makes her so mad, but I'm not dumb. I can see she doesn't want to talk about him anymore. So I say nothing, just make myself smile to try to convince her that I really am okay.

When she moves away and starts walking back to the kitchen, I am surprised by a let-down feeling. I can't remember the last time I had someone hover over me when I was hurt or sick or just feeling sad. Someone to care for me, like my mama used to –

I squeeze my eyes tight. There's no use thinking about my mama. She died a long time ago. Which is the reason I ended up with Mr. Brent...

**********

"Arianna, follow me. There's someone here to see you."

I grunted and rolled onto my back. Opening my bleary eyes, I saw the head of the orphanage, a large woman all the children called Biru, bending over me and whispering right into my ear. The only reason I saw her was that she was shining a flashlight onto my covers and the beam reflected just far enough up so that I could make out her face in the dark.

The dark. For a few months of the year, when the days were shorter, it was dark when we got out of bed. But for the past several weeks we hadn't been roused from our sleep until the sun had been visible over the horizon. So it must have been the middle of the night.

I wanted to ask her what time it was, who wanted to see me in the middle of the night, but I knew what she wanted was obedience, not questions. And if I started asking questions, there was a good chance I'd get my ears boxed. Or be forced to miss breakfast.

So I sat up, yawned, then swung my short legs over the side of the bed.

"Put these on, quickly." She thrust my regular day clothes at me. "And try not to make a sound."

I did as she said, growing more confused with every second. It must have been somebody important if I was to change out of my nightclothes, an adult-sized T-shirt which stank because the people who ran the orphanage rarely washed our nightclothes. But why couldn't this person wait until daylight?

When I finished changing, Biru grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the large room where several dozen other girls were sleeping. Closing the door with a quiet click, she led me partway down the hall, then stopped and set her hands on my shoulders.

She leaned down so that her face was right in front of mine. "Arianna, you need to be as sweet and as good as you can be when we meet our visitor." Her tone wasn't sweet. It was as sour as her breath. "It's an American man who might be interested in adopting you."

I'd heard about adoption. It was a word whispered among the children sometimes, a sacred word because it meant that a grown-up had decided that one of us children was special enough to accept the child as part of their family. It meant three solid meals a day, every day. Clean clothes. Someone to tuck us in at night. No more working all day at nasty chores to "prepare us for the real world."

It meant time to play, and hopefully, someone who might love us, at least a little bit like our real parents used to love us.

My eyes grew wide, and my mouth fell open. "Why –"

"Don't ask questions, child!" Biru stuck her finger within half an inch of my nose. "Will you behave, or won't you?"

I nodded. "Yes. I will." My heart was already starting to beat faster from happy anticipation.

Less than a minute later, we had walked out the back door of the large building. A car was parked a few yards away, its headlights on, and leaning against the hood was a tall man. When he saw us coming, he stood up to his full height and stepped into the beams coming from the car, a big smile on his face.

I almost exclaimed, "Mzungu!", a word that Africans commonly used for white people, but stopped myself just in time. I didn't want to make Biru angry, or insult the man in case he thought it was an insult. Which it wasn't.

We walked over to him, and Biru introduced the man as Mr. Brent.

Still smiling, he squatted down to get at eye level with my eight-year-old self. "Biru here says that you sing real pretty. You understand me, don't you?"

I nodded. "I speak English." My voice sounded shaky, and my stomach fluttered with nervousness.

"Wonderful. Why don't you sing me a song, then?" He stood up, clasped his hands behind his back, and kept looking at me.

I thought it was a strange question, but maybe all Americans wanted their African children to be able to sing.

"Stand up straight and sing as beautifully as you've ever sung in your life," Biru instructed.

I sang, "Jesus Loves Me." As I sang, Mr. Brent lifted his brow and glanced at Biru. But she was behind me, so I didn't see the expression on her face.

By the time I finished, I was close to feeling like throwing up. Somehow I knew that my singing, and my singing alone, would determine whether Mr. Brent adopted me. I guess I did a good job, because he got back into a squatting position.

"Arianna, what would you think about going back to America with me and living in a big, beautiful house where you could have your own bedroom and all the toys you ever wanted? And eat delicious food whenever you wanted?"

I wondered about my brother, Adroa, and whether this man would adopt him, too. I wondered how this man could be so sure I'd be a nice little girl, based solely on the song I sang. I knew that grown-ups only adopted nice boys and girls, not the ones who caused trouble or were unhealthy.

But this man had offered me the fantasy of every boy and girl who lived with me in that orphanage in Uganda. I could hardly care about anything else.

I turned slightly to look at Biru, to make sure it was okay for me to answer. She gave me an encouraging smile, waving her hand in a gesture for me to go ahead and talk.

I looked up at the man, excitement blooming inside my chest. "I would think that would be wonderful, sir."

"Well, then." Mr. Brent put his hand on my shoulder. "How would you like to be my little girl?"

**********

"Wow! Can you believe this weather?" Miss Allie's voice, artificially cheerful, breaks through the scene replaying in my head.

Hoping I don't look as tense as the memory has made me feel, I look out the window. The ice that fell from the sky mere minutes ago has morphed into large, wet snowflakes. What if I hadn't found Miss Allie's shed? What if there had been no buildings on this mountain?

I shiver involuntarily at the morbid thought that follows. Mr. Brent would tell me to thank God for my blessings in a situation like this. But I don't believe God has anything to do with this. It was my own determination, plus a happy coincidence. That's all.

A couple of minutes later, Allie sits in the rocking chair with her bowl of – what did she call it? buckwheat? – in her lap, mine on the table in front of me, drizzled with honey and sprinkled with cinnamon. I try to eat slowly so as not to seem rude. But it's hard. My stomach is like a cave the size of Africa, and this cereal is _good_.

It's not that Mr. Brent and his wife don't feed the children. No. What with us constantly being paraded in front of large groups of people, we can't look neglected. But the food is always boring, the menu never changing. Wheat flakes and milk for breakfast, peanut butter or baloney sandwiches for lunch – and no, no jelly or jam with the peanut butter – and rice and beans for supper. At least there's salt and pepper to make it a little interesting, but that's all. The only time we get fresh fruits or vegetables is if somebody donates them to us – and that isn't very often.

"You want some more? I cooked extra," Allie says to me when I finish all the buckwheat in my bowl.

I glance over at hers, and see she's barely half-finished. Either I was eating too fast, or she's a slow eater. A part of me wants to decline her offer. I can hear Mrs. Brent's mousy voice remind me that "it ain't ladylike to eat too much in one sitting."

But this woman isn't Mrs. Brent, and she's invited me to eat more. I nod my head with a "please." As I shove the spoon into my second helping, I notice Allie watching me out of the corner of her eye for a minute. Is she going to start asking me uncomfortable questions?

Then she fixes her gaze on her own bowl, and the two of us finish up in silence. Finally, my stomach is happy, and I watch her carry the two bowls into the kitchen.

I shift in my seat, suddenly feeling restless, and stifling a groan of pain when I accidentally move my ankle. If I believed in prayer, I would be praying that it wasn't broken. "I sho' am sorry I can't help you," I tell Miss Allie. And I truly am. She's given me a warm place to stay and the most delicious food I've eaten in years.

Saved my life, maybe. Probably.

So I would like to do something to show my gratitude.

Miss Allie twists her neck around to glance at me. "Don't worry about it for one more second." She turns back to the sink, and I hear the sound of water running from the tap. "Besides, it's just one more bowl than usual. I'm used to washing fo-"

She cuts herself off and stands rigid for a few beats. When she starts moving again, her shoulders seem to droop.

What was she going to say? For more people? I know she has the one son whose crutches I'm using, but now I wonder if there's more to it than that. But it isn't any of my business, and I don't want to get into the position of having to tell her my history because she told me hers. Guess we both got secrets.

Miss Allie makes quick work of washing the few dishes, but I can tell she's uncomfortable with her almost giving up her secret. I'm starting to feel uncomfortable, too, so I turn my gaze toward the window nearest me to watch the snow fall. We've been in the South during the winter before, Mr. Brent and we children, but it's never been cold enough to snow. Maybe it's just this state – Oklahoma, Mr. Brent said. Maybe it's further north than the other southern states we've performed in.

I look back at Miss Allie. Should I ask? It shouldn't make her suspicious. After all, I don't exactly sound American, so she probably figures I'm some kind of immigrant.

Which I am, but not the legal kind. Mr. Brent doesn't know, but the last couple of years I have found a bunch of chances to talk to the church folk without him around, and they've told me some interesting things. Yes, sir. I'm telling you, some _very_ interesting things.

Anyway, I don't think I risk anything in voicing my question.

"Miss Allie, you get snow here every winter?"

At the sound of my voice, she jumps. Then she sets a mug down in the dish drainer, turns around, and wipes her hands on her sweatpants. "No." She shakes her head. "Lots of years we'll get temperatures cold enough for this kind of stuff," she waves her hand toward the window near her, "but not get any frozen precipitation. Other years winter feels like spring most days, and others, like this one, I feel like I'm back in my home state of South Dakota."

South Dakota! We were there last summer. I open my mouth to say just that, but then I remember and close it.

Miss Allie steps toward me. "I'll bet it doesn't snow where you're from."

"No, ma'am." The words are out before I realize what I have said. Heat floods my face, and I glance down at the little dog who climbed up in my lap after I finished eating. I hope Miss Allie doesn't ask me more questions about my past.

If I have learned nothing else during the past eight years of my life, it's that you never know who you can trust. Especially if they are a white American.

# Chapter Four: Allie

Bundled up in my parka, cell phone in hand, I quietly open the door, step outside, and close it behind me. I turn on the phone, knowing I may not even get a signal this morning. But I'm going to try. I need to talk to somebody. At least the wind has died down and the thick snow from a half hour ago is down to just the occasional flurry floating down from the gray sky.

The phone shows one bar, so I click through my call log, select a name, and hit the call button. If I get through, I should have plenty of time for this conversation. Arianna is sleeping soundly on Jared's bed, and as exhausted as she seemed I wouldn't be surprised if her nap lasted a couple of hours.

Not that I'll be able to last out here even half that long. Even with the wind diminished, the cold bites.

"Hey, Allie, you snowed in down there?" is how my best friend, Liz Richardson, answers the phone.

"Only about an inch so far," I reply, relieved she's answered.

We chat for another minute or so about the weather, then Liz asks, "So, what's going on? You're not standing out in the freezing cold to give me a weather update." She chuckles. "Especially since you know it's worse up here."

We both live in the rural development of Pine Mountain Estates near the very small town of Forest Peak. The development is a piece of mountain that a land developer divided up into twelve land tracts and started selling about thirteen years ago.

Liz moved here seven years ago after a wretched divorce from an emotionally abusive husband. A freelance writer, she can live anywhere she wants to and chose quiet rural southeast Oklahoma over her hometown of bustling Atlanta, Georgia. She bought the property near the top of the mountain, a steep fifteen-minute walk up from my house, and is one of only three other people besides me who live up here most of the time.

I am getting cold, so I get to the point. "Did you know Jeb was being released?"

Silence. Then, "Allie, no!"

"Liz, yes." I take a ragged breath. "I guess he was let out on parole." A lump begins to form in my throat, and I have to clear it to continue. "He showed up here about an hour ago."

A gasp from the other end of the line. "Allie, what did you do? What did he say? Are – are you okay?"

"I'm fine." I take another deep breath. "Okay, so not _fine_ , fine, but I'm not having a breakdown or anything."

"What did he want?"

I look up toward the spot where Liz's place is hidden in the trees. But since the entire mountainside is obscured by a cloud, all I see is a wall of white. "He said he wanted to make sure I was okay because of the power outage."

Suddenly, I am back in the kitchen, reliving the memories that had bombarded my mind while Jeb stood at my front door a little while ago. Reliving the pain. I should have waited to call Liz until I'd worked through those emotions.

"Allie? Allie, are you still there?"

"I'm still here." The words push out against the sob threatening in the back of my throat.

"Oh, Allie," Liz says, her voice full of concern, "if I could make it down the road, you know I'd come down right now and give you a big hug."

"I know you would." I sniff, annoyed at the tear sliding down my cheek. All I need are icicles forming on my face.

"Did...did y'all talk about...anything else?"

I start to tell her no, then remember. "Apparently he's been back long enough to have heard about Jared." I swallow against the golf ball inside my throat. "I told him I didn't want to talk about it. He left after that."

"Well, at least he didn't ask for forgiveness." Liz's tone oozes bitterness. She'd feel differently about Jeb if she knew the truth, the full story. But I've never had the guts to tell her.

Besides, as far as I can ascertain, my friend struggles to trust men in general, thanks to how her ex-husband treated her for almost two years.

As we wrap up the phone call, I consider mentioning my earlier adventure from this morning, discovering a stray teenager in my shed. But I know that Arianna would be unhappy if she knew I told anybody, even though she hasn't thought to ask me to keep her presence a secret.

And for some odd reason, I feel protective of her. Maybe my maternal instincts are kicking in. I have a feeling that Arianna hasn't run away from loved ones or friends, but from a bad situation.

I hope that if she needs help, she hangs around long enough to let me help her. Goodness only knows I need something to do besides clean the house and wait for the gardening season to return.

I decide that after lunch, I will do some gentle probing to see what I can get out of the girl. But when Arianna settles back down on the couch with Belle just after noon, she throws me for a loop with her own question.

"Who are Arthur and Jared?"

I am standing behind the rocking chair, preparing to do my own interrogation, but her question slams into my heart. Except for Jeb earlier today, no one has mentioned my boys by name for ages, except Liz on occasion. For the space of five heartbeats, I can hardly breathe as I stare at her. No doubt she noticed something on the shelves in their room with their names.

Finally, I manage to breathe, and with that breath, make a decision. "You might as well know the whole story." I come around the chair, sitting down in it with maybe the fiftieth heavy sigh of the day. I meet Arianna's curious gaze as I begin, "Five years ago, my husband, Jason, and my younger son, Arthur, were killed in a car accident." I pause, then look away, wondering how much detail I should share. She doesn't need to know much, especially if she's going to be on her way in a few days.

I swallow, then shift my eyes back toward the girl. "Jared had a few minor injuries, but was pretty much all right." Physically, I mean. He was anything but all right emotionally. "Six months after the accident, he left one morning, telling me he was going to go hiking with some friends."

Tears well up behind my eyelids, and I look down at my lap as I remember. I remember, when Jared wasn't home by dusk, calling a couple of those friends and finding out that there hadn't been any hike planned and neither of them had seen Jared all day. I remember waiting up all night, hoping and praying he would be back by morning. Talking to the deputy sheriff when he wasn't, and filing a missing persons report.

I remember finding his note to me tucked into his pillowcase when I went to wash it a few days later.

Mom,

I'm sorry, but I can't live here anymore. I know you said we could talk about it, but you can't understand what I feel, and nobody could make it go away even if they did understand.

I think the only way for me is to go far away, and try to start over. Please don't try to look for me. I'll come back if I can ever get this monkey off my back.

I love you, Mom. Please don't worry. I know how to take care of myself.

Jared

I clear my throat, sniff, then swallow.

"You can cry if you want, Miss Allie." Arianna's voice is soft and tender. "I don't mind."

"I've cried enough." I lift my head back up and give the girl a shaky smile. "Anyway, long story short, he left a note saying that he needed to leave, that he couldn't face living here anymore."

Arianna slowly dips her head. "The memories." Her eyes take on a faraway look, as if she's reliving her own memories.

I don't respond, but wonder if now is the time to ask her some of her own personal history. Demand that she tell me how she came to be in my shed, or she'll have to leave.

Ouch! The internal "no" to that last one is so loud, it pinches. I wish God would be so clear with me every time I asked Him a question.

I decide to change the subject. "Arianna, would you like to watch a movie with me this afternoon? Unless you need to sleep some more."

Arianna slowly turns her head to look at me. Her charcoal eyebrows form a deep V in the middle of her forehead. "Movie?"

At that moment, my computer dings an incoming e-mail. Wanting to read it if it's from Liz, I excuse myself to the desk sitting by the bathroom door and pick it up.

When I open my inbox, my heart falls to my feet. It's from Jeb. I move to delete it, then stop. I should read it. He deserves that much from me.

So I open the e-mail.

Allie, I know I caught you off guard this morning. I'm sorry. I'd like one more chance to talk with you. Please? I'll make it as painless as I can.

For the longest time, I stare at the e-mail. Then, I type a reply.

No.

My finger hovers over "send." And hovers. And hovers.

Finally, I delete the e-mail and turn off my phone.

Ignoring him won't make him go away, a voice in my head scolds.

No, it won't. But it _will_ give me time to decide if I should finally come clean with him about the accident.

# Chapter Five: Jared

My arms full of the wood that I've just chopped, I blink my eyes to ward off the snowflakes pinging against them. The ski mask and scarf I'm wearing only go so far to protect me from the bitter cold of the Montana winter storm. Despite the acrylic and wool covering most of my face, it's getting cold. I wonder what Mom would think if she saw me like this.

The thought brings a pinch inside my gut. For several reasons. Mostly, because I realize how badly I hurt her, and that I've been dragging my feet in doing what I know to do to fix it.

I need to talk to Leo. Today. Now.

Carefully, I tread up the wooden porch steps that are already covered with another three inches of snow, even though I swept them off before going out to chop wood. I dump the wood into the woodbox just outside the door, then pause to catch my breath.

Pause again to work up my nerve. To pray. Because I have a feeling I'm about to let Leo down in a huge way. Or make him angry. Maybe both.

Placing my gloved hand on the doorknob, I turn it. I push the door open to be greeted by a wave of warmth, courtesy of the pot-bellied wood stove in the middle of the small cabin. I wish I had the luxury of removing all my outerwear and lying right in front of the stove until I begin to feel half-roasted instead of half-frozen, but I've got to get this conversation over with.

I lean into the door with all my strength, having to fight a gust of wind to get it closed.

"Glad to see you made it back, son." Leo's gravelly voice sounds stern, but after almost five years I've come to recognize when he's teasing. And he's teasing me now.

I glance over to where he's sitting as I start removing my outerwear. For a guy almost eighty years old, Leo is in good shape. His shoulders are slightly stooped, but the muscles in his arms and chest, almost always bare during the summer months, are well-sculpted for someone with sagging skin.

"Barely," is my wry response as I hang up my coat on a peg near the door.

After playing tug-of-war with my boots for a minute, I get them off and my frozen toes feel instant relief at the exposure to the warm air. I take a deep breath to steady myself for the coming discussion. Then, walking over to the rustic wooden bench across from the old recliner where Leo is sitting, I ease my tired body onto the planks.

I watch Leo for several beats. I'm going to miss him. He is the quintessential mountain man with his long, white hair and scruffy mustache and beard to match. He's even got a pipe in his mouth, though it's not lit right now.

Mom would freak if I told her that I lived in a 400-square foot cabin for five years, inhaling second-hand pipe smoke. But I'm not planning on sharing that little detail with her. She'll be livid enough when I tell her that I've eaten eggs and bread almost every day that I've lived here.

She raised us vegan and mostly gluten-free.

Mom. Okay. That's why I'm sitting here. Doing nothing. Except working up my nerve.

"You got something to say?" Leo doesn't look up from the well-worn Tom Clancy novel that he's reading. He asks me that because I never sit around doing nothing. If I'm not reading a library book, I'm listening to podcasts that my friend and boss at the local dollar store downloads for me, since we don't have Internet up here. Leo must realize that something is up.

I suck in a breath. "Yes, sir."

Leo closes the book over a finger, pulls the pipe out of his mouth, and cuts his eyes toward me. "Go on."

"I lied to you."

I watch him for a reaction, but not a single twitch alters his stony expression.

I clear my throat. "I wasn't nineteen when I came here." That's what I told him when I first arrived in Montana, and offered my services to him. "I'm only twenty now. I...I ran away from home."

Leo _harumphs._ "I thought you were gonna tell me somethin' I didn't know."

I feel my brow push toward the top of my head, and Leo bursts out laughing. Leaning forward, he says, "Boy, you think I was born yesterday or something? I knew you were a runaway, and that you weren't anywhere near twenty years old."

Now my brow furrows. "But, then, why didn't you call the sheriff on me? Why did you take me in?"

He lifts a shoulder, still smiling. Something I've rarely seen him do. "I figgered you had a good reason for running away. Had a parent who beat you, or wanted you to buy drugs for them. Or maybe you was a foster kid and was tired of being part of the system."

He sits back, his expression sobering. "I'm a live-and-let-live kind of guy. I figgered I'd give you a few days, a week, and see how you did. Get to know your character. You proved to be a responsible boy who wasn't afraid of hard work, so I decided to take you in and let the Almighty deal with whatever problems you was having."

I flinch. The "Almighty" has definitely been dealing with me. "I'm not sure you'll think my reason for running away is a good one." I go on to explain the circumstances of my life five years ago.

Leo puts his pipe back in his mouth, his right eyebrow arching. "And you're telling me all this now because...?"

I sigh. "I need to go home. Make things right." Not that I think I can, but I want to try. Mom at least needs to know I'm alive and well, even if she slams the door in my face when I show up.

Which she wouldn't do. But I'm certainly not expecting the red carpet treatment.

Leo dips his chin. "You're right. You do. Soon as the roads are clear, you need to git."

I bring a fist up to my mouth, lightly bite on it, bring it down again. "But I don't want to leave you in the lurch."

Leo waves his novel in the air. "I was fine before you came, I'll be fine after you leave." Removing the pipe again, he leans forward and points it at me. "You broke your mother's heart."

My own heart clenches at his words. Don't I know it.

"Much as I've come to enjoy your company, come to think of you as a grandson, even, she needs you more'n I do." Lowering the pipe, he leans back in his chair. "If I need help, there are plenty of strapping young men like yourself around who wouldn't mind room and board in exchange for work, just to have some independence."

I nod, the tension from the last few minutes sliding off my shoulders, replaced by a warmth from Leo having thought of me as a grandson. By his gruff, no-nonsense manner, I hadn't been able to pick that up.

But the thought brings me to another one. I'm not going to go straight to Oklahoma when I leave. There's another stop I need to make, because I know Mom's isn't the only heart I've broken.

I have a lot of repenting and fence-mending ahead of me.

# Chapter Six: Jeb

She hasn't said no. All right, so she hasn't given me any response. But it's been, what, eighteen hours since I sent the e-mail. Could be she ain't even read it yet.

Or deleted it without reading it.

I shake my head as I swallow the sip of coffee I just took. Ain't no cause to fret. The Lord is in control. And I gotta remember that my hope is in Him, not Allison Whitlock. I gotta remember that He has forgiven me, even if Allie hasn't. Even if I can't forgive myself.

I stare out the kitchen window at the sun sparkling on the ice and snow that fell yesterday. Like the sun coming out after a gray, wintry day like yesterday, this hope glimmers inside me.

The toast pops up, and I set down my mug to retrieve and butter it. I don't bother using a plate. Bev, of course, would have never let me get away with leaving a piece of dry toast – let alone buttered – on the table.

My mind wanders back to the first day after our wedding, when I did just that.

"Jeb, you ever heard of a plate?" My bride's face beamed with a smile, and her words were soft and teasing. But I got the message, got up and got a plate, and didn't ever make that mistake again.

Course, I made plenty of other little mistakes. I'd been a bachelor until age thirty, so I'd had plenty of years to get into bad habits that most women disapprove of. But over the years, Bev had slowly and gently changed my habits.

I sigh, looking across the table to where Bev should be sitting. I tap my index finger on the table several times. Then I ease up off the chair, limp to the cabinet, and pull out a plate.

But now I've lost my appetite. Still standing, I put the toast on the plate, then turn and walk to the window. Five years without the only woman I ever loved. And it's my own fault.

Remorse swells inside like a boil. Every week for the past four years, the prison chaplain counseled me. He helped me see God's love in a way I hadn't understood before, and I found a measure of peace greater than I'd have thought possible, given the circumstances.

I made some spiritual breakthroughs while behind bars. But not the big one.

I still haven't forgiven myself for what happened.

"Give it time," the middle-aged preacher had told me. Now I'm wondering if a lifetime will be long enough.

I close my eyes. I need to get out of here. Almost wish I'd been able to serve my whole sentence. At least then, I'd have plenty of distractions around me. Not that they were always good distractions.

I glance down at my left knee, which the physical therapist said may take two or three years to fully recover. And even then, at my age it may cause occasional discomfort. I should've known better than to get in the middle of a scuffle in prison.

I head for the back door, which opens out of a mud room space next to the kitchen, to look at the thermometer hanging under the overhang. Twenty-seven degrees. The roads are probably still all frozen over. I'll risk taking the half-mile drive up to the Whitlock place, but even with my four-wheel drive pickup I'm leery about trying to navigate my way into town.

Besides, my first trip into town three days ago didn't exactly bring me any warm fuzzies. Seems a lot of people I used to consider friends, or at least friendly acquaintances, ain't forgiven me for the accident. Some of them are even ones who showed up for Bev's funeral and gave me their condolences.

Guess they've had four years to deliberate, and have found me guilty of stupidity. Not that I blame any of them. But the cold reception I got a few days ago has cemented my decision to go ahead and sell this land, and head off to parts unknown.

I only hope I can talk things out with Allie before I leave. 'Cause anybody else can think whatever they want about me. But I got to have Allie's forgiveness.

It may be the only way I'll ever be able to forgive myself.

# Chapter Seven: Arianna

A movie, two days in a row! Miss Allie couldn't believe it yesterday when I told her I'd never seen a movie. When she asked me what country I grew up in, I decided it would be safe enough to tell her. While the big cities in Africa have a lot of the same modern things that the United States does, those of us who are born and raised in the bush – for me, it was Uganda – and then sent to a poor orphanage that barely has enough money to feed the children it houses, we don't see a lot of those modern things.

And Mr. Brent told us that movies were of the devil. Then again, once I sneaked a peek inside one of those paperback books that Mrs. Brent would pull out of her backpack when her husband wasn't around. Though I can't read real well, I can read well enough to know that what the characters in that novel were doing wasn't exactly church material.

Probably Mr. Brent just doesn't know his wife has books like that.

Anyway, the movie we watched was about a little fish who lost his way in the ocean, and his dad who went out to find him. I couldn't see how God – if He existed – would be against this kind of a story, so at the end I asked Miss Allie if she knew anybody who might think that this movie was "of the devil."

She looked at me real strange for a minute, then said that she supposed some religious zealots thought that any kind of entertainment was of the devil. I didn't understand that phrase, "religious zealot", and she told me that it was somebody who pretended to know and love God, but all they knew was a bunch of rules and the only person they really loved was themselves. Or, they couldn't love anybody because they hated themselves.

That's Mr. Brent, all right. But is he the self-loving or self-hating kind?

Miss Allie got up and went to the bathroom, and by the time she came out I'd gathered enough courage to ask her, "What 'bout you, Miss Allie? Do _you_ know God?"

She smiled then, the first real smile I'd seen on her face all day. "Yes, Arianna, I do. It's what's held me together these past few years."

Then she looked at me – studied me, seemed like, so that I felt like squirming – and I'm telling you, I was so afraid she was going to ask me what I thought about God. Or about where I had come from.

But then she just shrugged, gave me another small smile – this one kind of sad – and went over to the kitchen, talking about what we might eat for supper.

Now I sit watching another movie on her laptop computer. But even though the images on the screen fascinate me, I'm having a harder time focusing on them. My ankle doesn't hurt as badly as it did yesterday and my mind is clearer, so I'm starting to realize what I have done.

I have abandoned the other eleven children, most of them younger than me. They are all like brothers and sisters to me, and I spent a lot of time in the early days comforting them and caring for them when they got sick. And what do I do? Instead of going to the police with what I have learned about our situation, I run away.

I didn't tell anybody else about my plans, except to leave a note saying that I would be all right. I didn't want any of them to have to lie to Mr. Brent. But...what if he whipped them all to try to get them to tell him where I went? I know he hits his wife sometimes, and once in a while he'll whip a child if he thinks the child didn't do their absolute best during a performance.

The images on the screen in front of me go out of focus and I bite my tongue to keep from letting out any kind of noise. Luckily, Miss Allie is typing on another computer at her desk and has her back toward me. I don't want her to see me right now. Because if she does, she will probably be able to tell that I'm scared, and ask me what's wrong.

I lower my head, taking a deep, quiet breath. _God, please don't let Mr. Brent whip any of the kids on account of me,_ I pray before I realize what I've done – talked to a God I don't believe exists.

Then I shake my head, scoffing inside at myself. Miss Allie must be rubbing off on me, even though I hardly know her. Last night she asked if she could pray about the healing of my ankle, and I went ahead and let her even though I wanted to tell her that I didn't think she should bother since nobody was listening. But her prayer was so...nice. Real. Like she really cared. And believed God was there, and He was listening.

Not at all like how Mr. Brent prays. Or how a lot of the pastors of the churches we have been to pray.

On the other hand, like how a few of the pastors pray. Some of them have actually sounded like they know God, and love Him. Guess not all church folk are religious zealots.

I shut my eyes real tight, take a deep breath, then open them again. I got to get these thoughts out of my head. I cannot do anything about anything until I can walk, so I might as well not fret about it.

That's an English word I learned from Mrs. Brent, fret. She likes to say, "You ain't in control, so there's no use fretting about it."

Except she's wrong. I finally figured out I _am_ in control, at least enough so that I can choose to leave a place that I don't like.

I force myself to refocus on the movie, though when it finally ends I'm not sure I could recite the main story back to Miss Allie if she asked. But she doesn't ask. Not about that, anyway.

She asks the question I have been waiting for – and dreading – since yesterday.

Settling herself into the rocking chair, she sits back, smiles at me, and says, "Arianna, don't you think it's time you told me how you came to be in my shed yesterday morning?" She lifts both her hands, palms out, as if to stop me from protesting. "If you need help, I want to help, that's all."

She settles her hands back in her lap, then looks at me with eyebrows raised above her bright, blue eyes, her mouth curved upward just a little.

I let my chin drop to my chest, staring at the colorful orange, red, and yellow afghan draped over my legs. I have been thinking about how to respond to this inevitable question. I like Miss Allie, so I want to be as respectful as possible. But if I said to Mr. Brent what I'm about to say to her – I'm telling you, it would not be pretty.

Taking a slow, deep breath, I raise my head and meet her gaze. "I – I need to trust you more 'fore I can answer that."

Miss Allie has been rocking the chair ever so slightly while waiting for me to answer. Now, she stops. Tilts her head at me, her eyebrows lifting even higher, her smile growing wider.

Finally, she does the last thing I would have expected – she laughs. "Girl," she says, pointing at me, "you're a smart one. Wise beyond your years. Anybody ever tell you that?"

I shake my head, my own brow lifting in surprise.

Miss Allie stands up, leans over, and pats my shoulder. "Let me know when I've earned your trust." Her smile fades and her voice gets quiet as she adds, "I know we barely know each other, Arianna, but I care, and I really do want to help."

Her words wrap around me, warmer than the afghan. Not since Mama died have I heard anyone say that they care about me, let alone love me. Can she mean it? Could it really be true?

I decide right then and there, sitting on that couch with an old lapdog by my side: if it really _is_ true, then I will believe in God again.

# Chapter Eight: Allie

As Arianna and I eat lunch, I take surreptitious glances at her. Back before the accident, when the weather was bad the boys would play video games together, read, or watch videos online. I'm not sure whether Arianna can read – at least in English – and if she's never seen a movie before, she certainly won't know how to play a video game or navigate YouTube.

Other than showing her more movies, I have no idea what to do with a foreign, incapacitated teenage girl.

If school were in session today, Thursday, I would drive into town to do some teacher helping and volunteer tutoring. That and blogging are two of a handful of ways I keep myself from going nuts during the winter when gardening and outdoor activities seem a distant memory.

Then again, I wouldn't want to leave Arianna alone. And even though she's noticeably better, she still should be off her feet as much as possible, and I'm not sure the three teachers I work with twice a week would appreciate an unexpected guest.

That's not to mention the questions her presence would bring. Questions for which I have no answers.

I stifle a sigh. So, no going to school for the foreseeable future. I need to send the teachers an e-mail and let them know. Tell them I have an unexpected out-of-town guest, and leave it at that.

The next few days – which already would be long, just because I'm alone and mostly housebound in this weather – stretch out before me like the Sahara. _Father, help me_ , I pray.

A small voice deep inside me replies, _One day at a time_.

As we finish up lunch, I ask, "Arianna, are you familiar with board games?"

Her face lights up. "Oh, yes, ma'am. You mean like checkers and Candyland? They only had one Candyland at the orphanage, but –"

She cuts herself off, widens her eyes, then drops her gaze to her plate.

Huh. Did she run away from an orphanage, then? I wouldn't blame her. But if she did, I'd have to call family services. And they would put her back where she was.

And I'm thinking that's not the best idea, since something – or someone – made her run away in the first place.

I decide to act like I haven't heard her. Shoving the chair back, I stand up and pick up my plate. "I never did buy Candyland for my boys when they were little." I step over to the sink and put my plate into it. "But I have a checkers set. And _Sorry!_ , _Parcheesi,_ and _Clue_."

I turn back to face her, and see that she's still staring at her plate. "Chess, too," I add, smiling, "but I could never get the hang of that. So I hope you're not a chess aficionado."

At this, Arianna lifts her head. "Ah-fiss...pardon? I don't think I have heard that word."

"Aficionado. Are you finished eating?" As she hands me her plate, I continue, "It means someone who's a big fan of something. Who likes something a whole lot," I add quickly when she looks even more puzzled.

And so, we spend a good portion of the afternoon playing board games. For the first time in years, I'm glad I never got rid of them. I considered it after Jared took off, but one, I felt like getting rid of them would be like giving in to the possibility that my elder son might not ever return; and two, there are too many memories wrapped up in the games.

Arianna and I start with checkers, and she wins the first game. Eyes wide, she bites her lip and apologizes. I think I actually see fear in her eyes.

Whatever she's running from, she suffered some sort of abuse there. No, I will definitely _not_ call family services.

"Arianna," I tell her, "you're allowed to win. In fact, I want you to win sometimes. Whenever you can. It means you're trying your best."

So I go on to lose four out of the five checkers games we play.

For that reason, when I teach her to play _Sorry!_ , I decide not to go easy on her. Even so, she ends up beating me several times. By then, she has relaxed into winning, even giving me victorious smirks whenever she comes out on top.

Through playing together, the wall of awkward tension that's been between us ever since she arrived begins to crumble, and we begin to talk with ease. "When I was a kid," I say in the middle of our second game, "my dad used to play this with me and my brother and sister all the time during the winter. When one of us would knock one of his pieces off the board, he'd say, 'You're the one who's going to be sorry! You'll see!' And we'd all laugh, because we knew he was just teasing."

Arianna picks up the die and turns it around in her hand. "You have a brother and a sister?"

And so, in between counting moves, I share childhood memories with my guest, who seems to hang on my every word. I wonder whether she has any siblings, but resist asking. I'm not going to probe and risk losing what little trust I may have built up with her during the past few hours.

Several games later, Arianna makes a move that knocks me back into my "home" space. I groan and she laughs, but in the next moment she turns serious.

"This is why you taught your own children this game?" she asks. "Because you had fun with it when you were a child?"

The question slices through my heart. But I force a smile and nod as I pick up the die. "Yes." The word comes out hoarse, and I clear my throat. "I always worked to make sure my sons would have a lot of warm memories of their childhood." Childhoods that were tragically cut short. Even Jared's, as he was forced to grow up quickly when he confronted the natural consequences of his actions.

Actions I can never be sure of, since I wasn't in the car that day. This uncertainty is what has kept me silent all these years, what feeds my reluctance to see Jeb again.

Only when I feel a warm arm over my shoulders do I realize that I am staring down at the board game, blinking rapidly.

"Miss Allie," Arianna says, giving my shoulders a squeeze, "I really am so sorry about...about your loss. I know how you feel."

Sniffing, I look up, angling my head to meet her gaze. The girl isn't at the age where she would spout off meaningless words of comfort. Dare I ask?

I dare. "Do you?"

She slides her hand off my shoulders, straightens, and limps back to her place on the couch. Then it's her turn to stare at the game board. "My mama died when I was eight." She lifts her chin back to look at me. "I still miss her very badly."

I continue to be surprised at the easy English coming out on top of her heavy African accent, but what surprises – not to mention encourages – me more at this moment is her opening up to me about her past. How I would like to dig deeper and find out everything I can about her, but I know that I might as well shoot myself in the foot than try to take the lead here.

I especially would like to know whether her dad is still alive, or has even ever been in her family picture, but I land on a question that should be fairly benign. "How many years ago was that? Your mother's death?" I begin shaking the die in my hand, hoping I sound casual and conversational rather than probing.

"Eight years ago, ma'am."

"Ma'am?" I raise an eyebrow at her, and the girl I now know to be sixteen years old chuckles through a grin.

"Miss Allie," she corrects herself.

We resume the game, and though Arianna doesn't reveal anything else about her past or family for the rest of the afternoon, we chat easily about other topics. While Arianna occasionally answers a question I ask about her likes and dislikes, she mainly listens while I tell her stories about my husband and sons. Sometimes, she asks just the right question to get me to delve even deeper for details, and her conversational skills make me think that her past may have been richer with experience than I first believed.

By the time we decide to call it quits on the games, I realize two things. First, I feel more joy than grief from having shared the lives of my lost loved ones. Second, I could get used to having someone else in my house again. With a start, I realize I've begun to wish that somehow, Arianna will be able to stay with me.

# Chapter Nine: Jeb

Warmer today. Fifteen degrees warmer than it was two days ago, when the sleet attacked me at Allie's house. And so, around one o'clock, I make the trip I've been putting off ever since being released from the prison halfway house a week ago.

Despite the roads being mostly clear now, the fifteen-minute drive seems to take hours. Guilt that I thought I'd processed through while incarcerated swoops over me like a bald eagle, digging its sharp talons into my soul and threatening to tear the scabbed-over wound wide open. If I only hadn't been angry with Bev that morning. If I'd just stayed home until I'd calmed down.

If-onlys are one of the primary ways the devil uses to keep you from living in victory. The chaplain's words rise above the noise in my head.

"Lord, help me," I pray, my eyes fixed on the road ahead of me. "Shut up the wrong voices."

But the accusations persist, now reminding me of the friends that I killed, the friend who is therefore now a widow without children.

"No. No. No!" I shout the words at my windshield, a death grip on my steering wheel. If I had known taking this step would be so painful, I would not have taken it. Or, at least not alone.

Jen is supposed to be down here for a visit once her business conference in Seattle is over. She's my one comfort, my one hope that God hasn't given up on me. Because as my daughter – and only living child – Jennifer has every right to hate me.

But, she doesn't. Never blamed me for the accident. Talk about the grace of God.

Finally, I turn into the cemetery drive. Minutes later, I am standing in front of a marker that reads, "Beverly Winifred Mitchell." I take off my cap, place it over my heart...and begin to weep.

I was in the hospital for three days after the accident, and was in too much pain to cry then. A few days later at her memorial service, I was too numb with shock. Even standing by her freshly-dug grave, the emotion that welled up got stuck in my chest, forming a granite-hard lump.

Now, having spent a week in our home alone, visiting her grave for the first time in four years, it hits me like it's never hit me before: my Bev is gone. And she ain't coming back.

I sink to my knees and lower my head into my hands. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" The words come out in choking sobs. I'm not sure I've ever cried this hard in my entire life. Not that I can remember, anyway.

I'm not sure how much time passes before my body stops shaking, the tears stop rolling down my face, and I lift my head. When I do, I feel like I've been pulling my half-ton truck up one of these mountains with a rope between my teeth.

And I feel...resigned. Accepting. I know I'll see Bev again one day, and I know she's already forgiven me. Since for some odd reason God saw fit to leave me on earth a few more years, what I need to focus on is doing the best I can with the time I have left.

Standing up, I place my cap back on my head, then pull a handkerchief out of my pocket and blow my nose. Only then does it occur to me to look around to see if I'm still alone. I am.

Not that I would really care if anybody saw me blubbering like a baby. Heck, maybe if one of those women who gave me the cold shoulder a few days ago saw me just now, she'd think a little better of me.

Several long moments pass as I stare out over the cemetery, waiting for my breathing to return to normal. A cool breeze billows out the right side of my unzipped jacket. The only sounds are a car going down the road some distance away and a lone bird singing from a nearby tree.

With a sigh, I look back down at the grave. "Well, Bev, I guess you know I still love you." Then I chuckle. "But if I believe you're in heaven, guess it don't do no good to talk to the ground, now, does it?"

I return to my truck feeling a little bit lighter – inside, that is. Four years being fed what passes for food in an institution did nothing to reduce the spare tire that slowly crept up on me during the decade of my fifties.

Settling into the seat, I reach over to the passenger side to pick up my phone and check it. No voice or text messages, but I have an e-mail.

From Allie.

I hold my breath as I open it.

I need some more time, it says.

More time. More time to decide whether or not to deny my request, or more time to get used to the idea of talking to me?

Whichever, at least it isn't a flat-out "no." Beggars can't be choosers.

I toss the phone back onto the seat, turn on the engine, and head back home.

Such as it is.

# Chapter Ten: Jared

Even though my old Buick is slowing down to a crawl, my heart is going like the typical car racing across the empty, flat highways of Montana. Turning into the long driveway, I push down on the brake pedal next to the mailbox. I stare at the old white-shingled house 200 feet away, its gray-brown front porch flanked on both sides with snow drifts.

How long has it been? Mom tried to get us up here, to her childhood home in southeast South Dakota, at least every other year. It's been six or seven years, then.

And Grandma and Grandpa haven't heard from me anymore than Mom has since I ran away.

I swallow. This was a bad idea. I might give them a heart attack, showing up like this. Out of the blue. Like a ghost.

Nausea turns my stomach, and my knuckles start aching from gripping the steering wheel so hard. A few beats pass before my right hand loosens, sliding over to the old-fashioned steering wheel gear shift. As with a mind of its own, it pulls the stick down into the reverse position.

No, no, no. No more running away!

Both hands go limp as my head drops to the top of the steering wheel. "Jesus, help me. Please. Give me strength. Give me the guts to obey."

Although, truth be told, I'm not exactly obeying what God told me to do a year and a half ago. I'm compromising.

Which, I suppose, is the same as disobedience.

Who am I kidding? I've been disobeying God every second that I haven't headed straight for southeast Oklahoma since He told me what to do.

But I can't face Jeb yet. I'm just not ready. And I know my grandparents will give me just the encouragement I need to help me do the right thing. Sure, Grandma will probably give me what-for. But then she'll love on me like nobody's business.

Like nobody has for the past four and a half years of my life in Montana.

Taking in a deep breath, I lift my head, my resolve returning. I refuse to go back – and if I did, my friends in Montana would kick me out of the state because I had to go and tell them what God told me to do – so I have nowhere else to go but to my grandparents' home...or to Mom.

I shift back into drive, press the accelerator, and maneuver my way over the compressed snow and ice glazing the gravel. The snow drifts on either side of the driveway remind me of the time when I was about seven and we came up here for Christmas and Grandpa let me sit on his lap while he drove the snowblower down the driveway. He said when I started driving, I should come up here in the winter to practice so I'd know how to drive in the ice and snow.

He sort of got his wish. I didn't start driving until two years ago, and it was during the winter. Since I was in Montana, I learned to navigate the freezing elements like a pro. Not a single accident.

But I had good motivation to drive especially careful. Leo said I could have his old Buick for part of my payment as long as I didn't get into any car wrecks under his watch. Oh, and if I was willing to fix the thing up.

I learned a lot of things in Montana. And refurbishing an old car engine was the least of them.

The gravel drive circles around in front of the house, and I make the circle to pass Grandpa's old truck parked almost smack in front of the front door, stopping only when I am facing toward the county road again. I would pull over to the side except for the four-foot high snow banks.

My hands are shaky as I remove them from the steering wheel. Taking a deep breath, I open the car door as I will my nerves to settle. I might as well will the temperature to soar to eighty degrees in the next ten seconds, and for palm trees to spring up in the front yard.

"Hello! Are you lost?"

I slam the car door and whirl around to face my grandmother, who is peering through the storm door on top of the porch. I swallow. No turning back now.

I inhale deeply once more, hoping the rush of frigid air into my lungs will re-energize me and spur me forward. It must work, because the urge to run at top speed toward the porch surges through me like a jolt of electricity. But Grandma doesn't know me from Adam at this distance, and the action would probably provoke Grandpa to appear, shotgun in hand.

So I measure my pace, calling out, "Grandma! Grandma! It's me, Jared!" as I move.

I am close enough to see her jaw go slack. When I am within eight feet of her, I can also see that her eyes have grown to full-moon proportions.

She steps out the door, revealing a hot pink sweatsuit that shows where Mom got her propensity to ignore convention. Squinting against the bright sunlight glaring at the white crystals all around, she throws a hand up to her chest. "Jared? Is that really you?"

Despite my dozens of hesitations and second-guessings since leaving Montana, my mouth splits into a wide grin. I run up the porch steps to stand in front of her.

The hand on her chest goes up to cover her mouth as she gasps. "For heaven's sake! For heaven's sake!" She flings her arms wide open, and I walk into them, gratitude swelling inside.

The force of Grandma's embrace belies her fragile appearance. She not only looks more frail than I remember, but as I put my arms around her I feel it. I'm afraid I might snap her in two if I hug her too hard.

When she lets go, I can see through the tears streaming down her face that her countenance, too, has aged much more than I would have believed a face could age in seven years. Because of me? Guilt sears my insides. If my unexplained absence did that to Grandma, how has it affected Mom?

Then again, Grandma is in her mid-seventies. And I was only thirteen or fourteen the last time I saw her. A child remembers things differently than an adult does.

My thoughts are interrupted by Grandma spinning around, pulling open the door, and screaming, "Danny! Danny! He's back! Jared came back! He's not dead!"

My grandpa appears within seconds. He seems to be more stooped, and his hair has gone from gray to white. But he's wearing the same winter outfit I've always seen him wear when he's at home: blue denim overalls over a long-sleeved thermal shirt.

Still crying, Grandma steps aside to let him look me over. I had relaxed in Grandma's arms, but the scowl on Grandpa's face as he looks me up and down sends all my nerves to skittering again.

Narrowing his eyes, he asks, "You told Allie yet? Been home?"

I swallow hard. Will he send me packing if I tell him no? Get angry? But what am I going to do? No way I'm gonna lie.

I shake my head. "Not...yet." My voice pitches up like it used to in my mid-teens. I clear my throat. "No, sir."

The wrinkles on Grandpa's face crumple downward as his eyes fill with moisture. "Never mind, never mind." He steps toward me and pulls me into a bear hug. "You've come back. You've come back. The rest will take care of itself."

Relief enfolds me along with his arms, and – despite the cold – my heart feels warmer than it has for a long time.

I feel sure that staying with my grandparents will be just the transition I need to complete my journey and fulfill my mission.

If only it weren't such a scary one.

# Chapter Eleven: Arianna

"Oh. So you're foot must be feeling a lot better."

I am standing by the freezer, having just limped there from the living room without the crutches, when Miss Allie comes in the door. I didn't expect her to be back so soon from dumping the contents of the composting toilet, so I jump and whirl around when the door creaks open.

"I was testing it, to see if I can walk without the crutches." The pain in my ankle screams its failure of the test, but I try not to let my agony show on my face.

I track Allie's steps toward the bathroom with my eyes. She disappears for a minute, and I hear bumping and scraping sounds that tell me she's putting the bucket back into the toilet. It's kind of funny. I grew up using an outhouse, but ever since Mama died I have only ever stayed in places that had flush toilets. Even the orphanage, and some of the nasty places where Mr. Brent housed us, had flush toilets.

And when I run away from him, where do I end up? In a house that has a toilet that looks and acts like a flush toilet, but really is more like the pit toilets I used when I was young. If I believed in God, I might think this is some sort of sign.

But eight years ago, I started to have good reason to believe He didn't exist...

**********

I reeled back, placing a hand to my stinging cheek as tears pricked my eyelids.

"Don't you never sass either one of us ever again, you hear me?" Mrs. Brent threw her glare around the group in front of her, the other eleven children Mr. Brent brought from Africa.

Mr. Brent grabbed his wife and jerked her around to face him. "What did I tell you about not hitting them in the face?"

Mrs. Brent's eyes grew wide, and I felt a grim satisfaction that she might be feeling as afraid of Mr. Brent as I was feeling of her.

Mr. Brent pulled her away and spoke to her in low, but fierce, tones for several seconds. She nodded her head, and when he released her, pushed her away so that she stumbled and almost fell. A couple of the children giggled, but the others quickly hushed them. Most of us had learned in the orphanages we came from that making noises deemed as inappropriate brought on undesirable consequences. And laughing at adults was definitely inappropriate.

I should have known not to say what I just said. But my heart was already breaking over having left my brother behind in Uganda, and when I realized that Mr. Brent had also lied about the mansion, the words just came out. "This is not what you promised to us."

Now Mr. Brent stepped over to us, eyes narrowed and hands on hips. "Two things y'all need to understand right off." He raised a finger. "First, you now live in the United States of America. Anywhere you live here will be better than living in the orphanage you came from. But the law says I can send you back to an even worse place than where you came from if I decide not to like you."

He raised the next finger. "Second, I know where your brothers and sisters live." His glare stopped on me, and I had to bite my lip to stop myself from crying. "If any y'all cause any kind of trouble, I will make a phone call that will cause a lot of trouble for the siblings you left behind in Africa."

I wanted to scream that **he** had left them behind, that he had lied to us about adopting our brothers and sisters, too. But I knew that would be causing trouble.

Mr. Brent commanded his wife to take us into our new home and tell us the rules, then he marched toward the mobile home a few yards away and disappeared inside. Even though it looked nicer than a lot of homes I'd seen in the bush of Uganda, I knew, even at my young age, what a mansion was. I knew this was hardly a mansion; besides, on our way from the airport I'd had glimpses of other houses that were much bigger than this one. For a while, I'd actually been so excited that I would soon be living in a house like one of those that I'd forgotten about Adroa.

And then we got out of the van to Mrs. Brent's words, "We're home."

I stared at the door that Mr. Brent had closed. Maybe the house was bigger than it looked. Maybe there was more to it at the back that I couldn't see from here. After all, even though he'd gathered the twelve of us in a warehouse in Gulu before bringing us to America, Mr. Brent had made sure we were warm and well-fed while we were waiting to leave. And up until today, none of us had been hit or threatened.

I wanted to believe the best of the Brents, so I hoped that the narrow house in front of us was bigger and nicer than it looked from the outside. But when Mrs. Brent led us around the back of the small home, there was nothing more to it. It was the size that it looked like from the front.

I took a deep breath. Mama had taught me to be grateful for all my blessings, even the smallest ones, so I decided to be grateful that I had a place to live at all.

However, Mrs. Brent kept walking. She led us to an even smaller building about fifty yards away from the house. It looked like it had seen better days, and a couple of weeks later several of us children overheard the Brents refer to it as "the shed."

I'm not exactly sure how big it was, but it was just big enough to cram twelve cots inside, plus some shelves along the side to hold our clothes and other necessities, plus a tiny bathroom in the corner, plus a narrow table shoved up against the side opposite the shelves. Even to my untrained, eight-year-old eyes, the walls of the bathroom looked like they had been hurriedly erected out of cheap wood.

As my young eyes inspected it, I wasn't so sure I could be grateful for this restricted space as my new home. Especially after the first night there. It was February, and though we lived in the state of Mississippi, where it doesn't get too cold during the winter, it can get a lot colder than where we used to live in Africa.

And that first night, none of us could get warm except for the three children sleeping closest to the space heater in the front near the door. I wasn't one of them. I felt like I'd barely gotten to sleep when Mrs. Brent threw open the door the next morning, yelling at us to get up and get dressed.

This was how it would be for the next several months. At night, it was often either too cold or too hot, and we would eat the same three meals as we crowded together by the table next to the wall. Breakfast was wheat flakes and milk. Lunch was a peanut butter or bologna sandwich. Supper was rice and beans. Just rice and beans. We could add salt if we wanted. Though the salt helped the food go down easier, it couldn't make up for the fact that we never got to have seconds, and so we all walked around hungry most of the day.

Those days were spent learning songs, and learning English grammar, and improving our English vocabulary. Mrs. Brent told us that once we started meeting other Americans, they'd expect us to speak correctly or they'd make fun of us. Which was funny, because as the months passed by I heard Mrs. Brent say a lot of things that broke the very rules she was teaching us.

Mr. Brent read to us from the Bible twice a day, once in the morning and once at night. He made sure that we understood that God became angry at boys and girls who misbehaved, and that when God became angry you never knew what bad things might happen in your life.

We had some play time in the afternoon, but not much. And we had no toys to play with. That was okay, because we were used to having to play with sticks and rocks, and make up our own games. It was just another promise Mr. Brent had broken, that's all.

Once in a while, one of the people we believed to be our new parents would invite us into the house. But not very often. Even on rainy days, we usually had to spend the entire day together crammed into the shed. We would grow bored and irritable and say things that would have gotten us into trouble if we'd said them in front of one of the Brents.

But the shed did have a flush toilet. It was the only thing about it that, for many months, I could convince myself to be grateful for. During the time I still believed in a loving God.

**********

The memories are more painful than the throbbing in my ankle. Waiting for it to pass, I lean against the freezer. Just before Miss Allie comes back out of the bathroom, I take a few careful steps to the table. But I have to grab onto the utility cart, and then the table, to support the weight of my left ankle. My pain must show on my face as I ease myself into a chair, because as I do Miss Allie looks at me and frowns.

She rushes over to me. "Let me look at it."

I stick out my left foot and pull up the denim around my leg, and she sits down on the floor to examine my ankle. "Well, it definitely isn't broken." Her gaze traces up to meet mine. "But it doesn't look like you're ready to throw out the crutches quite yet."

I nod my agreement. It's just as well I am stuck here for a few more days, because I still have not worked up the courage to do what I know I need to do.

Using her hands to help her push herself back to her feet, Miss Allie gets up. "Let me get – oh!" Her gaze yanks away from me and toward the window, eyes widening. "Hold on. I'll be right back."

I twist my head around to see what's going on, and am dismayed to see a white man walking up the driveway a couple of yards away from the stone path leading to the house. Panic squeezes my heart, and for several ticks I can't breathe. It's not Miss Allie's neighbor from a couple of days ago. What if it's somebody working for Mr. Brent?

In a flash, I find myself inside Jared's bedroom, breathing hard, my ankle hurting more than ever. I ease onto the bottom bunk, lift my left leg onto it, and clench my teeth to keep from groaning.

And realize I have just proven myself to be the world's biggest coward.

A few more seconds, and I hear the main door opening. For the second time since arriving here, I pray. This time, it's, _God, please let it be Miss Allie, and let her be alone_. I wish I could hide myself even further, but since I can't I stare at the bedroom door as though by doing so I can keep out any intruders.

"Arianna? Arianna!" The front door closes as Miss Allie calls out. "It's okay. It was just the mailman, delivering a package."

My breath comes out like a gust of wind, and I hear her steps approaching. Another second, and she knocks on the bedroom door.

"Come in," I say, my heart still pounding though I have finally caught my breath.

Miss Allie opens the door, her brow knit together. "I'm so sorry. I should have told you it was just the mailman." She sits down next to me, a medium-sized box in her hand, and reaches over to squeeze my shoulder. "Are you all right?"

I nod, though I'm still shaking inside. "He – he didn't...see me, did he?"

Allie leans back, placing both her hands on the box. "Oh, no. That's why I went out to meet him. So he wouldn't come near the house." Her face relaxes into a smile as she taps on the box. "Want to see what's inside?"

I really don't care, but I don't want to seem rude, so I nod my head. Miss Allie leaves and is back in a few seconds with scissors. After cutting the box open, she pulls something out with a flourish. It's an orange plastic bag, filled with some kind of brown powder.

"Raw chocolate!" She turns the bag so that I can see the label. "We can't be running out of the main ingredient for hot chocolate in this weather, can we?" Then she laughs. "Although, it's warmed up nicely now."

I don't really hear her, because my mind is still grappling with the idea that food came in the mail. Intrigued, I lean over to see what else is in the box.

"Oh, the rest of it is boring." From between the folds of brown paper Miss Allie pulls out a small bottle she says is her magnesium supplement – what is _magnesium_ , anyway? – and another plastic package. But this one is box shaped.

"Feminine napkins," Miss Allie says. "I usually use washable cotton ones, but with my crazy hormones..." Her voice trails off, likely because I'm staring at her with all the confusion of a puppy trying to play with his own reflection in a puddle of water.

"All right." Miss Allie rips open the plastic and pulls out a smaller wrapped package, handing it to me.

I don't take it, though I recognize it. My face flames with embarrassment, and I look away. Mrs. Brent called them "period pads," and with four of us girls needing them now, she'd made it clear that Mr. Brent didn't like wasting his money on "female products", so we'd better make sure to fill every one up before changing or he might decide he didn't want us anymore.

And of course, Mrs. Brent didn't fail to tell us every single month that getting our period was a curse, and the shame of women because it came from Eve feeding Adam the forbidden fruit.

"Miss Allie," I whisper, "isn't it a...a sin to talk about such things?"

Out of the corner of my eye I see her pull the pad back and replace it in its package. "Arianna, look at me," she says, kindly but firmly.

I shift my gaze back to her.

"Sin is a willful turning away from what you know God wants from you. Or behaving in a way that you know is wrong, but you do it any way even if you have the opportunity to make the right choice. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

I do. I nod once, but can't do much more. I'm too shocked. If Miss Allie is right, then a whole lot of what Mr. Brent has said about God was downright wrong.

And I'm not nearly as sinful as he told me I was.

She places a hand on my arm. "I want to ask you who taught you these crazy, totally wrong ideas about God and sin and all that, but I suppose you won't tell me."

I shake my head. "But...is it...how do you know it's true?"

She studies me for several beats, then excuses herself, leaves the room, and returns a few seconds later with a Bible. A few minutes later, I understand. God is love, and if I ever hear anything that doesn't sound like it comes from a loving Father, then it's not from God. No matter who said it, and no matter what they claim to know about God.

Besides all that, God created a woman's body to do the things it does. It is nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing to do with any kind of curse.

I cannot help the tear the slips down my cheek after she's done explaining all that. I'm so relieved! I feel so...so free.

Miss Allie, seeing the tear, cups my cheek in her hand. That gesture all by itself, so motherly and loving, makes me want to weep buckets. I have to take in a deep breath not to.

"Arianna, is this a happy tear?" she asks.

I nod. "Oh, yes, Miss Allie." I cannot help it; I laugh. "Very happy. But I got one more question that's been making me itch for the past few minutes."

Lowering her hand, Miss Allie smiles. "Go ahead."

"How does it happen that a person can get _food_ in the _mail_?"

# Chapter Twelve: Allie

Sin. Ha. According to how I defined it to Arianna yesterday, I'm the world's greatest sinner. Move over, Apostle Paul!

This is one of the first thoughts I have upon awakening on Saturday, the fourth day that Arianna has been with me. I need to e-mail Jeb and invite him over for a talk. I could have Arianna hide out in the Tuff Shed, since the warmish weather is supposed to hold out for a few more days.

In fact, between yesterday evening and this morning I've tried three times to send said e-mail, but something has stopped me every single time. A something in my gut, a spiritual tug.

I don't understand it. Why would God want me to put off this conversation? At least, I'm pretty sure it's God sticking up His stop sign. Maybe it's not. Maybe I'm just more afraid of the consequences than I want to admit.

Whatever. "The voice of God is a growing conviction over time," I once heard. I'll give it a few more days and see which way the conviction leads.

I drag myself out of bed at five-thirty, having had a fitful sleep. While dressing in black jeans, a pink turtleneck and a black-and-white cardigan, my mind slips to the other major thing I learned about Arianna yesterday. Even if she was born in Africa, if she's spent the past few years in an American orphanage she should know something about online stores and ordering. When I asked her if she'd ever heard of Amazon, she told me sure, it was a big river in South America.

We spent the next hour in front of my laptop, browsing the giant online store. Arianna's eyes grew so wide I thought they'd pop out of their sockets.

And my anger toward her former caregivers grew in kind. In today's world, you can't justify sheltering a child to the extent that they don't even know you can order food off the Internet.

I explained the online ordering and shipping process as thoroughly as I could, and at the end, I told her she could order anything she wanted from Amazon as long as it was under twenty dollars. I figured the experience would be good for her. I also suspected she hasn't had much in the way of special possessions since her mother died, perhaps even before then.

By the time I invited her to make a purchase, she knew how to do a search and compare products by price and reviews. But I had to help her with spelling and finding the letters on the keyboard to type in what she wanted. This was another huge red flag for me; had this girl had any kind of education at all during the past few years?

To my surprise, she wanted a doll. To _her_ surprise, there were a myriad of options to choose from. After an hour of oohing and aahing and going back and forth trying to decide on which one would be the best buy, she settled on a kind of baby doll that had a 4.6 star average and which came with two outfits.

Now, I quietly go about my morning routine, and an hour and a half later, Arianna and I sit at the kitchen table, sipping green smoothies.

"This is so delicious!" Arianna smiles at me with green striping her upper lip. "So sweet. I love fruit."

"Speaking of fruit," I say, setting down my jar of thick liquid, "I need to run into town today and pick up a few groceries. Do you want to come with, or stay here?" Some people might call me crazy for even thinking about leaving this near-stranger in my house all by herself. But I've been praying for her a lot since she arrived, and the inner conviction that she can be trusted has only grown stronger.

As big as Arianna is, she suddenly seems to shrink. "Do you – do you have to go today?" Her voice is small, like a child half her age.

"I'll need to go eventually." I struggle to maintain an even tone. As much as I enjoy her company, I need to get out and talk to other people once in a while. And I'm growing impatient with her fears. Maybe more impatient with not knowing what they are, and where they came from. "And you need some new clothes," I add. "We can stop by the variety store for some jeans and a T-shirt, and see if the –"

"I don't need new clothes." Arianna's voice snaps the way mine almost did a few seconds ago.

I glare at her, a dozen retorts flying into my head and tingling the tip of my tongue. Somehow, I manage to bite them back. "Fine. If you want to dress in boy's clothes, knock yourself out."

Yesterday, she had to wear a pair of sweats and a sweatshirt that Jared left behind so I could launder her worn clothes. Which, I might add, belong in the compost pile in the section of woods behind the Tuff Shed.

Arianna leans back against her chair, drooping her head over her chest. "Does it...make you sad to see me wearing your son's clothes?" She glances back up at me for a beat, then back down.

I heave a sigh. "No, it's just that...You need some new clothes." _Even if you're planning to run off again_ , I almost add, but don't. "I have plenty of money to buy you a few new outfits. If that's what you're worried about." Between the bit of retirement Jason had saved up over the years and the life insurance policy he had purchased when the boys were young, I am well taken care of financially.

Arianna takes a ragged breath, then lifts her gaze back up to meet mine. She opens her mouth, then closes it, shaking her head. For close to half a minute, she stares out the window, her right index finger absentmindedly tracing circles on the condensation on her smoothie jar. I watch her, wishing I could see inside her brain and know what she is thinking.

When she finally turns back to face me, I can't read her expression. "I do not mean to be disrespectful," she says, "but can we wait a few days to go buy clothes?" Then, she nods. "I will be okay by myself if you want to go to the store for a while."

It takes everything in me not to ask why. Why she's so scared to go into town, when no one there will recognize her. Why the clothes she arrived in barely fit her and were so worn. Why she treats every basic meal I feed her like a gourmet treat.

But as usual, I keep my mouth shut. We established a good rapport yesterday, and I don't want to blow it by pushing her before she's ready to talk.

A few minutes later, I put on my coat and walk out the door to check my phone for messages. Though the high is predicted to hit fifty degrees today, right now it's a frigid twenty-eight. Small patches of snow still persist in shady places, and where the sun shines, frost sparkles on the dead grass in front of the house.

I turn on my phone, which ten seconds later sings me the song of a waiting voicemail. I call it. Liz. She called not fifteen minutes ago, stating that, since the ice has melted off the road up to her place, she'll be coming down for a visit sometime today.

This is nothing new. She stops by my place at least once a week, and I walk or drive up to her cabin as often. I usually welcome the companionship; it's the one bright spot when I'm guaranteed to laugh and forget my loneliness for a while.

But not today. Not with Arianna here, acting like a skittish mouse. My pulse picks up, though I'm standing still on the walk in front of the house. How do I convince Liz to stay away without causing her to worry? Without giving into the sudden temptation to lie?

An idea forms in my head, and I text her: Want to have a walkabout this morning? I need groceries. Pick u up in 1 hr?

Our idea of a "walkabout" is a casual stroll about town. We carpool, park in a central location, and walk around while visiting with each other and anyone else we come across. Typically, one of us calls for it if we have to go to town for something, and doesn't want to go alone, or needs an excuse to get off the mountain for a while.

Less than a minute later, she replies: _Perfect! c u then_.

I stare at the message for a few seconds. Belle has been acting more and more lethargic over the past few days, and eating a little less than usual. Would it be wise to leave Arianna alone with her? What if something happens to the little dog while I'm gone?

I huff out a breath through my nose. What if nothing happens? I'll only be gone for an hour or two. And I really need to get out.

Pivoting on my heel, I head for the door. When I go back inside the house, Arianna is at the sink, washing our smoothie jars. "Oh. Thank you," I say, shrugging out of my coat.

"Yo' welcome." Her voice has a sing-song quality to it that I haven't heard before. I guess our little tiff a while ago didn't upset her like I was afraid it might have.

After slinging my coat over the rocking chair, I walk over to Arianna. "You're foot's not bothering you?"

She carefully sets a jar in the dish drainer. "It's okay if I keep my weight on my right foot, like this." She points down, water dripping off her fingers as she does so.

I reach for the hand towel hanging from the utility cart behind me, and pass it to her. "Here."

As she dries her hands, I tell her about my plans for the morning. "Are you sure you're okay with staying here alone?"

She nods her head, handing me back the towel. "Oh, yes, Miss Allie. I will stay in the bedroom and read for a while. Maybe draw some."

I am relieved she's willing to stay here by herself. But my relief is tempered with a nagging fear.

She might not be here when I get back.

# Chapter Thirteen: Arianna

I like this room. I wonder what Miss Allie would say if I told her, if it would bring her pain. But I like it. I like the wood wall on the bathroom side, covered with shelves. I like the kids' paintings hanging in frames on the opposite wall, a concrete wall painted white like all the other main walls of this house.

I like the colors around this room – the boxes holding the toys, the covers on the beds, and such – and how it's not quite tidy. Mr. Brent demanded that we always keep whatever space we were sleeping in as "clean as a whistle" – though I never have figured out how a whistle might be particularly clean.

But the room not being tidy makes me a bit sad, too. I think Miss Allie left it much the way it was when Jared left. Like she needs to keep it that way in case he comes back...or maybe, in case he does not.

Still, all in all it's a cozy place to sit and read, and I do that for the first little while that Miss Allie is out. But I'm not that good of a reader, which limits me to picture books for kids much younger than I. And there aren't that many of those in the house, and I have already read most of them during the past couple of days.

I pull one of the thicker books off the shelf. I can read the title all right: _The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe_. Witch? But good Christians are not supposed to have anything to do with witches. What's this doing in Miss Allie's house? Or did one of the boys sneak it in without her knowing about it?

I start to return the book to the shelf, but then I remember our talk about sin yesterday. Mr. Brent said that things like witches and wizards and magic were of the devil, and so it was a sin to read books or play games that have those things in them. But seems like he either lied, or doesn't know the first thing about sin.

Pulling the book back to myself, I hobble over to the bed, sit down, and flip through it. It has some pictures, but not many. I read the first sentence. It's not as hard as I thought it would be. Before I know it, I have read the entire first chapter. No witches so far. But that wardrobe is definitely magic.

What if Mr. Brent was right about this one? With a shudder, I close the book and toss it to the end of the bed, deciding to ask Miss Allie what she thinks.

That gets my mind going in a whole new direction. Somebody's got to stop Mr. Brent. Now that I know what he has done, I can't let him keep on doing it. But I don't think I can carry out my plan all by myself. I think I'm going to need help.

I pull out a small piece of crumpled paper out from under the pillow where I have been hiding it, glance over the hastily written scribble, then replace it. Lying down on the bed with a sigh, I wonder. Could I trust Miss Allie? She seems trustworthy. She hasn't kicked me out of her house yet, lets me eat as much as I want – and the food here is delicious – and she even wants to buy new clothes for me. Washed my clothes yesterday, by hand because she doesn't have a washing machine, without making one complaint about me giving her extra work to do.

Told me that if I started my period while I was here, I could use as many of the feminine napkins as I wanted.

Don't know why, but she seems to really care about me. Maybe because she believes in God? So wants to make Him happy?

Anyway, seems like I can trust her. But, how can I be sure? She doesn't know my situation. Or, maybe I have not understood correctly the things that Miss Allie told me, and Mr. Brent has every right to do what he has been doing.

Groaning, I turn my face into the pillow. I might just go crazy with all this confusion. Life was so much simpler at the orphanage, and before. Hard, but simpler. Folks did the best they could to take care of themselves and their loved ones, and do what was right.

But how does a person figure out what's right when you got different people with different ideas about what's right? Maybe life was simpler because I was so young. Maybe dealing with more and more complications is what growing up is all about.

I flip over on my back. "If that is true, then maybe I don't want to grow up." The words come out in my native tongue, a dialect of Bantu, which I have worked hard not to forget. Mr. Brent did not let us speak any language other than English when he was around, but in the middle of the night, we kids sometimes whispered to each other in our own languages, even if we didn't all understand it. It was Dalia's idea.

Dalia was a year older than I, and one night about a year after Mr. Brent had brought us to the United States, she called us all into a circle and whispered, "Listen up. One day, we will get to go back home. And when we do, we want to be able to talk to the elders who don't speak English so good." The moonlight streaked half of her thin face with the broad nose, leaving a temporary white stripe over her black curls. "So I think, for ten minutes or so every night, we need to whisper to each other in our mother tongues so we don't forget."

Dalia mysteriously disappeared last year. Mrs. Brent said she was getting too old for our group, and so she and the Mr. had sent her on to a group for young adults. I know she flat-out lied, first of all because Dalia was my best friend, and she would have told me if she had known what was going to happen.

Second, I had overheard something a while back that revealed the truth. About us children, and our relationship to the Brents. And about what they _really_ did with Dalia.

Back to knowing what is sin and what is not. Strange that I'm even thinking about that, since I don't believe in God. Except...if He's like what Miss Allie says, I would sure like to believe in Him. Like to have Him on my side. But if there is a God, and He does love me, where was He after my mama died? Mr. Brent always told us to count our blessings, that horrible things would've happened to us if we had stayed in the orphanages we came from.

Maybe he's right about that one thing. I have had plenty of church folk tell me that I was blessed to have adoptive parents who take care of me and don't hurt me. Some have told me terrible stories about abuse and neglect – and these evils done by American parents to their own children!

Could it be that Mr. Brent taking me from the orphanage, even if it meant a hard life, was God protecting me from worse things? But then why does God let those evil things happen to other children?

"Argh!" I cover my face with my hands, squeezing my head between my hands. "God, if You're real, and You really love me, show me and make me stop being confused!"

My cry – again, uttered in Bantu – bounces off the walls and seems to fill the house, even though the bedroom door is shut. I slap my hand over my mouth, turning toward the door. What if someone were standing right outside the door, ready to knock? They might be able to hear me. I must stay quiet.

Slowly, I ease my feet onto the floor and push myself up into a sitting position. Then I listen. I half-expect to hear somebody calling for Miss Allie, but the only sound I hear is the quiet hum of the ceiling fan and Belle emitting a soft whine from her place on the sofa.

Then I remember the favor Miss Allie asked me before she left. She said if I felt brave enough to leave the bedroom for a few seconds, would I turn on the dehumidifier once the humestat read fifty-seven percent?

Two more things that are brand new to me, an appliance that can take the water out of the air, and a little device that can tell you how much water is in the air. In some ways, I feel like a newborn baby since I came here, knowing nothing and being fascinated by everything.

But since she trusted me enough to leave me by myself, the least I can do is –

Hold up.

She _trusted_ me? Yes, Miss Allie trusted me. She doesn't know me that well – hardly at all, really – but she left me alone, in her house, with her stuff.

With her laptop?

Easing myself up off the bed, I hobble to the door, open it, and poke my head out. First, I look out the windows. Nope. Nobody there. All clear. Next, I slide my gaze over to the right, where the desk is.

Yes, she left her laptop there. She knows I could run off with it, but there it is.

I could smash all the jars of food in her pantry. Or set the place on fire, as far as that goes. I could steal or destroy anything and everything.

She doesn't know me well enough to know for certain that I wouldn't. Yet...she trusts me.

For several beats, I just stand in the doorway, amazed. She trusts me. So, does that mean I can trust her?

I think it does. I really think it does.

# Chapter Fourteen: Jeb

"Well, look who the cat dragged in." Leslie Pierce, a tall, blonde woman in her late thirties, glares at me from the cash register of the hardware store.

"Leslie." Ron DeWalt, the store manager sitting behind the customer service counter a few feet away, growls her name in warning. Then he stands up and gives me a tentative smile. "Help you find anything this mornin', Jeb?"

Leslie snaps the gum in her mouth. "You can find him the door."

With speed that defies his short, rotund figure, Ron bolts out from behind the counter and steps behind the cash register. His face just inches from hers, he whispers, "Three strikes and you're history."

Leslie harumphs, but turns to face inside the store without another word to me.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ron heading toward me, but I'm already pulling on the door handle to make my exit. I've had enough.

Leslie is a single woman of three who often sought child-rearing advice from Bev whenever we came into the store, or ran into her at other places. So I understand her pain. But I thought four years would be enough to lessen it, at least enough to stop seeing me as the enemy.

She obviously doesn't understand _my_ pain. Or chooses to ignore it.

Without turning around, I lift a hand to let Ron know I've heard him, but I continue on out the door, across the asphalt, and over to my truck. I happen to be glancing across the street as I open the driver's side door, and what I see stops me in my tracks.

Allie is there, walking side by side with her neighbor, Liz. They are talking and laughing, by all appearances having a good time. I should just hop in my truck and drive on home. Let them be. Not put a damper on their day. Liz has never liked me much in the first place – I believe she don't like men much at all – and is likely to give me as warm a welcome as Leslie just has. And Allie asked for more time. I should respect that.

But I guess I'm a selfish old man, because I want to get rid of the ten-ton monkey I've been carrying on my shoulders for the past several years. And the only way to do that is by talking to Allie.

Steeling myself, I slam the door of my truck shut and make my way to the side of the road. Nobody coming. I cross over to the other side, my eyes fixed on the two women.

Liz spots me when I'm halfway across, nudging Allie and pointing straight at me. Allie's eyes widen, and I fully expect her to turn and start running the other direction, with Liz on her heels. Instead, she stares back at me, unmoving. Liz whispers harshly in her ear and tugs on her arm, obviously wanting to get Allie away from me.

But Allie stays put, crossing her arms over her chest, eyes narrowing to slits as I approach. I open my mouth to say my piece, but she beats me to it.

"If you want my forgiveness," she says, her voice shaking, "you have it. If you need me to say I don't hate you, I don't." She drags in a long breath. "Anything else?" Despite her stance and expression, her tone is weary rather than hostile.

I stopped mid-stride as she began to speak. She doesn't hate me, and she forgives me. What I've been desperate to hear her tell me these past few years. So I should just thank her, turn around, and go home. But, I can't. My feet won't budge, and my tongue feels stuck to the roof of my mouth.

I wanted her words, her forgiveness, to be the culmination of a conversation where we sit down and hash everything out. The accident. My feelings. Her feelings. Where God might be in all this. Even if she's sincere – and I believe she is – her abrupt offering leaves me feeling emptier than a creek bed during a drought. A little relieved, a little lighter, yes. But...empty. Unsatisfied.

A gust pushes past us, and Allie reaches up to brush back a strand of hair that it blows into her face. Liz glares at me while pulling her coat more tightly to herself, her downturned mouth and flashing eyes a silent challenge. Or warning. _Don't you dare hurt my friend any more than you already have._

Allie's asked if there is anything else. I should say, "Yes." I should tell her I still want to talk. I know we can never be the friends we used to be, but I want us to be able to really and truly put the accident behind us.

It can't be done with the brush-off she's just handed me.

I decide to accept it, anyway. At sixty-eight, I'm too tired to fight. Too tired emotionally, too tired physically. Allie has forgiven me, and I know Bev has, too.

Allison Whitlock wants to be done with me. The fact sends shards into my heart, but I ain't gonna push her to do something she clearly ain't never gonna do. My big idea was just a fantasy, likely as not based on pure selfishness and self-centeredness. Wanting to clear the air completely between us, once and for all. So that I could stop feeling guilty.

News flash, old man: I ain't never gonna stop feeling guilty, no matter how much Allie and I talk, no matter how kind and gentle her words of my imaginary conversation might be.

I ain't never gonna stop feeling guilty, because the accident was all my fault. The death of my wife, her husband, her son. And the disappearance of her other son.

"No, ma'am." When I can finally speak, the words come out hoarse. "Nothing else." I turn and limp to the other side of the street, get in my truck, and head to the Realty office on the outskirts of town, a whopping thirty-second drive away. I have no reason to stay on my little farm. I've got what I really needed from Allie.

And as Leslie and Liz have made perfectly clear, I need to start over somewhere else, where nobody knows who I am or what I've done.

# Chapter Fifteen: Allie

"He's got a lot of nerve." Liz practically spits out the words as we watch Jeb return to the hardware store parking lot.

"He's got a broken heart." I speak as the revelation slams into my brain.

Liz emits a "pfft" sound. "What, now you're taking up for him?"

I slowly turn toward my friend, my own heart shredding at the thought of the unnecessary extra pain I've just caused Jeb. Especially considering that he may not be the one needing to ask for forgiveness. "Either we're done talking about it," I say, "or I'm taking us home."

Liz lifts her hands in a gesture of surrender. "I'm done. You want to head to the grocery store, or visit the flea market first?"

I'm tempted to make a stop at the flea market and comb through their clothing. But Arianna is three sizes larger than I, so Liz would get suspicious if she saw me purchase anything that would fit the girl.

And then there's that thing about her possibly not being at my place when I get back.

Another chilly gust blows by, and I shiver and pull my hood over my head. "I thought the next cold front wasn't supposed to move in until the day after tomorrow." I start walking in the direction we were headed when Jeb stopped us, which would take us past both the grocery store and the flea market.

Liz moves to keep up with me. "They did predict a gusty north wind today."

We say nothing more, and I let her lead me into the flea market. She loves to accessorize her house with unique and old items, and though the flea market typically doesn't have anything beyond the usual rural small town offerings, she likes to look whenever she can. Just in case.

We resume our chatter as we look around, but it's superficial and stifled, and I can tell Liz has lost the cheery mood she was in just before Jeb caught up with us. I'm beginning to wonder if I should have listened to Arianna's protest, and just stayed home. At least today.

By unspoken agreement, we don't linger either at the flea market or in the grocery store, and I'm relieved when I finally get up to Liz's place.

"I'd invite you in for some herbal tea," she tells me as she pulls on the handle of the passenger door of my Corolla, "but I've got a deadline looming."

That's fine with me, because the anxiety that Arianna may have run off again started picking at my mind when we went to the grocery store, and is now hammering. I had nothing to worry about though; Arianna actually opens the front door as I walk up the path toward the house.

Or, maybe I _do_ have something to worry about, because her knit brow and tight lips reflect the same anxiety that I've been dealing with for the past twenty minutes.

"Miss Allie! It's Belle. Somethin's wrong with her."

Dread swells inside my gut. I heft the two canvas bags I'm carrying and pick up my pace. Arianna swings the door wide for me as I reach it, and I push past her, drop the bags to the floor, and rush over to Belle's usual spot on the couch.

"She's over here." Arianna is standing in the space between Jared's bedroom and the bathroom just as a sour smell hits my nose. "She vomited real bad about fifteen minutes ago," she adds as I step over to where Belle now lays, in her bed on the floor. "I cleaned up the best I could – I sho' hope that was a bag of rags sittin' on the bottom of the shelf in the bathroom, 'cause that's what I used – but I know it still stinks, I'm sorry, and I put her on the floor 'cause I figgered she make less of a mess than if she was on the sofa."

By now I am kneeling next to Belle, stroking her fur and kicking myself for leaving this morning. Serves me right for being selfish.

"That _is_ a rag bag, and you did fine. Thank you." Belle looks up at me and whimpers, then licks my finger. "What's wrong, girl? Are you sick?"

I fear the answer to that question. And unfortunately, the only way to get the answer is to get her to the vet. A full forty minutes away from here. And he's only open Monday through Friday.

Arianna met me at the door using a single crutch for support. Now, she leans it against the tall bookcase which sits in the corner between Jared's bedroom and the living room and lowers herself to the floor. "Is...is she gonna be okay?"

Her shaky voice causes me to yank my gaze up to hers. Her eyes shimmer with unshed tears. She's really become attached to Belle these past few days, I realize. My heart aches to think how she'll react if Belle is on her last legs.

I can't let myself think about how _I_ will react.

I also can't look at Arianna as I give her my honest response, so I drop my gaze back down to Belle's mournful black eyes. "She's an old dog. I...I just don't know."

As I finish the sentence Belle makes a strangled sound in the back of her throat, lurches violently beneath my touch, and jumps out of her bed. I think she's trying to get to the door to get out, but doesn't make it two feet before she starts heaving. A second later, vomit spews out of her mouth, hitting the legs of my desk and splattering clear into the middle of the great room. I've never been so glad about keeping that hundred-square-foot area open and unfurnished.

"Oh, the poor thing, the poor thing," Arianna croons as Belle drags herself back to her bed, whining.

The terrier vomits twice more that afternoon, but only a little liquid since her stomach is empty. I have to pick her up and carry her outside for her to do her business, and instead of crossing the driveway and choosing a place among the trees, she walks on wobbly legs to the middle of the front yard and empties both bladder and bowels right there.

The next day, Sunday, her behavior changes little. I fix her a broth made from some of the vegetables I have growing under a cloche in the garden. She laps it up greedily...then loses all of it five minutes later.

Arianna spends most of the day by the dog's side. The scene is bittersweet for me, because it reminds me that if Arthur and Jared were here, they would be taking the Ugandan girl's place. While sitting there, Arianna strokes Belle and sings softly in tune to the instrumental worship music I decide to play on my laptop. Her alto voice is rich and melodious, making me think that she has had more than a little experience singing.

For supper, I stir-fry some garden vegetables and serve them with quinoa and garbanzo beans with a homemade pasta sauce. Arianna mostly picks at her food. She also doesn't give me any effusive compliments, another hint that she's really taking Belle's illness hard. I try to distract her by giving her my own compliment.

"I heard you singing to Belle a little bit ago." I fork up a slice of carrot. "You have a lovely singing voice."

"Thanks." She stares down at her plate, swirling a bit of quinoa and bean around on it.

"Have you ever sung in a choir?"

The movement on the plate comes to a dead stop. Arianna fixates on her food as though watching to see if something might emerge from it. She is quiet for so long that I give up on her answering, and resume eating.

But after about a minute, head still down, she says, "Once, I was in a choir. Yes." Then she raises her eyes to meet mine. "Miss Allie, your food tastes good, as usual, but I'm just not hungry. May I be excused?"

I consider reminding her that I've told her that when she's finished, all she has to do is say, "Thank you for the food. Excuse me," and go do whatever it is she wants to do next. But maybe she's afraid I'll be offended if she gets up with barely having touched her meal.

So I just smile and say, "That's fine. Let me know if you get hungry later."

My heart squeezes as I watch her return to her vigil beside Belle, who seems to be getting weaker and thinner by the hour. The next day Arianna watches me, tears streaming down her face, as I walk out with Belle in my arms.

An hour later, sitting inside the vet's office with Belle laid out on an exam table, my own face is streaked with tears.

Belle has a tumor, likely cancerous, in her stomach. Removing it may give her a few extra tenuous, painful months, at best. And she has nearly reached the end of the average lifespan for her breed.

I face yet another loss. But I have to make the compassionate, merciful decision.

I cry all the way home, Belle's warm body wrapped in a towel beside me in the passenger seat. I wonder how Arianna will take the news. I wonder how I will be able to live without this last living reminder of the family I once had.

But more than anything, I wonder how I will explain Belle's absence to Jared when he finally comes home.

# Chapter Sixteen: Arianna

I cling to Miss Allie, and she clings to me. And we cry. Hard. And long.

I understand why Miss Allie does it. This was her dog. And not really her dog, she told me the other day, but her sons' dog. So she's crying, for sure, not just about Belle, but she's probably reliving the loss of her family, too.

Why I should be mourning like this, over a dog I knew for less than a week, does not make sense. Maybe because Belle was a comfort to me when Miss Allie first took me in. Maybe she was even the reason I stayed with Miss Allie and came to trust her.

Or maybe I can feel some of Miss Allie's pain. After all, I know what it's like to lose someone I love. Could be, too, this is the first graveside ceremony I have attended since Mama died, and it reminds me of that heart-searing day back in my country all over again.

It seems a long time before we finally let go of each other and spill a few leftover tears over the grave Miss Allie dug for Belle right after she got back from the animal doctor. What word did she use? Ve-ter...something. Miss Allie told me that in the city, animal doctors have to dispose of the dead bodies of pets, but since she lives in the country she was allowed to bring little Belle home.

Poor dog. A chilly gust skims the top of my braids, and I decide to go ahead and ask the question that pops into my head. "Miss Allie, do animals go to heaven?"

Miss Allie swipes a hand underneath both her eyes, then leans over to pick up the shovel. "I have a book written by a woman who claims to have visited heaven several times. She says that heaven contains every kind of animal that ever lived, including dinosaurs, and that God recreates pets for people who want their..."

Her voice hitches, and then she starts sobbing again. I put my hand on her back, and she drags in a ragged breath. "I'm sorry. I just realized that Belle...Belle is – is with –" Another sob cuts off her words.

She doesn't have to finish her sentence. She thinks the dog is in heaven with her husband and son. I rub her back some more, and as I do, I realize that just like she helped me a week ago, I am helping her. Miss Allie leans against me, like she's the child and I'm the mom. I'm telling you, if there is a God, I have to wonder if He put us together right at this time because He knew we would need each other.

Miss Allie's new wave of crying doesn't last a minute, though. Soon she's taking deep breaths and wiping the tears off her cheeks. "Let's go in," she says, her voice gravelly but calm. "I'm freezing."

We eat a simple meal of soup and crackers, neither one of us saying much of anything. I do ask her one question. "When is that doll supposed to be here? Is it Wednesday?"

She nods her head. Biting into a cracker, I wonder if now would be a good time to tell her who I am running from, and why. And who the doll is really for. I wonder if it's a good time to ask her to help me...with what, I'm not sure. I think, by what church folks have told me when I was pretending to ask innocent questions, that Mr. Brent has broken the law. Many times. Least a dozen, as far as I know.

**********

"All right, everybody out!" Mrs. Brent's voice had a strained cheerfulness to it. Fake. The way she sounded that day when a stranger's car broke down on the road going past the Brent's place and she was explaining why there were so many black children running around.

And making up lies about where we slept.

I and the other children stumbled out of the van, taking deep breaths of the fresh air. Benesha and Kintu had actually vomited into the small bucket that Mr. Brent had given us just for that purpose. Somehow he knew that some of us weren't going to do well bumping around on the floor of a hot, smelly van for two hours.

Though it was a hot August day, the Sunday morning air felt cool compared to what we've just left. I took a moment to look around me. We were in the middle of a large parking lot, but there were only a handful of cars around because we had to get here early to change clothes and rehearse. We were somewhere in a town or city. We couldn't tell driving in, because we had to sit on the floor and all the windows were covered so we couldn't see out.

At the time, I didn't think that was strange. Not until I overheard the conversation between the Brents that changed my life. And that wouldn't be for almost seven more years.

Benesha, who was five, crept up to me and held my hand. I don't know why, but she'd come to look up to me as a mother figure since we got to America. A little girl myself, I felt proud that she'd chosen me out of the group, and I tried my best to encourage her and cheer her up whenever she needed it.

Of course, by this time all of us children were close to each other. We were from three different African nations, spoke several different languages, and three of the children still struggled to speak English. But our differences didn't matter. We were all foreigners in a new place, being taken care of by people who would probably never love us like our own parents had, and that pulled us together.

"Is that the church?" Benesha whispered, pointing to the large brick building some twenty feet away.

"I think so."

"All right, y'all." Mr. Brent clapped his hands to get our attention, even though most of us were already looking at him and not saying a word. "You're gonna be on your best behavior today, and sing like nobody's business."

He bent his tall frame down to look at the group more closely, a big grin on his face. "If the church folk here like what you do, y'all will start eating better."

About an hour later, we stood in front of a large audience. I had to take a deep breath to try to stop from shaking. Could I sing well enough to please these people? Even though a lot of them were smiling at us, I wasn't sure we would make them happy with our singing. Then, the background music started. Mr. Brent, standing in front of us with his back to the audience, lifted his hands and cued us to start singing.

I don't know about anyone else, but the moment I opened my mouth, all the nervousness went away. An unfamiliar thrill chased up and down my spine. I didn't understand it, because practicing the songs at home never made me feel this way.

When we sang the last note of the last song forty-five minutes later, everyone in the audience stood up, clapped and cheered. I felt so euphoric, I completely forgot about Mr. Brent's promise from that morning. Until we got home for supper that night.

Because despite the wonderful chicken dinner we ate at the church afterward, our meals at home didn't get any better.

**********

The memory fades, and I realize I'm staring at the wall, holding my spoon in the bowl. I blink my eyes, yanking my gaze to Miss Allie in case she's noticed that I stopped eating, and is wondering where my mind went. But she is also staring off in the distance, no doubt lost in her own memories.

I scoop out some of the soup, and go back to thinking about Mr. Brent. Could he go to jail for what he's done? Is doing? I sure hope so. But he's a God-fearing man – according to him, anyway – and as far as I know has not ever done anything really evil. Except for slapping his wife a few times, but he never did it hard enough to leave a mark.

On the other hand, Mr. Brent has taught us that lying is a sin. It's evil. And has he not been lying about us children to the church folk all this time? Maybe even lying about our relationship to him?

As I finish the bowl of savory soup, I decide that yes, I will tell Miss Allie. But not today. She needs to grieve. I need to grieve, for that matter. Poor little Belle.

My left foot is well enough for me to stand by the sink and wash the dishes, so I insist that Miss Allie let me do that. I use a tone like my mama would use with me when she was serious, only I wink so Miss Allie won't think I am being disrespectful.

While I wash, she puts on some music, sits down in the rocking chair, and rocks. That doesn't last long, though. After a couple of minutes she gets back up and goes into her bedroom, closing the door behind her. Finishing the last dish, I creep over to her bedroom and listen. Yes. She's crying again. By now I feel like all my tears are dried out, but if betting wasn't a sin, I would bet she's crying more for her lost loved ones than over Belle.

Of course, maybe betting is _not_ a sin. Another thing to ask Miss Allie when she is feeling better.

I turn from the bedroom door, and as if on autopilot my feet take me toward the spot where Belle had been lying on her bed the past couple of days. Sorrow pinches my heart when I look down and see the empty bed. I sigh. I sure hope Miss Allie will help me with what I have to do, because if she doesn't, I'll have to leave again, and then she'll be all alone.

I slip into the bedroom, leaving the door ajar. I'm thinking about reading for a while, but none of the books on the shelf appeal. So I sit and listen to the music still playing out in what Miss Allie calls the "great room."

I have never heard that phrase before. I used to think I was pretty smart for being an orphan girl who cannot read real well, but over the past few days I have been feeling more and more stupid. I know she tried to hide it, but I could tell Miss Allie was very surprised when she found out I didn't know how to buy things on the Internet...or that I didn't know much about the Internet at all.

There's other things too, like not understanding some of the funny English phrases Miss Allie says sometimes, and not knowing what a blender was. Then there's the whole "sin" thing.

A few minutes later, I'm about to get up to go to the bathroom when there's a knock on the front door. I freeze. My bedroom door is open. Do I dare get up and shut it? Or will the person knocking see me through one of the windows?

After a few seconds of silence, the knock sounds again, more loudly. If I leave the door open, the person will see me for sure if they come in. As quickly as my lame ankle will let me, I hop up and to the door, closing it as quietly as I can. Not five seconds later, I hear the sound of Miss Allie's flip-flops slapping the floor.

Then the sound of the door opening. Then her voice saying, "Oh, Liz, I didn't mean for you to come down today."

I hear the panic in her voice. For me?

"You have company." The words from the woman at the door – Liz; isn't she the friend Miss Allie went shopping with the other day? – hold a hint of accusation.

But I barely register that. She saw me. Somehow. Maybe she was looking through a window when I was closing the door? I should have just stayed put.

Ugh. I should stop using that phrase, "stay put." I learned it from Mr. Brent, who was always telling us that whenever he had to go somewhere and leave us behind for a little while. "Y'all stay put, or there'll be big trouble when I get back. And remember how angry God gets when children disobey."

Anyway, if I would have just stayed on the bed, she probably would not have seen any motion, and not insisted on coming in the house like she does now. I would sneak up to the top bunk and hide, except that neither of the bedrooms have a ceiling. Miss Allie told me that's so that all the rooms in the house can get ventilated properly so the concrete making up the ceiling and walls won't mold.

"I can't believe you're lying to me!" Liz is saying, sounding hurt. And more clear, like she's stepped into the house.

My heart pounds against my rib cage, and I suddenly have trouble breathing.

"I saw somebody close the door to Jared's – oh, Allie! Jared! Is he home? Were you trying to surprise me?"

"Liz, don't!" Miss Allie sounds angry.

"Let go of me. You're hurting me."

I guess Miss Allie grabbed Liz's arm to keep her from crossing the room to where I am.

Then she must have let go of Liz's arm because now I hear fast footsteps that don't belong to Miss Allie coming closer and closer to me. I press myself against the wall that the bed sits against, as though I can make myself disappear that way. In the next instant, the door flies open and Liz steps in.

Her hair is lighter colored and longer then Miss Allie's, falling a couple of inches below her shoulders, and her gray-blue eyes widen when she sees me on the bed. Taking a step back, she says, "You're not Jared."

By that time Miss Allie is right behind her, her brow all crumpled and looking at me like she wants to start crying again. My fear turns to anger. Friend or not, this Liz person has no right to make Miss Allie even more upset than she's already been on account of her dog.

Mustering all the courage I have, I push myself forward and off the bed and offer the woman my hand. "No, ma'am, I am not Jared. My name is Arianna." I'm astonished by the confidence in my tone because my insides are still quivering.

Liz stares at me for a couple of beats before gingerly taking my hand.

"Don't mean any disrespect, ma'am," I continue since she seems to have lost her voice, "but as far as I know it's as rude to barge into somebody's bedroom in America as it is in Uganda."

Liz's face flushes pink, and she pulls her hand out of mine. "I – I'm so sorry. Of course."

My next problem is, stay in the bedroom with the door closed, or go out and face this lady? I know Miss Allie must be feeling awfully uncomfortable right about now, maybe embarrassed, because I have been wanting her to keep me a secret. So I feel like I should go out and be with her while we both explain how I came to be here.

But Miss Allie makes my decision by gesturing for me to stay when I make a move for the door. Liz leaves the bedroom, Miss Allie closes the door, and I hear the two of them exit the house.

To talk about me, no doubt. Miss Allie won't be able to tell her friend much, but that's not necessarily a good thing. What if Liz wants to tell the police about me? What if she doesn't like me, and would convince them to send me back to Mr. Brent? After all, even though I am only two years away from being eighteen, I know older people still see me as a kid. "Just a teenager," they'll say.

The police might believe a grown-up that they know over a kid that they have never met. Especially a runaway. Which is why I ran away in the first place, instead of seeking out an authority figure to help.

Then a thought twists my insides: is it illegal to run away from the grown-up who's taking care of you, even if he's not really your parent like he said? Then I would be in big trouble.

The gentle lunch of soup and crackers suddenly turns to stone in my stomach. Even if I can trust Miss Allie, I don't know if I can trust Liz.

I think I'll have to leave sooner than I planned. Without Miss Allie's help.

# Chapter Seventeen: Allie

I stare after Liz's retreating figure, holding back a scream. She has every right to be hurt. I mean, you don't hide a runaway in your house for a week, and not tell your best friend about it. I get why she might be feeling betrayed or shut out.

What I don't get is her threat just now: "Either you get that girl to tell you who she really is and where she came from, or I'm sending the sheriff up here!"

Liz yanks open the door of her car, slams it, and is out of my sight three seconds later. Clenching my teeth, I trudge back to the house.

"Arianna, she's gone," I say after closing the door behind me.

Arianna limps out of the room I am actually starting to think of as "her" bedroom. Leaning against the wall, she wraps her arms around her middle and shivers.

I shrug out of my coat and step toward the closet to hang it up. "Are you cold? I don't mind turning the heater up to high."

Still no answer. I turn toward her to find her watching me with a wary expression.

My heart falls to the floor. Have I lost the bit of trust I'd built up with her? Perhaps this mess wouldn't have happened if I'd told Liz about Arianna, and let them meet and get to know each other, the second or third day she'd been here.

Or maybe Liz would have been just as adamant about prying the truth from the girl, and Arianna would have run away from me.

I move toward Arianna. "I'm so sorry about the way Liz barged in. She moved so fast, I –"

"Am I still safe here?" Her voice is small, childlike. She's afraid.

She's also smart, and I know that if I hesitate to answer, she will guess the right answer. But I hesitate anyway.

I instantly see the change in Arianna's eyes. Resignation. I might as well go get Jason's rifle and shoot myself in the foot. I probably could aim well enough to do that.

With a sigh, I sink onto the couch. Nothing to do but give her the truth. "Liz loves me, and since we're both single women living alone, we look out for each other." Arianna continues to stare at me, and I have to resist squirming under her scrutiny. "She's – she doesn't know you, you know. So she's...she's not sure-"

"She does not trust me." Arianna dips her head down as she speaks. There is no hint of anger or frustration in her words.

"No." I clasp my hands on my lap. "Mainly because you haven't told me where you came from, who you're running from."

Arianna's eyes narrow. "Why did you tell her all that? Why didn't you lie?" Her words come out in an angry staccato as she drops her arms to her side.

I rise up and take a step toward her, working to keep my voice calm. "I'm not going to lie, Arianna. Except in extreme circumstances, it's not right." Not to mention the fact that I might lose my best friend if I ever lied to her. Look at what a week-long deception did to our relationship. But if I mention that, it will sound selfish. And Arianna's flashing eyes tell me that I don't need to provoke her emotions any further.

"So you're saying that _my_ circumstances don't matter? Is that what you're saying?"

She's yelling at me now, her hands squeezing into fists. My Mommy Hackles rise. And when my Mommy Hackles get raised, nothing can intimidate them, not even a temperamental teenager who matches my height and has fifty pounds on me.

"Young lady," I say through clenched teeth, a hand on one hip, "You will _not_ speak to me in that tone of voice. Or twist my words." I'm on a roll, and though my brain is telling me I should shut up, my mouth won't listen. "I would've been happy to help you the very first day you came here. But no, me giving you a warm bed and good food apparently wasn't enough. You had to wait until someone found out about you and threatened – "

I cut myself off with a short gasp. If ever there was a time I wanted to take my words back and throw them into a black hole, that time has arrived. I've been standing rigidly, leaning toward Arianna, but now my shoulders slump and I take a step back.

The anger has gradually faded from Arianna's eyes during my tirade, replaced by disbelief and shock. Now, her eyes bulge out at me, fear and dismay playing over her features.

I wait for her to ask about the threat. To yell back at me. To storm out the front door and slam it behind her, like Arthur used to do when I had railed on him about something.

Instead, she turns around, goes into the bedroom, and quietly clicks the door shut behind her.

I blew it this time. I just know it.

# Chapter Eighteen: Jared

"That was your mom." Grandma sinks onto the sofa where I sit, one leg crossed over the other, reading my Bible. "Your dog – what was her name? Bella? – died."

I jerk my head up. Her compassion-filled eyes blink at me as she puts a hand on my thigh. "Belle," I correct her, but it's like my mouth is on autopilot. The rest of me has gone numb.

Belle? Gone? "Did...did she say how?" I have to force the words past the lump in my throat.

"Stomach tumor. Probably cancer."

Another loss in the family. Poor Mom. "I was hoping," I have to clear my throat to continue, "to see her again."

"If you'd'a gone straight to your mother's instead of camping out here –"

"Danny!" With her rebuking tone, Grandma stops the words mumbled from Grandpa's recliner.

My chest squeezes as I uncross my legs and put a hand on my grandmother's arm. "But, Grandma, he's right." I nod at Grandpa. "And now she's totally alone." I don't guess, anyway, that Mom ever bought another dog since I left.

Grandpa sits up straighter, snapping the newspaper he's holding in his hands. "You could change that in a hurry." His tone becomes stern. Glancing at Grandma, he snaps, "And don't you be taking up for him, Tillie. You told me yourself that keeping him a secret from Allie is about driving you mad."

His glare turns on me. "Young man, I think it's about time you tell us why on earth you're so scared to go back home. You say you haven't committed any crime, but you sure been acting like a fugitive."

I had actually been planning on telling them either later today or tomorrow, and it looks like right now is the winner. Besides, I owe it to them. After all, they've been feeding me and letting me hang out without question after that first day several days ago when I told them I needed some time to work up the nerve to go back home.

I take a deep, shaky breath, glancing from one grandparent to the other. "It's about...the accident." Fighting back tears, I answer the question in both my grandparents' eyes by telling my side of the story.

As I speak, fumbling over words and generally sounding like an idiot, a range of emotions passes over Grandma's face while Grandpa just sits with a stoic expression. The pain of having to explain the scene rips through me like a butcher knife. Why didn't I just type out the story on my computer and let them read it? And how on earth am I ever going to admit any of this to Jeb Mitchell, who paid dearly for my silence?

When I finally finish, the ticking of the antique clock on the bookcase next to Grandpa reverberates through the room like a bass drum. My eyelids sting. What do my grandparents think? If they never hated me before, they have good cause to hate me now. Or at least think I'm the most irresponsible person who ever lived.

Fighting the temptation to run upstairs to the guest room, I force myself to look Grandpa in the eye. He is more likely to offer a logical bit of insight or piece of advice without emotions getting in the way.

His expression softens, the stoicism giving way to compassion. "You may be making a mountain out of a molehill," he says in his gravelly voice, "but I agree with the Lord. You need to go talk to this Jeb fellow."

Grandma, who has been staring at me with a wrinkled brow and moist eyes, bursts into laughter. "Well, Danny," she says in between gasps, "I'm so happy to hear you agree with the Lord."

Grandpa turns up one corner of his mouth. "Bound to happen once in a while." Then he turns to me, sobering again. "I can see why you'd want to put this off. And we sure don't mind an extended visit with you after all this time. But," he points a finger at me, "if you're not out of here a month from today, I'm going to haul your rear into that old car and call your mother to tell her you're on your way. Got it?"

Of all the reactions I'd anticipated, being handed a month-long invitation to stay was not one. I smile as Grandma puts an arm around my shoulders. "Got it."

# Chapter Nineteen: Jeb

One-thirty.

The red numbers almost hurt my eyes in the pitch blackness of the bedroom, so I lean over to click on the bedside lamp. Might as well, since I've only fitfully dozed off and on – mostly off – for the past two and a half hours. Guilt eats away at my conscience, mocking my attempts at relaxing even the tiniest bit.

Wednesday morning, day after tomorrow, a fella's gonna come to do an appraisal on my two hundred acres. But I just ain't sure I should go through with a sale. Especially considering the Realtor's warning, that it might only bring a fraction of what I was hoping for.

More than that, this has been my and Bev's home for most of our marriage. Though the farm is small, it always provided just enough to feed our small family plus bring in enough profit to pay the bills and purchase the occasional new sofa or take everyone on vacation. So it seems like if I sell off the farm, I'm somehow disrespecting Bev. Trivializing the memory of her.

On top of that, I ain't told Jennifer yet. This was her childhood home – and that of her brother, Tim, who died of a bad staph infection at the age of twenty-two.

With a groan, I push my body up into a sitting position. Might as well turn on the T.V. for a while as lie here feeling like the morning's never gonna come. Nothing like a good infomercial to put me right to sleep.

I've just settled myself in my armchair and picked up the remote when I hear a sound outside. Like a woman crying out.

The sound that a mountain lion makes sometimes. Only, the cat would need to be in my front yard for me to have heard it inside the house with all the windows closed.

Curious, I get up, walk to the front door not ten feet away, and flip the switch to turn on the yard light. Scanning the yard, at first I see nothing. Then movement by the fence next to the driveway catches my attention. Someone with skin as dark as the surrounding night is pulling on their coat as if it's caught against something. That something must certainly be the lone piece of barbed wire that I never got around to cutting off. Though not very long, there's enough to snag a person if they were to try to squeeze themselves – or even climb over – the dilapidated wooden fence.

Which a person wouldn't do in broad daylight, seeing as how there's an eight-foot opening into the driveway only a couple of feet over. So the next question is, why is the person trying to scramble through or over a fence in the middle of the night? A thief, is the only answer I can come up with.

Limping to the corner near the T.V. where I've been leaving my rifle ever since coming home, I snatch it up and move as quickly as my bum leg will let me back to the front door. In two shakes I've opened it, descended the porch steps, and aimed the rifle at the ruffian.

"Yer trespassing!" I shout. "Put yer hands up where I can see 'em."

The person raises their head, giving what is definitely a female scream when she sees me holding the gun on her. "Please, sir." She slowly raises her hands above her head, a bag dropping to the ground as she does so. "I did not know I was trespassing. It's dark, and I could not see."

Her foreign accent is heavy, though her English is admittedly better than mine.

I lower the gun as I walk toward her. She shrinks back at my approach, but keeps her hands raised. "You need help getting your coat untangled?"

"I would be very grateful, sir."

I stop about four feet away from her, laying my gun on the ground. "Go ahead and put your hands down. You don't strike me as the violent type."

"No, sir," she replies, lowering her arms, "I am not."

I kneel down to where the coat is snagged. It's an orange, black and white coat that seems familiar somehow. While I work on it, I say, "Don't suppose you wanna tell me why you're runnin' around out here in the middle of the night." I wrench the first of two offending barbs free. "In this weather."

"I am going home, sir."

I snap my gaze up to meet hers. What kind of home would she be headed for if her folks make her walk out in this weather? And why doesn't she know her way?

Suspicion snakes around me, but I decide not to pry her for more information. Instead, I say, "In that case, I'd be more'n happy to give you a lift."

"No, thank you." Her words come out in a rush.

Well, good enough. She don't know me from Adam, and it ain't real smart for a girl to accept rides from strange men. Even old codgers like me.

A ripping sound fills the silence between us as I remove the second barb. "Sorry. That one was stuck good. But I think you could mend it pretty easy." I stand up and look at her, and she looks away.

"Thank you." She snatches up the bag, then turns toward the opening of my driveway. "Sorry for disturbing you."

"Hold on." I reach out and grasp her shoulder. Though my touch is light, she goes rigid under it. "I got a lady friend up the road who would take you in for the night." I must be crazy. This girl could be a hardened criminal for all I know, and Allie wouldn't want to be awakened in the middle of the night to take in a stranger, nice or not.

And Allie clearly wants nothing to do with me.

But I feel like I should offer some help to this girl. However, as soon as I make the offer, she slides out from under my hand. Increasing her pace, she steps onto the driveway. "No. I – I will be fine. I know my way now. I just got...confused in the dark."

A part of me wants to get back to my truck, get in it and drive around in front of her until she cries uncle and lets me give her the obvious help she needs. The yearning tugs even harder at my heart when I notice that, like me, she has a limp. If it were my daughter, I would want someone like me to insist on giving her shelter, at least for the night.

My legs start moving in her direction. "Look, young lady," I call after her, "it's not safe for you –"

"Leave me alone!" She whirls around to face me, but continues walking. Backwards. "Please. I will be fine. Just...leave me alone." During the last words, she turns back around and starts jogging away.

I stop, let my shoulders sag, and sigh. I'm not in the mood to play police, or to force a stubborn young lady into doing something she doesn't want to do. Heaven only knows how she could twist my intentions and actions. Good-bye, parole; hello, ten more years in prison.

There's one thing about the incident. By the time I'm back inside the house and have set my rifle back in its place, I'm exhausted. I get back into bed and promptly fall asleep.

Can't say that I sleep well, though. About four-thirty I wake up in a cold sweat, my heart pounding so hard I'm afraid I might be about to have a heart attack. Images from the nightmare I've just had linger in my head. First, me driving my truck down the highway, one hand on the steering wheel and both eyes on Bev as I yelled at her. Next, Bev's face turning black, her hair turning black with tight curls.

Looking just like the girl who caught herself on my fence last night.

It was Bev's voice, though, that screamed at me to look out. I jerked my head to face out the windshield, to find myself almost bumper-to-bumper with a car coming the other way. Both of us going at least sixty.

Finally, I was in a hospital bed, being told by an angry nurse that the girl was attacked by a pack of coyotes, and it was all my fault. I started to defend myself, but then the nurse suddenly turned into Allie. She looked at me, tears streaming down her face.

Then the tears turned to blood. A creepy feeling slithered all over me, like I knew something akin to a scene in a horror movie was going to happen in the next second.

That's when I woke up.

I've never been one to wonder what dreams mean – actually, I've rarely had a dream that clear in my entire life – but this one leaves me frightened. I'm more scared than a rabbit under an owl's nest for the plight of the girl from last night. And scared that Allie really hasn't forgiven me, after all.

"Lord, help me. Please, help me," I mutter, throwing back the covers and getting out of bed. I shower, shave, and dress in jeans and a sweatshirt, but having no appetite, I settle myself in a chair at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a pile of brochures and printouts that the Realtor gave me on Saturday. Mostly senior living apartments in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Shreveport, and the Dallas area, though I'd just as soon live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere in Idaho as have several hundred other people living within spitting distance of me.

An hour later, images of the black girl still scrape against the edges of my mind, and I've found absolutely nothing appealing in any of the brochures. I am deciding to call the Realtor in a few hours and tell her I've changed my mind, when somebody knocks on the front door.

Scratch that. They _pound_. Did the girl change her mind and come back for help? Get hurt? The thought pushes me out of my chair, but before I am even halfway across the kitchen I hear a voice yelling from outside.

I can't quite make it out, but it's familiar. Six feet from the door, and I recognize it. What on earth is Allison Whitlock doing here so early? And why is she so upset?

Then I remember the end of the dream, and stop midstride. Is she angry with me? Does she intend to harm me?

_Bam, bam, bam_. "Please, Jeb, I'm sorry it's so early, but this is an emergency!"

Years of friendship wipe away my doubts, and I pull the door wide open. Allie stands on the top step, her eyes frantic. "Jeb, I'm sorry, but I have to know. Have you happened to see a black girl come by last night or this morning? About my height, but heavier? Wearing Jared's old Sooners coat?"

I want to slap myself in the head, kick myself in the rear and call myself all sorts of names, all at the same time. That's why the girl's coat had seemed familiar.

Then something else clicks under my thick skull. "Is she the friend of a friend you had visitin' about a week ago?"

Allie's head bobs up and down so quickly I'm afraid it might snap off.

"I saw her last night. She got caught –"

Allie gasps. "Is she here? Oh, no, she's not here." Allie reaches out and grabs my arm. "I've got to find her. She left me a note – oh, Jeb, I have such a bad feeling about this!"

Two minutes later, we jump into my four-wheeler and head for the hills.

# Chapter Twenty: Arianna

I would hum to myself, even sing out loud, to make myself feel better. If I had enough breath.

But that old man might come after me at any minute. Not that I'm afraid of him, as he seemed kind, and if he had wanted to do anything bad to me, he had that gun to persuade me to stay. However, I'm afraid if he slows me down, I won't make it. And I will end up back at Miss Allie's. And her friend will call the police.

And my plan will be ruined.

I can't let that happen. Not now that I know the truth. Heat fills my face, and it's not from the running. It's from shame. I've known the truth for some time now...

**********

Kintu was sick. He'd been acting woozy all day, and right before bed he told me he had a headache. I felt his forehead, and sure enough, he had a fever.

I held in a sigh. When I was eleven and Dalia was twelve, the Brents began expecting us to take care of the sick children as much as possible. Now I was thirteen, and it was my turn, and I knew it meant I probably wouldn't get any sleep that night.

But I wasn't mad at Kintu. It wasn't his fault he was sick. I just hoped everybody didn't get whatever he had. "I'll go get you some aspirin." I left the shed, grateful for the pleasant spring weather. It had been raining a lot, but right now it was just humid and warm.

We had permission to go to what we now called "the big house" for three reasons. First, if our toilet wasn't working right. Second, if somebody was sick and needed medication. Third, if somebody was hurt so badly that bandages and ointment couldn't fix it.

We did our best for nothing like that to happen. Mr. Brent had told us that if one of us couldn't perform, the entire choir wouldn't be able to perform, and that would mean the church folks wouldn't be able to help us eat better.

By that time, although we were still eating the same food, we could have more than one helping.

He also told us that he would be so embarrassed if he had to cancel a performance – we had one most every Saturday or Sunday – that he would have to think about giving the injured child to another family. None of us wanted that. Who knows what kind of person he might give the child to? Besides, we had become like real brothers and sisters by then. We would have been heartbroken to see one of us leave.

And so we were always careful about how we played, during our short outside playtimes.

But sickness couldn't be helped. Even Mrs. Brent said so. But she said she had a lot of work to do keeping house and fixing food for twelve children, and that Dalia and I were old enough and responsible enough to care for anybody who got sick.

I took my time walking from the shed to the house. I would probably be stuck inside the shed for the better part of the next two days, so I meant to enjoy the fresh air while it lasted. The sun had just gone down and the ground was a dark mass in front of me, but the way was easy.

The only problem was, there was no light coming from the house that I could see, which meant that the Brents had already gone to bed. Which meant that if I knocked on the door, I might wake Mr. Brent up.

Which would mean trouble.

My steps slowed as I approached the back door. I could just try the door, and if it was unlocked, sneak into the bathroom, get the aspirin, and sneak back outside. But we weren't supposed to come into the house without permission.

So when I arrived at the door, I hesitated. But not for long. Kintu was hurting, and he was counting on me to help him feel better. Taking a deep breath, I placed my hand on the door handle and pushed down. It moved. I pushed it all the way to unlatch it, then slowly pushed open the door. Just a couple of inches.

Then I stopped to listen. Leaned into the crack I'd made so that my right eye could peer inside. Still no sound, no light.

I pushed the door the rest of the way open, then closed it behind me as quietly as I could. Walking on tiptoe, I took the few steps toward the bathroom on the right, opened that door, and closed it most of the way before turning on the light. Seconds later, bottle of aspirin in hand, I slid out of the bathroom with a mouse-like tread.

I was four steps away from it and at the edge of the kitchen when I heard a cracking noise, followed by a shriek. Before I could make another move, footsteps thudded on the other side of the house, and the living room light flicked on.

My heart jumped into my throat and began beating against it. The living room was on the opposite side of the house from where I stood in the kitchen, but a long bookcase that rose to about five feet tall was the only visual barrier between the two rooms. My instinct was to turn for the door, but one of the Brents might pass around the bookcase at any second and catch me leaving.

I might not eat for a week if that happened. Or be able to sit down. Not that they were in the habit of hitting us, but none of us had ever done anything that bad.

They couldn't know that I was there.

For a fleeting second, I considered tiptoeing into the bathroom and hiding behind the shower curtain. But if I did that, I would have a hard time hearing where they were in the house. And of course I wouldn't be able to see whether or not the light in the living room was still on, which would help me know whether it was safe to leave.

It didn't matter, anyway. I was paralyzed with fear. Somehow, I managed to push myself against the door of the pantry. Even though I was a big girl even then, part of my body would be hidden by the oven if one of the Brents peered around the bookcase.

I forced myself to take long, even breaths to stop the panting, which to me sounded as loud as if the clothes dryer was running. God, please don't let them see me. Please don't let them see me. The desperate words, though loud inside my head, were drowned out by Mrs. Brent's angry voice.

"I told you never to hit me again! I told you –"

"Shh!" This was Mr. Brent. "The kids'll hear you all the way in the shed."

"Let them hear me!" Mrs. Brent sounded furious, but her voice was quieter. "They deserve to know what a rat their father is." She said the word "father" in a tone I cannot describe. Like she was making fun of it. I could tell that they were now standing in the middle of the house, behind the bookcase.

Mr. Brent's voice calmed. But when he spoke, it sent a shiver down my spine, it was so cold. "I told you you'd get fifteen percent. I've given you fifteen percent every Monday."

"Liar." Mrs. Brent sounded like she was talking through her teeth. "I counted yesterday's offering. It was three thousand. You only gave me two hundred."

Then I heard a scuffling of feet and a gasp I guessed came from Mrs. Brent.

"You ain't supposed to touch the church offerings," Mr. Brent hissed through his teeth. That was interesting, because Mrs. Brent always slapped us on the leg if we used the word "ain't." Said it would make a bad impression on the church folk if we were lazy with our words.

"Let go of me, or I'll call the police." Mrs. Brent sounded like she was choking.

"I'd kill you before they had a chance to get into their patrol cars," Mr. Brent growled. "Which would be a real shame, seeing as how I've got you trained real good with them kids."

A long silence followed, during which my stomach turned so quickly I was afraid I was going to throw up right then and there. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Mr. Brent was threatening to kill his wife?

I heard Mrs. Brent mumble something, after that some more shuffling. Then Mr. Brent said, "Offerings are down a little bit. I think we need to add some newer songs, or get them kids dancing."

For a couple of minutes, they talked about why the church folk hadn't been giving as much, and what they could do about it. While they did, I did a couple of calculations. First, if the offering for us children was usually at least three thousand dollars a week, that would come to twelve thousand per month! And we usually sang somewhere every Sunday or Saturday night. If that was true, why didn't the Brents hardly ever buy us new clothes, and why was the food so boring? At least by that time, we weren't going hungry. But it was the same old thing every day.

I also wondered why Mr. Brent didn't put us up in nicer motels, or buy himself a nicer house.

Then I thought about what Mrs. Brent had said. Why would Mr. Brent be paying her like she was his employee? Didn't married people share their money?

And then it hit me – what if the woman we'd been calling Mrs. Brent all this time wasn't really Mr. Brent's wife?

What shook me out of my thoughts was hearing Dalia's name.

Dalia. What about Dalia? Why were they talking about Dalia?

I listened, and knew the answer in a minute.

It took another few seconds for my brain to register the real meaning of the words I'd just heard. And when they did, terror sliced through me as my stomach turned.

It can't be true. No, God, please, it can't be true.

But it was true. Even though I was only thirteen, even though the Brents had done their best to keep us from the outside world, deep down inside I knew it was true.

My supper rose up to the base of my throat, and I had to swallow and take several deep breaths to keep it down. After what seemed like forever, the living room light blinked off and the footsteps and voices of the Brents faded as they, I guessed, returned to their bedroom.

I pushed away from the pantry door and made my way back out the door, gripping the aspirin bottle so tightly that my knuckles hurt. Once outside, I ran as hard as I could. I ran as though speed would take me away from the terrible words I'd just heard. As though by running, I could eventually take off and fly, fly far, over the ocean, and back to my homeland.

But I couldn't run that fast. And I couldn't run that hard. I made it as far as the oak tree several yards behind the shed, and couldn't run any more. My breath heaved.

And then, so did my stomach, emptying its contents behind the knotty trunk.

**********

A shudder racks my body, even as I am now running. I should never have stayed quiet. As soon as I knew the truth, I should have told somebody. At least told Dalia, and given her a chance to run.

They can't keep doing what they've been doing. I have to stop them.

So I just keep going as fast as I can, panting, in what I hope is the right direction. The town on Mr. Brent's schedule for this coming weekend is called Greenridge. A couple of days ago, I asked Miss Allie real casually if a person could find a map on the Internet. She was so excited to show me, I thought she was going to jump out of her skin. She showed me where the nearest town to us is, and then showed me how to zoom in and out to find other towns.

Thanks to that, I know the town is only forty miles away, and like most towns around here there is plenty of forest along the roads so I can hide myself whenever I need to. I didn't deceive myself that it would be any easy walk, especially with another chance of snow tomorrow, but I think with the coat and some snacks and continuous motion I'll do all right.

I feel guilty for taking some of her things. But like I said in the note I left on the kitchen table, if my plan works I'm going to come back and return the things I borrowed. I asked her not to worry and not to come after me, that I would be fine and hopefully see her again in a couple of weeks.

I have a sinking feeling she's going to come looking for me, anyway, so I have to be extra careful from now on not to stumble onto anybody else's property. I don't want her to know which direction I am headed.

I wind my way back into the trees, and pretty soon my hands and head are all scratched up because I cannot see three feet in front of me, and the tree branches seem to come out of nowhere and hit me in the face. I wish I could have snuck out during the day, but somebody would have spotted me for sure and come after me.

I keep going, but my left ankle starts hurting and I have to slow to a walk. I don't think I've gone thirty minutes away from that man's house when two things happen at once. First, a sharp pain shoots through my left ankle, like somebody is stabbing it with a knife. Second, a pack of coyotes start howling not too far away. The only kind of television show Mr. Brent ever let us watch were nature shows, and once I watched one with coyotes.

I cannot mistake that sound.

The eerie noise all by itself would send chills down my spine. But knowing that they might be able to smell me? See me? I thought my heart beat hard when Miss Allie's friend came to her house. That was nothing compared to what's going on in my chest now. It's like a herd of water buffalo stampeding on the plains.

I want to scream, but if the animals don't know where I am, screaming might bring them to me rather than scare them away. What do I do? Oh, what do I do?

I don't mean it to be a prayer, but an answer comes in my head as clear as bottled water: _Climb a tree_.

I don't think I can climb a tree, but I don't have time to argue. Anyway, who would I be arguing with? Having no time to even begin to think about that, I turn to the tree to my right, and begin feeling around for lower branches.

There are a couple, just two feet off the ground. And they feel thick and sturdy, too. I try to put my right foot up on the branch, but putting all my weight on my left foot sends another searing pain through the ankle. I try doing the opposite. Somehow, I am able to drape my left leg over the branch so that my ankle doesn't have to support the rest of me as I push off the ground.

But it's throbbing, and I'm not sure I can go up any further. I feel for another branch, find it, and this time I do let out a loud gasp from the pain as I lift up my left leg. "God," I whisper, "if You are real, help me get up where I will be safe."

And somehow, a few painful minutes later, I am up in the tree at least ten feet off the ground. In the meantime, the coyotes have stopped their awful noise. All around me is silent. Not even a breeze to set the branches to a gentle creaking. It being near the end of January, there aren't any insects chirping, and if there are any owls searching for food they are being very stealthy about it.

Then, my stomach growls. It growls so loudly that I wonder that it didn't echo off the nearby mountain. I have hung the bag of snacks on a smaller limb just above, and now I look up and stare at it. I really should not touch it unless I'm desperate, as it may take two whole days to reach my destination. Especially now with my ankle bothering me so much again.

I tear my gaze back down, forcing myself to stare out into the blackness. I realized the other day that I wasn't as smart as I thought I was. In this moment, I understand how much I underestimated my stupidity. I am, using Mr. Brent's words, "dumb as a post." What was I thinking, deciding to leave tonight? The first time I ran, both my ankles were healthy and it wasn't nearly this cold.

I also didn't have any food with me, like I do now. Suddenly my stomach feels like it's gnawing itself from the inside out, and I know I will go crazy if I do not eat something.

I reach up, slide the bag off its branch, and lower it into my lap. Thrusting my hand inside the bag, I grab the first thing I can feel – a plastic bag that I stuffed with nuts, seeds, and raisins. This is one thing I don't feel guilty about, because if I was still with Miss Allie she would feed me. So I don't think taking some food was a theft.

I'm sitting with both my legs dangling down the same side of a branch, and leaning sideways against the trunk. As I put a small handful of goodies from the bag into my mouth, I relax against the tree trunk and chew slowly, knowing that I have to make my provisions last as long as possible. A couple more handfuls, and the gnawing sensation in my gut has stopped. I reseal the plastic bag and put it back inside the canvas bag, but keep it in my lap. I don't want to risk losing my balance by reaching up to hang it where it was.

Now, I have to decide what to do next. If I had only brought a flashlight, but I didn't know where Miss Allie kept hers. And didn't dare ask her for batteries for the one I brought with me when I ran away from Mr. Brent. She is a smart woman; she would have suspected something.

So, I don't have a flashlight, so I cannot see if the coyotes are lurking around me quietly, waiting for me to get down. Then again, they might be hiding close by and light would not help me, anyway. Besides, my left ankle still hurts. It's not a throbbing pain anymore, but I know if I try to walk on it, the pain will come back.

I decide I need to just sit here and rest for a while longer, and so I do. The problem with just sitting is that it makes me sleepy. I shift around as much as I dare every few minutes, but that doesn't help.

Then, I start to shiver. At first, my body quivers only slightly. But about ten minutes after the shivering starts, I am shaking so hard that my teeth are rattling inside my mouth. A person would think that would keep me awake, but I continue to grow sleepier with each passing minute.

I should feel afraid. I could freeze to death. Or fall out of the tree, and become coyote breakfast. But I am so sleepy, and so cold, my emotions have gone numb.

But not my brain. Not entirely. It manages to work up a prayer: "God, if You save me from this mess, I will believe in You for sure."

And then, it happens. My quaking legs lose their hold on the branch and I feel my bottom start sliding forward. Now I snap wide awake, flailing my arms in every direction to try to grab hold of something, anything. My fingers touch the trunk, then a branch, but I can't get them to grasp, they are so numb.

As I go down, my back hits hard against one of the branches I probably used to climb up. The jarring against my body thrusts me forward. Just before hitting the ground something rips into the right side of my face.

I scream. My arms fly out in front of me to keep my face from slamming into the ground first. In the moment that I land on my right side, two things happen. First, a sharp pain worse than what I felt when I twisted my ankle shoots through my wrist and up my arm.

Second, I tell myself, "God is punishing me for running away." Then, everything goes black.

# Chapter Twenty-One: Allie

I remember the first time I rode in Jeb's four-wheeler. We'd moved to Pine Mountain Estates not six months earlier, and I held tightly to a squirmy, five-year old Arthur as we sped up a mountain road. It was a beautiful, warm September day, and it was the day I knew Jeb and Bev Mitchell were going to be more than good neighbors. They would be good friends, as well.

Now, I am jostled along in that same four-wheeler, my toes turning numb, as I shine the flashlight through the trees. Several times we've stopped to walk into the woods and shine our flashlights around. Maybe it would have been better to wait until seven o'clock, and daylight, to have gone out on a search. But my gut tells me that Arianna is in trouble.

Last night I'd thought about staying up all night in case she tried to sneak out. But logic finally won out. What if Arianna didn't run tonight? Then I would be sleep-deprived for nothing, and unable to keep myself awake if I more strongly suspected she would leave the next night.

The exhaustion from having had to have Belle put to sleep – and the deluge of irrepressible memories that came with it – played an equal part in my decision to go to sleep last night.

Forty minutes of exploring back roads later, I ask Jeb to stop the ATV. "Look," I say, "she had me look up maps on the Internet the other day. She may have chosen one of the towns she saw as her destination, and is just following the highway and main roads." I hope Jeb doesn't take my snappish tone personally. My stomach is a yawning chasm, my behind is sore, and my mind a blender of worries. I fight to keep the worst possible scenarios out of my head, but it seems to be a lost battle.

Jeb nods, the earflaps on his old-fashioned winter cap moving with his head. "Sounds reasonable to me." Taking his foot off the brake, he turns the four-wheeler around and heads back toward the highway.

As soon as we hit the asphalt, the utter futility of what we're doing crashes into me like a runaway train. Arianna could have hitched a ride to wherever she wanted to go. She could have gone in the opposite direction. Or ended up spending the night in a barn, or somebody else's house.

In other words, we're looking for a needle in a haystack.

I turn to tell Jeb to take me home, that I'll let the authorities deal with it, when something small, cold, and wet hits my face. Through the beam of the flashlight, I see several snowflakes flutter down in slow procession. Their presence reminds me of how cold it is – I think it was around thirty when we left to go search for her – and steels my resolve to keep looking for the girl. Whether she's hurt or not, if she's still outside she could die from hypothermia in short order.

I turn toward Jeb as we pass an area of open fields and houses and encounter a wood. "Stop here." I have to yell to make myself heard, and am surprised at the struggle to push the words out. My face is getting as numb as my toes.

Panic slices through me. If Arianna has been out in this all night –

"Hold on." Jeb grabs my arm as we come to a stop. "I think we should pray."

I raise my eyebrows. I don't think I've ever heard Jeb suggest praying beyond blessing a meal. Prison must have somehow drawn him closer to God.

"Go on," I say with a shiver.

Keeping hold of my arm, Jeb says, "Lord, we need Yer help. We need to find this girl. Help us, please. And keep her safe, wherever she is." Then he gives my arm a gentle squeeze.

"Amen." I slide out of my seat, wondering why I haven't thought to pray all morning.

I start combing the north side of the highway, Jeb takes the south side. The snow is falling a little harder, and I'm sure the humidity has gone up ten percent since I first left my house this morning. I shiver again, and make myself pick up my feet in an attempt to stay warm.

I call Arianna's name several times, shining the flashlight all around. Dawn is just beginning, producing a dim blue light in the southeast, but in the woods it's still dark as midnight. I figure I'm about fifty feet away from the highway when I find her.

"Jeb!" I scream as loud as I can. My vocal chords immediately protest their sudden overuse, and I predict I'll have a painful time talking for the next couple of days. But I don't care. _Can't_ care. Arianna looks to be in bad shape.

I kneel down next to her frighteningly still body, tears pooling in my eyes. _She can't be dead!_ She's lying face-down in the leaves, so I pick up her wrist to find her pulse, rather than trying to find it on her neck. A long, harrowing moment passes before I feel it. But it is slow. She must be severely hypothermic in order for her not to be shivering. I know this because Jared developed hypothermia one winter when he got lost hiking up the mountain, and I went online to find the symptoms. Jared, at least, had still been conscious and shivering.

That Arianna is neither heightens even further the sense of urgency to help her.

I want to turn her onto her back so I can look into her face, but I can't do that by myself and keep her spine straight. If she has a back or neck injury, I don't want to risk making it worse.

I stand up, cup my hands over my mouth, and yell for Jeb again. Relief washes over me when I hear his distant response, "Coming!"

Two minutes later, Jeb is there, telling me that he doesn't think we should risk moving Arianna. Shining his flashlight up into the tree, he points out several broken limbs, as well as some tree debris around Arianna's person. "If she fell from this tree, who knows what she might've broke."

"But an ambulance would take forever to get out here!" I don't mean to yell, but Arianna is going to die if we can't get her warmed up soon.

Jeb puts a hand on my shoulder and looks me straight in the eye. "I called Jake Horton while walking back over here. His wife and another paramedic should be on their way soon."

Jake Horton has been a deputy sheriff for our county for years. I'm surprised that Jeb number one, has a cell phone – he must have bought one soon after coming home – and number two, still is on good terms with Jake. Jake was one of the first responders when the accident between Jeb's truck and Jason's car occurred.

Jake's wife is a paramedic, and the Hortons live within ten miles of where we are right now.

I'm even more surprised with what happens next. I throw my arms around Jeb and squeeze him tightly. "Thank you."

For a couple of beats, his arms hang limp. Then, he returns the embrace.

But I pull out of it quickly, because every second counts for Arianna. Unzipping my parka, I shrug it off and hand it to Jeb. "Here." I wish I could take off the coat Arianna is wearing, but it would be awkward, and could prove risky if she has, indeed, hurt her spine or broken an arm.

"What are you doing?" Jeb asks in disbelief as I straddle my legs over her rear and slowly lower my trunk over her back. I don't put all my weight on her, but barely press my chest against her back. I can only hope Mary Horton and her friend will be here soon. My arms will only last so long. I could probably do one push-up if I tried. And it's been a long time since I tried.

I twist my neck up so my voice won't sound muffled to Jeb. "Now, drape my coat back over me." Only after he's done so do I answer his question. "I'm trying to share my body heat with her."

I turn my head back down and breathe slowly onto her neck, then onto her ears. As I continue this routine, Jeb returns to the side of the road to flag the paramedics down. To my aching biceps and shoulders, their arrival seems to take an hour. But I'm sure it's not ten minutes later when I hear the sound of engines roaring down the highway. Soon after, the engines are cut off, car doors slam, and the sounds of voices and crunching leaves hit my ears. Then and only then do I move off of Arianna.

I wince when the guy paramedic takes out a boxcutter knife and cuts straight down the back of Jared's old coat. But the brief emotional pain the action provokes is quickly overshadowed with yet another surge of relief as he and Mary announce that Arianna's spine seems to be in good shape. With great care, they roll her over onto her back and onto the stretcher they brought with them.

And I gasp as Jeb groans. Instantly, I am on my knees next to her once again, my hand hovering over the gash going almost from her right ear to just above the corner of her mouth. The clotted and dried blood on and around the area tell me that the gash happened a while ago. Hours, even?

"Allie, step back, please." Mary's tone is clipped and professional, brooking no argument.

I scoot over, giving Mary room to squat next to me and examine the wound. She tilts her head up toward her partner. "This'll probably need stitches, but for now it's stopped bleeding. We'll need to apply some antiseptic."

Minutes later, the stretcher is secured in the minivan Mary bought some years back especially to transport injured people when the need to get to the emergency room thirty miles away is urgent. The heat is blowing full-blast, Arianna is covered with blankets, and I sit in the single back seat, staring down at her while the guy paramedic – Phil – monitors her.

Just ahead of us, Jake turns on his lights and sirens, and Mary pulls onto the highway, following her husband at breakneck speed. But I barely notice the force thrusting me back against the seat. All my attention is on the girl, the runaway who has stolen my heart.

If she dies, I'm not sure I'll be able to take it.

# Chapter Twenty-Two: Jeb

Grief pangs through me when I offer to let Allie's dog out to do her morning business, and Allie tells me that Belle has died. With nothing else to do, I decide I'll meet her at the hospital, and drive my four-wheeler home as fast as it and the highway traffic will allow.

Not counting severe hypothermia like that black girl has, I'm as close to an ice cube as a person can get. So I allow myself the luxury of a hot shower before I put my clothes back on, put together a bag of fruit and protein bars, and climb into my truck. Unlike Mary Horton, I can't go very fast without getting into trouble, but I do go over the speed limit by a few miles per hour.

I ain't sure why I'm doing this. The girl is nothing to me, and Allie...well, she may not exactly welcome my company. But Allie seems attached to the girl, and nobody should have to be alone in a precarious situation like this.

By now I've got full daylight, and am thrilled that the snow has stopped falling. Since we didn't have any precipitation yesterday, the roads are safe for driving, so I arrive at the hospital in about thirty minutes. Once inside, I go to the desk to ask about Allie and "the big black girl who had a bad cut across her cheek." The receptionist turns to the computer screen, fingers flying across the keyboard.

A few seconds later, she turns back to me with a smile. "She's in room 214. The elevators are right down that hallway."

She points, and I thank her, not bothering to tell her that I am all too familiar with the layout of the hospital. I still remember everything from five years ago, and nothing seems to have changed.

Arriving at the room, I raise my hand to knock lightly at the door. Then lower it. Is this really wise? If Allie needs somebody, she can call Liz. Or someone who she wouldn't feel awkward around. Or who wouldn't bring up all kinds of bad memories for her.

Maybe I'll just stay for a few minutes. I am curious about how the girl is doing. Since she ain't in I.C.U. or anything, I'm guessing she's doing okay.

Before I can change my mind again, I knock lightly. A beat. Then two. And the door opens.

At first Allie's brow is wrinkled, her jaw tense. Then she smiles, pulling the door open wider. "Jeb. I'm so glad you came." Her voice is low, almost a whisper.

She is? All right, then. I give her a nod and step through the door, immediately looking toward the bed.

"She's going to be fine," Allie says, tracking my gaze. "She did have hypothermia pretty bad, but she started shivering like crazy a few minutes before we got here, and regained consciousness just after we got her inside the hospital."

Allie grimaces. "Of course, she was in horrible pain and awfully disoriented. She probably wouldn't have minded staying unconscious until her face and wrist were healed."

I take several cautious steps toward the bed. "Wrist?"

"Apparently her right wrist was the one part of her that broke when she fell out of the tree." Allie follows close behind me. "I guess we should be grateful, but that cut is going to leave a nasty scar."

Her tone is that of a worried mother, making me think she's come to care deeply for this young lady. I wonder what transpired between them for this to happen so quickly – I think they've only been together for about a week – but say nothing. I'm not that much of a talker, anyway, and I don't figure Allie wants me meddling in her business.

Looking down at the sleeping girl, I see a large gauze pad taped to her right cheek. At least her lips are back to their normal color, rather than the blue they were when we first found her. Her right arm is in a cast three-quarters to her elbow. It's a miracle she wasn't hurt worse.

I almost laugh aloud. We did, after all, pray for her safety. If I ain't gonna believe that God hears me when I pray, what's the point in praying?

"She looks a lot better." I turn around to face Allie, whose skin looks paler than usual, except for the dark shadows under her eyes. I frown. "But, are you okay?"

She smiles and nods. "I just need a good night's sleep." Setting a hand on her belly, she adds, "And some breakfast."

Which reminds me of the bag I'm holding. "I almost forgot." I lift up the bag and hand it to her. "I figgered you wouldn't want hospital food, so I brought you something." Allie's eyes widen in surprise as she takes the bag. "It ain't organic, but I promise, it won't kill ya."

The joke is an old one between us, her being a self-proclaimed health nut and having made several attempts to get Bev and me to get on the organic bandwagon with her and her family.

She laughs. "Not today, anyway." Then her smile turns grateful. "Thanks for thinking of that, Jeb."

"Allie?"

We both turn toward the weary voice coming from the bed. Arianna's eyes are open, looking at us with drooping lids. Allie sets the bag down on the only chair in the room and steps over to the girl's left side. Resting a hand on her arm, Allie says, "I'm here. How are you feeling?"

"Sleepy." She shifts a little, then moans in pain. "And my back hurts real bad."

"The doctor says you have a big bruise there, like it hit a branch on your way out of the tree." Allie gives her a sympathetic smile.

"I don't remember." She's been looking at Allie; now her gaze shifts my way. "Who's that man?"

Allie turns back to face me, and I suddenly feel like I'm being scrutinized under a microscope. Or like I'm facing a firing squad. Allie's fading smile doesn't help me feel any better.

She swallows. "This is Jeb Mitchell." She looks back down at Arianna. "Remember? My friend who showed up the same morning I found you?"

_Friend._ She can't really mean that. She's just trying to be polite in front of the girl.

But when Allie glances back at me, gratitude shimmering in her eyes and her expression soft, I think I might be wrong. "He helped me find you this morning." She reaches her hand down to grasp the girl's, and squeezes it. "I think it's safe to say that he saved your life."

Then, Allie smiles at me.

And I know she has really forgiven me.

# Chapter Twenty-Three: Allie

Do I really believe that Jeb saved Arianna's life? It wasn't something I was planning to say. Maybe I say it because I have to let Jeb know, give him some small hint, about the truth of the accident. Or what may be the truth. Maybe I say it because deep down, I realize that Jeb was the closest neighbor with a four-wheeler who would have been able to help me in the way he did. Without the help of his off-road vehicle, it likely would have taken much longer to find Arianna.

And she would have died.

Whatever the reason for that declaration, when I speak it something inside me releases. Something warm and glowing. Something that seeps into my heart and fills it like warm honey.

Joy. It's been there all these years, but I've kept it bottled up. Here and there, I've let a trickle of it out. Like the day Arianna and I played board games. But I haven't allowed it out much, feeling that I much more deserve misery. If I had been a better mother, I have often thought, I would have done and said the right things to get Jared to stay, to help him have the courage to go to the authorities to tell them his side of the accident story.

At the same time, I knew there was a chance he was wrong, and that Jeb had been completely at fault. And part of me has wanted to hold the death of my family – not to mention one of my closest friends, Bev – against Jeb.

But standing in this hospital room, looking the man in the eye, I see him as God does. I see a lovable, imperfect human being who wants the same thing that all of us do: unconditional love and acceptance.

And I am ashamed of myself, both for the way I've been thinking about him during his absence, and for how I've treated him since his return.

Jeb looks embarrassed now, twirling his cap in his hand, his gaze sliding down to the floor while Arianna stares at him, eyes sparkling with admiration.

A couple of beats pass, then, "Sir, would you come over here, please?"

Jeb snaps his gaze back at Arianna, then smiles. "Only if you'll call me Jeb, and not 'sir.'"

Arianna grins. "Jeb, would you come over here?" She extends her left hand as Jeb approaches, and he takes it in his right.

Her grin fades. "I believe in God again, 'cause of you." Shimmering, chocolate eyes shift my way. "And you." She looks back at Jeb as the joy grows tenfold. "I believed in Him when I was little. Even in the orphanage, I kept on believing." Her head makes a slight left to right movement. "Then things changed. Happened." A single tear trickles down her uninjured cheek, and she looks away.

When she says nothing more for several moments, I decide it's as good a time as ever to face the elephant in the room. "Arianna, would you tell us what happened? Who you've been running from?"

I had quite a time trying to come up with a plausible story about Arianna when we got into the emergency room. I'd been so fearful of her death, that I didn't even think about the personal questions I would have to face by both the medical personnel and the paperwork that needed to be filled out. I lied the least that I could. At least Arianna had been able to give a last name, Brent. This new development had intrigued me, since she had never offered that much to me. I thought at first she might be making it up, but it came off her tongue much too quickly and easily for that.

Arianna squeezes Jeb's hand and drops it, giving him another smile, before looking back at me. "I – I want to tell you everything." Fatigue returns to her voice. "But can I wait until we get back ho – to your house?" She glances at Jeb, who has remained by her side. "I want you to be there, too. Since you saved my life."

I don't think I've ever seen Jeb's face turn red until this moment. I pretend that the upward tug on my lips is for Arianna, and return my attention to her. "Yes, we can wait."

A few minutes later, she is asleep again, and Jeb excuses himself to go get some coffee and a muffin from the cafeteria. I only go home before lunch because the next time she wakes up, Arianna insists that I need some sleep, and that she will be okay.

Jeb drives me home, and though we are mostly silent with some country music playing in the background, we fall into small talk a few times – when will winter end this year, how my school volunteering is going, the new consignment store in town and how many months before we think it will close. As the three before it have.

At first, the conversation feels awkward. But the more we talk, the easier it feels until by the time we get home, I'm actually feeling almost as comfortable with Jeb as I did before the accident. I count this as a big milestone, proof of God's grace and mercy.

I don't sleep until that night, but go to bed early and for the first time in years sleep straight through the night. Around seven the next morning I call the hospital to see if Arianna is being released. I have to wait ten minutes and talk to three people, but am finally told that I can come pick her up at my convenience.

When I walk into Arianna's room, she is dressed, out of bed, and chatting up a storm with one of the nurses. It sounds like they're talking about, of all things, dolls. She turns to me and smiles, holding up a finger, then resumes talking to the nurse.

A minute or so later she tells her new friend, "Thank you for everything. I like you a lot, but I also like that I get to go home now."

The nurse laughs. "I like you, too. Maybe we'll see each other again sometime."

"But not here!"

I join the nurse in her laughter at Arianna's declaration. On the way home, the girl seems to be as full of energy as she was lacking it yesterday – and excited to be sitting in the front seat of the car. "Oh, Miss Allie," she exclaims, "you can see so much more from the front seat! And you can see everything go by so fast!"

Again, I have to wonder at her upbringing. She is certainly old enough to have been riding in the front seat of a car for several years. At least I won't have to wait long for the explanations I've been so desperate to hear during the past week and a half.

We're ten miles from home when I notice the nearly empty gas gauge. I can almost hear Jason's voice chiding me to fill the tank before it gets less than a quarter full.

I sigh. "Arianna, I really need to get some gas before we go home." I steal a glance at her from the corner of my eye. "Would you be okay with that? You can sit in here and stay low."

Arianna turns her head toward me, a slight frown on her lips. "I guess that will be okay."

When I pull up to one of the fuel tanks, there are a few cars parked by the store and two other vehicles filling up, an old van to my left and a pickup to my right. Arianna bows her head and scrunches herself up into what must be an uncomfortable position as I exit my car and am hit with a cold gust.

I always pay at the pump, so after I fill up I press the necessary buttons to obtain a receipt. As I do so, the man who has been filling up his van must climb into the driver's seat, turn the ignition, and get nothing, because while the keypad pushes out my receipt I hear the sound of a hood being popped. Looking over toward the van, I see the driver get out and open up the hood. He must be at least six feet tall, and is clean-shaven with a neat and short haircut. By the gray peppering his hair and lines around his eyes and across his forehead I estimate that he's about my age.

Intending to let him know that there's a service station two blocks away, I take three steps toward him. But out of the corner of my right eye, I notice that Arianna has sat bolt upright. I turn to glance at her, and do a double take. She is staring at the man, her eyes wide with horror. She must catch sight of me in her peripheral vision, because she shoots me a split-second look, silent pleading and terror splashing into her eyes. Then she ducks her head again, pushing herself even further into the seat than she was before.

I don't hesitate. Keeping my gaze fixed on the man, whose attention remains under the hood of his van, I open my door, shut it, and stick the key into the ignition.

"Please, go back. Not forward," Arianna's muffled voice begs.

She recognizes this man. The man she's been running from?

If it is, there's no time to stall and ask questions. I do as she asks, backing up slowly so as not to draw the man's attention. As I drive toward the parking lot exit, I see in the rearview mirror that he is still staring down at the van's engine.

I drive through town, for the first time in twelve years sorely tempted to break the twenty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit. During the two minutes it takes to get to the other end of the main street, I keep one eye on the rearview mirror to make sure we aren't being followed.

Only when I've made the turn up the road that leads to Pine Mountain Estates and gone half a mile do I turn into a driveway, put the car into park, and turn to Arianna. She is still curled up as close to a fetal position as a stout person can get with the encumbrance of a seat belt over one's body. She is also trembling all over.

"Arianna," I say, my voice gentle, "it's safe to get up."

Slowly, she uncurls herself. Raises her head. Turns it toward me. Her eyes still hold more than a trace of fear.

"Who do you think that man was? Next to us at the gas station?"

"Did...did he see me?" Her whisper is high-pitched and tight.

I shake my head. "He was looking down at the engine the whole time."

Arianna closes her eyes and shudders.

"Arianna." I firm my voice, reaching over to grab her arm. "Who _is_ he?"

She opens her eyes. Swallows. "He is my owner." Her gaze drops to the floorboard. "I am his slave."

# Chapter Twenty-Four: Jeb

I'm not an emotional man. But I can't stop the lump in my throat that forms after I disconnect the call with Allie.

I am grateful. In awe. Humbled.

I feel like the heavens have opened and showered blessings down on me.

Not because she told me that Arianna is clear to leave the hospital today. Yesterday the doctor told us that she would be discharged today as long as her body temperature and other vitals remained normal and stable throughout the night. So it wasn't that Allie called to tell me she was on her way to pick the African girl up.

No. It was the fact that Allie called me at all. Lord knows she don't owe me anything. And she didn't talk to me in a terse or condescending voice, like she was just doing it out of obligation. She sounded friendly, cheerful. Like how she used to sound when we talked, back before the accident.

I try to swallow the lump back, but it's lodged in my throat as tight as a possum in a rat trap. So my whispered prayer of, "Thank You, heavenly Father," comes out hoarse. I have to wonder if Bev is looking down at me right now, smiling. I got me a strong feeling that she knows Allie's forgiven me, and that she's dancing around with Jesus over it.

The thought brings a smile to my face, and the lump begins to shrink. Thinking of my wife makes me think about last night's supper and this morning's breakfast dishes sitting in the sink, unwashed, and if she is looking down on me that's one thing she ain't smiling about.

My lips stretch even wider as I set the phone down and wander back into the kitchen. I pick up the bottle of dishwashing detergent and chuckle. Allison Whitlock may not have succeeded in converting us to organic food eaters, but she did a fair job convincing Bev to switch our cleaning products to more natural and less toxic ones.

Plugging the sink drain, I turn on the faucet and remember the time Jared was at our house and refused to wash his hands with the soap we had in the bathroom "because Mom says this kind is toxic and can make us sick."

Allie and Jason were sitting in our living room when their eldest came in and made that announcement, and Allie's face turned beet red. While I hid my smile and Bev, seated next to me on the couch, did not try to hide hers in the least, Allie stammered to Jared that it was perfectly fine to use that kind of soap once in a while.

At first, the memory puts a smile on my face. But then I remember about Jared's being gone, and the smile fades. He'd run off before I began my sentence, so of course I heard about it. But I always figured he'd come back. I figured he couldn't stand me being around, and as soon as he knew I was out of sight would come back to his mother.

Funny how a fifteen-year-old can disappear without a trace. Far as I understand, most kids who ain't been kidnapped are caught by the authorities after not too long a time. But if Jared learned nothing else his seven years living in southeast Oklahoma, he learned how to survive. I should know, seeing as how I taught him and his brother quite a bit about surviving in the wild.

Another thing to regret. But ain't no reason to do so, 'less to drive myself crazy. Yet another thing to put in the hands of the good Lord, I reckon.

Once I've got the dishes scrubbed, rinsed, and set in the drainer, I think about what to do with the rest of my day. Seeing as how the appraiser's coming out tomorrow, I should probably tidy up a bit. The house is starting to look like a bachelor pad, one that doesn't hire a maid to come give it a weekly shine, and even though the Realtor will be looking at the land, I feel I should make as good an impression all around as I can.

Heading into the living room, I decide to start with the coffee table where two empty coffee cups and a plate with crumbs sit. Oops. Shoulda got those before I washed the dirty dishes.

I start to reach down for one of the cups, but my eyes are drawn outside one of the front windows. The sun is sparkling on the light frost sprinkled over the front yard and the fields beyond, beckoning me outside. Maybe it's because I'm thinking of selling the place and still ain't reconciled to the idea. Or maybe it's just that I'm sick of sitting inside all by myself. But I straighten up, abandoning the task I'd set out to do, pull my coat on, and head out the door.

Like a magnet my eyes are drawn toward that loose piece of barbed wire that Arianna got caught in the other night. Talking about impressing people, I'd better cut that off. I limp over to the tool shed, feeling my knee joint more than usual. The blue sky is deceptive. Bad weather must be moving in during the next few hours, just like the weatherman said.

Wire cutters in hand, I take care of the offending wire, carry it over to the garbage bin at the end of my driveway, and drop it in. Then I raise my eyes to the mountain across the way from me. I remember shortly after the Whitlocks moved here, Allie wondered aloud why these large bumps in the landscape were called "mountains", when they weren't even as high as the Black Hills in her home state, which are called, of course, "hills." Arthur looked up at her then, and with his wide, innocent eyes proclaimed, "Well, if you're as little as me, they look humungous, so I'm gonna call them mountains!"

The view of the green smattered with brown rising in front of me blurs, and I slowly turn around. Will I miss this place? Am I making a huge mistake? But how can I stay? I know not everyone is going to forgive me as quickly as Allie has.

A picture of Leslie Pierce, the cashier at the hardware store, pops into my head. I wonder if me being her knight in shining armor would change her tune. I'm inclined to think not, that she and Liz Richardson are two peas in a pods when it comes to wanting to hold onto their bitter pasts, but then I remember God. If He can part the Red Sea and raise the dead, He can heal their hurting hearts.

I send up a silent prayer for both of them as I make my way down the driveway. But instead of going into it, I pass it by, listening to the gentle crunch of frost beneath my boots as I lope through the backyard and toward the fields.

I wander around, lost in thought for what feels like a long time, kicking at sandstone rocks and studying the delicate lace patterns of the frost over dead weeds. When I finally make my way back to the house, I am shivering underneath my coat and my nose feels numb. And no wonder – according to the small clock on a shelf in the living room, I've been out walking my property for the better part of an hour.

Shedding my coat, I return to the coffee table to pick up the dirty dishes I'd intended to wash an hour earlier. On my way to the sink, I see that the answering machine is flashing. Allie, calling about Arianna? Has something happened?

The dishes clatter as I drop them into the soapy water, and I hurry over to the machine as quickly as my bum knee will let me. I push the button to listen to messages and hear, "Hi, Daddy, it's me. I wanted to let you know I'm flying into Fort Smith tomorrow, and should be there around four. Plan on letting me cook something for you. Love you."

My chest squeezes. Tomorrow? What if the land appraiser is still here? Well, I was going to have to eventually tell Jen of my plans. But I was hoping to have a little more time to work up my nerve to do that.

I call my daughter back, but my call goes to voice mail so I tell her that I got her message and look forward to seeing her tomorrow.

_The sun'll come out tomorrow_...I can almost hear Bev bursting into the chorus, which she often did whenever anybody spoke of the coming day in anything but a positive light. Actually, it's supposed to be cloudy and rainy, with a slight chance of sleet. But it will be like the sun coming out when Jen comes home. At least she still believes in me.

I spend the next hour reminiscing as I go through the various rooms of the house and put things in order. I ought to take a dust rag to everything, too, but I just don't have the energy and by the end of the hour my knee is screaming at me to sit down.

I do, but not for long. As soon as I've settled into my recliner, the phone rings. I should just let it go to the answering machine, but if it's either Allie or Jen, I want to talk to her. So I get up and pick up the receiver on the fourth ring.

It's Allie. Sounding all out of breath. "Jeb!" she exclaims as soon as I answer. "Can you come over here right now? It's Arianna. You won't believe what just happened!"

# Chapter Twenty-Five: Jared

"Go ahead and give 'er a go, Grandpa!" I raise my head up from under the hood of his truck as I call out to him.

Sitting in the driver's seat of his old Chevy pickup – though not as old as my Buick – Grandpa turns the key in the ignition for the fifth time in the past thirty minutes.

The engine turns over and roars to life.

I walk over to the driver's side door, unable to keep a grin off my face. Though I told Grandpa I could help him get his truck started up, once I got started working on it I wondered if the confidence had been false, a bravado I set up because I wanted to prove something to him.

But, I did it. And without freezing my hands off, either. This afternoon it's a balmy forty degrees outside. Ever since lunch the long icicles hanging from the eaves of the house have been dripping.

Grandpa rolls the window down and laughs. "Well, I'll be! Guess you learned a thing or two over in Montana."

I did learn a lot. It was kind of a pressure cooker of Life University, you might say. Thanks to my parents and Jeb Mitchell, I already had some basic life and survival skills. I could grow a tomato, build a birdhouse, and set up a lean-to with the best of them. But working for Leo had given me the opportunity to expand on those skills, plus learn a lot more.

There was one thing Leo didn't – couldn't – teach me, the thing that's been bugging me ever since I left Montana. And the closer it gets to the end of my stay here, the more it's been bugging me. As Grandpa turns off the engine and steps out of the truck, the problem suddenly swells up inside me, making me feel like I'll burst if I don't get it out.

Grandma might be the better person to ask the question, but Grandpa happens to be the one in my path right now. Besides, I know he'll give it to me straight.

"Grandpa," I say after he slams the door shut, "there's...there's another reason I'm reluctant to go back to Oklahoma."

Grandpa hooks his thumbs into his overalls pockets. "And what is that?"

My gaze drops to the slush at my feet before returning to meet Grandpa's. "Dad and Arthur...they won't be there. I – I'll – I don't know if I can..." The words trail off as emotion clogs my throat.

Grandpa steps close to me, slinging an arm around my shoulders. "You finally got to face reality." The understanding in his voice softens the impact of the blunt – and true – words.

I swallow. "Yeah."

Grandpa drops his arm to his side and begins lumbering toward the house with a step much slower than I remember him having the last time I was here. Another reality to face: my grandparents won't be here forever.

And I lost five years of their lives to my selfishness and immaturity. How could I have been so stupid? So blind? My legs suddenly feel like lead, but somehow they manage to stay in step with my Grandpa.

"Reality can be painful," he states, his eyes fixed on the house. "But if you're willing to accept the pain and grow through it, it's the only place you'll ever find joy." He stops, turning his weathered face to me. "Fantasies only ever bring short-lived pleasure. Rarely happiness, and never joy."

The words echo in my head for the rest of the day and into the night. Sleep comes late and is fitful. The next morning, I wake up to a different set of words reverberating around my mind: _It's time_.

I lie on my back. _Lord?_

_It's time_. If thoughts can become louder, this one does. Louder and stronger.

I get up out of bed and sit down at Grandma and Grandpa's computer, which they keep in the spare bedroom where I am sleeping. Ten minutes later, I know the weather forecast from here down through Kansas during the next three days: mostly clear, some flurries in a couple of the northern states. But nothing dangerous to drive through.

Taking a deep breath, I practice a technique that a friend in Montana taught me. Think about doing a particular thing, he said, and pay attention to what's going on in your gut. Where the spirit lives. If it fills with dread, you're not supposed to do that thing. If it suddenly feels light or like happiness is bubbling around inside, you _are_ supposed to do it. If you can't feel anything either way, you're either too emotional or too tired to hear God's communication, or the decision to go forward or not is neither here nor there as far as God's will for your life.

So I picture myself leaving this house, getting in my car, and driving to Oklahoma. I picture myself facing Mom for the first time in years.

Facing the hard, cold reality that my dad and brother are gone, and won't be coming back.

And it's like this balloon expands inside my belly. Not in a painful way, but a balloon of joy – excitement, even. The emotion bubbles up into my brain, and I know.

I know.

Two hours later, after getting a tearful, lighthearted scolding from Grandma because I won't let her call Mom to tell her I'm coming, I get into the Buick and wave good-bye to my grandparents as I steer the car down their driveway.

In three days, weather permitting, I'll be home.

The question is, how welcome will I be?

# Chapter Twenty-Six: Arianna

I sit on the edge of the sofa, leaning over with my left hand rubbing my sling. I do not think I would feel half this nervous if it were not for Miss Liz being here, too.

But Miss Allie insisted that she hear my story, along with her and Jeb. Told me Miss Liz is not only her best friend, but also a good and kind person who would want what is best for me if she only had a chance to get to know me. And know my story.

I wanted to argue, but did not. After all, this is Miss Allie's house, and I have no right to tell her who can be in her house and who cannot. At least Jeb is sitting right next to me. He seems a bit nervous himself, maybe something to do with that evil eye Miss Liz gave him when she came in. But his close presence is comforting.

Miss Allie sits in the rocking chair. At first she was going to sit next to me on the sofa, but I told her no. I needed to talk mostly to her if I was not going to feel too scared, and it would be awkward if I had to turn halfway around to look at her while I talked.

So she's sitting in front of me, instead. Still, knowing Miss Liz is also there, and that she does not like the man who saved my life, makes me feel sick to my stomach. I have to take a few deep breaths before starting my tale.

First, I tell them I was born in Uganda sixteen years ago, and that my father died from a snake bite when I was three years old, then my mother died of malaria when I was eight. Along with my little sister and my older brother, I ended up in an orphanage. It was crowded and dirty and sometimes we had to fight over who got to sleep in a bed. Some days there wasn't enough food to go around, either.

A couple of months after being placed there, my sister got sick. They took her to a clinic, and I never saw her alive again. After she died I cried almost every day for a month, and had a hard time doing my chores. I remembered comforting myself by singing the song that Mama so often sang to us before we went to sleep, "Jesus loves me, this I know..." I think the only thing that kept me from going crazy was the idea that my sister and Mama were in heaven together.

I go on to tell the story of how, a couple weeks later, Mr. Brent came to the orphanage, supposedly wanting to adopt a little African girl. I tell them about asking about my brother, Adroa. And how, two weeks after he took me out of the orphanage, we boarded a plane. Without Adroa.

I told them about the Brent's mobile home, and where the children slept and ate.

At this point in the story, Miss Liz leans toward me with a frown on her face. "What on earth did Mr. Brent want with twelve African children?"

Miss Allie reaches out her hand and lightly slaps her friend on the leg. "Let her tell the story, Liz," she says, then gives me an encouraging smile.

I am now so engaged in the telling that my nerves have calmed. The overwhelming emotion inside me now, thinking about what I am going to say next, is anger. "He wanted a choir," I reply, looking Miss Liz straight in the eye. "A choir of African orphans that he could have perform in churches so he could make money."

My gut burns as I speak. "'Course, that is not what he told us. He said God told him to go find twelve African orphans to raise as his own children so they could live happy lives. Said he had adopted all of us, and when he found out we were all good singers, God told him to turn us into a choir and have us sing for church folk."

Miss Liz's eyebrows meet in the middle. She opens her mouth like she is going to say something, then closes it, I guess not wanting to get another scolding from Miss Allie.

So I go on with my story, telling them about our first few months in the States, about how Mr. Brent never let us call him "Father" or "Papa." About our first choir performance, and how our choir clothes were the only ones that were kept clean and nice.

And about Mr. Brent's lie that "good food" would be our reward for blessing the Lord in song. That's what Mr. Brent always said we were doing, blessing the Lord in song.

"And I'll bet his wallet got blessed with more and more money."

I glance at Miss Liz and nod. "I'm coming to that." I shift my weight, trying to decide how much more detail to give them about the past eight years. "At first we sang at churches that were no farther than a two-hour drive from Mr. Brent's house, but after a few months we started traveling in the van and staying at motels."

When I describe how all twelve of us kids would have to stay in one room, and how many of the motels had roaches and bedbugs, Jeb surprises me by muttering, "Sun-uv-ah." That is all he says. It doesn't make any sense, and I decide to wait until later to ask Miss Allie what it means.

I explain our daily routine of learning songs, Bible reading, learning English and arithmetic, and a little reading, having an afternoon nap and playtime, and eating the same three meals every single day. The only exception was Sunday, when the church folks would usually provide a special meal for us.

Here, Miss Liz makes a growling sound that Mama would have called "most unladylike." But she does not say anything, so I continue.

I explain how nighttime was the worst time for me, because in the silence I would lie and think how much I missed my family back in Uganda, and worry over how Adroa was doing. Had he been adopted, too? If so, where was he living?

Finally, I get to the story about the night I had to sneak into the big house to get aspirin for Kintu. The night I learned the truth about my and the other children's relationship to the Brents. I have to swallow and take a big breath before I tell it, and I start to tremble inside. I think it's part anger, part shame.

I tell the story up until the part about hearing Dalia's name, and the memory blows up inside my head as though I witnessed the scene just last week, instead of years ago...

**********

"Dalia will be getting too old in a couple of years," Mr. Brent said. "We need to figure out who to sell her to, and see about buying a new choir member."

At the same time his words seemed to strike Mrs. Brent funny, by the way she started laughing, I felt struck by lightning. I couldn't move a muscle. I think even my heart stopped beating for a few seconds.

What did he mean about selling Dalia, and buying a new choir member?

By the next morning, I was pretty sure I had figured it out. And I knew that one day soon, we children needed to figure out a way to leave.

# Chapter Twenty-Seven: Jeb

I ain't never been a violent man, and I know what Jesus said about thinking angry thoughts about somebody, how that makes them as bad as a murderer. But I can't help the strong emotion coursing through me as Arianna's story takes this turn. I want to find this Mr. Brent and tear him limb from limb.

Since I'm sitting next to the girl and she's mainly keeping her eyes on Allie, I can't make out her expression very well. But her voice remains calm and strong, so I guess she ain't about to cry or anything.

I steal a glance at Liz, who wasn't none too happy to see I'd joined the party when she showed up a little while ago. Her eyes spark with fire, her bright red lips forming a thin line. Allie, on the other hand, just looks sad and sympathetic.

"I didn't dare say anything to the other children," Arianna continues. "Somebody was bound to say something by accident, and then who knows what heap of trouble we might get in."

"What about Dalia?" Liz asks, her voice low.

Arianna's gaze slides over to her, then falls to the floor. "Not her, either." Her shoulders rise and fall. "I did not want to scare her if I had heard wrong." She looks back at Allie. "But now I wish I had. She would have had the chance to run before..." Her head dips down again.

Allie reaches over and puts a hand on her knee. "Before what?"

Arianna raises her head. "Before they sold her last year."

Liz gasps, clutching a fist to her chest.

"Yes, ma'am." Arianna looks toward Liz again, her next words edged with anger. "My best friend disappeared one day, and the next day Mr. Brent tol' us that she was getting too big for our children's choir, and she was going to join another group."

She turns to look straight at me. "That was when I knew for sure Mr. Brent had not ever adopted any of us. He stole us away from the orphanages so he could make money off us."

She shifts her body to return her attention to Allie. "But before then, not long after I had overheard that conversation that night, I started asking church folk questions, real innocent-like when Mr. and Mrs. Brent – or whoever she is – weren't close by. Like I would say, 'I heard somebody say at another church 'bout a girl from Jamaica that got sold to a white man in the United States. But those things don't happen anymore, do they?'

"And they were happy to fill me in about modern day slavery, and the sex trade." She chokes on that last phrase, and her next words are strangled. "I'm afraid that is what happened to Dalia. She was – is – real pretty."

I determine then and there that if we can find her friend Dalia, we will.

Arianna runs her left hand over her sling. "Over the next couple of years," she continues, "I find out what I already suspected – that slavery is not legal, and that people who buy and sell other people and are caught go to jail."

Liz leans forward in her chair. "And we'll make sure your Mr. Brent spends the rest of his life rotting in prison." Her voice drips with bitterness and anger.

"Liz." Allie gives her a warning look.

"'Sokay, Miss Allie," Arianna tells her. "I also find out about con men, scam artists..." She shudders, her gaze shifting down. "And other things I do not want to think about." She looks back up at Allie. I still cannot see much of her expression, but her next words are filled with sorrow. "I did not know this world was so full of evil, Miss Allie."

Allie nods. "This is why God had to send His Son to redeem humanity." She flicks a glance to me, then to Liz. "Unfortunately, not everyone wants to be redeemed."

"You can say that again," Liz mutters.

I clear my throat, and everyone looks at me. Makes me feel a bit like a cornered possum, but I'm ready to help this African girl. That ain't gonna happen 'til she gets to the point. "Arianna," I say, "how did you get away from him?"

Arianna gives me a single nod. "Yes, sir," she replies. "I had been planning it ever since I heard that conversation, and after Dalia disappeared, I knew I would have to leave soon, or I would be sold off, too." Her gaze slips over to Liz, then back to Allie. "What got me going was something that happened two weeks ago."

And I thought I was madder than a wet cat a couple of minutes ago. As Arianna relays the story, my anger at the Brent man becomes a fiery furnace.

**********

"Arianna, can I talk to you a minute?"

I exchanged glances with the three other children near me. Mr. Brent rarely came into our motel room when we were on the road, and I don't think he'd ever asked to speak privately with just one of us when he did.

In the next second, I realized what was about to happen. And terror streaked down my spine with the force of a lightning bolt.

He was going to sell me. Just like he sold Dalia. I was going to walk out of the motel room, and none of the other children would ever see me again.

Even more horrible was that since finding out about his plans to sell Dalia, I'd found out what older girls like me were usually used for in the slave market. And I'd decided that if that ever happened to me, I'd kill myself.

The terror slithered into my belly and wound around my gut, cinching itself so tightly that I almost couldn't breathe. If I'd still believed in God, I would start praying. Oh, would I start praying!

Mr. Brent smiled at me. "I can see I've made you nervous, but it's going to be fine. I just need to ask you a question."

I hadn't meant for him to see my fear, and I tried to relax my face and smile. "All right."

The other children moved to make a path for me to get to the door, and I could almost feel their stares on my back.

When I stepped outside and closed the door, Mr. Brent gently grabbed my elbow and suggested that we go for a walk around the parking lot. This might have made me even more nervous since night had fallen, except there were enough lights dotting the area to provide a dim illumination.

Mr. Brent led me to the other side of the parking lot, and as we walked he asked me how I felt the choir was doing, then shared his own opinions. He told me about a couple of areas where he thought we could improve, talked to me about where our performances were really strong.

By the time we were as far away from the motel as the asphalt led, the terror had loosed its grip and begun sliding away. Was he going to ask me to help direct the choir? Do the choreography? Maybe he wanted more soloists, and was going to ask me to train them.

But why was he still holding onto me? He'd never been one to show physical affection, even when we were little. Even his hugs for Benesha were few and far between back then, and she almost always initiated them.

Dread swelled under my breast, and in that instant, I knew I didn't want to hear whatever his question was.

At the furthest corner of the lot away from the road, he stopped, let go of my elbow, and turned me to face him. Then he gave me a kind of smile I'd never seen. It wasn't evil, it was just...so different. And for some reason, made me feel dirty.

I wrapped my arms around myself, my mouth suddenly dry.

"Arianna, you've turned into quite the handsome young lady." Mr. Brent spoke in a low, husky tone. Not the kind of tone that a father uses to speak to his daughter.

I swallowed. I should have said "thank you," but the words seemed as inappropriate as the tone he was using.

"And I've come to care for you as a man cares for a woman." He stepped closer to me, giving me an intense look that, for some reason, provoked a wave of nausea to roll over me. "Do you understand what I mean?"

I nodded. I tried to take a step back, but he reached out his hand and pulled me closer to him. Was he...was he going to...

But it was too light here. And he could have sent his wife out of their room if he'd wanted to –

The thought disgusted and repulsed me so much, I did something I would have never dared to do before that moment. I yanked my arm back with all my strength. But despite his graying hair and slightly bulging belly, he was still stronger than I. He tightened his grip.

"Oh, Arianna," he said, his tone a mix of apology and surprise. "You think I'm going to – no, I would never hurt you like that. I brought you out here to ask you to marry me."

I stopped pulling. Stared at him. At this man who had claimed to be my adoptive father. Of course by now I knew he wasn't, but I knew I had to play along. I knew if he so much as suspected that I knew the truth, he would sell me off in a heartbeat.

Or, would he? Had he really developed feelings for me? Or was he lying for some crazy reason? Because at that moment, I wondered if he was crazy.

Mr. Brent dropped my arm, apparently sensing my sudden weakness. "You're too young right now, of course," he added in a tone more like what I was used to hearing, though softer. "But I could court you in secret. When the other children are sleeping. And then when you're eighteen, you could make your decision."

Stepping back again, I struggled to remain calm. Not to let my jaw drop. Not to stare in disbelief.

Not to run away, screaming.

I was only sixteen. He was in his mid-forties. And he was –

"But you're my father." I couldn't keep the words from escaping my mouth.

"Adoptive." His smile turned kind, his tone, soothing. "I can legally unadopt you. And then, well..." Then his smile turned sickening again.

I swallowed the acid coming up into my throat. I had to play along. If I didn't, he'd probably get mad. And if he did, I'd probably end up like Dalia.

It was easy enough to play along with his idea that he could "unadopt" me. Because I'd already learned the truth about that. However, there was one other problem that I couldn't believe he was ignoring.

My confusion was real when I stammered, "But...but you're already married."

He laughed, and waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. "All these years I've been reading the Bible to y'all." He shook his head. "There are plenty of men in the Bible with more than one wife, remember. And besides, Mary Lou isn't any good. She don't know how to really love a man." He closed the gap between us and laid a hand on my arm. "But you're different. Special." He stroked my arm, and fear and disgust mingled in my gut. "I think we'd be good for each other."

"I...I'll...can I think about it?" I could barely squeeze the question out.

He squeezed my arm and, to my relief, let it go. "Why, of course you can. I ain't the type to force a woman."

If I hadn't been on the verge of either throwing up or screaming, I might have laughed. Not the type to force?

I let him walk back with me to the motel room, where I told my curious friends that Mr. Brent wanted me to come up with some new dance steps. We all went to bed soon after, but I barely slept.

**********

Arianna takes in a ragged breath. "I knew I had to get out of there, and soon _._ " Her gaze drops to her lap, seeming embarrassed.

In the next instant, Liz jumps out of her chair. "I'll kill him with my bare hands!"

"Liz!" Allie's admonishment is sharp this time, her glare toward her friend fierce. "Sit down and let the girl talk. Don't you think this is hard enough for her already?"

With a huff, Liz sits back down, fixing her eyes back on the African.

Arianna raises her head. But she doesn't look at any of us, just stares out toward the kitchen. "I told him I needed to think about it." Her voice is low, quivering, as if reliving the moment. "But I have not lived with that man for eight years without learning about him." She shakes her head, then looks straight at Allie. "I knew that if he wanted to marry me, he would make it happen. No matter what I said." She tugs on the top of the sling. "And I thought that might be worse than what happened to Dalia."

Being a man, I am by now chomping at the bit for the girl to get to the point, to tell us how she succeeded in escaping the clutches of this perverted man. But I remember something Bev told me more than once during our marriage, that while she's talking a woman's got to run down every rabbit hole her mind leads her to, or when she's done she won't feel like she's said everything that needs to be said.

So I take a slow, deep breath, reminding myself I ain't in no hurry to get anywhere.

My patience – or my intention of it – is instantly rewarded, because Arianna turns to me and gives me a sly smile. "Three days before I ended up here, we were staying in a motel room in a town called Mac...MacLes...I forget."

"McAlester?" I supply.

She nods. "Yes. It was Saturday night, and we were going to sing the next morning. Usually, Mrs. Brent stays with us until we are all asleep, and there's also baby monitors in our room and in the Brents' room so they can hear if anybody gets up and starts moving around.

"But Mrs. Brent was sick and could hardly talk, and Mr. Brent didn't want us to catch whatever she had so she didn't stay with us that night and Mr. Brent forgot to see to the baby monitor in our room. You see, that was always Mrs. Brent's job.

"I'm telling you, I forced myself to stay awake until two in the morning – I did not have to try very hard, 'cause I was so excited and scared – and then I left as quietly as I could. Mr. Brent always left a flashlight in our room in case the power went out, and I took it on the way out."

I can feel my eyes nearly popping out of my head, and I steal a glance at Liz and Allie to see if they are as shocked by this revelation as I am. McAlester is about fifty miles away, and walking from there to here without being seen would require tramping through a lot of forest – full of coyotes and mountain lions – and trespassing through ranch fields potentially holding aggressive bulls.

Sure enough, Allie and Liz both look like they've just encountered a live wire. Allie asks the question burning in my head at the moment: "You _walked_ all the way from _McAlester_?" Her voice goes up so high at the end of the question, it's almost a squeak.

Arianna grins. "No, ma'am. I mean, Miss Allie. Prob'ly most of the way, but a few miles outside of the city a black man in an old, beat-up truck picked me up and drove me part way."

Both women gasp at this.

Arianna shrugs. "There were three bumper stickers about Jesus on his rear bumper, so I thought he would be safe. Besides," she adds, her smile turning sly again, "once I got in and he found out I was a real African, he got real excited and asked me all sorts of questions about what it's like to grow up in the bush."

The next few seconds of silence are thick with tension. I don't know about anybody else, but I'm thinking about how to catch this slimeball. Not the guy who gave her a ride; I mean that Mr. Brent fella.

Allie breaks the silence by summarizing how she found Arianna, why she ran away from her the other day, and how they spotted Mr. Brent at the gas station just a little while ago. To her credit, Liz is full of apologies when she hears how she scared the girl off

As Liz and I turn googly-eyed once again, Arianna describes the plan she'd had to enlist Allie's help to sneak the children away from Mr. Brent in the middle of the night. While she speaks, another idea occurs to me. One that's guaranteed to work. If only –

"Arianna," I say, turning toward the girl, "I don't suppose you happen to know where your choir's supposed to be singing the next coupla weeks?"

"Actually, sir – I mean, Jeb – I do." Her face lights up like Christmas, and she stands up, reaches into her back pocket, and pulls out a crumpled and slightly torn piece of paper. Handing the paper to me, she adds, "This is the schedule. I copied it a couple of days before I left when Mr. Brent had laid it on the table in a motel room."

I never have been one of those people who go around praising the Lord over happy circumstances. But as I take the paper from her, I can't help letting out a fervent, "Hallelujah!" I glance around at the three women, smiling – yes, even at Liz's stony face. "Now we can catch Mr. Brent as easy as makin' a hornet mad."

# Chapter Twenty-Eight: Allie

The next couple of days are a whirlwind of putting Jeb's plan into action. Even Liz grudgingly admits that there seems to be no fault with it. And if it falls through, plan B is not likely to fail.

Unless someone talks, or drops a hint, to the wrong person. This is definitely a danger in a community this small, but everyone involved agrees that keeping the affair among us and going about business as usual is of utmost necessity.

Wednesday is the day after Arianna's big revelation – and the day the doll is scheduled to be delivered. It's being shipped through the postal service, so that afternoon I drive down the road through the cold drizzle to check the mailbox. It's a large one – Jason and I chose that size when we moved here, knowing we'd be making a lot of online purchases – and when I pull the door down a brown box fills half the space inside. I retrieve a couple pieces of junk mail along with it and get back into my car as quickly as I can.

"Arianna, it's here!" I call out as I open the door to the house.

Apparently feeling bolder, knowing that she no longer has anything to fear from her criminal captor, she has been sitting on the couch rather than hiding in the bedroom. Setting down an old copy of _Mother Earth News_ magazine, she stands up, her face breaking into a wide smile. Though her ankle is as good as new now, her back still hurts which slows her down a little. But I can tell she's trying to close the distance between us as quickly as possible.

However, when she gets to me, instead of taking the box I'm extending toward her, she drops her left hand down to her side and stares at it for several beats while her smile shrinks away.

Then her gaze slips up to meet mine. "I should not open it," she says. "It's not mine."

My arm is getting tired, so I lower it as my eyebrows crumple down. "What do you mean? I told you to consider it a gift."

"Oh, yes, Miss Allie, and I do." Nodding with enthusiasm, she raises her brow. "But it's not for me. I bought it for Benesha, who is three years younger than me. She once told me that she has never had a doll in her life, and if Mr. or Mrs. Brent would buy her one, she would be happy doing anything they ask."

"I would hope not." The sardonic words slip off my tongue before I can stop them. When Arianna's eyes grow wide, I'm quick to apologize. "I'm sure she's doing just fine." I take a step and put a hand on her shoulder. "You're a sweet, kind girl to have put her needs above your own wants." My mouth twists. "A lot of people could stand to learn from you."

Embarrassment slithers over Arianna's features as she shrugs. "I just did not know what to get for myself. And I knew I was going to go back to rescue the other children."

She went into greater detail this morning than she had yesterday about her plan to figure out where the choir was performing, and either with my help or without to find out where they were staying and somehow get them out of the motel room one night. As I used to with my sons, instead of lecturing her I asked her questions to help her to realize the problems and dangers involved in that kind of plan. The conversation ended with her hugging me so tightly I could hardly breathe, and her declaring that she knew she'd never have to do anything like that again because she now had three people in her life that she could trust: me, Jeb, and Liz.

I lift the box toward Arianna again. "Even if it's not for you, you should still open it."

Shaking her head, she takes a step back. "But I want it to be a surprise. I want Benesha to open it herself."

I have to smile at the childlike excitement shining in her eyes. "What if you open it so you can see what the doll looks and feels like," I suggest, "and then we can tape the box shut again and wrap it all up with pretty gift wrap and put a ribbon on it."

Arianna's eyes widen. "Like Christmas!" she exclaims, finally taking the box from me.

Tired of standing, I sink into one of the dining table chairs nearby. "Did your family celebrate Christmas?"

"Oh, yes, ma – I mean, Miss Allie." She walks over to the utility cart across from the pantry, setting the box on the table as she does so. After pulling the scissors out of the top drawer of the cart, she takes a seat next to me.

Warmth flows through my entire chest like spilled oil at the gesture. She must truly be feeling at home to help herself to a household tool.

She opens the scissors, jabs it into the top, and starts cutting like she's done it a hundred times before. "At the orphanage, too. We – me and my brother and sister – got there about a week before Christmas. On Christmas day, we all got a small box with a small toy or two and things like toothbrushes and soap. But the simple gift was like gold to us."

My heart pricks at the idea of so many children having next to nothing. But my head is still stuck on the way she's opening the box. "Arianna, how did you know how to open that box?"

She laughs her deep, throaty laugh. "Oh, when I lived at the orphanage, the cook let me help her in the kitchen. She worked alone, and was so very busy. I saw that when I'd been there for only a couple of weeks, and one day asked if she needed help. She taught me how to open boxes of frozen food." She sets the scissors down, the task accomplished, and starts folding back the cardboard flaps. "Sometimes I helped her wash dishes, too. Oh!"

She says nothing else as she pulls the plastic-encased doll out of the box and studies it for a long moment. When a tear tracks down to the bandage on the right side of her face, my throat suddenly grows a golf ball.

Passing me the doll, Arianna says, "She looks so real!"

For the thousandth time in the last week my heart bleeds for the girl. Not because she was born in the African bush, but because after being taken away from her home, she – as well as the other children who have called Mr. Brent "father" for so long – was continually deprived of the wonders her new home had to offer.

"Do you think we should open this package so Benesha won't have to?" I ask. "They're a real pain – I mean, they're difficult to open."

Arianna laughs. "Something is a pain – that is one expression I understand. Mrs. Brent uses it all the time." She frowns. "Unfortunately, often it's to call one of the children a pain."

While the information makes me want to hunt down this woman right now and do something to her I'd have to repent for later, I decide not to even comment on it. After what Arianna told us about Mr. Brent wanting to marry her, and how young Mrs. Brent is, I have my doubts about the relationship between the two apparent partners in crime. If my hunch is right, "Mrs. Brent" deserves as much compassion as the eleven children under her care.

Arianna agrees that we should get the doll, which is almost as large as a small baby would be in real life, out of the plastic, then wrap it up in paper before we return it to the box. So that's what we do. Then I rummage around under my bed for the remnant of floral gift wrap I know I have somewhere. Arianna beams when I present it to her, and during the next few minutes she learns yet another skill: how to wrap a gift.

At supper, she chatters away so much about what it will be like to see the other children free, and what it will be like to surprise Mr. Brent the way we plan, that I have to admonish her to stop talking and eat some food. I do it teasingly, and she laughs and starts to eat, but I have to put my fork down and take a deep breath.

My gentle scolding felt motherly. I mean, as I was speaking I felt like Arianna's mother. And as I watch her eat, I realize that I've developed an attachment to her that might not be healthy. Might end up with one or both of us experiencing a broken heart.

Because I'm really not Arianna's mother. And now that the authorities are involved, she will probably not be with me much longer.

She may not be in this country much longer.

Thursday morning I decide the forecast is amenable to my starting some lettuce outdoors under cover. Arianna is a willing student as I explain how the greenhouse plastic over the hoops that arch across the raised bed protects the plants underneath from extreme cold. Over the past couple of weeks she's learned all about the kale, broccoli, cabbage, and mâche growing there, as well as about the spinach and carrots growing in one of the other beds.

She knew something of the broccoli, spinach and carrots as she'd occasionally eaten frozen or canned versions of the vegetables in the orphanage. She thought she hated spinach until I served it to her very lightly steamed with a tomato sauce; and another time, raw, mixed together with lettuce in a salad.

So she knows what lettuce is, and eagerly watches, listens, and helps as I explain how to sow and space the seeds. She probably asks several dozen questions about the garden as we work, including what I plan to grow in the summer. Apparently she's overheard other people talk about their gardens when she participated in post-church service meals and has developed a yearning to try her hand at growing food.

That afternoon, however, she becomes more reticent and withdrawn, behaving as she did when we first met. I can't help wondering, as she spends most of the rest of the day in her bedroom, whether she's thinking about what's going to transpire this weekend, and how it will change her life.

Any doubts I have about this are erased Friday morning. She sleeps late – or, at least, stays in her bedroom late – and when she finally gets up, she barely says anything and won't look me in the eye.

She is sitting at the table pretending to eat a slice of toast when I sit next to her and put a hand on her arm. "Arianna, what's wrong?"

She sets the bread down and stares at it for several ticks. When she finally answers me, her gaze remains fixed on the plate. "I...I want to see my brother again."

My heart cracks. No, but I have to be strong. I knew this was a possibility. Even a probability. The air between us grows thick.

"But...but..." Arianna's jaw clenches and she squeezes her eyes shut.

I gently pat her arm. "But what?"

Her eyes fly open as she twists around to face me. "But I do not want to leave you. I – I like living here. I like _you_ , Miss Allie." I've had to drop my hand from her arm at her movement, and now she picks it up with her left hand. "I – I feel like...you have been...Miss Allie, would you be my mama?"

The question first stuns me. Then, as it registers, it both thrills and scares me. I open my mouth to respond, but at the same time Arianna's eyes widen. "Miss Allie," she says, pointing out the nearest window.

I've been sitting with my back toward it, but when I turn, I see a lone figure walking up the stone path to the house. A familiar figure.

A figure I haven't seen for almost five years.

My heart jumps into my throat and starts beating a hundred miles a minute. Then I jump up from the table, fling open the door.

"Jared!" I scream.

My elder son, who has been looking down at the path, looks up at me. Remorse and regret fill his eyes, but I barely notice. In the next moment, I have my arms around him. Around his chest that has expanded in proportion to the four or so inches he's grown during his absence.

For a brief moment, I'm angry. Angry that he made me miss this last, late growth spurt. Angry that he made me miss his transition from teen to young adult.

But the emotion drains away in the next heartbeat, replaced by relief and gratitude. Intense gratitude such as I have never felt before.

And joy. I finally release it in all its fullness from the prison where I've held it captive all these years while I rock him gently back and forth. My tears soak his shoulder, while Jared's tears wet my hair.

"I'm so sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry," he repeats several times in a manly voice I barely recognize.

I shush him like I used to when he was small. I think a full half a minute passes with us standing like this, holding each other as if we'll never let go. But we do. I step back, holding him by his forearms and looking up into his face. An odd sensation, because when he left he was only about half an inch taller than I.

"Let me look at you. Here," I add, gently swiping the back of my right hand up each of his cheeks to dry them.

He swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing, while I study his face. He's still got Jason's ruddy complexion, and his jaw looks stronger, more square, a mirror image of his father's. His blue eyes are bright and clear.

Another wave of relief washes over me. Whatever he's been doing, it hasn't been drugs. "You look good, son." My voice is shaky and hoarse.

"So do you, Mom." He grimaces. "No thanks to me, I'm – " His gaze suddenly shifts to somewhere behind me. "Who's that?"

I turn to see Arianna staring at us out the window. She quickly moves away as soon as our gazes meet. "That," I say, "is a long story. Come on in." I grab his hand and start pulling. "I have a feeling this is going to be a day full of long stories."

# Chapter Twenty-Nine: Arianna

I have never really understood the word "fool" until now. I must be the biggest fool in the world, telling Miss Allie I wanted her to be my mama. She barely knows me, and as I watch her reunion with the man who must be her missing son, my heart bleeds with the remembrance that she is already somebody else's mama.

And I have been sleeping in that somebody else's bedroom. The realization makes me feel funny inside. As if I am an intruder.

Then again, isn't that exactly what I am? Miss Allie did not ask for me to come onto her property. She only took me in because she is a kind woman. And maybe a little lonely. But I have kept her from doing the work at school she usually does. I almost kept her from going to town to do her necessary shopping.

I have been, to use a word Mrs. Brent seems to particularly like, a nuisance.

I begin to wish that my attempt to run away again a few days ago had succeeded. Walking away from the window and to the middle of the room, I wish I could shrink to the size of a speck of dust and blow away.

The door opens, and my heart begins to pound. Jared will not be happy that I have slept in his room, in his very bed. Read the books from his childhood. Oh, how I wish I had never found Miss Allie's shed! It would have been better to have frozen to death than to face the truth that stares me in the face right now: I have been nothing more than a burden to Miss Allie. And to Jeb.

Still, as I stand there with my arms wrapped around my waist, wanting to disappear, I cannot help staring at the young man who steps in the door. He stares back at me as Miss Allie steps over to me.

Putting a hand on my good arm, she gestures toward her son. "Arianna, this is Jared." Her voice chokes, and she clears her throat. "My son that I told you about." She smiles at Jared. "This is Arianna." She squeezes my arm. "My new friend and a lovely young lady."

By the moisture staining his cheeks, Jared has been crying. But he gives me a small smile as he walks toward me and extends his hand. "Nice to meet you, Arianna."

In the next instant, I make a decision. I am sixteen years old, not a little girl. It is time for me to grow up and stop having silly fantasies, like acquiring a new mother when I am practically an adult. Time to accept reality and make the best of it. I may end up sleeping on the couch, or even in the shed, tonight, and that's okay. I will see Mr. Brent taken down and reunite with the other children for a short time. After that, I will hope that God will help me. I will not hope for what I desire deep in my heart, but take what I can get. As long as I can have my freedom.

And so, after hesitating for only a half second, I take Jared's hand and give it a firm shake, pasting a smile onto my face. "It is nice to meet you, too." As I release his hand, I turn to Miss Allie. "I'm happy for you, Miss Allie." Despite everything, I mean that with all my heart.

Jared clears his throat. "Look, Mom, I want to catch up with you and," he glances at me, "find out all about Arianna, but I need to talk to Jeb." Another glance toward me, then back at his mama. "To tell him the truth," he adds in a quieter voice.

_The truth about what?_ I want to ask, but it is none of my business, and so I push my curiosity down.

Miss Allie steps over to him and folds him into another embrace. "Oh, Jared." I can't see her face, but she sounds both worried and relieved.

"I called the prison, and they told me he'd been released. But when I stopped by his place, his truck was gone and there was a for sale sign in his yard."

Miss Allie pulls back, glances at me with a puzzled look then turns back to her son. "He didn't tell me he was thinking of selling."

Jared raises his brow. "You – you've been talking to him?"

Miss Allie slides her gaze my way. "Arianna, it will be hard to explain everything to Jared without telling him at least the bare bones of your story."

I nod, and soon we are all seated in the living room. Though I believe the phrase "bare bones" to mean as little as necessary to understand, somehow I feel Jared deserves to know the details. Maybe to make up for the guilt I feel about taking over his bedroom. Or maybe because when we shook hands, I felt that in different circumstances we might be friends.

And so, I begin at the beginning, just as I did when I told my story a few days ago in this very place. Miss Allie concludes by telling Jared what we plan to do tomorrow night.

"Sweet!" he exclaims. Expressions of anger and worry have alternated over his face during my telling, but now his mouth opens into a wide grin. "Can I come?" he asks his mama. "I'd love a chance to rub that jerk's face in the mud."

I gasp, and Jared and Miss Allie swing their gazes toward me. Heat rushes into my face, but I must explain myself. "That word...jerk." I can barely get myself to say it. "Isn't it a – a swear word?"

Jared smiles, but it's a kind smile, not a taunting one. "Not in the United States."

"Oh." I look down at the jeans Miss Allie bought for me a couple of days ago, picking at a thread that isn't there. "Whenever Mr. Brent would use the word, he used it in such a horrible tone of voice. And very loud." I venture a glance up at Miss Allie. "He was so angry whenever he said it, I was sure it must be a bad word."

Jared asks me a few questions about my life on the road as a "choir slave", as he put it, and I am surprised to find myself comfortable sharing details with him that I have not yet told Miss Allie about. But for his much paler skin and blue eyes, he reminds me so much of Adroa. Maybe that is why.

We go on like this about twenty minutes after I finish telling my main story, and when there is a long pause, Miss Allie shifts in her chair and pins Jared with a narrow gaze. "All right, Mr. Prodigal, your turn." Her voice is stern, though I can see love glimmering in her eyes.

Jared studies his hands for several beats. Lifting his head, he sighs. "I hitchhiked to Montana and found an older guy who lived in a kind of remote cabin who was looking for help on his homestead. Chopping firewood, planting the garden, that sort of thing."

Miss Allie's mouth drops open. "You're kidding."

Jared's lips twist upward. "Nope." Then his gaze drops again. "I told people my car had been stolen at the last gas station I went into, and would they give me a ride to the next town where my parents lived." He looks up with a sheepish smile. "I told them my dad was a P.I. who had enemies and so he didn't like people knowing where he lived, so would they please drop me off at the first gas station we came to so I could call and have them pick me up."

"Jared Michael Whitlock!" Allie exclaims, her eyes wide. "You didn't."

He shrugs. "I did. I know it was wrong, Mom, but...I was just a stupid kid." He yanks his gaze toward me. "No offense or anything."

I lift a shoulder, giving him a small smile.

"I was stupid and confused and...and hurting so bad." He leans forward with his hands on his thighs, his eyes widening. "But Mom, then God started speaking to me."

Miss Allie arches an eyebrow as I tense up. Mr. Brent was always saying, "The Lord told me this" and "The Lord told me that." Sometimes the things did not sit right with me, and the day he said that the Lord had told him to send Dalia away was the day I stopped believing in God.

His focus still on his mama, Jared chuckles. "I know, right? Me, the evil son who always rolled my eyes when you talked about hearing God's voice." He straightens up, flicking a glance my way before looking back at his mama. "See, besides working for Leo – that was the name of the old man – I got a job in town stocking shelves at the dollar store a year later. The manager's a nice guy in his mid-thirties, married with three children. Name's John.

"Well, about a year and a half ago, he asked if I'd be interested in filling in as a youth camp counselor that summer because they were suddenly short-handed. John knew I was a believer, even though I told him I didn't participate in the institutional church, and said I was smart and had great people skills so I should be a good fit for the job."

Jared turns to me with a smile. I don't know why, but it is so genuine that I smile back without any effort. "I thought it was kind of crazy, 'cause I was still a teenager myself, but I said yes." His gaze moves back to Miss Allie. "Long story short...I don't really know how to explain this," he reaches up a hand and rubs the back of his neck, "but I had an awesome encounter with God." He clears his throat, looking away for a couple of ticks. "And now, I – I hear that still, small voice you've been trying to tell me and Arthur about forever."

He _hears_ it? What does he mean, he hears it?

As I puzzle over this, Miss Allie raises both her hands up in the air, grinning. "Hallelujah! Thank You, Jesus!"

I have seen people behave in such a manner at church, but I have never seen Miss Allie do any such thing. I cannot help staring at her, my eyebrows pulling up to my forehead.

Lowering her hands, she catches sight of me and laughs. Then she reaches over and puts a hand on Jared's knee. The gesture reminds me of who I am and the fool I made of myself a little while ago. Miss Allie will never be my mama, has never had any thoughts about it, has probably been wondering how long it would take for me to go somewhere else.

_Then, why did she go after you a few days ago? In the freezing cold?_ I shake the thought away, forcing my attention back onto the conversation.

Miss Allie pats Jared's knee. "See, kiddo, God does answer prayers. He sometimes just takes longer than we want him to."

I know that is true.

Jared grins, too, but the expression fades as he continues his story. "He actually started talking to me about coming back and making things right with Jeb about a month later."

Miss Allie straightens up, the rocking chair creaking as she sits on the edge of it. "What took you so long?"

Jared sighs, leaning back, then drops his gaze to the floor. "I didn't want to believe it was God." He glances toward me. "I was scared."

I can no longer stand the suspense. "Excuse me, please, Miss Allie," I say, looking at her, "but may I ask what happened between Jared and Jeb?"

Miss Allie and Jared both turn to look at me. Then they look at each other. Finally, Jared begins talking, and five minutes later I understand the situation. At first, I become angry at Jared. But did I not do the same thing, run away from a problem instead of facing it? Sure, I left a note for the other children to find, telling them that I left myself and was not kidnapped, and that I would be fine. But why did I not find a way to call the police and tell them what I suspected? Tell them that I was only sixteen, and a man in his forties who had pretended to be my adopted father for eight years was asking me to marry him?

In the end, I believe what I did was worse than what Jared did because it impacted more people. And even after Jared and his mama's explanation, I am not convinced that Jared did anything wrong.

So the anger fizzles as soon as it sparks. I nod my head toward Jared. "I know I have no right to know about that. Thank you for telling me."

Miss Allie frowns at me. "Arianna –"

Whatever she is going to say is cut off by an exclamation from Jared which, if any of us choir children had spoken in Mr. Brent's presence, would have earned us an evening without supper. He is staring, wide-eyed, out the window about ten feet across from his chair. I follow his gaze, Miss Allie turning around to do the same.

I glance back at Jared, pity rising up inside me as his face grows pale.

"Is...is that who I think it is?" His voice grows quieter, pitching upwards.

I stand up and head for the door, letting Miss Allie answer the question. I open the door to Jeb, who is holding a blonde woman who looks to be about twice my age by the elbow.

Yesterday, I would have given my rescuer a wide, welcoming smile. But knowing what I know now, I can barely curve my lips upward.

"Jeb," I say. "So nice to see you."

# Chapter Thirty: Jeb

Arianna's words don't match the reserved smile on her mouth and sadness in her eyes. I wonder if thinking about all that's about to happen is causing her stress. "Arianna, this here's my daughter Jennifer." Releasing Jen's elbow, I gesture toward her.

The girl's smile widens just a bit. "Nice to meet you, Jennifer." After a brief handshake with Jen, she pulls the door open wider. "Please, come in."

As we step inside, I look around for Allie. Apparently, Jen does, too, because she breaks off her "Thank you" to Arianna with a loud shriek of "Jared!"

I can only stare numbly as I watch Jen run over to the living room area, feeling like I'm seeing a ghost. My first thought is that my daughter is mistaken. After all, her work as a business consultant and conference organizer has her all over the country, sometimes in other parts of the world, so she's only seen the Whitlock family a couple dozen times or so since they moved to Pine Mountain Estates. And the young man standing up to accept Jen's embrace looks different than he did before he ran off.

"You scoundrel, you!" I can hear the tears in Jen's voice, but still, I am unable to move.

I am vaguely aware of the sound of the door closing behind me and barely register Jen's next words. Or Jared's reply. I do notice, sure enough, that his voice is deeper and more manly than I remember.

I feel a soft touch on my arm. "Jeb, would you like to sit down?" Arianna's African accent vibrates in a low tone right next to me.

I shake my head. "Don't think I can." And I ain't fooling, either.

Only when Allie and Jen greet each other with a tearful embrace do I find the strength to take a step forward. Jared looks over at me and our gazes meet. Lock. I ain't sure what I should be feeling. I've always felt responsible for him running off. On the other hand, he was old enough to know that wasn't any way to solve a problem. To know how he'd break his mother's heart.

How long has he been here, anyway? Surely Allie would've called me the day he arrived, if not that very minute.

Jared finally looks down. "I...we need to go outside to talk." He lifts his gaze toward his mother. "Me and Jeb need some time alone."

Allie shakes her head. "Oh, y'all stay here. I need to get out for a few minutes, anyway."

Jen's brow creases above her smile that fades just a little, but she nods and heads toward the door. Arianna wordlessly moves to the coat closet and, with her one good hand, pulls first Allie's coat, then another one hanging next to it. A minute later, the three women are walking toward the garden, and I am left alone with a young man who looks as nervous as I feel. I take a few steps until there are about three feet between us, steeling myself for the inevitable – and well-deserved – accusations.

They never come. Instead, the last thing I expect happens. Wringing his hands together and looking everywhere except at me, Jared spits out, "The accident was my fault, not yours." He cuts his eyes toward me for a second, then he shoves his hands in his jeans pockets while his gaze drops to the floor. "There. I said it. Go ahead and hate me."

I am more stunned now than I was when I first saw Jared seated in the living room, all grown up. Seconds tick by, the silence in the room thicker than an old bramble patch.

Finally, I find my voice. "I don't understand. I was clearly at fault. I know it. The one witness we had knows it. And if Bev were still here, she'd say she knows it better'n anybody."

"No. No." Jared lifts his head, shaking it. His eyes brim with tears. "When you swerved into our lane, Dad had plenty of room to avoid the collision. He even tried."

He starts to tremble, and it occurs to me his agitation might make him pass out. "Son, why don't you sit down." I nod toward the couch, which Jared drops down onto. I ease myself onto the edge of the rocking chair, directly across from him, and wait for him to explain.

Swiping the back of his hand under both eyes, he continues, "You know how I was in the front seat? Well, I was fooling around with Arthur, turning around and making faces and pretending to fight with him." He clenches and unclenches his jaw, then swallows hard. "Right before you –" His voice cracks, so he clears his throat. "Right before you came into our lane, Arthur made a move to hit me. I thought he was really going to do it, and I...I...oh, man. I was such an idiot."

He rakes a hand through his hair. "I pretty much threw myself against Dad's right arm. He yelled at me to get off, trying to push me away, and I turned to look out the windshield." Jared's face crumples. "You were...your truck was...I moved away from Dad so he could move his arm, so he could steer." Tears begin streaking down his face. "But it was too late." His breath heaves. "Jeb, it should've been me who went to prison, not you." His voice shrivels. "Or me who died, instead of my father and brother."

At that moment, it's as if my brain splits in two. Half of it stares at the boy sitting across from me, sobbing into his hands. The other half relives the accident all over again. But it's not like how I've been reliving it the past few years, with heavy guilt and overwhelming pain. I relive it like I was the out-of-towner driving behind me who witnessed the accident.

I see myself, turning to yell at my wife, yanking the steering wheel around because I'm so angry I've forgotten I'm driving. I see the Whitlock's car coming right toward me, because I've swerved into their lane. Then, I see something I haven't been able to remember until now. I see Jason's look of wide-eyed horror in the split second before our vehicles collide. I can't tell if he's trying to veer away or not. But I also remember Jared sitting fairly close to his father.

I remember in that split second, having a choice to make. I can try to get back into my lane. But what would happen to Bev if I overcorrect – which seemed inevitable – and the truck flipped over? Or I can try to drive into the ditch. The vehicles would still collide, but maybe not as bad.

On the other hand, both the boys were on that side. So if it _was_ that bad, I could kill one or both of them.

Or my wife. Or maybe all three.

All these thoughts rush through my head like a lightning streak, and I make my decision. I yank the steering wheel to the right.

I can't see what happens next. I can only imagine it by the testimony of the guy who'd been driving behind me, who somehow managed to swerve into the ditch and avoid any sort of injury to himself, and not much to his car. He said that my truck hit the driver's side of Jason's car head on, then flipped over onto the passenger side. Jason's car went spinning, then rolled into the ditch opposite the eye witness.

Bev and Jason were found dead on the scene. Arthur was critically injured, and lingered for a few days in the hospital before breathing his last breath.

And I wished I was dead. Wished Bev, Arthur, and Jason had survived instead of me.

My mind refocuses on the present, sorrow and sympathy overwhelming me as I wait for Jared to calm down. After a couple of minutes, he does, though he doesn't look up.

"Jared," I say, my voice hoarse, "look at me. Please."

He looks, his eyes revealing misery and guilt. "I went to prison because I got into the wrong lane. Had no business driving that morning, actually."

"I was fifteen," Jared argues. "I knew better. And Dad had told me and Arthur several times to knock it off." He sniffles. "But we wouldn't obey."

I shake my head, my heart hurting for the boy. "But your dad didn't break any traffic laws. That was all on me."

"But it wasn't manslaughter!" Jared jumps to his feet. "It was an accident! And I knew it, but I was too big of a coward to ask the lawyers to put me on the stand. You went to prison because of _me_!"

I stand to face him. "I went to prison because the prosecuting attorney was going for the D.A. that year and needed to prove his competence." My voice begins to rise. "And because what I did _was_ manslaughter!"

Jared has begun to pace, but now he stops in his tracks, turns around, and stares at me. For the longest of moments, the only sound in the room is the hum of the ceiling fan.

Finally, Jared says, "What – what do you mean?"

I huff out a breath as my shoulders droop. "I mean, I knew what Jesus said about anger being as bad as murder. And that morning, in the truck, I was so angry with Bev..." I swallow, struggling to maintain eye contact with Jared. "My anger killed her. And your dad. And your brother."

Jared makes a scoffing noise and opens his mouth, but I raise a hand to quiet him. "I didn't contest the charge because I believed it was true. My lawyer wanted to get the charges dropped down to a traffic violation, was sure we had a good chance of that happening, but I asked – no, _told_ him – to let the charges stand."

Jared's eyes grow wide, his jaw dropping. "You – you did _what_?"

I lift a shoulder. "I sent myself to prison, I guess."

"But I was as guilty as you." Jared shakes his head. "I should've been punished."

"Guess you've been plenty punished these past four years, ain't you?" I step toward him, wanting him to let go of the guilt, to see the facts from my perspective.

He tilts his head, pauses. Then, "Yeah, I guess."

I smile. "One thing the prison chaplain helped me see was that it don't do any good hangin' on to past guilt and sin, 'cause that only keeps you from bein' everything God wants you to be." I reach out my hand toward him. "How about we both agree that we each had a hand in the accident, call it even, and accept the grace God done gave us to move forward?"

Nodding, Jared takes my hand and shakes it. With a firm grip I pull him toward me and give him a bear hug. Tears blur my own eyes when I release him. I blink them back quickly, turning toward the door so he won't see them. "You heard Arianna's story yet?"

"Yes, sir." He walks up beside me, and we watch as the women come into view from the direction of the garden. Shielding her face from the sun, Allie looks toward the house for a couple of beats, then turns back to her companions.

"Then you know," I continue, "she's searchin' for her own victory."

"I'm sure she'll get it." Jared's voice turns adamant. "And if that jerk tries anything underhanded, I'll be on him faster than a...a...a mouse on peanut butter!"

I chuckle. "You and me both, kid. Now, come on." I gesture toward the door. "Your mother's waited a long time to see you. So let's not keep her waiting any longer'n we have to."

"Hold on." I turn to look at Jared, whose eyes hold more than a glint of admiration. "Thank you, Jeb."

I ain't sure what exactly he's thanking me for, but I really don't need to know. I nod and smile. "You're more'n welcome, son. You're more'n welcome."

An entire day passes before I realize I feel a hundred pounds lighter than I have since the accident. The reason why zaps me like an electric fence: I've finally forgiven myself.

# Chapter Thirty-One: Jared

"You all set?"

"Yes, sir," I reply as I pull myself up onto the passenger seat of Jeb's truck. "Kinda wish I was one of the cops taking this guy down."

Jeb turns the key in the ignition. "You and me both."

Mom, Arianna, and Liz stand in the driveway and watch us head out toward Greenridge. I can only imagine what Arianna must be thinking and feeling. Tonight will be one of those nights that she'll remember for the rest of her life, I'll bet. Seems kind of crazy, the scheme they've cooked up, but I gotta admit – it allows for plenty of eye witnesses.

Actually, the whole thing is crazy, me coming home to find an African slave living with Mom. I knew slavery was still alive and well – it's why Mom's always been so picky about where she buys chocolate and bananas – but to meet someone who's actually lived the experience...whoosh.

I wonder about how Mom's taken to her, though. Though Arianna's been polite enough to me, she seems reticent and distant. Kind of cold, truth be told.

Oops. Made a rhyme.

Anyway, I mentioned it to Mom yesterday when she was out taking laundry off the line and Arianna was in the house, and she assured me that before I showed up, Arianna was an outgoing, friendly girl.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," I said, maybe with a hint of sarcasm mixed in.

"I doubt it's got much to do with you." She dropped a shirt into the laundry bag. "You know she's got a lot to think about right now. Decisions to make. And what she plans to do at the church? If I were her, I'd be stressing big-time."

Mom's words turn over in my mind a few times while I stare out the windshield of Jeb's truck. Then I glance toward the older man as we turn onto the highway. "Jeb, what do you think of Arianna?"

Jeb smiles, keeping his eyes on the road. "Great little gal." He laughs. "Okay, so she ain't quite little. But you know what I mean."

"Not really."

The corners of his mouth turn down. "Y'all ain't getting along?"

I lift a shoulder, turning to face the front. "I suppose we're getting along, but that's about as far as it goes." I let out a sigh. "I feel like she's been avoiding me, and Mom admitted that she hasn't been as talkative or open since I came back."

A beat passes before Jeb remarks, "She's jealous."

I twist my neck to face him again. "What?"

"Think about it." Jeb's eyes shift to meet my gaze for a split second before turning to look back out the windshield. "She had your mother to herself for several weeks. Far as she knew, it'd never be any different. Then you come home, and suddenly she's not the center of attention anymore."

"Would a girl that age be that immature?"

Jeb laughs. "Trust me, son. I raised a girl, remember? Shouldn't be _sweet_ sixteen, should be _selfish_ sixteen."

Realization thunders inside my head. "I guess I wasn't so mature myself five years ago." My face heats with embarrassment at the admission.

Jeb's mouth quirks upward. "Guess not."

We ride in silence for a while afterward, and my mind wanders back to the conversation I had with Leo a little over a month ago when I finally told him that I had run away from home. That was the first time in my life that I really and truly believed in guardian angels. Not that I thought Leo was one, but I had to have had some guidance to end up with a guy who would give me the freedom to sort through what I needed to sort through. And to end up in a place where, eventually, I'd be touched by God Himself.

Another miracle was that Grandma kept quiet about me for almost a whole month. Mom stomped out of the house with the cell phone the other day, declaring that she was going to give her mother a piece of her mind. I'm not sure how that conversation went down, but when she came back inside the house she was smiling and peaceful.

The hardest part about coming back to Oklahoma has been, of course, what Grandpa said – facing reality. Facing the fact that Dad and Arthur are gone from this life for good. Facing the dinner table with both of them absent. Facing not watching Mom and Dad kiss each other for no good reason. Facing not having a kid brother to tease. Or play video games with.

Facing the guilt.

I thought I was done crying after that revelatory conversation with Jeb, but I've shed some tears more than once since then when nobody was around.

The pain is as intense as it was after their funerals, but different. This time, it's tempered by the comfort of the Spirit living inside of me. By the words He whispers to me when the guilt looms over me like a pterodactyl, threatening to swallow me whole. He reminds me of what Jeb said, that the accident was mostly not my fault; and of what my former manager and friend, John said, that if there was anything to forgive, God forgave it long ago.

But the comfort hasn't kept me from contemplating running again, at least twice in the past few days. I resist the temptation, though, for Mom's sake.

And I know that Grandpa is right – if I want my life going forward to have any measure of joy, I've got to walk through this.

I squeeze my eyes closed, needing to relinquish those thoughts so I can concentrate on the task ahead. Opening my eyes, I turn to the window and stare at the trees and fields passing by, similar to the trees and fields that Arianna had to run through in order to escape her captor. Mom and Jeb must be right. She must be quite the girl to have the guts to do what she did – let alone what she plans to do tonight. Guts and an inner strength I have to admire. Maybe her behavior the past few days is due to a combination of what Mom said, and what Jeb just suggested.

Except I don't think she can be all that selfish. Not to have planned to do what she's finally going to do tonight. To rescue her fellow slaves.

With that thought, my perception of Arianna takes a complete 180. I even feel it in my soul, a shifting from mistrust and uncertainty to admiration and respect, and, oddly, a brotherly desire to watch her back.

No doubt, tonight is going to prove one of the most interesting nights of my life.

# Chapter Thirty-Two: Arianna

"I think I'm going to be sick." Miss Allie, Miss Liz, and I have barely walked five feet away from the car in the parking lot of the large metal building in Greenridge, Oklahoma, when my stomach starts churning.

Miss Allie stops and takes hold of my arm. "You know you don't have to do this," she says. "We can tell the sheriff to skip your part. The result will be the same."

I take a deep breath. "I will be okay. I want to do this." I straighten, inhaling deeply once more. "I just...want it to be over with."

"Oh, honey, don't we all." Miss Allie smiles and squeezes my arm.

She called Jared just as we pulled up, and her son now steps out the main door of the building and gestures for us to come inside. He, Jeb and Jen came early to make sure neither of the Brents and none of the children were anywhere in sight when we arrived and entered. They also needed to save us some seats in the back, as Mr. Brent's choir has been filling up churches for the past four or five years, because we have become well-known in some circles.

Dressed in Miss Allie's parka with a hood over my head, and sitting in the back of the sanctuary, I should not be recognized unless I want to be.

The three of us sit in the very back row of the crowded church. My heart, which had begun to race the moment we arrived, now thuds inside me like a drum. I am suddenly sweating, and I know it is not just the parka. The lights dim, and after looking around Miss Allie turns to me and suggests that I might take off the parka if I'm hot. Between the spotlights shining on the front of the sanctuary and the darkness all around me, there is no way anyone up front would be able to see past the second row.

I take off the parka as a man, I assume the pastor of this flock, gets up to introduce the choir. His enthusiasm belies the fact that he has been informed just who Mr. Brent is, what he has done, and what is going to happen tonight.

And then, there he is. Mr. Brent comes onto the platform, his big, fake smile on his face.

Miss Allie leans over to me and whispers, "That's him! The man from the gas station!"

I nod, keeping my gaze straight ahead. I did not know how I would feel once this moment arrived, but the wrenching, burning feeling in my belly lets me know that anger has taken precedence.

This is the man who took me away from my brother. This is the man who sold my best friend off to who-knows-what kind of terrible life. This is the man who destroyed the lives of eleven other children, who has abused us with fear for the past eight years, who has used us to make money.

When we first started out from Miss Allie's almost an hour ago, I was afraid. Now, I have to restrain myself from getting up out of my seat, marching to the front, and calling him one of the most evil men alive today.

My hands ball into fists. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Miss Allie pull her cell phone out of her purse and dial a number. I guess she's calling one of the sheriffs or deputies stationed around the room to let them know that I have positively identified the man who kidnapped me and made me his slave. But with my blood roaring in my ears, I cannot hear the whispered five-second conversation she has.

Then the children – my fellow slaves – begin walking onto the platform, single file, and my heart stops beating. Suddenly, the air is too thick to breathe. Anger melts into a mixture of guilt, sorrow, and excitement. I count each singer as they take their places, whispering each name under my breath. Good. There are still ten, and the same ten that have become like family to me since Mr. Brent stole us away from our respective home countries. He has not sold or bought anyone.

The idea that we children were all sold and bought sends chills through me, and I shiver.

"Aw, sweetie, are you cold?" Miss Liz asks in a low voice.

Glancing at her, I shake my head, wondering at how quickly she went from being my enemy to my strong advocate. I have had a couple of long conversations with her during the past few days, and have found that Miss Allie was right – she is a good, kind person.

Except when she stormed into our – I mean, Miss Allie's – house the day Jared came home. It was not long after Jared and Jeb had their private conversation, and she scolded him up one side and down the other. Then hugged him really hard and started crying. The others and I, we just stood to the side, watching. I asked Jared later if Miss Liz had hurt his feelings, but he said, nah, he knew it was coming and also was used to her sometimes brusque ways.

My attention returns to the platform. Of course everyone is smiling brilliantly, as if they are living the happiest life in the whole world. Anyone who doesn't smile through the whole performance will get their ears boxed, possibly their bottom whipped, and will not eat supper for two or three days.

Once again I need to restrain myself. This time, from running up and gathering all the children to myself. It's funny how I still think of all of us as children, even though we are all teenagers. Even the youngest, Benesha, is now thirteen.

They begin singing, and an odd sensation flows through me. It's the first time I have heard them without being up there myself. I have heard a lot of church folk compliment our group over the years, but this is the first time I understand why. The sound is beautiful, angelic, even.

It's also haunting, because I know the situation they came from earlier today, and where they'll end up after the performance.

That is, where they _would_ have ended up, if I had not found them.

I know the program like the back of my hand, and during the last verse of the second to last song I motion for Miss Allie to let me out of the row. She has an aisle seat, so she is the only one I have to climb over to get into the aisle. Slowly, I begin walking toward the front of the sanctuary, knowing that Miss Allie and Miss Liz are about six feet behind. When I get to the second row from the front, Deputy Horton, in plain clothes, is in the aisle seat to my right. The tough-looking woman to my left must be the other law enforcement officer who was supposed to flank me at this location, but I have not met her.

I glance down at Deputy Horton, and he looks up at me, smiles, and winks.

The song ends. As I expect, Mr. Brent turns around to introduce the last song, a big smile on his face.

"Mr. Brent." I speak as loudly and as clearly as I can, so that as much as the audience as possible can hear me. His eyes widen, locating me in the next breath.

Next to me, the two officers of the law stand behind me as I take a step forward and every one of the children on the platform stares at me. "I believe it is time for my solo, is it not?"

Two of the children cry out my name, and I let my focus shift to them for one heartbeat. Flash them a smile. It fades as my gaze returns to Mr. Brent, whose pale face has turned a shade paler.

He takes a step backward as two uniformed police officers walk onto either side of the platform, hands on their holsters. Noticing one of them, Mr. Brent raises his hands into the air.

Members of the congregation gasp and begin to whisper, but I ignore them. "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved and set me free." I sing as loudly as I can, only interrupting that song at that moment to yell to the fraud on the stage, "I really am free now, Mr. Brent. I will no longer be your slave."

Behind me, the congregation becomes more agitated, but I finish singing the verse as I walk slowly toward the platform. As I sing, "...was blind, but now I see," I fix my gaze on my friends on the platform who are displaying a mix of confusion and excitement on their faces. "Everybody, second verse!" I yell, then begin waving my hands to direct the choir's singing.

None of them miss a beat. As one, they begin, "Through many dangers, toils and snares..." At the same time, Deputy Horton takes my arm and escorts me to the side of the platform where the stairs are. Eleven pairs of eyes, those of Mr. Brent and the choir members, follow my every move. I am on the platform as the verse ends, and somebody – the pastor, I think – hands me a microphone.

Silence falls, stretching as I glare at the man who claims to be my adoptive father. He looks away, and an ungodly satisfaction rolls over me. He knows he is in trouble. Big trouble.

I turn and look at the audience, an unexpected boldness coming over me. "You see that man?" I point toward Mr. Brent without looking at him. "That man is a liar, a fraud, and a thief!" A few gasps follow, but mostly the audience remain quiet. I think they are stunned by the turn of events. "He bought twelve children from orphanages in three different countries in east Africa – yes, _bought_ us – so he could pretend to be our father, all the time making thousands of dollars from our singing."

I turn toward my about-to-be fellow former slaves, who are mostly staring at me in disbelief. Two, however, are nodding at me with knowing expressions, as if they had somehow figured out the truth. "That's right," I tell them. "He never adopted us! We were his slaves!" I glare at Mr. Brent again. "I dare you to deny it, _Father_." The last word comes out on a stream of venom.

I turn back to the congregation, my voice rising without me trying, I am so passionate that they understand what Mr. Brent has done. "But none of that money has been spent on us. We have never had any toys, never had nice beds, never even had enough room to sleep in comfort."

I am going to say more, but a woman screaming to my left in the front row interrupts me.

"She's right! Arianna's right! He's a filthy, lying pig!" It's Mrs. Brent. She jumps to her feet and points an accusing finger toward Mr. Brent, opening her mouth again, but the police officer who's been seated next to her probably for the entire concert jumps up next to her, grabs her arm, and says something in a low tone that I cannot make out.

I can guess what he has said by her next words, though. "Fine! Arrest me! You'll soon find out the truth. Put me in any jail you want! It'll be better than spending one more second with that slimeball!"

"You have the right to remain silent – "

I jerk my head in the direction of the new voice to find another officer handcuffing Mr. Brent. I should leave well enough alone and let the authorities do their job. But feeling bold and confident because of all the law enforcement people around, I march up to where Mr. Brent stands, fear and regret etched into his face.

He has been staring at the floor; he lifts his head as I approach.

I point my finger at him. "Two things, sir. First, it is time for you to stop being a religious zealot and truly find God. Second," I swallow and blink back the tears that unexpectedly jump into my eyes, "I forgive you."

I don't feel like I have forgiven him. If anything, that burning in my gut has grown hotter. But I know that Jesus said that if I don't forgive other people the wrong they do to me, then my heavenly Father cannot forgive me. And I remember a preacher once talking about how not forgiving people can cause all sorts of problems for the person who has been wronged. He said that many times, you have to say that you have forgiven somebody and the feeling of forgiving will come later.

So I speak my intention to forgive. And pray that the words will be true soon, if not tonight.

Whirling around before I can see Mr. Brent's reaction, I head toward the other Africans who remain in their places, looking uncertain, as if they don't know what to do next.

The boldness from a moment earlier drains out of me as I remember what I did to them. Though some of the faces are smiling at me, not all are. And I do not blame them. They have every right to be angry at me, to feel betrayed.

The tears I have been trying to hold back begin to flow. "I have been a bad sister." My voice shakes, and I have to take a couple of deep breaths to continue. "I should not have left without telling you. Without trusting you. I was stupid...and – "

"We forgive you." Kintu's voice rings out loud and clear. Nine other voices echo the sentiment.

And before I realize what is happening, I am surrounded and being pulled into embraces from all sides. We laugh and cry and are all talking at once. I have almost forgotten where we are, until applause begins from behind me.

At first, just a few people begin clapping. But the sound spreads throughout the sanctuary within a matter of seconds. I turn toward the congregation to see everyone on their feet, clapping. Some are shouting and whistling.

I look around for Miss Allie and Miss Liz to find them directly in front of me below the platform. Miss Allie is sobbing on Jared's shoulder as he holds her tightly. Of course, I cannot hear her with all the ruckus going on around me. Miss Liz is rubbing Miss Allie's back with her hand. No doubt seeing me reunite with my siblings-by-force has made Miss Allie feel even more strongly about her own recent reunion with her son.

I stare down at them for several beats, but none of the three looks up at me. And in the midst of all the happy confusion surrounding me, the children asking me all sorts of questions about where I have been and what I have been doing, I feel more alone than I have ever felt in my life. More alone, even, than I felt at my mama's funeral.

I am an outsider. An intruder. My real family is thousands and thousands of miles away, across an ocean, then across a big continent, and I have no idea if he is even still alive. Or, if he is, how to find him. The young people flocking me now will all have to go their separate ways as the authorities try to contact family back in Africa, and meanwhile place them into foster homes.

Or even another orphanage.

Turning away from the trio below me, I take a deep breath and force myself to smile at my African friends. God will take care of me, I remind myself as I begin to share my story.

I can only hope that this is true.

# Chapter Thirty-Three: Allie

Sunday morning I wake up exhausted. My body never did like to sleep in, even after the rare late night, and so even though I didn't get in bed until after midnight it rouses me at six-fifteen and refuses to return to slumber.

It's six-thirty when I give up my futile efforts to go back to sleep, and sit up in bed. Yawning and stretching, I think back to the craziness of the night before. In the sanctuary I noticed that several people had phones pointed toward the platform. No doubt that Arianna will get her fifteen minutes of fame today – and more, since I suspect the story will go viral over the Internet.

Despite my lagging energy, I have to smile at the memory of how all those African youth crowded around Arianna. I didn't mean to make the scene that I did, but I couldn't help it. First hearing Arianna's gorgeous alto filling the sanctuary while knowing all she's been through, and only being able to guess what she must be feeling as she confronts the man who's stolen eight years of her young life. Then watching her as she confronts the man with confidence and poise. Finally, seeing all those beautiful and innocent African faces surrounding Arianna...the pride and excitement, and gratitude and joy colliding inside me was just too much to bear, I guess.

Then when I realized I was crying on my son's shoulder – my son whom I couldn't be sure was even still alive until yesterday – I started crying even harder.

Accompanied by Deputy Horton, we – the Mitchells, Liz, and Jared and I – treated the reunited family to dinner at a local restaurant. I told the children to order whatever they wanted, planning to pick up the tab, but by the time the two-hour party was finished Jen insisted on paying it. She hadn't given to a worthy cause in a while, she said, and wanted to do her part.

Having worked out the details with the county sheriff ahead of time, the teenagers were distributed among us and a couple of other local families until the social workers could come out on Monday and get to work on finding them all foster homes.

Arianna is still sleeping in Jared's bed. Two other children, including Benesha, are sleeping in the open area between the kitchen and living room on cots we bought for camping years ago. How my heart wrenched when Benesha, one of the two, exclaimed what a huge house I had. The place isn't even 600 square feet. Then I wanted to cry when she kept saying how she couldn't believe she would get to sleep on her own bed.

And it's just a cot.

At Arianna's insistence, Jared is sleeping in Arthur's old bed, the top bunk. "It's just for one night," she said, "and it's better than the couch."

_It's just for one night_. She made the statement shortly before Jared left for the town of Greenridge, so I didn't have time to unpack it. But as I sit in my bed, I realize that I have no idea what Jared plans to do. Is he going to go back to Montana? Stay here? Try to find a job in the area, and go live wherever he finds a job?

I told him, of course, that he is free to live with me as long as he likes. Which I hope is all right with Arianna.

But then, I'm assuming Arianna will want to go with the plan I have yet to discuss with her. But what if she doesn't? What if she wants to be placed in a foster family with one of her African friends? Or return to Africa permanently?

My heart shouldn't be aching at the thought of losing Arianna. First of all, she was never mine to begin with. God sent her to me so I could help her and the other slaves get free. Second, I have Jared back. He was lost to me for five years, and now is found. Shouldn't that be enough?

I shake the thoughts away as I ease out of my bed and quietly dress. The others will probably sleep for a couple more hours if they're not disturbed, and since the low last night didn't fall below freezing, I take my e-reader and cell phone out to the Tuff Shed, where I turn on the extra space heater.

I am surprised when, half an hour later, a soft knock sounds at the door. "Come in," I call, wondering that either Arianna or Jared would be up so early after such a chaotic late night.

The door opens, and Jared steps inside, wearing no outer clothing. I go to him and pull him into a tight embrace, still overwhelmed with gratitude that he has come home. And in one piece.

"Mom, you're squishing me," he protests with a laugh.

"Serves you right." But I pull back and smile up at him. "Was Arianna snoring?" I tease.

Jared's forehead creases. "More like she probably had trouble going to sleep listening to all my sniffling."

I stare at him for a couple of ticks.

"I was in Arthur's bed?" He gives me that duh-are-you-brain-dead-or-something look for which teenagers are so famous.

"Oh, honey." I draw him back into my arms. I'd wondered if that was going to bother him.

He pats my back, then steps out of the embrace. "I'm okay, Mom. I just had to..." He runs a hand through his hair. "I had to face...everything...for the first time in five years." He walks past me and plops down onto the makeshift couch against the wall. "I guess it was easy to pretend like the accident was just a horrible nightmare while I was gone."

I walk over to him and tousle his hair. Another sign of his maturity is that he doesn't tell me to stop it and brush my hand away. Instead, he looks up at me. "Anyway, I almost forgot Arianna was sleeping below me when I first woke up. Far as I know, she never made a sound all night." He shifts as I settle next to him. I'd rather be in front of the space heater, but at least I can share his body heat. "I think I may have heard one of the other kids make some sounds, though."

He puts his arm around me, and I lay my head on his arm. "Man, this has been _crazy_ , hasn't it?"

"You're telling me. Wait until tomorrow." He knows I'm referring to the social workers who will come by to round up all the children and begin the legal process of deciding their fates. I really wish Liz would go through the training to be a foster parent and keep one or two of Arianna's friends, but as it is I had to practically pull her teeth to get her to agree to have two of them crash at her house just for two nights.

Jared's expression turns serious. "Do you think they'll all be sent back to Africa?"

I've worked so hard to ignore this very idea the past few days. To hear it spoken aloud makes my gut clench. "I certainly hope not."

Jared drops his arm, scoots down on the cushions, and frowns at me. "Is there something I should know?"

I look away and swallow. After letting several seconds pass, I venture to meet my son's eyes again. "What are your plans?"

"You're dodging the question." He pins me with a challenging gaze.

I puff out a breath. We're probably both too tired to tackle the issue I'm about to bring up, but he deserves to know. So I tell him.

Hold my breath while I wait for his reaction.

It surprises and pleases me. His words and broad smile could not be any more exuberant or encouraging, and they stir up that long-suppressed joy again.

I can only hope I'm not setting myself up for a major disappointment.

# Chapter Thirty-Four: Jeb

"Did I ever have that much energy when I was a kid?" Jen sidles up to me where I stand by the back porch, watching the black and white faces mix in a game of double tag.

I glance at my daughter. "'Course you did, sweetheart. But Timothy probably had more."

We both stand there in silence, watching the group dodge each other and the various oak, hickory and cedar trees dotting the backyard. The plan today was for each of us to feed breakfast to the children who stayed with us, then for everyone to gather at my place for a few hours of play and a potluck lunch. I volunteered, thinking that my house was fairly centrally located among the five host families and that it probably has the largest amount of open space.

Though thankful for the relatively warm and sunny day, I can't help feeling a little bit down. I fold my arms across my chest and sigh.

Jen puts a hand on my arm. "What's wrong?"

I turn to face her. "I told you I can't stay here anymore, what with how most people ain't seemed to be inclined to forget the accident."

Jen grimaces, but nods her understanding. We had quite the argument about me putting the property up for sale when she first arrived a few days ago.

I jut my chin toward the cheerful scene in front of us, laughter and happy shouts seeming to come from every direction. "Seein' all these kids havin' such a good time...fillin' up that space –"

I don't have time to finish my thought – which may be just as well since I've no idea how I might go about that – because Liz suddenly appears out of nowhere and drops onto the porch steps, panting. "As my grandpa would say, those kids plum wore me out!"

Jen grins down at her. "You spend too much time sitting in front of your computer."

Liz raises an eyebrow. "Uh-huh. And why aren't _you_ playing tag?"

"Too much time sitting on airplanes."

Liz raises a fist into the air. "Long live women entrepreneurs!"

Both women laugh as I roll my eyes. I know for a fact that Jen goes to a gym two to three times a week even when she's out of town. And from what Allie has told me, Liz did her fair share of hiking with the Whitlock boys when they were younger.

Liz pushes herself to her feet, turning to me. "Jeb, why don't you go out there and prove – oh, your knee." Her expression turns sheepish. "I'm sorry. I forgot."

I smile at her. "That's all right."

I don't know if there's been enough time for either Allie or Jared to tell her about Jared's part in the car accident. Maybe it's just her seeing how Allie's softened toward me, or learning about my part in finding Arianna a week ago. Whatever it is, Liz Richardson seems to have forgiven my part in the death of her friends.

I'm about to tell her that sometimes I forget about my bum knee and try to make it do something it can't do anymore, but I'm interrupted by one of the kids running up to the porch. Jimmy. He's a fourteen-year-old Ugandan boy who's staying with me and Jen until this whole mess of what to do with this passel of teenagers is figured out.

A grin nearly splitting his face, he presses a finger into Liz's arm. "You're it!" He runs away, laughing and calling out to his friends, "Liz is It! Liz is It!"

Liz slumps her shoulder with a groan. "We should have established the porch as the time-out area." Then she straightens, stepping toward the backyard. "Guess I'd better get back to it."

Jen laughs as Liz jogs away, then turns back to me with a sober expression. "Right before Liz came up..." She bites her lip, looks down, then back at me. "It sounded like you weren't sure you wanted to give this place up."

My gaze slides back toward the game. Jared is hooting as he runs away from one of the boys who is staying with the Waldrop family. "No. I'm not sure." I look back at Jen, whose eyes are filled with concern. "But I can't live in a place where most folks seem intent on reminding me what an awful person I am."

"What if I bought it?"

My body instantly becomes as still as a prickly pear cactus. For several ticks, I'm not sure I heard her right. "You...you want to buy this house? The farm?"

A beautiful smile spreads over her face, and she nods. "I've been thinking and praying about this over the past few days." She puts a hand on my arm. "I've done really well for myself, Dad. And for the past few months I've been thinking I have the luxury to slow down. Not take on as many projects."

I raise my brow. "Maybe finally have time to find you a good man."

Letting her hand slide off my arm, Jen laughs, but it sounds hollow. "I'm thirty-nine, Dad. I've done just fine on my own, and on the rare occasions some guy has dared to ask me out, he's never given me good reason to keep looking."

I frown. "What's that supposed to mean? Somebody hurt you?"

Jen waves a hand. "No, no, nothing like that." She turns to face the backyard, staring out at the mountain beyond. "But I hardly think I'd find somebody to suit me out in this redneck wilderness."

I clap a hand on her shoulder with a laugh. "Famous last words, sweetheart, famous last words." I squeeze her shoulder. "Jen, look at me."

She turns back to face me.

"If you don't want me to give up your childhood home, I won't. Long as you're willing to pay the property tax and maintain the place, I'll sign you over the deed."

Jen looks as shocked as I feel as soon as the words are out of my mouth. I'd never given one thought to handing the house over to my daughter. But now that I've suggested it, I like the idea.

Jen closes her mouth, tilts her head, then asks, "But...you need the money to buy a new place, don't you?" She begins shaking her head vigorously. "No, no, Daddy." Reaching out her hand, she grabs my arm. "I don't want you to move. Stay here with me. Give the locals a chance to recover from the accident."

"They've had five years," I snap.

"Five years without you here to defend yourself."

I nearly jump out of my skin at the new voice coming from just behind me. I do a 180 to find Allie standing there.

Allie. Her name might as well be "Ally." Turns out she never did want to lose the friendship between us. Among other things, the day after Jared revealed what he believes to be his part in the accident she told me the real reason she'd returned my three letters from prison. It wasn't because she didn't forgive me or was angry with me, but because she didn't know what to say to me given the guilt she was feeling over the secret she and Jared shared.

"Jared told me," Allie continues, "he'd be willing to take his side of the accident story to the sheriff to get the word spreading that you weren't completely at fault."

I furrow my eyebrows. "Then what would folks start sayin' about you and your boy?"

"Daddy."

I whip my head around like a tumbleweed in a windstorm. I don't think Jen has ever spoken to me so sharply before.

"No matter where you go," she continues in a stern voice, "not everybody's going to like you. And though I don't know a lot of people around here anymore, I'd bet the majority don't hold the accident against you."

Looking down at the ground, I rub my beard while I force myself to remember my encounters in town during the past couple of weeks. Could I have been exaggerating in my mind the antagonism I thought I'd been feeling?

Slowly, I raise my head, looking from one woman to the other. "Y'all might have a point." My knee starts to complain, and I shift my weight to relieve the pain. "It might be that the folks who are still upset with me are just so vocal about it that they feel like the majority."

"And some of the people may just feel awkward around you right now," Jen adds, "knowing you've been in prison."

I study my daughter. I can see in her eyes that she really wants me to stay. I know Allie does, since we had that conversation a couple of days ago.

Without saying another word, I turn, pass Allie, and head back inside the house through the back door. When I turn to see the two women staring at me from outside, I motion with my head. "What're y'all standin' there for? Come on."

They look at each other, then at me, then follow me through the house and out the front door. Ignoring the throbbing in my knee, I limp to the "for sale" sign in the front yard. Grabbing onto both sides, I yank its posts up and out of the dirt.

"Dad!"

I turn to face my daughter, grinning. "Congratulations, ladies." I wink at Allie. "Y'all talked me into staying."

Allie laughs as Jen throws her arms around me.

"Under one condition, though," I say into her hair.

"Shoot."

"You do the cooking whenever you're home."

Jen pulls back, a mock frown on her face. "Okay," she says. "But just remember. You asked for it."

# Chapter Thirty-Five: Jared

"All right, here goes nothing." I open the door to the Tuff Shed and step inside, leaning against the desk-table-kitchen counter as Arianna and Benesha stop just inside the doorway.

I fold my arms across my chest and smile. "Well, girls, what do you think?" I wonder if Arianna realizes that this shed probably saved her life. And, ultimately, assured her and her friends' freedom.

Slowly scanning the small space from the doorway, Arianna's eyes open wide. "It's different, I'm telling you."

It is definitely different. After spending three days shifting things around in the other shed, the one we dubbed "the storage shed", I was able to move the large utility shelf that had been in here since forever to over there. I couldn't have used it, anyway, since it was packed so full of junk. Even though it only took up six square feet of floor space, that's a lot when the total space is under 200 square feet.

Getting rid of it and the pile of stuff behind it allowed me to squeeze a cot into the corner next to the couch. It extends to the desk, barely fitting. On the other side of the desk I've added a clay pot with a spigot that Mom and Dad bought when we first moved here, but never used. It's sitting on a plant stand with a five-gallon bucket underneath. This set-up will serve as my faucet and sink.

Benesha glances from Arianna to me, then looks around. "It is...nice."

"No," I say taking a step away from the desk, " _you're_ nice. Too nice. This place is ugly as all get-out. It needs a woman's touch." I meet Arianna's gaze as she looks at me. "Y'all need to tell me how to make it really and truly nice."

For a minute, Arianna just stares. Then an impish smile grows on her face. She points to my bed. "First, you need to trade that ugly blue blanket for one that has pretty pink flowers. Roses, maybe." Her gaze turns to the wall behind me as she steps away from the door. "You could not put wallpaper over this...what do you call it?"

"Texture."

"Yes. So no flowery wallpaper. But you could hang a lot of pictures of flowers, and kittens with bows around their neck, and-"

Hand to her mouth, Benesha starts giggling, I guess because she's noticed the way I've twisted my mouth around in disgust.

"I'm telling you," Arianna says, laughing herself, "you want a woman's touch, that's what you do."

Now, _this_ is the Arianna that Mom tried, last week, to convince me existed. While she has seemed a little depressed and still keeps to herself a lot, she has been spending a good bit of time with Benesha. She's also been more open and friendly toward me since a few days ago when all of the African teens got together at Jeb's house.

Benesha, for her part, took to me right away, from the first night she slept at our house. Which is cool, because I've felt like her big brother ever since she showed up. Not sure why. Maybe, deep down inside, I've always wanted a little sister.

"Ha, ha." I lean back against the desk again, placing my hands behind me on the surface. "Seriously. I want it to look less like a shed and more like a house."

Benesha comes up to stand beside Arianna. "But the walls are painted and the floor is pretty." Her voice, higher than Arianna's, is almost sing-song when she talks.

The "pretty" floor she refers to is peel-and-stick linoleum that looked pretty good when we first moved in here over a decade ago, but which now has several broken tiles. On several other tiles the top layer is wearing away, revealing a dingy grayish-brown underneath.

"It already looks like a house," the younger girl continues. Her eyes narrow at me. "Why you want to live here, anyway? Why don't you stay with us and Allie and just sleep on the cot there? It's easy to put away every day."

I cross my arms again. "A grown man needs his privacy, and that house isn't very big." The words are only part of the truth, but by the way Benesha's features smooth out and she doesn't probe any further, they seem to be enough explanation for her. That's good, because Mom has sworn me to secrecy about the real reason I'm moving out here.

"So, ideas." I glare at Arianna with mock sternness. " _Serious_ ideas."

Arianna walks over to the window and taps on the wall next to it. "Curtains. Definitely curtains."

"And a rug to match." Benesha rubs her foot over a particularly chipped-up tile. "Right here, to cover this ugly spot."

They throw out a few more ideas, most of which appeal much more to me than Arianna's earlier teasing suggestions. After some light debate about the ideal color for the curtains and rug between the girls, I flick a glance at my watch.

"Flea market's open," I say. "Anybody want to go with me and help me pick out a few things?"

Arianna's mischievous smile comes back. "Can I drive?"

"Sure, why not." I grin. One of the many things Arianna had yet to learn under the so-called care of Hugh Brent was that the legal driving age in this country is sixteen. So, of course, she hasn't a clue about how to drive.

"Then I am staying here." Now Benesha crosses her arms, shooting her friend a skeptical look.

We all burst out laughing, and, five minutes later, pile into my Buick and head to town.

As the girls chatter behind me, that older brother feeling infuses itself into me, warming the middle of my chest. I only hope I'm not setting myself up for disappointment, starting to care for these girls who so desperately need a family. Becoming an older brother again is really growing on me.

#  Chapter Thirty-Six: Arianna

During the past couple of weeks, I have not felt this much emotion since my sister died. No, since I found out Mr. Brent had lied about taking my brother to the United States. Except this time, the emotions are as varied as the baskets of fruits that women back in Uganda would carry home on their heads from the marketplace.

Fear was the first player, fear at seeing Mr. Brent again. Even though I knew he would no longer be able to enslave me, or be able to control me, and even though I knew that he was going to suffer for what he'd done. Anger came next. In the days leading up to confronting him at the church service, it would slither around me at unexpected moments, temporarily quieting the fear with its red-hot tendrils.

Joy came next, the night that I saw my friends set free, and reunited with them.

And then fear again – this time, fear of the unknown. It has been lurking around me like a shadow since that night, but the brightness of the excitement and anticipation for a future of freedom have kept that fear at bay.

Then there is the heart-wrenching sorrow. It has been living in tandem with the excitement about my freedom, more persistent than the fear, reminding me that soon, my friends and I will all be going our separate ways. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I wrestle with the idea that perhaps I would have been better off – if we all would have been better off – if we had somehow been able to stay together.

Even if it meant staying with Mr. Brent.

Then I remember: for me, it would mean marrying the odious man, and for the other children, it would probably mean eventually being sold off as Dalia was.

Dalia. They are looking for her, Jeb told me. Mr. Brent confessed to having sold her to a slave agent. But all he could do was describe him and tell the authorities where the transaction took place, as the agent refused to tell Mr. Brent his name.

Jeb's daughter, Allie, and Miss Liz pooled their money to pay for an artist to create a likeness of Dalia based on the description I and some of the other children have provided. I could not speak when the artist finished, for the lump in my throat at the feeling that I was looking into Dalia's face. That's how accurate the portrait is.

Jen has begun posting the picture wherever she can on the Internet, including creating a YouTube video using the picture. And Jeb has told me that he will do everything he can to encourage whatever authorities he contacts to find Dalia.

I only hope it's not too late for her.

In any case, I choose to believe that God has all twelve of us original choir members in His hand. Nothing is official yet, but we have all been told that if the U.S. government finds any of our relatives in Africa that wants to take us in until the age of eighteen, we will go back to those relatives. Three remember aunts and uncles who visited their families before their parents died and the children were put into orphanages. Benesha included.

The thought of never seeing her again tears my heart in two. I remind myself that I would have never known her if not for Mr. Brent's crimes, but the thought does not console me. I think she has taken the place of my sister in my soul – really, though she is only three years younger than I, in some ways I have been like a mother to her.

Now I sit with my back against the very shed I first took shelter in so many weeks ago, a week and a half after Hugh Brent's arrest, and watch Jared coach Benesha as she tries to climb a nearby cedar tree. My mind wanders to the revelation we received the other day about Mrs. Brent.

Turns out that was all another big lie, her being married to Hugh Brent. Her name is Mary Lou Wallace, and she claims that he took her in after her mother kicked her out of her home in Alabama. She was only eighteen, and he made all sorts of promises to her if she would only agree to be his business partner. It wasn't until a year later that he revealed what his "business" idea was, and when he did, she tried to get out of it. But he threatened to kill her and then go after her family if she didn't stay with him.

If she's telling the truth, then she was, in a way, a slave herself. So I suppose I should feel sorry for her, but it's hard.

The sound of Benesha screaming yanks my attention back to the tree. Instinctively, I push myself off the shed wall and begin to move in her direction, but then I see that it is just that one of her feet slipped and she is only four feet off the ground.

"Be careful, Benesha!" I call out, annoyed that Jared is laughing at her plight.

But in the next instant he is underneath her, telling her that he'll catch her if she falls, and the annoyance slips away like a drop of water on sand. _I'll catch you if you fall_. The words revolve around my brain for the next little while. This is what God has done for me. For all of us African children. We were falling, but He caught us before anything really bad had a chance to happen.

I wonder if Mr. Brent will let God catch him.

"Arianna?"

Allie's voice from some distance behind me snaps me back to the present, and I turn to face the direction the sound is coming from. Phone in hand, she is walking around the northwest corner of the garden and toward me quickly, a big smile on her face.

My heart plummets. I know she has been talking to one of the two social workers who have been working to find me and the other children homes. While I have tried to remain hopeful during the process, the fact that Benesha and I are still at Allie's has got me wondering what about us might be making it hard to find foster families who will take us in.

Did they finally find somebody? I know Allie, who insisted that I drop the "Miss" about a week ago, wouldn't be smiling at the news that we'd have to spend time in an orphanage.

Another idea flies into my head, and my heart clenches. Maybe they have discovered some of Benesha's relatives. I immediately feel guilty for the selfish thought.

Allie walks up to me, takes my hand, and squeezes it. "I have good news. At least I hope it will be good. Can we talk inside the shed?"

I follow her into the shed, closing the door behind me. Allie sits down on the couch where I slept my very first night here, patting the place beside her. I sit next to her and turn to face her without a word. I could not speak if I tried right now. A huge lump has formed in my throat.

As much as I have tried to prepare myself for the day I would leave, as many times as I have reminded myself that it would be for the best, that God would take care of me...now that the day has come I want to cry out like a small child that I don't want to leave.

Allie's smile fades. "Arianna, are you okay?"

I nod, trying to force a smile and failing.

"All right." Allie takes a big breath. "Arianna, during the past month, you've become like a daughter to me."

My eyebrows raise slightly as my heart rate picks up. I remember the day that Jared came home when I asked her to be my mama. We never did come back to that, and I had decided she did not reciprocate my feelings.

"Maybe I should back up." Allie clears her throat. "A year after Jared left, I felt so lonely that I decided to get my training and approval to be a foster parent. I got the approval, but I never did put my name out there because I realized that when a child would have to leave my care, my heart would break all over again."

Wait a minute. Allie is a foster mother? Does she mean...?

My heart rate doubles in speed, and I struggle not to hope. But hope explodes inside me, anyway.

Allie puts a hand on my leg. "Arianna, I totally understand if you want to go back to Africa. To look for your brother, or...or to live there permanently." She swallows. "Just be perfectly honest with me. But if you want to stay here, the county has just approved for me to...be your foster mother."

Her hand slides off my leg, and she clasps both her hands together in her lap while she gives me a shaky smile. And while I try to calm both my runaway heart and my spinning brain. Now it all makes sense. The mysterious smiles she and Jared have been sharing for the past week. Jared cleaning out and refurnishing the shed to make it look like a little house.

Is this really happening? Of course one day I want to try to find Adroa, but –

"Oh, Miss – I mean, Allie – yes! Yes, please, I want to live with you. If it's not too much –"

Allie cuts off my words with a shriek. Throwing her arms around me, she begins to laugh.

I laugh, too, although I believe the urge to cry is just as strong.

"Oh!" Allie exclaims, pulling out of the embrace. "And Benesha. While they look for her family. I know she's like a sister to you, so I asked – they said – oh, do you think she'd like to stay here, too?"

Now I can't keep the tears from streaming down my face. Without answering Allie, I jump up, run to the door, and throw it open. "Benesha!" I call, remembering too late that she is climbing a tree and if I startle her, she could fall.

But when I look up, she is seated on a limb about eight feet off the ground, grinning down at Jared. The grin slides off her face when she looks over at me. "What is wrong?"

"Come down here, quick!" I command, starting to laugh.

She comes down, and I tell her the news. A few seconds later, we are crying on each other's shoulders. Then, before I know what is happening, Allie has come to us and we are all holding hands and dancing around in a circle, laughing.

I see Jared, standing off to the side, rolling his eyes at us. But the smile on his face goes from one side to the other.

When we finally stop, Benesha, gasping for breath, exclaims, "This is the best present I ever got! Except for that doll."

I smile at her, then Allie. Then, I tilt my head upward. "Thank You, God!" I shout to the sky.

He is taking care of me. In a better way than I could have ever imagined.

THE END...

... _but not really!_ There are other choir members' lives to follow, not to mention the lives of Jared, Liz, and the other residents on this mountain. So keep reading to find out more about the other books in this series!

Also, I have the first book in my latest series, "Rock Star Husbands," available for pre-order now. The series consists of sweet, clean romance novels with a touch of faith. If you would like to check out the first book in the series, _Worth The Risk_ , search for it by title and my author name, Emily Josephine, at your favorite ebook retailer. The novel will go LIVE on June 15, 2020!

# Note To My Readers

Dear Reader,

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this novel! If you enjoyed it, I have a HUGE favor to ask you. Would you take a moment to write a review for it? Reviews are the lifeblood of authors. In today's digital world, it's how prospective buyers find their books, _and gives extra support to the authors that you enjoy._ So I would appreciate it SO MUCH if you would jot just a couple of sentences to help other readers decide whether this novel is worth a try for them.

As soon as you read the end of this book, you'll be able to navigate straight to the page where you can write a review.

Thanks a ZILLION in advance! :)

## The inspiration for this story

Arianna's story is, unfortunately, loosely based on a true story that my mom told me years ago. Authorities discovered that a man touring his choir of African children had actually purchased those children as slaves and was using them, of course, for his own monetary gain.

Human trafficking, aka slavery, is alive and well today. And children and young adults from foreign countries aren't the only victims. Whatever country you live in there are people being bought and sold as slaves – even among people of their own race or ethnicity! I encourage you to find and support an organization that is helping to combat that, and/or helping to transition former slaves back into freedom.

Whether the unethical heads of some African orphanages actually sell off some of their wards, I don't know. While it's possible, I made up that piece for the story.

## The Pine Mountain plot thickens

Are you interested in following the lives of the characters in this book? You can, and you _must_ continue with the series if you want to find out what happened to Arianna's best friend, Dalia!

"Pine Mountain Estates" is currently a four-book series. I plan to add a book or two in the series every year for the next few years, as I have a lot in store for these characters.

If you have enjoyed and read some of the books in my "Texas Hearts" series, you will eventually see some of your favorite characters from those stories (now twenty years older!) incorporated into the community of Pine Mountain Estates.

_You can get a sneak peek at all of the first four books in the series here:_  https://www.emilyjosephinewrites.com/my-novels/pine-mountain-estates-series/

Read on for several other titles that you may enjoy!

Blessings to you,

Emily Josephine

# More Books by Emily Josephine

The next three books in this series are available only at the world's largest online bookseller (which shares the name of the largest river in South America, hint.) HOWEVER, you can find the boxed set of the first four novels in this series at any of the major online book retailers. The cost is about 30% less than buying each novel individually. Search "Pine Mountain Estates Books 1-4 by Emily Josephine" to find it.

_The Envelope_ is the first novel in my inspirational romance series, "Texas Hearts." It is FREE. You can find it at all the large online booksellers.

_His Second Chance_ is the first novel in my sweet, clean romance series, "Choices and Chances." It costs a mere 99 cents. This series is available only at the world's largest online bookseller.

How about a FREE short story? "Revenge" will leave your eyeballs popping and mouth grinning by the end. Search for it at any of the usual online booksellers.

For more information on and links to my other novels in the series, as well as a link to the free short story, please visit my blog at https://emilyjosephinewrites.com.

## Want to know about my upcoming books?

There are three ways to stay in the loop about the publication of my future novels. The first and ABSOLUTE BEST way is by signing up on the form in the right sidebar of my author website, https://emilyjosephinewrites.com. This way, you will receive new blog posts to your inbox the instant I publish them – and I always post when I have a new book coming out, or am about to discount the price of a book.

Therefore, you will not only be among the first to not only know as soon as I publish a new book, but also have an opportunity to download my newest releases for FREE.

#  About Emily Josephine

Emily Josephine lives in the rural Southern U.S. where she, along with her husband, are muddling their way through the complexities of the simple life. A perimenopausal mother of one, Emily spends her days wishing she still lived near a health food store gardening, getting irritable for no reason learning to accept the ever-increasing gray hairs and wrinkles on her body, and trying to get her son off the computer and outside into the five acres that she and her husband purchased just for him.

And, of course, she pursues her passion: writing. She's written about all kinds of topics, but she loves writing women's fiction and sweet, clean romances most of all, using her books to infuse the knowledge she's gained about simple living, God's love and grace, and finding peace and purpose in our messed-up world.

***********************

**PLEASE REMEMBER...** If you enjoyed this book, please take a minute to write a positive review of it at your favorite online bookstore. It will help others to find and enjoy this novel, as well.

Thank you very much, and I wish you every blessing!

Emily Josephine

