Published by Steeple Hill Books^™

      MILLS & BOON

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      Dedicated to my grandfather, Harold Norris.

       I remember him for his small kindnesses

       and his big heart. He was a good man.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Epilogue

      Chapter One

      “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.”

      John 10:11

      Marla Gossett sat in her bare apartment on the one wooden chair she had left to her name. The apartment building faced a busy street in south central Los Angeles, with the constant hum of cars going by. Marla didn’t even hear the noise any longer. She’d sold her sofa yesterday and the kids’ beds the day before that. She wished she could at least take the beds with them, but they wouldn’t fit in the car when they moved. Besides, they all had sleeping bags.

      Right now she was in the middle of selling her lamp to the African-American woman who had moved in down the hall a week ago.

      Marla had given up on selling the chair she was sitting on. No one was willing to buy it with “XIX” carved into the arm. Not that she blamed them. She felt uneasy just sitting on the thing herself. She had put a notice in the hallway a week ago and several people had asked about the chair until they saw the numbers.

      “You’ll have a new life away from here,” her African-American neighbor—Susan was her name—said softly. Susan was looking at these numbers on the chair. “Your son?”

      Marla nodded. She wasn’t proud that her eleven-year-old son, Sammy, had carved the sign of the 19th Street gang into her furniture. She told herself it was only natural for young boys to be impressed with the tough guys that ruled their neighborhood. The 19th Street gang was the largest Hispanic gang in Los Angeles. She knew her son was just an onlooker at this point. Other people didn’t know that, though, and they were scared to buy the chair even if it was solid oak and had been the finest piece of furniture she owned.

      The chair had been a wedding gift, and there was a matching wooden cross that came to hang behind it.

      Susan looked up from the chair. “Well, I guess they have gangs everywhere. Where are you going, anyway?”

      “A place called Dry Creek, Montana. My husband had an uncle who left us a house there before he died.”

      “Did your husband get a chance to show it to you?”

      Marla shook her head. She had already shared her vital statistics, so the woman knew her husband had died from lung cancer last year.

      “Well, at least he left you with something,” Susan said in a tone that implied she didn’t expect much from men. “Of course, it would have been better if he’d gotten you some life insurance.”

      “We always thought there was plenty of time.”

      The woman nodded, and Marla wondered how it was that death had become so commonplace. Some days she wanted to scream at the injustice of it, but more often it just weighed her down with its ordinariness.

      She had been a widow for over a year, and it still felt like yesterday. She’d married Jorge when she was nineteen, and it hadn’t taken long for the blaze of romance between them to settle into a steady flame of affection. At least, she had assumed the flame was steady. That was the way it had been on her side.

      The cancer came hard and swiftly. It wasn’t until Jorge was gone that she had had time to think about her marriage. Near the end, when he could barely speak, Jorge confessed he’d been unfaithful several times and pleaded with her to forgive him. He said he didn’t want to die with those sins on his conscience.

      After his diagnosis, Jorge had started praying often and had asked her to move their wooden cross into the bedroom. It seemed to comfort him, and Marla was glad for that. She believed her husband did repent his sins. So what could she do? There was no time to work through her feelings. She forgave him because she had to, and then he lost consciousness, dying later that same night.

      When he was gone, all Marla could think about was their marriage. She kept wondering if something was lacking in her, and if that was why Jorge had not loved her enough to be faithful or to even talk to her about his problems. Maybe she didn’t inspire love the way other women did.

      Even when he’d proposed, Jorge had not made any grand gestures of love toward her. Marla had not thought anything was wrong with that, though; she thought it was just the way he was. Marriage wasn’t all about roses and valentines. She’d accepted that. But had she missed some clue? Or were there many little clues she had ignored? Was a woman supposed to keep a tally of things that would tell her if her husband still loved her? How could she not even have known he was unfaithful?

      As her feelings for Jorge changed, Marla wondered if she’d ever really known her husband. Still, especially in the past few weeks, she’d wished he were still alive so they could share the problems about Sammy. Jorge might have been unfaithful to her, but he had loved Sammy. What would Sammy do without his dad?

      Worrying about Sammy had made her take the cross out of the box, where she’d put it after Jorge died, and hang it on the wall again. Sometimes she’d look at it, searching for the solace her husband had found in it. She wished she could find an answer for Sammy there. The cross didn’t speak to her the way it had to Jorge.

      “Did you say Montana?” Susan was frowning for the first time.

      Marla nodded. She wondered why the mention of Montana was disturbing her neighbor more than their earlier discussion about death had.

      “They don’t have much color there.”

      “You mean trees?”

      Susan pursed her lips as she turned to study Marla. “No, I mean people.”

      Marla had combed her hair this morning, as she did every morning. It was freshly washed and fell smoothly to her shoulders. At thirty-five, she knew she was no great beauty, but her skin was light olive,