You held up the empty condom wrapper.

"It's only good for one time?" If I'd known, I would have taken Fred's entire stash.

"So now what?"

You put your hand at the back of my neck and brought me to you for a kiss. "Now we lie here in the sun and listen to the birds and eat the lunch you packed and—"

How could you talk about listening to some stupid bird when all I could think about was your lips on my breast and your body between my legs? "I guess that means it wasn't as good for you as it was for me?"

"Why do you say that?"

"You're so...so., .casual about it. "Today was the most important day of my life.

Nothing before had even come close. And here you were cloud-gazing like it was any old day.

"I'm sorry. It's just the way I am, Julia."

I threw the grass at you. "You could at least tell me you liked it."

I know that I'd given as good as I got and I wanted you to be as eager for it to happen again as I was. But maybe most of all I wanted to know that while you were in Detroit you would remember me with the same longing that I had for you. I didn't know until that moment how afraid I was that you would go home and find someone you liked better.

How could I compete with sophisticated city girls? Everything I knew about the world outside Kansas I'd learned from magazines.

You didn't say anything for a long time and somehow I managed not to jump in with inane chatter to fill the silence. I could see that I'd dampened the joy that you'd been experiencing only moments before and didn't understand what was happening. Had it been awful for you and you were afraid to tell me?

"You have to realize that sex isn't the mystery for me that it is for you, Julia."

You confused me with that. "Are you saying I'm not—"

"My mother was a prostitute."

You said it with such acceptance that it almost seemed you were talking about the plot of some R-rated movie. In my world bad mothers were women who fed their kids a steady diet of fast food. I couldn't conceive what it must have been like for you growing up with a woman who earned the rent money selling her body.

"Always?" I asked, seeking a good memory.

"Yeah—always. When she brought her Johns to the apartment, I'd be sent to the corner market to buy cigarettes, or if she didn't have the money for cigarettes, I'd be shoved out the door to stand in the hallway until she was finished. That's when she remembered I was even there, which was only about half the time."

"How old were you?"

You sent me a penetrating stare. "This was how I lived. All my life. I've never associated sex with love or tenderness or caring, only money."

"Not even now?" I said, my heart in my throat.

"I'm learning. But it's been hard. You want me in a way that has nothing to do with people using each other. I don't understand that. And I don't trust it. Not completely.

Not yet."

"What can I do to help you?" I had a project. I would find a way for you to see the good in people. In me. I would do whatever I could to give you the joy and trust and love you'd never had.

You ignored my question.

"I've never seen a man look at a woman the way your dad looks at your mom," you said. "And your mom looks back at him like he's the most handsome, sexiest, funniest guy on earth. Robert Redford could be standing next to Clyde and your mom wouldn't see him. "You plucked off the grass that I'd thrown at you and tossed it aside.

"The idea of loving someone like that is as foreign to me as palm trees and white sandy beaches. I know they exist, I want to experience them, but I don't have what it takes to believe I'll ever feel that sand between my toes. I want us to have what your mom and dad have, Julia. I want it so much it hurts."

"My mom and dad really look at each other like that?" Not that I'd ever seen.

"All the time. You don't see it because you don't want to, or maybe you're blind to it because they're your parents."

Back then I didn't know how to respond to you when you said something like that. I was too young, my life before you too sheltered, to really understand what you were saying. "You mean they look at each other like this?" I put everything I had into the look I gave you, batting my eyelashes and grinning seductively.

You laughed, but I saw a wariness, as if you were thinking it had been a mistake to talk to me about your mother. "Yeah, just like that."

"I love you, Evan McDonald. "There it was. The fit as natural and right as a fox wearing its own fur. "And I'm going to love you when I'm fifty years old exactly the way I love you now." At the time fifty was as old as I could imagine and the same as saying forever. "If you let me."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"If you don't find someone else when you go home."

You moved toward me so that we were nearly nose to nose. "What are you talking about?"

You really had no idea. "Detroit."

"Detroit isn't my home anymore. It's just another city. My home is here. With you.

For the rest of my life, wherever you are is where I want to be. How could you not know that?"

It wasn't the I love you, too, that I'd been looking for. It was a whole lot better.

C H A P T E R 8

David put in his three hours at the typewriter, ate his first meal of the day—a bowl of stale cereal—grabbed his tool belt and headed back to the dock to fix the loose board he'd found that morning.

He liked repair work but found more satisfaction in creating the small, one-of-a-kind chests and boxes he made when he needed something to do that had nothing to do with writing. He created his boxes out of layers of contrasting woods glued together in varying patterns, experimenting with color and texture and grain. The finish received as much attention as the construction, and when he was satisfied he'd reached his self-imposed standard of perfection, he gave the box away.

Of the dozens of boxes he'd made, he'd kept only one. Crude in comparison to the others, the wood ordinary white pine, the hinges scavenged from a bin in an old-fashioned hardware store in Enid, Oklahoma. For the past dozen and a half years it had been the depository of the one or two invariable bad reviews that accompanied the publication of his books. They were the only ones he kept, ignoring the ones that proclaimed him a genius and the conscience of the hedonistic eighties and self-indulgent nineties. He used them as reminders of the futility of writing for anything but his own approval.

He saw Julia standing on the dock as soon as he rounded the final turn on the path.

She had her back to him, and for an instant he thought about retracing his steps and returning when she'd left. Not until that moment did he realize that his months of solitude had left him with a proprietary feeling about the place. He didn't like knowing that he was no longer there alone, free to come and go without conscious thought or consideration of another person.

He stopped to watch her. By anyone's definition she was a classic beauty. She had the features idealized in marble thousands of years ago by sculptors in love with perfection.

She was thinner than the Greek and Roman ideal, her hair shorter, the sadness in her eyes something not even the most skilled artisan could capture in stone.

Despite being annoyed that she was there, David felt a completely unexpected attraction. Obviously, he'd been alone too long. He needed to stop trying to find himself, and get back into the world. The simple fact that he could be attracted to a woman who'd come there to mourn her husband was insane.

She heard his approach and jumped, a fleeting look of panic crossing her eyes. An embarrassed smile followed. "I keep expecting a bear to wander out of the woods."

"I think the hunters cleared them out of this area a long time ago. At least, I haven't seen any while I've been here." David stopped at the end of the dock and put one hand on the waist-high piling, the other on his hip. "I noticed a board coming up this morning and figured I'd better fix it before one of us tripped and took a header into the lake."

"I already fixed it," she said. When he didn't say anything, she added, "I found some tools in the garage. I hope it's okay that I borrowed them."

"Of course it's okay." He shrugged. "Just not expected."

"What? That I can pound a couple of nails? I can fix leaky toilets, too, and cranky sprinkler systems, and wobbling ceiling fans, and you should see what I can do with creaky floor boards." She softened the words with a smile.

"I didn't mean I thought you were incapable, just that I was surprised you'd want to. I was told you were here on vacation." She appeared fresh from a shower, her dark hair damp and curling in a loose cap around her face. Dressed in red shirt, tied at her waist, and white shorts that showed off lean, muscular legs, she seemed a different woman from the one he'd met that morning, younger and somehow less guarded.

"It's been a long time between vacations. Obviously I don't know how to relax anymore."

He shifted his hand to the hammer in his tool belt. "Give it a couple of days. This place will either impose its pace or drive you back to the city."

"What do you do around here? For entertainment, I mean. Is there a theater in town?"

"You'd have to go into Redding for that."

"A video store?"

"The grocery store carries twenty-five or thirty titles, but any that aren't ten years old are gone by noon ."

"Sounds like I should find a bookstore."

He hesitated. "I've got a couple of boxes of books I'm donating to the library. You can go through and pick what you want." To make sure she didn't misinterpret his offer as an invitation to visit, he added, "I'll bring them by later and leave them on the porch."

"Thanks."

"Well, I guess I'd better get back."

She shoved her hands in her pockets."Yeah, me, too."

He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye at the edge of the clearing and turned to see what it was. A flash of white moved between two Douglas firs and then cautiously appeared next to a low- growing gooseberry bush. It was the dog he'd been feeding for several weeks and had named Pearl for her thick, almost iridescent white coat.

Where she'd appeared reasonably healthy before, she now looked emaciated and desperate.

"Shit," David muttered.

"What's wrong?"Julia followed his gaze.

"She's had pups." He should have known she wasn't plump because she was healthy.

How could he have been so stupid?

"Who—" But then she saw what David saw."Oh, my God. She's so skinny."

"She's been gone almost a week. I figured the coyotes had finally gotten her."

"She's yours?"

"She's a stray. Or more likely, she was dumped. That happens a lot around here.

Whoever had her probably discovered she was pregnant and didn't want to deal with it.

I haven't been able to get close enough to see if she has tags."

"She looks like she's starving."

"I'm amazed she's still alive. I've been leaving food out for her, but plainly not enough. I just assumed she was also getting fed somewhere else. I had no idea she was pregnant."

"What have you been giving her?"

"Whatever I had around the house."

"I'm going to see what I have," Julia said. "Keep an eye on her for me, please."

"She's not going anywhere." David took off his tool belt and laid it on the ground.

Pearl watched his every movement.

Within minutes Julia was back, a stack of sandwiches on a plate. David held up his hand when she moved his way. Maybe it was men Pearl feared. "She doesn't trust me.

Why don't you try."

Julia nodded. She slowly started across the clearing.

"Talk to her," David said."Tell her that she’s a good dog—and that she's beautiful."

They were the words he'd used to gain the little trust Pearl had allowed him.

Snatches of Julia's coaxing drifted to him, things about babies and being a mother mixed with the words good and beautiful. She was within twenty yards when she stopped, held out one of the sandwiches and then gave it a small toss forward. Julia then backtracked about ten feet and lowered herself to her haunches, purposely looking to the side and not directly at Pearl.

David kept his gaze locked on Pearl, ready to move should she misinterpret Julia's retreat and in her desperation become aggressive. Instead, a wave of pity shot through him so strong it became impossible to remain a bystander in Pearl's life.

She trembled as she left the safety of the forest and neared the sandwich, almost falling when she lowered her head to snatch it. Two bites and it was gone. She lifted her head to look at Julia, then at David.

Julia placed the plate on the ground, stood and backed away.

"It's okay," he mouthed, sending words of encouragement to Pearl that she couldn't possibly hear or understand. "Go for it."

Julia walked toward David. "Is she eating?"

"If she doesn't slow down, I'm afraid it's going to come back up."

Not until Julia was beside him did she chance looking at Pearl again, catching one final glimpse as she picked up the last sandwich and carried it into the woods.

"She's not going to make it if we don't do something to help her," Julia said.

"What was in the sandwich?"

"Peanut butter. It was the only protein I had."

He would never have thought to give a dog peanut butter. "I'm surprised she got it down."

"I put butter on the bread first."

"Well, it must have worked." David bent to retrieve his tool belt. 'I’ll go into town to get some dog food."

"I can get it. I was going anyway."

He nodded.

"Unless you want to go," she said. "She is your dog, after all—well, kind of."When he didn't immediately answer, she said, "Or we could go together."

Oh, hell. This was becoming way too complicated. His life was screwed up enough already without adding a homeless dog and emotionally lost widow. "Be ready in five minutes," he snapped."I'll pick you up by the garage."

Seeing her justified confusion, he added, "If that's okay with you."

"I'll be there." Her reply lacked her earlier enthusiasm.

David pulled up in a truck that would have been left on the back forty to go to rust in Kansas, leaned across the seat and opened the door. Julia didn't say anything as she climbed in beside him.

"I owe you an apology," he said, grinding the transmission into first gear. "I wasn't expecting company this summer, and like all true curmudgeons I'm a little slow accepting change. I'm sorry if I've come across as less than welcoming."

Company? It was a term she would expect from the owner, not the caretaker. "I'll try to stay out of your way from now on."

"That's fair. And I'll do what I can to stay out of yours."

"Now that we have that settled, I was thinking that we can make this trip a lot shorter and get out of each other’s way sooner if we stop at the vet's first." She went on to explain that they could buy a specialized food there and she would go back into town to do her grocery shopping another time. Alone.

The vet listened and nodded as David and Julia told him about Pearl. Plainly, it was a story he'd heard before. He wasn't encouraging about their chances of saving her but suggested vitamins and a prescription food for lactating dogs that he thought would give her the best chance.

"You could try to find the puppies before the coyotes do," he said, walking with them through the waiting room. "Provided they're more than a couple of weeks old, you might be able to save one or two of them if the mom doesn't make it."

When they were in the truck again and headed home, Julia said, "I hesitate asking this, considering we just said we would stay out of each other's way, but would you like help looking for Pearl's puppies?"

"I'm not going to try."

Could she have been that wrong about the kind of man he was? "But if we don't—"

"If I follow Pearl, she'll lose the little trust she has in me. When that happens she'll stop coming in for food and then she'll die. If she dies, so do the puppies."

Julia wasn't about to surrender that easily. "There has to be a better answer."

He stiff-armed the steering wheel. "I don't subscribe to lost causes. And as I see it, Pearl isn't a 'we' project. Either I take her on or you do."

So, it was her he didn't like interfering in his life, not Pearl or her puppies. Had she done something to offend him? After years of forcing her way into offices of people working just as hard to keep her out, she truly wasn't aware anymore when she was being pushy or too assertive or simply expressing interest. She wasn't the same woman she'd been before the kidnapping and had no idea how to go back. Or if she even wanted to.

"I'm sorry. I'll butt out." She rolled down the window, let the wind whip her hair and stared at the passing trees. "Pearl is all yours."

They were almost to the house when David said, "No, I'm sorry. I've been acting like a jerk." He took in a deep breath. "Let's work on getting her back to my place with food and then we'll station ourselves at points along her route to see if we can figure out where she's hidden her puppies."

She could hear the doubt in his voice; he didn't believe for a minute that it would work. But she was grateful he was willing to make the attempt, and that he had included her in the effort. She would have a hard time getting through the day knowing someone or something needed her and she wasn't doing everything she could.

"Thank you," she told him.

He rewarded her one of his heart-stopping smiles. "You're welcome." After several seconds, he added, "I'm sorry about today. Can we begin again?"

She'd known few men in her life who apologized—at least, few whom she believed.

For most, the words were a means to an end. She decided right then, without reservation and despite their rocky start, that she liked David Prescott.

She returned his smile. "Consider it done."

That night when Julia called Shelly and Jason, she told them about Pearl, grateful to have something to talk about other than how much she missed them.

"Grandma's cat had kittens," Shelly said cautiously after they'd exhausted the discussion about Pearl.

Her mother was a founding member of the Bickford Animal Shelter and fanatical about spaying and neutering. It was highly unlikely that she'd allowed one of her cats to get pregnant. "Grandma's cat?" Julia questioned.

"Well, not exactly. It's one she brought home from the shelter. The mom is almost a kitten herself and Grandma didn't think she would know what to do when she had her own babies. They're so-o-o-o-o cute, Mom." She rushed on before Julia could say anything. "She said I could have one—if it's okay with you. Is it? I really, really want this gray-and-white one. He's been sleeping with me and he follows me everywhere.

Grandma said she would pay for his shots and that she'd have him fixed as soon as he's old enough so you wouldn't have to do anything when he comes home."

It was on the tip of Julia's tongue to ask what would happen to the cute little kitten that would become a full-grown cat by the time Shelly left for college, but she'd been the bearer of negative answers for so long that she leaped at the opportunity to be positive. "Okay."

Shelly shrieked. "Thank you, Mom. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You won't be sorry. I promise. I'll do everything. You'll never have to feed Jim or change the litter box or anything."

Julia believed that the way she believed she would be the million-dollar grand-prize winner if she bought a magazine subscription. "Have you named him?"

"Grandma told me not to, but I did anyway. I'm calling him Orlando."

Julia didn't have to ask why. Shelly, like half her friends, had a bedroom wall covered in Orlando Bloom posters. "I like it."

"I suppose I should tell you that Jason will probably want one, too. There's this scrawny little black one that the mom rejected that Grandma has been helping Jason bottle-feed."

How could she tell Jason no when she'd told Shelly yes? Maybe Shelly was wrong and Jason wouldn't ask.

"Jason wants to talk to you, Mom," Shelly said.

So much for that idea.

Six Months and a Day Missing

"I'm pregnant," I blurted out. It wasn't anything like the way I'd planned to tell you.

I'd spent the day going over how to lead you into the news gently. The timing was terrible. We were in the middle of junior- year finals and you were a week away from your last summer in Detroit. I held my breath and waited.

You went from wide-eyed surprise to full-face grin, picked me up and swung me around, which was an amazing feat in our tiny apartment, and plopped down on the couch with me in your lap. "When did you find out?"

"You're not upset?"

"Hell, no. Why would I be?"

Perversely, your enthusiasm rattled me, even made me a little angry. I'd prepared arguments to convince you that having a baby wasn't the disaster it seemed, and you were over-the-moon happy. "Oh, I don't know. How about we still have a year before we graduate, we're not married, you're about to leave for three months, we're—"

"Two-and-a-half months."

"What?" I glared at you. "I'm telling you my life is in shambles and all you can do is correct my time line? Are you crazy?"You caught me as I moved to get up and pulled me back down.

"We can do this, Julia. "You kissed me then—

a kiss filled with such warmth and longing and passion that my unreasoning fury melted like a marshmallow in a campfire.

"How?" I asked, so near to tears my chin quivered.

"We'll work on that later," you said. "Right now I want to celebrate. With you—"You put your hand on my still-flat belly. "And with our baby."

We dug through the couch and chairs and under the seats in the car and in the ashtray and came up with two dollars and twenty-three cents. The side pocket of my purse yielded a five-dollar bill, which to us at the time was tantamount to finding a fortune. You took the bottles we'd been collecting back to the store, added it to the change we'd found and came home with an incredible feast. That night we spread a blanket out in a wheat field and ate brie and crackers and grapes and toasted our lives together with sparkling cider. We made love for the first time without any protection. It was so- o-o-o unbelievably sexy to have that kind of freedom that I swore we'd never go back to condoms, which plainly couldn't be counted on anyway. When we'd exhausted positions and each other, we lay with arms and legs entangled and counted stars.

You pointed out the Big Dipper and said, "See the second star on the handle?"

I nodded, my chin rhythmically bumping your shoulder.

"That's our star from now on."

"Why that one?"

"It's not one—it's four. They're so near each other, astronomically speaking, that they look like one."

I'd learned by then to stop questioning how you knew these kinds of things. You absorbed and stored knowledge like an intellectual sponge. "And you chose this star—"

"Mizar."

"You chose Mizar because?"

"It represents our family. Or the family we will have one day."

" We haven't had our first baby and you 're already planning a second?"

"Two against two. Us against them. It's only fair to even the odds, don't you think?"

I'd thought about having a family with you, of course, but not this soon. We had another year of school ahead of us and then graduation, jobs to find, moving and settling into a new apartment. Adding a baby to the mix complicated everything. How was I going to fit labor and delivery around finals? I couldn't possibly care for a brand-new baby and go to classes. I was going to have to quit school, at least for a semester. I started hyperventilating.

"Hey," you said, and drew me closer. "I didn't mean to scare you. If you really don't want two, we don't have to—"

"I don't know how I'm going to deal with one," I admitted. "I can't think about two.

Not yet. Maybe not ever." What I was trying to tell you was that I was scared. Really scared. I still hadn't become a wife and I was going to be a mother.

The wife part was settled when we eloped without telling anyone. We expected my mom and dad to be hurt, but being able to add that we were married when they announced they were becoming grandparents went a long way in salving the wounds.

As always, they pitched in and loaded us up with everything we could possibly need for a new baby, including giving us their time whenever possible.

That was the last summer I spent on the farm. My mother realized I would only be back for visits from then on and spent the entire time adjusting her moods to accommodate joy at having her married and pregnant daughter under her wing and sorrow knowing it would never happen again.

You and I did fine. No, we did better than fine. When Shelly was born in January, you took to being a father as if you'd been programmed for the job. I used to imagine you with your baby brother and liked knowing that he'd had you to love and care for him during his short life.

I didn't have to drop out of school, even though we spent the first six months of Shelly's life like loving zombies. We were lucky to share a kiss as we passed each other on our way to and from class and to and from doing the baby duty. Sleep turned into a distant memory; sex, too.

And then it all came together—graduation, job offers, and a baby who not only slept through the night but also slept in on weekends and gave us time to rediscover each other in some really fun ways.

The hard part was after the party my folks threw to celebrate all the changes in our lives and we had to tell them that you'd accepted a job—in California. Mom cried; Dad dug deep and came up with a smile.

If he'd been aware we were starting a Warren family exodus to the West Coast, he might not have been so gracious.

C H A P T E R 9

For two days Julia and David got up at dawn and planted themselves along the path they'd seen Pearl take into the forest. Julia was surprised at how comfortable she felt with David as they sat without talking and how often she noted they were drawn to the same things in their silent, sheltered environment. He pointed out a pileated woodpecker's nest in the cavity of a dead tree and Julia reciprocated when she discovered a tiny lichen-covered cup held together with spider webs. Nestled inside were two almost impossibly small rufous hummingbird babies.

Julia decided that it wasn't all that unusual to feel comfortable with someone in conversation, but it was

rare to feel such ease in sitting together in silence, especially with a man who was basically a stranger to her.

The only times they saw Pearl was when she appeared, like an apparition, beside the tree where they'd left her food.

Missing her again that third morning, they figured she wouldn't be back for a couple of hours and that they might as well get on with their day. Julia was halfway across the pine-needle-covered open area that passed for David's front yard when he called to her.

"Would you like a cup of coffee?"

When she'd made the same offer to him the day before, he'd declined and then quickly explained that his mornings were taken. If he didn't work then, he didn't work at all.

"But I thought—"

"I'm taking a day off," he said.

"Then, sure. I'd love a cup."Thank God for coffee, the great socializer.

"Come on in. It will only take a minute." He paused before going inside. "Or you could wait out here on the porch. Whatever makes you more comfortable."

What was with David? She'd never met anyone more push-pull."I'll come in, if that's okay. I need to use the bathroom."

He held the door. "It's in the back, down the hall to your right."

As she made her way through the house, she subconsciously noted how he lived—

what was important enough to keep, how often he cleared the coffee table of cups and cans and what reading material he had lying around. Paying attention to those kinds of details was a girl thing, readily understood by her girlfriends but never by any guy she'd known. Not even Evan. He thought what she and her girlfriends did was snooping, pure and simple. Every female she knew applied a different, kinder, word— curiosity.

What she found wasn't anything like she'd imagined. She'd assumed that David's

"work" had something to do with fixing things around the property. But the prominence of a desk and computer and peripheral material in the living room made it plain that whatever he was doing away from the daily upkeep of the property wasn't physical. She glanced at the books on the desk. They were mostly volumes of poetry and essays and biographies. She stopped to look at the one lying open.

"Walt Whitman," David said from the kitchen doorway. "Leaves of Grass."

"A favorite collection of yours?"

"For several reasons."

"My father is always quoting Whitman. 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry' in particular."

He nodded. "It's in there."

"Is there one you like to quote, too?" she asked, sensing his answer would tell her more than he would reveal by direct questioning. Now watch him pick a poem she didn't know.

"I never quote poetry," he said. And then, as if realizing how dismissive he sounded, he added, "But lines from 'I Sit and Look Out' run through my head whenever I read a newspaper or watch the news on television. I think of them as my conscience."

She didn't recall the entire poem, but the last line came to her complete, one of the bizarre bits of trivia that cluttered her mind and took over space where more important things should reside."'All these—All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon. See, hear, and am silent.'" Realizing what she'd done, she laughed.

"Obviously, I fall into the quoting category."

"I won't hold it against you."

"Thanks. I promise it won't happen again." A promise embarrassingly easy to keep.

Until that line popped out of her mouth, she would have sworn she'd never memorized any lines of poetry. "Are you a writer?" she guessed.

"I used to be. Whatever kept me going in the beginning seems to have disappeared, however."

"Published?"

"Some."

The "used to be" didn't make sense with the desk and computer. And once you had one book published, wasn't that all you needed to guarantee others would follow?

"Should I have heard of you?"

"Not necessarily. It depends on what you like to read."

"At one time I read just about everything," she said."I was hoping to get back to it while I'm here."

He pointed to several boxes of books."Like I said, you're welcome to whatever interests you."

"Do you have anything of yours?"

He shook his head. "Unless you read Spanish. I had some foreign-language copies of one of my books arrive the other day that I was going to give to the library."

"As a matter of fact, I do."

He hesitated and then shrugged. "I'll dig one out after we've had our coffee."

She left for the bathroom then because it would have seemed strange not to. She even succeeded in not peeking inside the medicine cabinet. That really would have crossed the line into snooping. She did, however, glance around again as she walked back through the living room.

A thin layer of dust coated most surfaces, but she'd already discovered that was a given with the wood- burning stoves both houses used for heat at night. A red plaid pillow sitting propped against the arm of the sofa told her David liked to lie down when he read. Judging by the deep indentation in the pillow, he read a lot. There were books stacked three and four deep sitting on most flat surfaces, the only real clutter in the room. His desk held his laptop and books and little

else.

"Coffee's ready," David called.

She joined him in the kitchen. "Why don't we drink it on the porch. Maybe we'll get lucky and Pearl will stop by."

David handed her a mug and held the door. They settled into creaking wicker rocking chairs, sinking into faded blue-and-white striped cushions.

"Did you hear the coyote the other night?" she asked. "He sounded so close, almost as if he were standing in the middle of the front yard."

David had, but wasn't going to mention it. The excited barking was something coyotes did. when protecting a kill. The longer they'd gone without seeing Pearl, the more worried he had become. "Without any traffic noise to mute it, sound travels a long way here."

She seemed satisfied with the answer.

"The view from your place is completely different from mine," she said, plainly struggling for conversation. "It's almost as if I'm looking at a different lake."

He hid his smile. They'd known each other almost a week, long enough that they were past the initial awkwardness of strangers but not long enough for anything personal, especially after their shaky start. But the more he was around her, the more he found to like and the less inclined he was to fight the attraction. She was smart and direct and had a sexiness that emanated from her like light from a campfire at midnight.

He looked out at the small cove and island that were hidden from her place by the stand of trees that separated them. "I think in this case the caretaker's cottage has the real money view."

A pair of geese swam by. They should have been in Alaska months ago, but David had learned from a couple who lived on the other side of the lake that this pair remained year-round. Every winter they lost their young to the flocks of migrating geese that stopped to rest before flying farther south, the call of the wild stronger than the plaintive cry of the parents.

"Did you know they mate for life, just like swans?" Julia said. "I've never heard what happens when one of them dies." She watched the gander circle and head toward shore.

The goose followed. "Do you suppose the one left behind eventually gives up and dies, too?"

The question carried deeper meaning. He didn't have to hear Julia's story to see that she was still hurting. "People die of broken hearts all the time. I don't know why the same thing couldn't happen to birds."

"That's something Evan might have said. He believed most of us are too egocentric to acknowledge we aren't the only sentient creatures on earth."

"He sounds like a man I would have liked. What happened to him? "The invitation to cross the barrier that had separated them until now surprised them both a little.

"He died. Six months—" She covered the awkward moment by taking a sip of coffee.

"Actually, he died five and a half years ago."

"Too strong?" David asked, noting the face she'd made and supplying her an opportunity to change the subject.

"Hotter than I expected."

"There's ice in the freezer."

"It's fine."

Before he could say anything more, she picked up where she'd left off. "Evan has been dead five and a half years, but I only found out six months jigo "

He didn't say anything, waiting for her to continue or not. The story was hers to tell.

The geese came onshore to nibble the short grass by the edge of the lake. Seconds stretched into minutes. Julia took another sip of coffee and then another. Finally, the coffee gone, she began.

When she finished filling David in on her life for the past six years, giving him a highly abbreviated version, she said, "As you've undoubtedly figured out, I'm having trouble letting go."

"I can understand that." For most, the kind of love she had had with Evan only happened in books and movies. David had known a lot of women, had even loved a couple of them, or at least had felt something he'd thought was love. But when the relationship had ended, he'd always been able to walk away without looking back.

"On some level my friends and family recognize that what Evan and I had was special, but now that he's gone, they're eager for me to get past losing him. No one understands what we had was a lifetime thing. For me, there is no moving on."

They were simple words, spoken in a matter-of-fact manner and heartbreaking in their finality. Julia frowned."Somehow, everyone I know seems to have found a way to accept that Evan has been gone five and a half years, while for me... I still can't believe he's gone."

"It's probably because he was more real to you during the time he was missing than he was to them." That was as deep as he wanted to get into suggesting answers for something so personal.

"It won't matter how much time passes. I'm never going to feel any different. I will always be connected to Evan the way I am now." She blinked, as if abruptly waking.

"I'm sorry. I don't know why I told you that. I don't usually—"

"It's okay. I like listening to you. Passionate people intrigue me." He was drawn by the depth of her feelings, and wondered what it would be like to love and be loved by someone the way Julia loved David. With a bittersweet sadness he knew it was a world he would never inhabit.

An embarrassed smile tugged at one corner of her mouth. "Me and Whitman?"

"I'd like to think there might be one or two more of your type out there."

"Like you?"

David didn't answer right away. He never shared his feelings outside his books. It was something both the women he'd lived with and said that he loved had complained about, and in the end told him was a reason for leaving."I feel things deeply," he admitted."But they are never as benign as love. Anger fuels my passions."

"Could that be why you're having trouble writing? You've mellowed?"

He laughed at that. "In my mind I can stand on a soapbox with the best of the sixties radicals. But like most of them, I eventually stopped believing raging at injustice can make a difference."

"I understand."Julia tucked her feet under her and settled deeper into the chair."Hope died for me, too. It would appear we're climbing the same mountain."

He held up his cup in a salute. "Here's to a fellow climber."

"Mind telling me how you got there?"

He did. Curious reporters had dug around and discovered bits and pieces of his background, but not enough to draw conclusions or come close to figuring him out.

He'd left home at fifteen, abandoning a father who handed out beatings like unshelled peanuts at a road house. Had David stayed, he would either have killed or been killed by his father. His mother had slipped a hundred dollars in his jacket pocket, kissed him goodbye and agreed it was for the best.

Wherever he'd found himself, in whatever circumstances, he'd given an honest day's work when he needed food or money, but never stuck around for two. He slept in forests and doorways, wearing out almost as many sleeping bags as jeans, living off the land when possible and off the kindness of strangers when not. He'd been confronted by cops on six continents, witnessed a man die trying to outrun an angry mob and lent brawn to the rescue of a wild elephant by African villagers whose crops would have been better off if the animal had died. He'd watched the sun set in the Antarctic and rise over the Himalayas and thrown up from seasickness in every major ocean.

David told Julia about his travels but left out the reason he'd gone. "Then I woke up one morning in a hut in South Africa, being eaten alive by some insect I couldn't name, and decided it was time to come home."

A sadness filled Julia's eyes. "When I'm feeling generous, I tell myself it was a good thing that Evan didn't have to put up with the heat and insects and disease in the jungle all those years. But that doesn't happen very often.The selfish part of me would have him put up with anything."

"Third-world countries can get pretty rough for those of us used to four walls and indoor plumbing."

"How old were you when you quit traveling?"

"Twenty. I worked a few odd jobs in South Africa until I found a cargo ship headed the direction I wanted to go, with a captain willing to let me work for my keep." He'd landed in New York with only his journals and a change of clothes and a gnawing hunger for knowledge. Without a high-school diploma and less than fifteen dollars in his pocket, attending college like everyone else was out of the question. Instead, he'd audited classes that interested him, moving from campus to campus to find new voices, new ideas, new perspectives.

"I kept a journal," he said."I kept dozens, actually. I wrote every day. It was a way for me to vent and not scare the crap out of all the kids around me who thought a crisis was running out of beer money." David laughed. "I was a real firebrand back then, believing one person could effect change. I was convinced all I had to do was discover my voice."

"And did you?"Julia asked.

"In a way. I discovered Leaves of Grass and started writing longer and more intensely thought-out pieces." It was at his darkest moment that the essays took over his journals.

He experimented with the rhythm and cadence of sentences and paragraphs as if they were weapons, expressing his frustration at the self-absorbed society of the eighties with words written in staccato bursts.

"So, you're a poet?"

He laughed. "Not even close. Today's poets are all songwriters. I could no more do that than I could carry a tune. My writing is all over the place." The bulk of his fame and income had come from the anthologies put together from pieces he'd done for newspapers and magazines.

"I'm impressed."

"Don't be. Opinionated people who think what they say matters to anyone but themselves are as common as allergies nowadays. If you watch Sunday- morning television, it's filled with either self- proclaimed pundits or infomercials."

"So how did you go from journal keeping to published author?"

"A girl I knew had a contact." He'd met Cassidy in Boston during Christmas break.

Emancipated by a father no longer willing to support her college habit, she'd waited tables in an Italian restaurant that David had frequented, a place where the pasta was cheap and plentiful. They'd slept together the first night and moved in together the next day. With a background of wealth and privilege, she'd dealt with poverty as if it were a novelty, spending an entire paycheck on a dress that caught her eye in a store window and eating customers' leftovers at the restaurant the rest of the week.

When she discovered David's cache of essays, she automatically assumed he wrote because he wanted to be published. Her family owned a publishing company; she understood how these things worked. Secretly, to surprise him and spare him the pain of possible rejection—or so she told him later—she sent copies of his work to her father.

Not until her father called with an offer did she acknowledge she'd used David's work as a peace offering, seeking a way back into her family's good graces. Poverty's charm had worn thin.

At first David had been furious at what he considered a betrayal and then he'd become pragmatic. He'd never believed poverty had charm. Settling on the anonymity of a pseudonym, he signed a contract and turned his work over to an editor. He and Cassidy parted amicably. She met and married a lawyer and moved into an apartment overlooking Central Park. David bought an old Volkswagen bus and headed west.

A year later, after reading an advance copy of the book, a New York Times critic proclaimed "Nicolas Golden" the spokesman of his generation, coining the phrase, "The Man with the Golden Voice."

David hated every part of the sudden and explosive attention that followed. Some saw his refusal to give interviews as a marketing ploy. It wasn't, but it gave the slim book of essays and observations far more press than it would have received had David accepted the dozens and then hundreds of requests for an appearance. The momentum built until Flying on Clipped Wings became the book everyone felt the need to own but few actually read or understood.

"That's it?"Julia questioned. "You knew someone who knew someone and you were on your way?"

"Pretty much."

"Was the book successful?"

"More so than it deserved."

"Are you being modest or hypercritical?"

"Neither. As much as we'd all like to think we know what we're talking about when we're in our early twenties, it takes a few more years to gain the experience and maturity to do anything but rant."

"Did you make lots of money?"

He could see that while she was interested in his answers, her questions were directed in ways to keep him talking. She was lonely and afraid he was going to do what he'd done every other day—send her home with the excuse he had work to do. How could she know that she'd been the first thing he'd thought of when he'd woken up that morning, and that he'd lain there for a half hour, trying to figure out why.

What was so special about Julia McDonald that being with her made him think of possibilities over regrets?

"After being in a place where having twenty dollars left after I paid the rent made me rich, I felt like the guy digging a well hoping for water and striking oil," he told her. "I had no idea what to do with that kind of money."

Julia laughed."I hope you didn't tell people that."

"I did—in an interview I agreed to as a favor to another writer. I was young and dumb, and after the piece hit the stands, I wound up a target for every cause that could locate me. It took a couple of years to sort through who wanted money, who needed it and who deserved it."

"So you just gave it all away?"

"Not all." He still had far more than he could or would ever use.

"Is that why you took the caretaker job—because the writing hasn't been going well?"

She made a face. "Ouch. That's a little personal. Sorry."

He could let her believe he needed the money and be done with it. But she was the first person he'd talked to about his writing in years who didn't have a clue who he was, and it felt too good to let go that easily. Once someone realized that his writing had been quoted by presidents and popes, pundits and all manner of idiots, that the thoughts and arguments he'd presented on some obscure radio talk shows were used by politicians on both sides of the aisle to make points he'd never intended, a wall went up. He became Nicolas Golden, someone too important to talk to about life's ordinary vagaries and complaints. In the end he'd ended up so isolated and insulated that the fire in his belly was extinguished by the champagne of his existence.

How should he answer her? He looked at her. Not a glance, but a steady, full-on look.

He realized with a start that he cared what she thought. When had this happened? How?

More important, why? "I took the job to see if there was anything left of the man I once was. I've been hiding behind distractions for too many years, using them as excuses for work that was mediocre at best. Here it's me and the computer."

"Put up or shut up," she said.

"Succinct but accurate."

"And?"

Yesterday he'd been ready to pack it in. Today something kept him from admitting defeat. At least, out loud. And especially to Julia."I'm still working on it."

It was her turn to raise her coffee cup in salute. "Here's to both of us finding our way."

David started to return the gesture, when a flash of white caught his eye. "Well, would you look at that," he whispered.

Julia let out a small cry of wonder. Half-hidden by the trunk of a massive pine, Pearl stared back, a tiny, squirming, black-and-white puppy nestled between her front paws.

Six Months and Two Days Missing

California, land of palm trees, sandy beaches, balmy breezes, the world's finest wines, Yosemite and Disneyland. We'd seen enough ads every winter showing Kansas buried in six-foot snowdrifts and Californians basking in the sun that we never doubted what we would find—beaches connected to spectacular mountains.

How could two people who'd graduated college with honors be so dumb? How had we missed questioning what was in that vast Sacramento Valley, which separated the ocean and the mountains? What were we thinking?

Whatever it was, reality rolled out a 110-degree welcome mat on that blindingly bright, cloudless Fourth of July day when we dropped out of the Sierra Nevada and into our new home, Sacramento. The city was huge; the surrounding countryside, as flat as home. Traffic was terrifying: mile after mile of race-car drivers merging on and off the freeway, while I sat white knuckled, convinced our Kansas plates made us some kind of target. I was ready to turn around and go home the minute I got out of the car at the service station, accidentally touched the fender and burned myself. I was positive you felt the same way and were somewhere between crying and screaming, but you came back from asking directions, grinning from ear to ear.

"The motel is around the corner," you said. "We must have driven right past it.

"You planted a kiss on my sweaty nose. "And wait until you hear this. All we have to do is stand outside our door tonight and we'll have a front-row seat for a huge fireworks display."

I didn't say anything. It wasn't that your enthusiasm was contagious. I just didn't have the heart to stick a pin in your balloon. I figured you had to remove those rose-colored glasses eventually, if only to wipe off the smog.

But you didn't. You loved everything about California, and slowly, without being consciously aware of it happening, I did, too. Barbara arrived for a visit and fell in love with the guy in the apartment next door. Mom was beside herself that another daughter was leaving and cried all the way through the wedding. She half-jokingly threatened Fred with bodily harm if he even thought about leaving Kansas. He applied for a job at UCLA the next year.

If your job with Stephens Engineering planted our feet in California soil, Jason became the cement that bound us here. Created the night you greeted me in the bedroom wearing nothing but the ridiculous, heart-covered briefs I'd gotten you for Valentine's Day and a rose tucked between your teeth, Jason was the first generation of my family born outside Kansas in a hundred years.

My mother couldn't stop crying the day he was born, reinforcing her reputation as the family weeper.

She'd tried to talk me into coming "home" for Jason's birth, but I knew how important it was for you to start our own traditions. I managed to resist her, even though it was something I'd secretly wanted, too.

You've always been so wonderful with my mother, understanding and funny, calling her without my prompting to include her in the milestones of Shelly's and Jason's lives and sending enough pictures to wallpaper every room in her house. You voluntarily put your dreams of traveling on hold so that we could spend vacations on the farm. I haven't told you often enough how much that meant to me. I'm sorry. I promise I'll tell you every day when you're home again.

And I'll tell you that I love you, over and over again, so often that it will echo in your mind when you 're sleeping.

I do it now.

Can you hear me?

C H A P T E R 1 0

Silent tears slid down Julia's cheeks when she saw Pearl's torn ear and the blood on her coat. She'd coaxed her into moving closer with food and soft words while David gathered blankets and stuffed them under the porch for a makeshift den. David left a trail of dog treats to entice her toward the house, then stood at a distance to give her time to explore.

"How badly do you think she's hurt?"Julia whispered.

"I'm hoping it's just the ear," David said. "Her throat and belly seem okay—or at least, what I could see of them. Even a coyote would have trouble getting through all that hair on her back."

Pearl gave them a wary glance before she left her puppy on the ground by the steps and crawled under the porch to look around. She stayed long enough that Julia hoped it had won her approval, but just as Julia's hopes rose, Pearl came out and picked up the puppy and turned away. She circled the house, climbed onto the porch and moved inside the house.

Julia looked at David, her mouth open in surprise. "What do you suppose she's doing in there?"

David shoved his hands in his back pockets. "I'm not sure."

They waited.. .and waited. And waited. Finally, Pearl returned—without her puppy.

She headed across the opening and into the forest without a backward glance.

"She must have more puppies," Julia said.

David touched the small of her back and gave her a nudge. "Let's see where she left the first one before she gets back."

They found it in the closet in David's bedroom, curled up on a pile of dirty clothes.

Julia looked closer at the plump, squirming ball of black-and- white fur. "It's a girl," she said. "Her eyes are open."

"Then she's more than two weeks old."

"How do you know that?"

"I worked in a shelter for a couple of months when I was in Utah. Most of the puppies' eyes opened sometime between ten and fifteen days."

He moved past her to adjust the clothing into a

flatter, broader surface, giving Pearl more room to lie down when she returned. "She's either decided to trust me or I'm her port in a storm of coyotes."

Pearl was back in less than ten minutes, another puppy in her mouth. Julia saw right away that there was something wrong with this one. The right back leg was stiff and swollen and the puppy was more limp than relaxed in Pearl's mouth.

Julia and David had decided not to wait on the porch, where Pearl would have to walk between them to get into the house. Instead, they sat on chairs in the living room, reminding the dog that she was sharing her den and letting her know that it was safe to be around them.

Pearl stood in the middle of the room, glanced at the doorway into the bedroom and then back again at Julia. She made a muted crying noise before she crossed the room and laid the puppy at Julia's feet. "What do I do now?"Julia asked David.

"Go with your instinct."

Julia peered into Pearl's eyes. She talked to her, soft words of encouragement, words from one mother to another. She put her hand on Pearl's muzzle and then her head, careful not to touch her ear. Instead of picking up the puppy, Julia lowered herself to sit beside it. Unlike its sister, this one didn't respond when she put her hand on its side. "It's a boy," Julia said. "He has a wound on his leg and it appears really nasty."

Pearl nosed the puppy closer to Julia. "I know this sounds crazy, but I think she wants me to help him."

David handed her the fleece blanket draped over the back of the sofa and reached for the phone. "I'll call the vet and tell him we're bringing him in."

"I'll do it," she said."You stay here so Pearl doesn't think we've conspired to steal her puppy. We don't want her to take off and disappear again. Not now."

Julia wasn't clear of the driveway, before she decided the puppy should have a name.

"How does Rufus sound?" she asked him. She waited for a reaction."No? Then how about Spot for that really cute spot between your eyes?" Again no reaction. This time she put her finger on his side to make sure he was still breathing. She let out a small cry of relief when she felt his tiny chest move up and down. She really, really didn't want him to die. She needed to win this one.

"Okay, so you're not crazy about the standard stuff. How about Francis? That's a good solid name that you don't run into very often. You can bet there won't be a lot of dogs at the dog park turning to look when your person calls that name."

He maneuvered to lift his head. It teetered upright for several seconds before falling to the side. That was indication enough for her. "Okay, Francis it is."

Julia touched his chin. Francis captured her little finger, took it in his mouth and sucked hard. "Good boy," she said, heartened at his strength and the cry of protest that followed when he discovered her finger wasn't what he'd expected. He was stronger than he appeared. "Hang in there, Francis. Help is only a half hour away."

Julia made it in twenty minutes. There were six people in the waiting room. When the frazzled receptionist refused to let her go in first, Julia didn't bother arguing. Instead, she unwrapped Francis and showed him to everyone ahead of her. Five years of dealing with bureaucrats had taught her direct and effective ways to get what she wanted.

The vet, the same one she and David had talked to about Pearl, did a quick assessment and said, "It's a good thing you brought him here right away. This little guy is in pretty bad shape."

"How bad?" Julia asked.

"The leg isn't broken, but he could still lose it if we can't get the infection under control." He continued to manipulate Francis's leg as he talked. "And there's no guarantee that amputation would work. How hard do you want me to try to save him?"

"Can he function with three legs?"

"Very well."

"Then I want you to do whatever it takes." She scooped Francis off the table and into her arms to keep him warm in the overly air-conditioned room. He responded by snuggling against her and nosing the inside of her elbow. She knew she should give him to the vet, but wasn't ready to let go. "What do you think happened to him?"

"It looks like a bite," he said. Then added, "Probably coyote." That confirmed what she and David had already guessed."She was probably bringing him back to her own pups for lunch. I'm surprised this little guy's mom managed to rescue him."

"I'm going to need something for his mom, too. She has a pretty mangled ear."

"I'm assuming she's the one you were here about last week."

Julia nodded.

"I'll give you an antibiotic that you can put in her food."

The vet took Francis and tucked him under his chin, where he weakly began rooting around again before finally latching onto a piece of soft skin. "Stop worrying. This guy is going to do fine."

Julia took the road back to David's house that circled the lake. It was shorter and more scenic, but took as much time as the direct route because of twists and hairpin turns. She kept glancing at the empty blanket in the front seat next to her surprised at how consumed she was with the need to protect Pearl's puppy.

She rolled the thought over and over in her mind, a sharp rock in a riverbed filled with smooth stones.

Was it the puppy Julia so desperately wanted to protect.. .or was it Pearl? What would she think when Julia came back empty-handed? Would she be frantic, or would she accept the seeming loss and devote herself completely to the one puppy she had left?

Maybe Julia should stay away until it was time for Francis to come home. That way Pearl wouldn't have to—

What was wrong with her? Why had she stepped so willingly onto this slippery slope of worry? She must be suffering parenting withdrawal, or maybe she'd developed a compulsive impulse to nurture.

Or maybe it was a desire to be nurtured herself. She was worn down from the need to be strong for Shelly and Jason, from pretending she believed she could build a life worth living without Evan, and from getting up every morning knowing the fight was over and that she'd lost.

Or maybe it was meeting a man so like Evan they could have been brothers. David was an aching reminder of what she had lost and what she would live without the rest of her life.

She had wonderful friends and the absolute best family. She had children who loved and looked up to her, children she would sacrifice her life to protect. She had to believe that all this, over time, would ease the ache in her heart. To think otherwise was too painful to conceive.

She could tell herself that her life would get better, that time and distance would dull the pain, but it was like all lies, filled with holes and predestined for collapse. Meeting David had brought that home in a way nothing else could. She was lonely beyond imagining.

Abruptly overcome with a powerful longing for a man she hadn't seen in almost six years, a man she would never see again, Julia pulled to the side of the road, let out a strangled cry and covered her face with her hands. She sat behind the wheel, sobbing uncontrollably until she was spent.

Exhausted and reluctant to let David see her with blotchy skin and swollen eyes and face the questions that would undoubtedly follow when he made the obvious assumption something had happened to Pearl's puppy, she got out of the car and walked to the lake. She wandered along the shore until she found a log and sat there to watch trout rise to feed on the afternoon caddis hatch. A piece of bark crumbled beneath her hands, on its way to becoming part of the soil that would feed a new generation of trees.

In death there was life...and heartache...and renewal. It was the natural order of things.

On the island the grass parted and the pair of year-round geese she and David had seen earlier lowered themselves into the water. This time they were accompanied by half a dozen fuzzy yellow goslings. Julia gasped—in surprise and then delight. Where had they been hiding?

Had Julia's mother been sitting beside her, she would have insisted the moment was a sign. Or maybe it was a cosmic gift that she'd come here at precisely the right moment to witness something to lessen her pain, and bring a smile.

Julia had no idea how long she sat there and absorbed her tiny miracle, only that after a while, somehow, she seemed less sad.

"Enjoy them while you can," Julia called out as she put her hands on her knees, stood and stretched. Considering what she'd said, she laughed. "Just be careful that you don't turn into clingy, overbearing parents and drive those sweet babies away before their time." She waited another minute for the parade to pass before heading back to the car.

The futility of her sorrow hovered over her like a cloud that refused to drop its rain. If grief were a coin she could spend to change the world, she had enough to stop the famines in Africa and negotiate for peace in the Middle East. But beyond personal pain, it had no value.

She had to find another way to remember Evan. A way he would approve of.

For now, Pearl and her puppies, maybe even David needed her.

Maybe almost as much as she needed them.

One Year, Five Months, and Four Days missing

There's no way for you to know this, Evan, but I haven't written to you for a few months. Actually, it's been almost a year. I had a hard time coming back after we paid the second ransom and then received the letter that . said it wasn't enough. I was so sure our ordeal was over at last that I took Shelly and Jason to Bogota so they could fly home with us, something I swore I'd never do.

I've fallen in love with Colombia and the people who've opened their hearts and homes to me. But fear is a constant companion when I'm there. I won't ever expose our children to that kind of danger again.

I don't know what to do anymore, Evan. I've begged and pleaded and thrown temper tantrums with every official I can corner both here and at home. They've been incredibly tolerant and understanding, but in the end, as ineffectual as the rest of us.

I try to imagine what your life is like now, what you do every day, what you 're wearing, what you eat. I want to believe that the people who have you are misguided yet kind, that they recognize what a good man you are and treat you well. It's the way I survive day to day. It hurts too much to think of you being mistreated. If I picture you locked away somewhere and suffering, a weight descends on me that makes it almost impossible to get out of bed in the morning.

Your captors surely know you by now. They have

to recognize what a good man you are. I imagine you working with their children, telling them that you have children, too, showing them the pictures you carry in your wallet. Can't the men who have you understand how much your children miss you? How can it not matter to them?

How can they keep you away from us all this time? We've done what they asked, over and over again. Are they oblivious to the depth of their cruelty? What kind of people are they that they don't care?

I used to keep a calendar beside our bed, next to the rose you picked for me before you left. Every night I marked another day, counting how many you'd been gone. I don't do that anymore. I don't want to be reminded of all the days we'll never get back.

When I can't sleep at night, I tell you about my day. I imagine you hearing me and smiling over the details that make up my life now. I never tell you how defeated I feel at times, or how I work to hide it from everyone for fear they will see it as a reason to stop believing you are coming home to us.

And I couldn't tell you about the lump I found in my breast and how hard it was going through all the tests without you here to lean on. The lump was benign—the process reaching that diagnosis, utterly terrifying. I couldn't stop worrying about what would happen to Shelly and Jason if something happened to me.

We need you home.

I'm worn down with missing you.

I'm going to read this tomorrow and will probably tear it up or burn it in the fireplace. I don't want you to get the idea I ever doubted what I was doing to free you or thought the work a burden. I would gladly spend the rest of my life at it, even if, in the end, we only had one day together.

You are my life, Evan.

I will love you forever.

C H A P T E R 1 1

David plucked one of the larger chunks of meat out of the canned dog food and slipped an antibiotic capsule inside. They'd decided to start the pills in the morning after seeing how agitated Pearl was over her missing pup the night before. This was his third attempt. The first pill she'd managed to leave in the bottom of a bowl that she'd otherwise licked dishwasher clean.The second attempt he made an hour later. He opened a capsule and mixed it into some canned food. She sniffed the offering, gave him a piercing look and walked outside to go to the bathroom.

"Okay," he said, placing the bowl with the hidden capsule at the closet door. "Third time's the charm."

Pearl peered around the closet door and waited until David had backed across the room, before coming out. She sniffed and tasted and ate;

David leaned his shoulder into the wall and grinned."I win," he announced. But the victory was short-lived. Pearl abruptly stopped eating, worked her tongue around her mouth for several seconds— and popped out the pill.

"Oh, you trust me enough to move in with me," David said, venting, "but not enough to know I wouldn't poison you?"

"You two have a problem?"Julia inquired from the bedroom doorway.

David caught his breath at the sight of her, not realizing until that moment that he'd been waiting for her to come and fill his morning. "Just how important is it that she take these pills?" he asked, working hard to tone down his happiness over Julia's arrival.

"Why?"

"The only way we're going to get them into her is to pin her between us and shove them down her throat. I can see getting away with that once, but not twice."

She held out her hand. "Let me try."

"Gladly." He handed her the bottle and watched her go into the kitchen, allowing himself a moment of guilty pleasure as he admired the shape and form and movement that he'd concluded made her one of the most beautiful women he'd ever known.

Julia came back and gave the wary dog a stern frown. "Okay, Miss Pearl. We're through messing around. You're going to swallow this pill and you're not going to give me any grief about it. Got it?"

Pearl tilted her head to one side and stared at Julia, holding her ground while Julia approached, but the dog was poised to flee.

David shook his head in wonder when Pearl made a whimpering sound and leaned into Julia. If he believed in such things, he would swear Pearl understood.

Julia put one hand over Pearl's muzzle and with the other separated her jaws and slipped the pill to the back of her tongue. Pearl swallowed, and it was done. "Good girl,"

Julia said, this time scratching Pearl's chin. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of leftover chicken she'd taken from the refrigerator. Pearl accepted^ e peace offering, tucked her nose under Julia's hand for one last scratch and went into the closet to check on her pup.

"That was impressive," David said.

"Eighteen years on a farm and you learn a thing or two about how to deal with stubborn animals." She walked past David on her way into the living room. He followed. 'I’m going into town to pick up a couple of things and check the mail. Is there anything you need?"

"Give me a minute and I'll go with you."

"Really?" Even as friendly as they'd become lately, she seemed surprised."I would have asked, but knew you worked in the morning."

"I'm done. I got up early."

She glanced at the couch. "Not comfortable?"

Nothing got by her. "I figured I'd let Pearl have a day or two to get used to sharing the house before I moved back into the bedroom."

"Keep this up and I'm going to think there's a tender heart beating under that grumpy exterior," she teased.

He felt an idiotic pleasure at both her opinion and the teasing. "I just don't want her to disappear and leave me with a puppy to raise."

"Uh-huh." She headed out the door. "Meet me at the car in fifteen minutes. I have a couple of phone calls I need to make first."

Instead of following the shoreline, the easier route back to her house, Julia went through the forest. She loved the snapping sounds the dry pine needles and fallen branches made with each footfall. And she loved the smell. The pine reminded her of Christmas. Flashes of memories from Christmases with Evan landed and melted like giant snowflakes drifting onto an upturned face. He'd loved Christmas, finally understanding the joy of the season when he joined her family, becoming a rabid participant when they started their own family. He was the one who took out the decorations and put up the lights and played the music. And he was the one who dragged them out of the house to walk hand in hand on frosty evenings through garishly over-decorated neighborhoods.

Knowing Evan would want her to, she'd tried to keep up their traditions for Shelly and Jason, but it wasn't the same without him.

There were boxes in her closet filled with handmade Christmas and birthday presents for Evan that would never be opened. One day, when Shelly and Jason had homes and families of their own, Julia would give them the gifts they had made for their father.

To think that they might not remember Evan the way he deserved to be remembered broke her heart. But how could she expect them to live in ftfe past and still embrace the future? As desperately as she missed their company in her loneliness, she loved her children too much to have them live with her in this world of constant sorrow.

Which, she reminded herself a dozen times a day, was why she was here now. Her struggle to find a way to let go of Evan and be the mother they needed was something she had to do for them and without them. It would have been easier without David as such a poignant, real reminder of what it had been like to have someone to share her day-to-day life with.

She was on the front porch when she heard the phone ring. It was Barbara. "I was just about to call you," she said.

"Great minds," Barbara replied.

"So, when are you coming for a visit?"

"How about this weekend?"

"Are you serious?" She squealed in delight. So much for calm and rational and convincing the family she was doing just fine without them. "That's great. I can't wait to see you. How long can you stay?"

"Until Monday. We have the day off for some administration thing."

With her old car on its last legs, Barbara had signed up to teach summer school to earn a down payment for a new one."I can't wait to see you," Julia repeated. "You'll love it here. It's so beautiful and peaceful. And there's a boat. We could go fishing."

"Fishing? Me? Are you insane?"

"Well, then we'll just row around the lake. There's this family of geese you have to see and there's—"

Barbara laughed. "You don't have to sell me, Julia. I'll be there. And, if it's okay, I'm bringing someone with me."

"Of course it's okay," she said, her words more generous than her feelings. She didn't want to have to share her sister. "Who is it?"

U A

"

A guy.

Julia's jaw dropped. She'd been so wrapped up in

herself she hadn't even known Barbara was seeing someone. "When did this happen?"

"A couple of months ago. Things are moving along pretty fast and I decided it was time you two met."

"Wow. This is great."Julia hoped she sounded more enthusiastic than she felt. She wasn't sure she was ready to witness love in bloom, especially not with someone she counted on emotionally as much as Barbara.

God, could she really be that selfish?

"I can't wait to meet him," Julia said, this time meaning it.

"I realize this is hard for you, Julia," Barbara said. "But I also know it would have been harder if you'd found out later that I was dating a special guy and hadn't told you. I want you to be a part of this now."

"You're right. Of course. And I am happy for you." She could do this. She had to.

Barbara had been with her through every moment of every crisis for five and a half years. Her sister deserved this happiness. How could she know that the timing was so bad, that Julia had met a man who filled her with a renewed and desperate hunger for what she could no longer have?

"I can't wait for you to meet him. His name is Michael St. John and he's an English professor at Sacramento State. A teacher, Julia. How perfect is that?"

"That's wonderful," Julia managed to say. "But be forewarned, he's going to have to be really special in my eyes to be good enough for you."

Barbara laughed happily. "I'm not the least bit worried. You're going to love him."

They talked a few minutes more, discussed what food Barbara should bring and the best time to arrive and said goodbye. Julia returned the receiver to its cradle and sat down at the kitchen table. She had planned to call her mother but had no idea how much she knew about Barbara's new man. If she said the wrong thing or nothing at all, she could wind up with both of them angry at her. Their family dynamics were like a pinball game, one loose ball and the whole board would light up.

"Are you in there?" David called through the screen door.

Julia glanced at the clock. A half hour had passed with her splashing around in a pond of self-pity over Barbara's wonderful news. Thank God no one had seen her. She jumped up and knocked over the chair. "Coming," she shouted.

Drawn by the noise, David appeared beside her. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, of course." Tears spilled down her cheeks. Damn, damn— damn it. She turned her back to him and righted the chair. "What makes you think I'm not?" She lost all credibility when she couldn't stifle the sob that came next.

In a move that took them both by surprise, David reached for her. "I'm not very good at this kind of thing," he said self-consciously. "And I'll deny it if you ever remind me I said something this cheesy, but you look like you could use a hug."

Instead of pushing him away, something she would have sworn she would have done, she buried her face in his shoulder, closed her eyes and breathed in the smell of the man holding her. He was the same height as Evan and had the same build, but didn't hold her as close or as intimately as Evan would have. The way she desperately wanted to be held.

The moment should have been awkward. It should have felt wrong. But it was neither.

His arms still around her, David asked, "Have you had breakfast?"

She almost laughed at the question. It was so like the men she knew to look for a good exit line rather than just leave. Stepping from his arms, she wiped her eyes. "I usually don't—"

"Yeah, I figured. But I know this terrific place on the river that makes the best sourdough pancakes in town, and it's late enough you could call it lunch."

"The best pancakes in this town?" She was dizzyingly grateful that he hadn't gone where she would have let him go. She was vulnerable and confused and ached for real intimacy. She would have used David, and he was too special for that to happen.

He grinned. "Okay, so that's not much of a boast."

"I'll go if you'll do something for me."

"Sounds fair," he said.

"Come to dinner Saturday."

He waited for her to go on, seemingly sensing there was more.

"My sister and a friend, a male friend, a new male friend, are going to be here for the weekend and I want someone to..." She didn't know how to tell him what she needed without appearing pathetic.

"You need someone to shift the focus from lust- filled gazes and groping under the table to sensible things like the weather?"

"Yes," she admitted. "It's not that I'm not happy for my sister—"

"You just don't want it shoved in your face."

She let out a sigh. "That makes me seem so selfish."

"So what? I'd say you've more than earned the right."

Again, tears welled in her eyes. They weren't the pretty words she would have heard from her family or friends, empty words of understanding meant to ease her pain. She'd known David two weeks, but she'd learned he was too pragmatic to waste time spouting something he didn't believe.

"I have, haven't I?" she said. "Well?"

For the question to register took a second. "You drive a hard bargain, Mrs.

McDonald. This dinner party of yours sounds about as stimulating as chaperoning a high-school prom."

"You want stimulating? What if I told you I'm fully prepared to dazzle you with a discussion on quarks." From somewhere she found a grin. "I sat next to a man on a flight to Colombia who actually studied them for a living. It was a very, very long flight."

"And that's supposed to tempt me?"

"Just how hungry are you for these pancakes?"

He laughed. "Okay, it's a deal."

Two days later David went into town with Julia to retrieve Francis from the vet. He was a much different dog from the one she had left, squirming, nuzzling, yipping and trying to suckle anything and everything he could fit in his mouth, including Julia's earlobe. The vet had purposely withheld his last feeding, leaving him ready and eager for his mom.

Pearl must have sensed their approach because she met them on the porch when they returned, dancing in circles and calling out in a high, rapid whine. There was no way she could see her puppy wrapped inside the blanket Julia carried, but it was obvious she knew he was there.

Francis squirmed until his head popped free, answering Pearl's call with frantic yips.

Julia waited until they were in the bedroom to put Francis down. Pearl immediately sniffed and licked him from head to toe, turning him on his back and then on his stomach, talking the entire time, her thin body trembling with joy. Satisfied, she gently picked him up in her mouth and carried him into the closet. Seconds later she had settled and was feeding her family.

Julia heard a deep contented sigh between the suckling sounds. She looked at David.

He was standing with his shoulder pressed against the door frame, looking back at her.

He smiled."All in all, I'd say this ranks pretty damn close to winning the lottery." .

She returned his smile. "Higher."

"Seems to me we should be doing something to celebrate."

"What did you have in mind?"

"Dinner? I know a little restaurant in town that makes the best—-"

She laughed."Is it as good as the pancake house?"

"Better."

"Give me a half hour to get ready."

He did a quick appraisal. "You look fine." He cleared his throat. "Better than fine.

You look beautiful."

She brought her hand up to her hair, a silly, feminine gesture, an automatic response to the unexpected compliment. No one had told her she looked beautiful since... Since Evan. Just as unexpectedly, her cheeks burned with a sudden blush. She thanked him because it seemed the least awkward thing to do and then insisted on the half hour, needing it now to regain her equilibrium.

Three Years Missing

I'm back, Evan. I've worked my way through the tunnel of depression I was in and am out the other side. I'm sorry it took so long. I considered not telling you, but we've always shared everything, good or bad, and I finally decided it was wrong to pretend I've been this never-failing, constant pillar of strength. It's four o'clock in the morning here, which means it's seven where you are. I'm trying to picture what your day will be like today. I want to believe you 're doing something that makes you happy, so I pull out some of my favorite fantasies—that you are teaching kids math, or showing men how to bring clean water to their village—things that will give you a sense of accomplishment when you're home again and reflecting back at the time you spent in Colombia.

I'm sitting up in bed, a cup of coffee in one hand, a pen in the other, your rose in a vase on the night- stand, keeping me company and triggering the most wonderful memories. Not that I have to have a trigger. You are always with me, Evan. I feel your presence in the air I breathe. I hear your whispered words of love and longing when the leaves rustle in the oak tree and when the birds call for me to fill their feeder. You hold me in my dreams and give me the strength and comfort I need to wake and face another day without you.

A storm is blowing outside. The rain is hitting the

windows in crashing waves that sound like your favorite Storm Giant is back, tossing handfuls of sand against the panes. Do you remember telling Jason that story when he was four and woke up terrified by his first really big storm? You might have gotten away with it if you hadn't started with the embellishments. I never did understand why it was necessary to give the Storm Giant great big teeth. How could that be a guy thing?

He still remembers your giant, Evan. I overhead him telling his friend Shawn about it the other day. Shelly doesn't remember that night, but then you didn't scare the crap out of her the way you did Jason.

All those years we worked so hard to create big- deal, carefully planned, expensive memories, and this is the kind of thing that sticks. Go figure.

With Shelly it's all the weekends she spent working with you in your gardens. She's always spotting some new flower or bush that she's going to tell you about when you're home. We're going to need a couple of acres to accommodate everything she's written in the notebook she's saving for you.

I get so angry sometimes when I think of all you've missed and how much richer our children's lives would be if you were here with them. It's been three years now, Evan.

Three years. When I break it into days and weeks and months, they overwhelm me.

I have wrinkles I didn't have when you left. And even though I've lost a few pounds, my stomach isn't as flat as it used to be. Stupid things like this hit me at the strangest moments. I know they don't matter, but they're like height markings on a closet door, indicating the years we've been apart. I still find myself reaching for the phone to call you at work and share something inconsequential that happened during the day.

It's not the big things you're missing that bother me as much as the small moments that make up our children's lives. We're the only ones who truly care about most of what I'd say. Telling you about Shelly shaving her legs for the first time isn't the same as being here for that tiny milestone on her path to becoming a full-grown woman.

And I never expected to have to shop for jock straps for Jason. I was so upset that I had to do something that you should have been doing I actually broke down in the middle of the sporting-goods store. Try explaining that to a bunch of people jostling one another to get to the two-for-one athletic-shoe sale.

Is there a religion I don't know about where prayers have a more direct line to God?

C H A P T E R 1 2

Barbara brought her wine into the kitchen and stood within whispering distance of Julia. Okay, you want to tell me more about this David guy?"

"There's nothing to tell. He's the caretaker, I owed him a favor, so I invited him to dinner."

"Now ask me how much of that I believe."

Julia handed Barbara a bowl of mashed potatoes. "Here, make yourself useful."

Barbara put the bowl on the counter. "Not until you spill who this guy really is and what he means to you. And, why do you owe him a favor?"

"He's the caretaker. He means nothing to me."That brought a jolt, forcing her to acknowledge, if only to

herself, that David meant more to her than she'd ever imagined another man could mean. "And he picked up tonight's roast when he went into town yesterday to get the mail. I could hardly ask him to pick up the meat for a dinner party and not invite him."

"You could if he was 'just' the caretaker."

"Give it a rest, Barbara. As much as you'd like to believe otherwise, love is not contagious ."This time she handed her sister the green salad. "Now, go— before it wilts."

Julia followed Barbara into the dining room and announced dinner. Twenty minutes later Michael sat back in his chair and proclaimed himself stuffed.

"Wonderful dinner, Julia," Michael said. "Barbara said you were a great cook, but this was extraordinary."

"Thank you." She'd decided she liked Michael. He was a couple of years older than Barbara, divorced but not bitter, had an offbeat sense of humor that perfectly matched Barbara's own sense of fun and was obviously head over heels in love with her sister.

Michael held up his wineglass and tilted it toward David."And the wine is exceptional. I don't think I've ever had better, and I was married to a woman who wrote for The Wine Spectator."

David acknowledged the compliment with a nod. "All I know about wine is what I like."

"Evan loved port," Julia said. "The first time I had it I thought it tasted like cough syrup, but it grew on me."

"I'm not there yet," David said. "I've had what people swore was the best and it still didn't do anything for me. What did Evan see in it?"

Julia laughed. "He only knew what he liked, too. He couldn't tell you why."

Barbara looked from Julia to David and back again, questions and curiosity burning in her eyes. "Evan was a special man," she said, plainly testing.

"So I've heard," David told her.

Julia knew exactly what Barbara was thinking, and would make another attempt to set her straight as soon as they were alone again. The last thing she wanted was for Barbara to leave believing there was something going on between her and David.

Barbara would be on her cell phone calling their mother the second she was within range of a tower.

Michael leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table."How long have you been working here, David?"

"Almost a year."

"And before that?"

"Here and there."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to pry. It's just that you seem so familiar to me and I was trying to figure out where we might have met."

"I've lived on the East Coast for the past few years."

In an obvious eureka moment, Michael slapped his hands together in triumph and grinned. "I've got it. You're Nicolas Golden."

David glanced at Julia and waited for what seemed an eternity before reluctantly admitting, "Guilty."

Julia frowned. She recognized the name but not why. "I'm confused. You're not David Prescott?"

"That's my real name," David said. "Nicolas Golden is a pseudonym."

"I still don't—"

"Oh, my God, Julia," Barbara said. "How could you not know the name Nicolas Golden?"

"You must have read him in college," Michael added. "Everyone did. He's considered one of the most influential writers of the past twenty years."

David put his wineglass back on the table. "There are plenty of people who would argue that point," he said, shifting position, clearly uncomfortable."Me among them."

Julia's heart went out to him. Had she realized, she would have warned him that of all her friends and family, she'd asked him to share a meal with the two people most likely to figure out who he was.

"Flying on Clipped Wings is my all-time favorite book," Barbara said. "I've almost worn out my original copy."

"You wrote Flying on Clipped Wings? You're that Nicolas Golden?" Julia gasped.

She'd first read the book when she was a freshman, and remembered being so impressed with the ideas and anger and compassion contained in the slim volume that she'd fallen a little in love with the man she imagined the writer to be. She'd told Evan. He'd laughed and told her that it was okay—he was a little in love with the guy, too.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Julia immediately regretted the question. He didn't owe her that kind of revelation or explanation.

David shrugged helplessly, trapped into answering by social convention. "It's my past. It has nothing to do with who I am now."

"I'm disappointed to hear that," said Michael. "I was hoping the long absence meant a new book would be out soon."

"You retired?" Barbara said. "To become a caretaker?" The insensitivity of the question must have occurred to her as soon as she asked it, because before David had a chance to answer, Barbara added, "Pardon me a second while I get my foot out of my mouth. I really didn't mean that the way it sounded. I was just hoping you were here for the peace and quiet so you could work on a new book."

"Or that you were doing research," Michael said.

"You weren't sent here by my agent by any chance, were you?" David asked.

Feeling protective, Julia decided he'd been put through enough and interrupted."I'm sorry to break things up, but David and I are already an hour late giving Pearl her evening pill." She stood."Why don't

you go into the living room and finish the wine," she said to Barbara and Michael."I'll make coffee and we can have dessert when David and I get back."

She retrieved her sweater from the closet and looked back to see Barbara and Michael clearing the table. "Please, leave it," she said, even knowing she would be ignored.

"I'm sorry," Barbara mouthed.

Julia gave her a tiny shrug. David held the door and followed her through. They were halfway across the lawn when he said, "You didn't have to do that. I can take care of myself."

Before Julia had a chance to reply, Barbara came out on the porch and called her.

"Julia—Shelly's on the phone. Do you want me to tell her you'll get back to her later?"

Julia hesitated. It surprised her. Evan was the only person she'd ever put in front of Shelly or Jason.

"Take the call," David told her before she had a chance to answer."It could be something important. I'll wait for you at the house."

She and Shelly had talked that afternoon and it was unlike her to call again this soon just to chat. Julia nodded to David and told Barbara, "I'm coming." She ran back across the lawn, avoiding her sister's questioning look as she passed her on the way into the house.

"Hi," she said into the receiver. "What's up?"

"Not much."

"You just called to say hi?" She peered out the kitchen window and watched as David disappeared into the trees.

"Not exactly. I met a guy at Grandpa's Grange meeting last week and he asked me to go to the movie with him tomorrow night. Grandma said I had to talk to you first. I told her you wouldn't care if she didn't care, but—" she dropped her voice to a whisper "—

you know how Grandma is."

"Does this guy have a name?"

"Steve."

"A last name?" She struggled to keep the impatience out of her voice.

"Boehm."

"Ellis Boehm's son?" Ellis was the only boy at her high school who'd actually spent a whole night in jail. He'd done a complete about face afterward, married her best friend, Karol, the day after graduation, became a policeman after finishing community college, worked his way up to chief in six years and made a successful run for mayor—all before he'd turned thirty. She'd met his kids and liked them a lot.

"I don't know whose son he is," Shelly whined. "I don't want a long-term relationship with the guy. I just want to see a movie with him."

"Ask Grandma if he's Ellis's son. If he is, you can go. If he's not, call me back."

"This is so dumb. What possible difference does it make who his father is?"

"Shelly?"

"Yeah?"

"How badly do you want to go?"

"Enough to shut up and do what I'm told?"

Julia smiled. "Wow, for me to get that out of you this guy must really be cute."

"Cute, Mom? Please. You know that word makes me gag."

"Well? Is he?"

"I guess so," she reluctantly admitted."He looks a lot like Dad when he was in high school. At least, the way he looked in that picture Grandma has on the piano when Dad's hair was long and he wore that black leather jacket you keep in the closet at home."

Julia swallowed, hard. She wasn't sure whether the comparison was good or bad, only that it was a connection Shelly had made to her father. She worried, too much at times, that Shelly and Jason would forget Evan now that he was no longer the constant presence in their lives that he had been all the years he was only missing and not dead.

"Call me when you get home tomorrow night."

"It could be late."

"It better not be that late. I have two hours on you. There's no way I'll be in bed by the time you should be home."

"Love you, Mom."

Shelly was through talking. "I love you, too, Shelly."

She made a dash for the door before Barbara could corner her and ask the questions Julia saw bubbling in her eyes. "Be right back. Pearl will eat David alive if I'm not there to intercede." A little melodramatic, and a little unfair to Pearl, but it accomplished what Julia needed.

David used a fork to dig out the third of a can of wet dog food he used to mix with the half cup of kibble, added a little water to create a paste and sprinkled a teaspoon of the powdered vitamins over the top. Pearl must have heard the preparations because she came to the kitchen door to watch hi nr.

"How're the kids?" David asked.

She tilted her head and stared at him.

"Glad to hear it." He'd been trying to convince himself that she was coming around a little and would one day let him touch her.

"Since you ask, things were going great for me tonight, too. Right up to the part where Julia—" Pearl tilted her head to the other side. "Yes, I'm talking about your Julia.

Like I said, things were going great—right up to the minute where it all went to hell.

Now Julia has every reason not to trust me, anymore than—well, any more than you do."

Julia tapped on the door frame before coming inside. He glanced up, acknowledging her presence. "I don't know why they can't make antibiotics that taste like these vitamins. She does fine with this stuff."

"I trust you," she said, ignoring his offer of a neutral opening. "You didn't owe me anything you didn't want to tell me."

David took a towel off the counter and wiped his hands. "I let you think I was someone I'm not."

"So does this mean the real you wouldn't sleep on a couch six inches too short in order to make a homeless dog feel safe? Or maybe the real you would never listen to the ramblings of a woman frozen in sorrow and indecision. Or could it be that the real you doesn't—"

He held up his hand. "Enough." "Why did you come to my place tonight? I told you Michael was an English professor. You must have realized he—"

Knowing it would be a mistake to give her the real answer-—that he'd begun looking for any reasonable excuse to be with her—he said, "It's been so long since I had a book out that I thought I was safe. People have short memories." He shrugged. "Hope springs eternal?" He picked up Pearl's bowl and stared at Julia. "There are a hundred cliches that fit. You interested in hearing more?"

"Do you really not understand how important

you were to our generation? How those who weren't caught up in the 'me' thing in the eighties looked to you to say what no one else was saying back then?"

"How could I not know that, Julia?" he said in a flash of frustration."I heard it so often I almost started believing it myself." He reached for the pills and handed them to her.

"Just because it's hard for you to hear doesn't mean it's not true."

"Let it go," he warned. "There isn't anything you can say that I haven't heard. I don't want to hear it again. Especially not from you."

She recoiled. " Especially me? What's that supposed to mean?"

He shook his head and moved to step around her. "Nothing."

"Oh, no, you don't." She followed him."I thought we were friends. Friends don't say things like that and walk away."

He put the bowl on the coffee table and turned on her."Can you really be this dense?

Has losing Evan made you so myopic that you can't see what other people around you are feeling?"

"You're going to have to be a little less obtuse, David. I really don't know what you're talking about."

He was on the verge of making a huge mistake. She wasn't ready to hear how he felt about her. "If you're really my friend, you'll let it go."

Conflicted, she backed off. "All right. If that's what you want."

"It is." He motioned toward Pearl. "You first."

Julia took a pill and slipped it into Pearl's mouth, then spent a minute talking to her.

David handed her the bowl of food and she and the dog disappeared into his bedroom.

When she returned, she hesitated, obviously wanting to say something more but unsure how to say it. "There's coffee and lemon pie...but I don't suppose you're interested."

"Not tonight," he said.

"Tomorrow?"

"Probably not."

"I understand." She started to leave.

"Julia?"

"Yes?"

"Would you—" He was torn between protecting himself and making her a part of the problem. Her sister and Michael could go home and tell a thousand people that they'd seen him and it likely wouldn't matter. But if just one of those people had a connection to someone who had a connection to someone who did care, his freedom and isolation would be over. "Never mind."

"Are you sure?"

He nodded. "It's nothing."

"They won't tell anyone they saw you, David," she said, guessing what he was going to ask. "I'm going to talk to them about it before they leave."

"I'm sorry I put you in that position."

"You didn't put me anywhere I didn't want to be." She placed her hands on his shoulders, stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. "It's what friends do for each other."

He shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching for her. "Then thank you for being my friend."

"You're welcome." She moved to leave, but instead stopped and gazed at David for a long time. "Evan loved Flying on Clipped Wings. You two would have been great friends. You have a lot in common."

More than she would ever realize. "Julia?"

"Yes?"

He held out his hand. She hesitated for several seconds before slipping her hand into his. Hebrew her to him, waiting for her to resist, ready to admit it was too soon. But she didn't. She came willingly, tilting her chin up when he brought her against his chest, parting her lips in sweet anticipation when he kissed her.

It was everything he could do to hold back, knowing the depth of his need, the breadth of his growing love, would scare her. She put her arms around his neck and held him, deepening the kiss almost to the point of commitment, giving him reason to hope.

And then it was over.

Julia's arms slid from his neck. She touched his cheek and looked into his eyes. "I wish..." She choked back a sob. "Oh, David, there's no way for me to tell you how much I wish this could be."

He took her hands in his. "Yeah, me, too."

"I'm sorry."There were tears in her eyes.

He believed her.

Four Years Missing

I considered waiting until you were home to tell you this—which is a good indication of how strongly I believe you can hear my thoughts as I write them— but I figured you might as well know now. I bought an artificial Christmas tree.

Are you groaning? Screaming in protest?

It's beautiful, Evan. They're making them so much more realistic now. And, best of all, they come with the lights already attached. It took me and the kids half the time to put up the tree this year. I told everyone there were lots of reasons I made the change, but the truth is that it just wasn't the same picking out a tree without you.

And I did such a bad job of securing last year's tree in the stand that it fell over in the middle of the night. I thought someone had broken in the house and I called 9-1-1.

The cops were really nice about the false alarm, but Jason is still annoyed that I refused to let him check out the house before I contacted them. He's going through another superhero stage and thinks he's invincible. I swear I've never told him that he's the "man of the family" with you away. You know I don't believe in things like that. Well, it appears it doesn't matter. Jason feels protecting me and Shelly is something you would want him to do. How can I argue with that?

Shelly's changing so fast lately that I tell one girl good-night and wake up to find another one in her place. In less than a year she's gone from being a pretty little girl to knocking on the door of being a full- fledged beautiful woman. That fourteen-year-old- hormone-influenced mind that's trapped inside a Victoria's Secret body terrifies me at times. Ninety percent of her conversations with her girlfriends is about boys and the other ten percent is about cell phones and iPods.

Were there iPods before you were kidnapped? I can't remember for sure. As much as you love listening to music when you're working in the garden, you're going to love all the new technology. You can go online and buy almost any song for less than a dollar.

What fun it will be for the three of us to bring you up-to-date and teach you how to operate all the new gadgets.

Have I told you lately how much I love to watch you with our kids? There's a secret that women have had forever that either men don't know or choose to ignore. We think men who are good with children are incredibly sexy. It's such a turn-on to see a father nurturing his son or daughter. Give us a guy who isn't afraid to hold a baby or roll around on the grass with a giggling three-year-old or walk to school holding hands with his kindergartner and we're butter in a hot pan, melting and sizzling at the same time. So there you have it, my magnificent stud muffin, the secret to your power over me. Just thinking about you with Shelly and Jason turns me to mush.

Of course it doesn't hurt that you're tall, dark and handsome, but when I look back at memories we share with the kids, I feel such fierce longing for you that I can hardly breathe.

How is it that your shoulders never gave out at parades with one of them and then the other perched there for hours? And how did your arms hold up carrying them back from one of our walks in the mountains when they grew too tired or sleepy to make it on their own? How much sleep did you get when you crawled into bed with one of them after they'd had a bad dream? Did you ever regret not being a better golfer because you gave up your weekends with the guys to coach Shelly's and then Jason's soccer teams?

Do you see your little brother, Shawn, in them? Are you memorializing him by doing for your own children what you couldn't do for him? We should have named Jason after Shawn, but I was too young to think of something that seems so obvious now. And I'm sorry I didn't ask you about him more. I was always afraid it would bring up sad memories.

Since you've been gone, I've learned I was wrong to worry about that. Memories are our connections. When they are of people we love, they are the wheat that makes the bread that sustains us.

I was thinking the other day that when you're home again, we should plant a garden for Shawn, one filled with all his favorite colors. Do you remember what they were?

Was he old enough to have favorite colors before he died? I guess what I'm really asking is, did he have colorful things to play with? When I think of the place you lived with him and your mother, all I see is gray and black and white.

I even have the location picked out for Shawn's garden. It's where we buried your mouse, underneath the peppermint-candy crepe myrtle. I didn't tell you about the mouse before because I didn't want to write anything sad. Are you laughing at that? He hung around for almost three years. According to something I read, that's an incredibly long time for a wild mouse. He must have been a young teenager when he wound up in Shelly's room. I found him one morning under the feeder, tucked into a sleeping position on top of a leaf. I cried. But then, I cry pretty easily these days.

Jason insisted on a funeral—your mouse had become a pretty regular part of our lives, fearlessly feasting on the birdseed that dropped from the feeder. He would even come out when we were there, paying us no more mind than he would a pill bug. Shelly attended the ceremony, reluctantly, grumbling the whole time and never getting closer than ten feet. Later, when she thought she was alone, I saw her putting flowers on the grave. She was wiping her eyes when she left.

C H A P T E R 1 3

Six Weeks Later

Julia sat on the railing that surrounded her porch I and watched for David. He'd taken Francis and Josi on a long walk to wear them out, hoping they would sleep on the flight to Sacramento. There they had a three-hour layover and a planned playtime to wear them out again for the direct, five-hour flight to New York, all carefully worked out to put him on the only airline that would let him have both dogs in the passenger compartment.

Somehow, from somewhere, David had found the answers he'd come there seeking, and had packed away the computer weeks ago, content, at last, with not writing. He claimed he'd let go without guilt or regret, but not without a certain sadness. When Julia expressed disappointment, he'd pointed out that he'd packed his laptop, not tossed it.

He was going home to sell his apartment and rid himself of the trappings he'd let accumulate over the years. Then would come a motor home just big enough for him and the "kids." Stealing a page from John Steinbeck's book Travels With Charley, he was going to reintroduce himself to a country and its people he'd only known by its coasts for the past twenty years.

He'd promised to keep in touch, because Julia had said she wanted him to. He even told her he would visit if he ever found himself in her neighborhood. After all, she'd put so much time into helping raise Pearl's pups it was only fair that she got to see the magnificent dogs they were sure to become.

It would take DNA to convince an outsider that Pearl was related in any way to the two wildly gregarious puppies that had consumed David's house and life. She'd obviously crossed paths with one of the breeds of short-haired pointers, because they looked like pet-quality examples of their father and nothing like her.

Over the past four weeks, as Pearl had weaned her pups she had moved in with Julia, first by minutes, then by hours and finally completely, leaving Francis and Josi to David. She let Julia give her a bath and luxuriated in the one-on-one time that came with her daily brushing. All the attention, regular meals and freedom from stress left her looking like a dog that had never known anything but a loving home.

Julia had never felt such a strong, empathetic connection to an animal before Pearl. It was as if their life experiences had created an understanding that went deeper than the words that usually formed a friendship this deep. When Pearl lay beside Julia's chair on the porch, her head on her paws, staring into the forest, Julia felt her sorrow and longing as readily as she felt her own and knew without question that there had been more puppies Pearl hadn't been able to save. When Julia was caught up in thinking about what should have been, invariably Pearl wound up at her side.

Drawn by Julia's thoughts, Pearl got up, crossed the porch and nosed Julia's hand. She looked down into expressive, questioning eyes."I'm going to miss David," she admitted.

"I know it's time for him to go and I know it's right, but that doesn't make it any easier."

She held Pearl's muzzle and locked gazes."And I'm going to miss Francis and Josi, too. Oh, Pearl, what are we going to do with ourselves without the three of them around here?"

Pearl responded with a throaty whine.

A familiar sound drew their attention as the pups came crashing through the trees, attacking each other, fighting and knocking each other over, tumbling and getting up to do it all over again. Seconds later David followed them, shaking his head.

Julia laughed. "I see you managed to wear them out. They certainly appear exhausted."

"And here I thought it was just my imagination."

"What did you feed them this morning?"

"Steroids and uppers, from the looks of it." The instant they spotted Pearl, the pups made a dash for her, taking the porch steps two at a time, missing almost as often as not with nosedives into the runners, gaining their balance and lunging forward again. Pearl issued a guttural warning, which they completely ignored, one jumping up to grab her good ear, the other tackling her tail.

"It's their way of telling her they love her," David supplied, climbing the steps after them.

Pearl let out another growl.

"Which I'm sure just means that she loves them, too," Julia said.

He sat beside her. "I wonder if she'll miss them."

"Yes," Julia said with absolute conviction. Just as she would miss David, more than she wanted to admit—to him or to herself. But by mutual agreement and understanding, certain things were left unspoken between them.

"It's been a good summer," he said simply.

"For me, too," she said.

"I got up this morning and tried to decide what was important enough to say to you before I leave. I've been going over them all day, but, basically, there's just one that matters." He took her hand."I came here looking for the man I used to be. You helped me see that letting him go is my road to freedom. Thanks to you, for the first time in longer than I can remember I'm looking forward instead of back."

"I hesitate telling you this, but my mother insists we didn't meet by accident this summer. She's convinced some cosmic force brought us together—" She gave him a self-conscious smile. "Are you ready for this?"

He returned her smile. "Lay it on me."

"To heal each other's souls."

"And you don't believe her?"

She was surprised to see that he wasn't teasing her; he really wanted to know. "It's hard for me to listen when she starts in. All my life she's insisted nothing happens by chance and that all I have to do is pay attention and I'll see the hidden meanings in everything from the ordinary to the bizarre. It sounds mean, but I finally reached the point where I just tune her out."

"I don't know about cosmic forces," he said. "But if you think about the series of circumstances it took to bring us together at this time and this place, you have to wonder if there wasn't something going on."

David had never believed in premonitions or signs or omens, either, but he believed in coincidence even less. If there was some mystical force that brought them together, it could have worked a little harder on some of the more important details. Or was loving Julia and knowing she would never love him in return the coin he had to pay for his newfound peace of mind?

"I have a feeling there's another time and place where you'll find the right woman waiting for you, David."

A flash of anger shot through him at the pat sentiment. How could she dismiss his feelings so casually? But then he saw that they weren't just words; she actually believed what she'd said.

She smiled. "Wrong thing to say?"

"Am I so transparent?"

"At times."

"I'll get over you, Julia." He meant it to reassure her, a promise between friends.

"I know." She squeezed his hand.

He glanced at his watch. He'd hired one of the vet assistants to drive him to the airport in Redding because he owned a van big enough to hold two dog carriers and luggage. He was due to arrive in ten minutes."I'd better get going. I want to get the 'kids'

loaded and settled before we take off."

"One more minute," she said. "I have something for you."

She went inside, brought out a package and handed it to him. Seeing how it was wrapped, in discarded manuscript pages that she'd unfolded and taped together, he shot her a questioning look.

"I stole them from your trash," she admitted.

He removed the bow, a pine cone decorated with tufts of Pearl's hair and held in place with fishing line, and then the paper. Inside was an unframed photograph of Julia and Pearl sitting on the top step of the porch, Julia's arm around Pearl, Pearl leaning into her side. Underneath the photograph were three bright red, spiral-bound journals.

David caught his breath at the'stab of emotion in his chest.

"For when the words come back."Julia smiled."I looked at a lot of fancy leather-bound journals when I went into Redding last week, but these seemed more your style."

"They're perfect." He heard the crunching sound of tires on gravel and felt a profound sadness, aware their time together was over. "Thank you, Julia. For everything."

She kissed him. The touch of her lips held none of the promise that could have kept him there. When she broke the kiss and stepped away, he softly told her, "I'm going to miss you."

"Thank you for being my friend, David. I know how hard that's been for you."

"Maybe those Fates of your mother's will arrange for us to meet again one day."

She shook her head. "I think once is all we're allowed."

"I left something for you on the table at the cabin."

She raised her eyebrows in question.

"That wooden box I made. I took out the bad reviews and burned them. The box isn't anything special, but I've carried it around a lot of years and thought you might like it."

David heard a car door slam. "It's time, Julia."

"Not yet. I'll help you get—"

"Now. I don't want to remember you standing on the road, watching me leave."

She nodded, tears filling her eyes."Goodbye, David."

He turned and left, the puppies following without being called. Pearl went to Julia and sat down, one haunch planted on her foot.

"How are we going to get up tomorrow morning, knowing they won't be here?"

Four Years, Three Hundred Sixty-four Days Missing

Tomorrow is an anniversary, Evan. It's not one I ever wanted to celebrate. It will be five years since you left for Colombia. I dread it. I don't believe it. I feel like screaming in frustration over all the days that turned into weeks that turned into months and now years. Why aren't you home when, with the exception of a woman abducted two months ago, every other American kidnapped before and after you has been released? What did I do wrong? Why are you still there and not home with me and Shelly and Jason?

It can't be your fault you 're still not home; it has to be mine. I'm so sorry, Evan.

I don't know what else to do, so I'm starting over. I'm going back to Colombia after the holidays and I'm going to hire a new negotiator—not because I doubt the people who have worked so long and hard for us up to now. They've been incredible, giving everything they had to give and more. But I'm hoping someone new will bring new ideas and new contacts.

I have to do something.

I won't ever quit, Evan.

I promise.

C H A P T E R 1 4

Julia picked up the smooth branch she'd found on her walk and tossed it into the water. Pearl bounded in after it, her remarkable retrieving skills making Julia wonder if she, too, had a little short-hair pointer in her obviously mixed genetic makeup.

She'd had a sense of unease the past two days, blaming the unseasonable thunderstorm that had moved in and stalled over the mountains, each lightning strike in the dry timber a potential fire disaster. Calls to her mother and Shelly and Jason and then Barbara and her brother, Fred, did nothing to settle the strange feeling that something was going on that needed her attention. Before adding Harold and Mary to her list and worrying them over the unexpected call, she decided she was simply missing David and the pups even more than she'd anticipated.

She'd been determined to stay at least another week after they'd left just to prove she could. It took three days before she accepted that her ability to endure the isolation didn't prove anything and she began packing. She and Pearl would leave in the morning, right after the new caretaker arrived.

Pearl left the lake and stopped to shake before racing to Julia with the stick. She barked and danced in circles, letting Julia know she was ready to go again. With two teens, two kittens and the new, livelier Pearl, theirs would be an interesting household.

Exactly what she needed.

Julia tossed the stick back into the water. But Pearl wasn't interested anymore. She stared toward the house, the fur on her back standing on end. It took more than a minute for Julia to determine what had drawn Pearl's attention—a car headed toward them.

They had company.

Figuring the new caretaker had decided to arrive a day early, Julia started back to the house to meet him. She was surprised to see Harold's green Lexus pull into the driveway, instead. He got out of the car and came toward her.

Her instant smile disappeared when she noticed the look on his face. Her heart in her throat, she demanded,

"What's wrong?"

"Come in the house. I have to talk to you."

No greeting, no how are you?

When Julia didn't move, Harold took her arm and guided her toward the house. Pearl circled them, then ran ahead, issuing a threatening growl. "It's okay, Pearl," Julia said, her voice denying her words.

Harold ignored the threatening dog and hurried Julia inside. Pearl followed, pacing between the living room and the kitchen, warily eyeing Harold.

"Sit down," Harold said.

The words snapped her out of her fog. "Enough of the melodramatics, Harold. Just tell me what's going on."

He took in a deep breath, swiped the hair off his forehead, stammered something she couldn't understand and looked at her as if she were someone to be feared. "Please, sit down."

She did, but only because he'd said it as though it really mattered.

"Evan—" He sat next to her and reached for her hands. "I don't know how to tell you this."

Now she was scared. What could he possibly tell her that was worse than what she already knew? "Just say it."

"He's coming home."

That didn't make sense. She stood up again. "He's already home."

"I don't know who we buried, but it wasn't Evan." He stopped to take a deep breath."He isn't dead, Julia. I just talked to him a couple of hours ago. He was at the Embassy. They were making arrangements for a flight home." He glanced at his watch."He's probably in the air right now."

The room was spinning. If she didn't hold on to something, she was going to fall. She put her hand out and grabbed a corner of the bookshelf. Damn it, she'd never passed out in her life and she wasn't going to now.

"Are you sure it was him?" How could it be?

Tears spilled from Harold's eyes. "Yes."

"How—"

Harold laughed through the tears and shook his head. "I don't know. All I could get out of him was that he walked out of the jungle last night and that he would tell us all about it when he got home."

"Are you absolutely sure?" She could not survive losing him twice.

"It's him, Julia," Harold insisted. "He's alive. And he's coming home."

Evan was coming home.

The hope she'd let die fought for footing in her mind. The pain of so many disappointments refused to yield their hold."I want to talk to him. Why didn't you give him my number?"

"I did. He couldn't reach you."

"I don't understand—" But then she did. She looked at the phone, at the red light blinking on the answering machine. "I wasn't here," she said in a choked whisper. "How did he sound?"

"Happy—ecstatic. He couldn't stop talking about you and the kids. He was like a man diving into a swimming pool after spending a lifetime in the desert."

"Does he know that we thought he was dead?"

"The people at the Embassy told him."

"Does he know we only gave up when.—" She couldn't finish.

"Aww, Julia don't do that to yourself." He gave her a helpless look. "Mary was right...

I was going to have someone from town come out here to find you, but she insisted someone you cared for had to be with you when you found out."

She would have to remember to thank Mary. Again. For so many things.

"She said you'd have a hundred questions and that there was no way you should drive home alone," Harold went on, filling the silence."We tried to reach Barbara, and when we couldn't, I finally managed to convince Mary she could trust me behind the wheel. I got here as fast as I could."

Julia went to the answering machine and, with a trembling finger, pressed Play. When she heard

Evan's voice, she let out a poignant cry of recognition and longing.

"Julia? Are you there?" He paused. "I know I'm a little late, but I thought I'd better call to make sure you got that little black dress. I'll be home soon and we've got some major celebrating to do." Another pause, this one longer. She could hear him struggle to keep from breaking down. His longing and heartache wrenched her soul. "I love you,"

he said softly. "I'm so sorry you had to wait all these years to hear me tell you that again."

The room took off. Her skin tingled. Stars appeared. She reached for something to hang on to again, but this time couldn't find anything. Her legs buckled. And, for the first time in her life, Julia passed out…

Julia came to with Pearl standing over her, growling fiercely, her teeth bared at Harold."It's okay, Pearl." She struggled to a sitting position and grabbed Pearl's collar.

"You're going to have to do something about that dog," Harold said.

"How long was I out?"

"A minute, maybe two. It's a good thing you didn't hit your head or break something, because she wouldn't let me anywhere near you." He put down the blanket he'd taken off the back of the couch to try to subdue Pearl. "Is there someone you could leave her with?"

Julia ignored him and hit the button on the answering machine. She listened to Evan's voice over and over until her mind let her accept that it really was him and that he really was coming home."I want to talk to him. Did he give you a number? Maybe I should just call the Embassy. Surely someone there would know where he is."

Harold took a piece of paper out of his pocket and read her the number. Three phone calls later she learned that Evan was indeed already on a plane and would arrive in San Francisco in five hours— too soon for her to get there to meet him. When she told Harold, he immediately arranged for a private charter to fly Evan the final hundred miles to Sacramento.

Calling her mother, working out the details to bring Shelly and Jason home, closing the house and stopping by the vet to pick up a muzzle and tranquilizer for Pearl kept Julia focused. On the long ride down the 15, she used Harold to ground her, throwing one question after another at him, even though he had few answers.

The authorities in Colombia and the United States would make the arrangements to have the man she'd buried returned to Colombia. The doctor who'd made the "positive"

identification had admitted he'd lost Evan's dental and medical records and that the death certificate was based on the personal belongings found in the grave.

As soon as they were within range of a cell tower, Julia asked Harold for his phone.

She hadn't bothered charging or carrying hers the months she'd been in the mountains because there wasn't any service within fifty miles of the house.

She tapped in Barbara's home number, and when her sister didn't answer tried her cell.

Barbara picked up on the third ring. Her heart in her throat at what she was about to do to her sister, Julia asked, "Where are you?"

"Why?"

"Just tell me."

"I'm at the grocery store."

"Leave—right now. Get in your car, but don't start it."

"Are you okay?" Barbara asked.

"Please," Julia begged."Just do this for me. It's important. I promise you'll understand in a minute."

"You're scaring me."

"No—don't be scared."

"All right," Barbara said, switching emotional gears again. "But it better not take long.

I have ice cream in my cart. The expensive kind."

In the minutes it took Barbara to assure a clerk she wasn't abandoning her cart and get to her car, Julia decided it would be better to ask her favor and then tell Barbara about Evan.

"Okay, I'm here."

"Are you inside and sitting down?"

"Wait a minute," Barbara said with a sigh. "This had better be good, Julia.

"Okay, lay it on me."

"I want you to go to Nordstrom and buy me an absolute knock-your-socks-off black dress and the sexiest black negligee you can find."

"What?" she nearly shouted. "This is why you dragged me out of the store? Tell me again. I can't have heard you right."

"You heard me correctly."

"Okay, I'll bite—why am I doing this?"

Julia took a deep breath. "Remember that note Evan wrote me when he left?"

"Yes..."

"He's not dead, Barbara," she somehow managed to say through the instant flood of tears. "He walked out of the jungle last night, and he's going to be home in a couple of hours."

"Julia—where are you?"The implied question was whether she'd had a breakdown and had called from a padded hospital room."

"In Harold's car. We're on our way home but won't be there in time for me to get the dress and get to the airport."

"I don't understand. How can Evan be alive when we buried him eight months ago?"

Before Julia could answer, Barbara added, "Are you sure? Are you absolutely, positively sure it's Evan?"

"Yes," Julia told her. "I heard his voice. It's him, Barbara. He's coming home."

"Ohmygod—" she breathed. "Ohmygod."

Julia could hear her pounding on the steering wheel.

"This is soooo wonderful. It's beyond wonderful. It's... it's..."

"Some kind of miracle," Julia said.

"It's a hundred miracles rolled into one. Oh, Julia, I'm so far beyond words happy for you." She let out a whoop and scream so loud they should have shattered the safety glass. "Do Mom and Dad know? Of course they do—you had to call Shelly and Jason.

How are the kids taking the news?"

"Shelly couldn't stop crying and Jason couldn't stop asking questions."

"And Mom and Dad?"

"Mom couldn't stop crying and Dad couldn't stop asking questions."

Barbara laughed."Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod," she squealed. "I have never been this happy. Not even close. Not in my whole life." She squealed again. "I'm going to throw a party. For all of you. Not right away," she added quickly."In a few weeks.

When Evan is ready."

"The dress?"Julia prompted.

"I'm on it— Give me a second. I'm digging for my keys."

Now it was Julia's turn to laugh. It felt like another brick had been removed from the wall she'd built around her heart. "The ice cream?"

"Oh, yeah. Okay, got it. I'll let the clerk know and then I'm outta here."

Julia heard the car door open and close. Seconds later came a long, loud horn and screeching tires. "Barbara—"

"Relax, that wasn't meant for me."

Just the fleeting possibility that something awful could happen to another person she loved made her sick with panic. "Promise me you'll drive carefully."

"Of course. Don't I always? Never mind—don't answer that."

"I'm going to let you go now." Barbara needed the distraction of a cell phone like she needed another dozen kids in her kindergarten class. "If you have to reach me, use Harold's cell. My battery's shot."

"Do I have a spending limit for this dress?"

"The sky," Julia said. She'd worry about how to pay for it later." All I care about is that it's the next best thing to being naked." That so-o-o-o needed a modifier. "Within reason. You understand that, don't you?"

"This is going to be so much fun. I wish you were going with me."

"Wait for me at the house and you can help me get ready. At the moment I don't think I could manage a garter belt, let alone buttons or zippers."

"I'll keep easy entrance and exit in mind," Barbara said, dropping her voice. "For both you and Evan."

For the first time in almost six years Julia felt a flush crawl up her neck and knew her pale cheeks had turned a flaming crimson.

C H A P T E R 1 5

Harold dropped Julia and Pearl off at her house at five-thirty and returned at seven to take her to the airport. He stepped back in surprise when she opened the door.

"Wow," he said. "You look...that dress is.. .spectacular."

"It's not the dress," Mary said. "It's the woman wearing it." She stepped forward to hug Julia. "You look like a million dollars."

More like $2,836 and odd change. But Julia wouldn't have cared had it been twice that—five times, a hundred rimes. Barbara had bought the absolutely perfect little black dress. Deceptively simple, the strapless, knee-length creation clung to her best features and softly draped over those that not even jogging four miles a day could return to their ten-year-gone prime. Her shoes were two-hours-max strappy heels; her only jewelry, her wedding ring and Barbara's diamond stud earrings, which she'd insisted Julia wear.

Julia stepped outside and turned to lock the door, but her hands were shaking so badly she couldn't fit the key into the slot.

"Let me," Harold said. He locked the door, tested it and handed Julia the key. She tucked it into her bra.

"Didn't want to bother with a purse," she explained. It was then she noticed a Mercedes limo in the driveway, so new it still had paper license plates. "What's this?"

"Your ride," Mary said. "We decided that this day belongs to you and Evan."

Mary must have worked her magic on Barbara, too, because when Julia invited her to ride to the airport with them, she'd declined, saying her absence was the first of an armload of gifts she had to give Evan. Julia glanced at Harold. There was no way he'd agreed to wait a whole day without heavy persuasion. She hugged him. "Thank you."

He nodded. "Tell Evan—" Overcome with emotions, he caught his lower lip between his teeth. "Tell him welcome home and that we'll see him tomorrow."

"For breakfast," Mary said. "At our house. As soon as you're up and feel like company."

Julia hugged her, long and hard. "I owe you two so much."

"Nonsense," Mary said, and then smiled."But you do realize that 'as soon as you feel like coming over' means no later than eight. I had to promise Harold I'd do whatever it took to get you there by then."

Julia laughed. "We'll be there."

"And then if you and Evan feel up to it, we thought we'd have a little reception at the house this weekend. Somehow word got out that he's en route and it was the only way we could manage all the friends who were calling."

That would give them three days, one alone and two with Shelly and Jason."I'll check with Evan, but I don't see why that wouldn't work."

Actually, she could think of several reasons Evan might not want to be in a crowd, even one made up of loving family and friends. The books she'd read about hostages coming home after long captivities had been filled with stories about stress and illnesses, both mental and physical. But worrying about that on the happiest day of her life was like winning the Miss America contest and stopping to make sure none of the stones in the crown were loose.

She looked from Mary to Harold to Barbara. "I couldn't have gotten through all these years without you," she told them. "Thank you." She put her hand to her chest. "From the bottom of my heart."

Tears filled Barbara's eyes. "You taught me the true meaning of love, Julia. I'll never settle for anything less again."

Julia kissed her sister and took a second to wipe the lipstick from her cheek before giving Harold and Mary quick hugs. The chauffeur got out and opened the door. Julia hurried toward the car as fast as her sexy, completely impractical heels would allow, then stopped for one last wave before disappearing behind smoked glass.

Two doors down she saw her neighbor Maijorie Wells, standing in the middle of her front yard, about to plant a sign that said Welcome Home, Evan. This was a woman who'd moved in two years ago, someone who only knew Evan through her and the kids.

Julia spotted a small jet in the distance and watched, transfixed, as it banked and circled and prepared to land. She knew without question Evan was inside. All the years of waiting had come down to minutes. Her hands tingled, a warning for her to stop holding her breath. She moved outside.

Another hangar kept her from seeing the actual landing, but she heard the jets back off and knew the plane was on the ground. Minutes later it appeared, taxiing toward her.

Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, louder even than the idling jet engines. She scanned the small windows but couldn't see inside past the reflecting sun. The wind whipped her hair. The plane stopped...

After all this time, could it really be true that Evan had come home to her?

The door opened. Stairs appeared. A man filled the doorway. He found her, and his face lit with a brilliant smile.

"Evan," she breathed.

He was here. He was really here.

Her legs wouldn't move. Evan was home. She didn't have to be strong or rigid or carry the world on her shoulders anymore. She didn't run to him; she couldn't. Instead, her heart and mind reached for him. He crossed the tarmac and swept her into his arms.

With a cry she melted against him, her arms locked around his neck. Now, at this moment, she truly believed he was home.

She leaned back to look into his eyes. "It's really you," she said in wonder.

He was thinner and his hair had more gray, new lines framed his eyes and there was a long scar on his chin that hadn't been there before. He was wearing dark-green slacks and a plaid shirt, clothes obviously borrowed, in colors he would never have picked for himself. But he was not the emaciated, sickly man she'd feared he would be after all the years he'd spent in the jungle.

Before she could say anything more, he lowered his mouth to hers. The kiss was the one she'd dreamed of in the morning when the kids had gone to school and the house echoed in loneliness, when she looked around at a world seemingly occupied by pairs; and in the middle of the night when her mind allowed her to go to a place where she was free of the agony of missing him.

"I'm here because of you," he said, cupping her face with his hands, absorbing her with his eyes. "I knew you were waiting." He gave her a breath- stealing smile. "I couldn't disappoint you."

She was crying, unable to return his smile. "I would have waited forever."

"I know," he said softly. "I always knew."

She touched the scar on his chin. "How—"

He took her hand and pressed his lips to her palm. "It's nothing. A story for another time." He kissed her again. "I want to go home."

Julia nodded.

Loud clapping erupted around them. Julia jumped, startled. She'd forgotten they weren't alone. Evan smiled in acknowledgment of the well wishes and waved. He put his arm around Julia and leaned in close to whisper, "Where's the car?"

C H A P T E R 1 6

"Incredible dress," Evan said, following Julia into a the limo.

An ordinary compliment filled with extraordinary meaning. "Barbara picked it out for me."

"Remind me to thank her." He settled in beside her, locking his seat belt and taking her hand. "I was expecting a crowd. How did you talk everyone out of coming?"

"We have Mary to thank for that."

His smile faded, his expression serious once more. "It's going to take a long time to thank all the people who worked to bring me home."

"There are a lot of wonderful people eager to meet you," she said.

"You must have made some important friends. I flew in first class with a State Department escort all the way from Bogota to San Francisco. There wasn't a barrier that came up in Miami that he didn't knock down with a phone call. How did you manage to maintain these people's attention spans all this time?"

"I never went away." Was she really having this conversation? Was it really her hand clasped in his? She touched his cheek, his chin, his nose, his hair. "You're really here,"

she said in wonder.

"It's hard for me to believe, too."

"What do you want to do?"

He gave her a throaty laugh filled with meaning. "You mean besides the obvious?"

For the second time that day, she blushed. "Afterward. You have a list," she insisted."I know you made one, if only in your mind."

He laughed again, this time joyfully. Could there be a sweeter sound? "I've been dreaming about a garlic-tomato-and-olive pizza," he told her.

"And?" she prodded.

"Brunch with you at Venita Rhea's. Please tell me they're still in business. I used to wake up dreaming about their olive-and-mushroom omelets."

"They're still there. No olives in the jungle?" She caught her breath in surprise at the question. Could she be joking with him about their ordeal?

He leaned over to kiss her. "Thank you," he said, his voice cracking. "I need to be home again. I need to have things the way they were—normal."

Her heart went out to him."I'll do what I can, but there are people who—"

"I know. I expect that. I just want to get through it as quickly as possible so we can get back to our lives." He squeezed her hand in reassurance as he looked out at a suburban landscape almost unchanged in five years. "I'm worried about reconnecting with Shelly and Jason," he reluctantly admitted. He looked back at her. "Do they even remember me?"

"Not the way I do, but you are as real to them as you are to me." There was nothing she could say to reassure him. Only being with his children again, seeing for himself how much they'd changed and how much they'd stayed the same, would give him what he needed."They'll be here tomorrow at noon. It was the first flight Dad could get."

"I tried calling them when we landed in Miami, but Fred told me that they'd already left for Kansas City. I should have made time before I left Bogota, but they were already holding the plane." He stared out the window again, this time seeing Sacramento's city skyline, radically different from when he'd left.

"All these new buildings. Everything has changed so much."

"Not me," she said softly.

He turned back to her and smiled. "Even you," he said. "You've grown more beautiful."

The amazing thing was that she believed him. She knew without question that in his eyes, she would still be as beautiful at eighty. She leaned over and put her head on his shoulder. "I tried to imagine what your days were like. It hurt so much to think of you being mistreated or locked away that I finally stopped."

"For the most part I suffered more monotony than abuse."

"I have so many questions I don't know where to begin. We never did find out who took you or why. Every time we thought we had it figured out', another group would make contact."

"I'm afraid that's my fault. I kept escaping but never made it very far before I was recaptured by someone else. In the beginning it was a bunch of stupid thugs who simply screwed up and snatched the wrong man. They had no idea what to do with me when the people who'd hired them refused to pay. I spent months with them traveling from village to village before I realized I was being shopped around to groups that knew how the ransom process worked.

"Finally, they just dumped me with someone's cousin who said he knew some guys who would keep me until they found someone who would pay. These guys realized I had no sense of direction, and I became their source of entertainment. They'd take me a couple of miles from camp and leave me just to see how lost I could get.

"One day they left me near a stream. I followed it and a week later wound up in a village controlled by FARC. They were a little more savvy about controlling their captives and it took me longer to get away from them."

"How many times did you escape?"

He put his arm around her and settled her deeper into his side. "Successfully? Only once."

"And unsuccessfully?"

"A dozen times. I wound up with six different groups."

"It must have been the FARC group that sent the first note," she said."We couldn't figure out why they waited so long to make contact."

"I probably should have stayed put," he said. "But all I could think about was getting home to you and the kids."

At last, all the ransom demands by different groups made sense. How was it that none of them had ever figured it out?

"For the most part I was with people who knew I was useless to them dead. And since no one knew how long it would take to get their money, it was in their interest to feed me and keep me as healthy as possible."

Julia slipped her arm around his waist, still struggling to comprehend that Evan was really there beside her, that it wasn't a dream. "We got reports of a tall white man with black hair and blue eyes, but every sighting was so far apart from the last one that we didn't think the reports could be trusted."

He chuckled. "Next time I'll know not to going wandering around."

Julia reared back. The olives were one thing, but how could he joke about a wound so deep it was still bleeding? "Don't say that."

He touched her cheek and then her lips with his fingertips, mapping her face. "It's over, Julie. I'm home. You can let it go now."

Did he really think that was possible? "I can't."

"I never believed it would be possible to put what happened to my mother and brother behind me, either, but you showed me I could. We have to find a way to let this go, too."

His mother and brother were his pain, something she hadn't experienced, something she could philosophize about from a safe distance. Not until now did she truly understand what she'd asked of him back then. "I don't know if I can."

He touched his forehead to hers in a gesture as intimate as a kiss. "If you don't, you give what happened power over everything you do or say or feel for the rest of your life.

Every sorrow will feel deserved and every joy will be dampened by fear. I know this, Julia, because I lived it before I met you."

"You can really forgive them for what they did?" That's what he was asking. She couldn't forget without forgiving. "This easily?"

"It's either that or let them have power over me. Why would I want to do that?"

They weren't just words. "I don't know how," she admitted."It's been my life for almost six years. It's all I've thought about. How do I stop being angry for all the Thanksgivings and Christmases and birthdays we missed with you? And all the ordinary moments that make up memories we'll never share?"

"Look at me." She did. "You were told I was dead. You buried me. And yet I'm here with you now. Do you really want our lives forever tainted by the men who put us through that hell?"

He was telling her what she needed to hear, what she'd told him twenty years ago.

How easy it had seemed in theory, how hard in execution. "If I could, I would castrate every last one of them."

Evan laughed, deep and hearty. "That's my Julia."

"But since I can't," she added, "I'll find a way to forget them."

C H A P T E R 1 7

Evan stood at the open sliding-glass door with Julia at his side and stared at the backyard, awash in a brilliant orange sunset."It's exactly the way I imagined. Even more beautiful. You did an incredible job."

"Shelly helped." She smiled. "And the gardener I hired when I was doing so much traveling."

He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her into his side. "Tell me about the dog."

Pearl was busy investigating this new territory, an investigation Julia had cut short when she'd left for the airport. She'd been afraid that if she left Pearl outside, she would spook and escape through one of the weak spots in the twenty-year-old wooden fence.

Julia also worried what Pearl would do when yet another man invaded her territory, especially one who wouldn't yield to her threats. But instead of the fierce greeting she'd given Harold, Pearl stood her ground and stared at Evan for a full minute before going to the door and scratching to be let out.

Julia told him about Pearl and David and how meeting them had saved her sanity that summer.

"Do you think he'll stop by if he makes it this far?" Evan asked.

Julia shook her head. "He fell a little in love with me. When he realized I could never reciprocate his feelings, he left."

Evan didn't say anything for a long time. "You thought I was dead. I would understand if you—"

"It didn't matter that I believed I would never see you again, Evan. If I'd never known your love... I could have found someone else. But almost losing you made me understand what it means to have connected to my soul mate. This is for life. Nothing can change that."

He kissed her. She came up on her toes to return the kiss, to feel the length of his body against hers. A long-banked fire exploded in her. Tentacles of flame turned gentle passion into raging need.

Evan ran his hands down her back and over the soft rise of her buttocks. He cupped the flesh and brought her closer, his desire hard and throbbing.

She clasped his hand and led him upstairs to their room, to the bed where they'd made sweet, familiar love the last night they'd had together. He sat her on the corner of the mattress and lifted one foot and then the other, removing her heels and kissing the arch of each foot. She reached for her zipper and he caught her hand. "Let me."

"Hurry," she urged.

He did, but stopped to look at her when she lay naked across the bed. "I remember a hay field and a girl I thought the most perfect ever created. That was nothing compared with what you are now."

She undid the buttons on his shirt. Her fingers shook in fevered anticipation and she fumbled getting them undone. Impatient, Evan grabbed the hem and pulled the shirt over his head.

Julia gasped when she saw his chest and arms. He was covered in scars, some so fresh that they were still red. "What—"

He placed a hand over her mouth to silence her. "Another time, Julia. Not now."

He'd lied to her. His life hadn't been lived in the benign captivity he'd implied. How could he ask her to forgive the men who had done this to him? She pressed her palm against his chest, feeling his heart, the heart that had survived untold horrors to bring him back to her.

He had survived for her.

He had lived through a hell she could only imagine to return home to her, even when it would have been easier to stop trying. The depth of his love was more than she could comprehend. "Thank you for not giving up," she said through her tears. "Without you I would have been alone forever."

"Don't cry," he said softly."I came home. I'm here. Nothing else matters."

She placed her arms around his neck and kissed him, tasting his lips and her tears, surrendering herself to his desire to forget. She ran her fingers over his scars, making them something she shared with him, erasing their power and thoughts of the men who had put them there. He stood and removed the rest of his clothes and she saw there were more scars, so many that there were few places on his body left untouched.

Julia sat up. "Turn around."

He did, exposing his brutalized back.

She tried, but couldn't stop the tears. "I've always believed that seventeen-year-old boy I made love to on my grandmother's patchwork quilt was the standard I would use to judge every other man against. I've changed my mind."

Evan turned to her and smiled. "Why, Mrs. Prescott, I believe that's the sexiest thing anyone has ever said to me."

"Come here," she told him, holding out her arms. "If you think that was sexy, wait until you see what I have—"

Evan covered her mouth with his, and the rest of what she was going to say was lost forever.

Julia awoke with a start. Evan was gone. For one heartbreaking moment she was almost overwhelmed by a terrible fear that he'd never been there at all, that she'd been dreaming he was home, dreaming that he'd made love to her, dreaming that he'd told her he loved her over and over again until her heart was ready to burst with joy. But then she saw his clothes draped over the chair in the corner and she could breathe again.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed to go look for Evan and almost stepped on him. He was sleeping on the rug she kept beside the bed dressed in his old pajama bottoms, holding something white. Julia crawled out the other side of the bed and came around to look at him.

The "white" tucked into his arms was Pearl. She raised her head just enough to acknowledge Julia, thumped her tail twice and let out a contented sigh before settling back down, her nose resting on Evan's arm.

Two lost souls had recognized each other. Almost as if it had been predestined—if Julia believed in such things.

She backtracked to get her robe. Placing her hand on the nightstand for balance, she stepped into her slippers and accidentally bumped Evan's rose. A petal dropped, and then another. Slowly the rose shed its petals one after the other until they lay in a perfect circle around the vase. It was as if Evan's homecoming had released the rose from its burden.

Julia stood and stared, transfixed."Okay, Mother," she whispered. "I give up. You were right."

She gathered the petals and slipped them in her pocket to take downstairs and put in the wooden box David had given her, saving them to pass on to Shelly and Jason one day, maybe at their weddings, or maybe when they became parents. Her mother would like that.

In the meantime, she had a letter to finish.