Sweet Blessings. Jillian Hart

It all burned in her stomach, the anger and the helplessness of it. They probably thought nothing of it, just two guys out having some fun.

      But it was a big deal, their lack of respect. She wasn’t some questionable woman. She had standards and morals she lived by. What hurt is that times like this and men like that reminded her of the days when she’d behaved in ways she deeply regretted.

      Don’t think about it. It’s over and done with now. She’d do best to erase the entire experience from her mind. She’d told the incident to the deputy on her way home. He lived four doors down. He was on his way out on an emergency call, but he told her he’d be by the diner in the morning if she wanted to file a report. She didn’t. There was no point. Things like that were public record and she wanted to keep as far away from the ugliness of the outside world as she could. For her son, and for herself.

      This trailer wasn’t much, but it was hers and she’d worked hard to make the best of it. The tan shag carpeting was nothing fancy, but it was freshly vacuumed and in good repair. She’d laid it herself, after buying it as a remnant from a flooring outlet store in Bozeman.

      Last year she’d retextured the walls in the living room and applied several coats of the lightest blue paint. The couch had been in the family for what seemed like generations. She’d reupholstered it and made the throw pillows that cheerfully matched the walls. Pretty lace curtains—she’d made a good yard-sale find with those—hung on decorative rods she’d mounted and gave the cozy room a sense of softness.

      This was her sanctuary, and Westin’s boyhood home. She breathed in the serenity and felt more centered. She knelt to blow out the candle, and darkness washed over her. Tonight the shadows did not seem as peaceful. Hail echoed through the spaces and corners of the trailer and filled her with trepidation, as if the past could rear up and snatch away her life here.

      I’m just tired, that’s all. Amy rose, breathing in the faint smoke rising off the wick and peppermint-scented wax. The uneasiness remained.

      “Mom!” Westin stood in the wash of light from his bedroom door, looking like a waif in pjs that were a size too big. He was holding his stuffed Snoopy by the ear.

      Her heart broke. Why was she letting the unease from the past trouble her? There was no reason to look back. She’d come a long way, and she’d done it all by herself—okay, with the help of God and her sisters. Westin was waiting for her, and no way was she going to let him down.

      “Are your teeth brushed?” she asked, because it was her job as a mom.

      “Kelly made me.”

      “And what about your prayers?”

      “Yep. I told ya. I’m really, really ready.”

      “Then get into bed, young man. Hurry up.”

      He ran, feet pounding as he raced out of her sight. The squeak of the box spring told her he’d jumped onto his mattress and was bouncing around, all boy energy, even this late at night.

      If only she could harness it, she thought wistfully, as she bent her aching back to blow out the other candle on the little dinette set in the eating nook. Every bone in both feet seemed to groan and wince as she headed down the hall, drawn through the darkness by the light in her little boy’s room.

      Westin was waiting and ready, tucked beneath his covers. A candle in a stout holder—Kelly must have placed it there—shone brightly enough on the pillow to reveal the boy’s midnight-blue bedspread with the planets sprinkled all over it. The rings of Saturn. The storms of Jupiter. The icy moon of…Jupiter? She couldn’t keep straight which moons belonged to which planets, but she should know it by heart because it was nearly all Westin talked about.

      “Kelly and I saved the chapter on black holes for you to read, Mom!” Big blue eyes sparkling, Westin hid a cough in his fist and scrunched back into the pillows. Snoopy, clenched tightly in the crook of one arm, was apparently anticipating the wealth of information on black holes, too.

      “I’ve been looking forward to this all day.” Amy settled onto the bedside and held the heavy library book open in her hands. The spine cracked, the plastic cover crinkled and she breathed in the wonderful scent of books, paper and ink. She cleared her throat and began to read.

      As exciting as gravity was, and as awesome as it was to hear about some stars exploding their matter into space, while others sank into themselves, Westin’s eyelids flickered. He yawned hugely and fought hard to stay awake. When she got to the part about gravity sucking light and matter into the net of a black hole, Westin’s lids stayed shut. His jaw relaxed. Snoopy kept watching her, however.

      She slipped a bookmark between the pages and set the book on the nightstand. She just watched her son sleep for a few minutes with her heart full. Then she rose, blew out the candle and shut his door tightly.

      The hall was pitch-black. Hail still rattled against the walls. Listening to the wind groan, Amy slipped into the darkness of her room. There was a tiny reading light, run on battery power, on her headboard. She unclipped it and flicked it on. It was a faint light and not strong enough to scare away the deep shadows from the room.

      The uneasiness was still inside her. It was the loner. Tonight he’d somehow breached the careful shield she kept around her. Maybe it wasn’t that he’d broken through her defenses as much as she saw through his. And what she saw there reminded her of hard lessons she’d learned.

      When a person lost her innocence, there was no way to get it back—even if she surrounded herself with family and friends, lived in a small rural town where she’d lived nearly all her life, where she knew everyone, where nothing bad hardly ever happened.

      She could work hard, do her very best, pay her bills on time, make a home, raise a son and sometimes, like tonight, there would be something that would remind her.

      Some wounds ran too deep to heal. And there lived within her a scar that cut into her soul. She was as lost as the loner had seemed to be. And as wounded.

      In the dark, alone in her room, she felt revealed. In an act just short of desperation, she switched on the clock radio by her bed and forgot the lights were out. Tonight there would be no soothing twang of familiar Christian songs to lull away some of the void.

      She hurried about her bedtime routine, the little habits reassuring her, making her feel as if everything was in its place. She washed her face, flossed, brushed her teeth, smoothed cream on those little lines beside her eyes and mouth. She changed into her soft flannel pajamas and knelt to say her prayers.

      The storm was moving on. The hail turned to rain as she crawled under the covers, and then to silence.

      But it wasn’t a peaceful silence.

      Chapter Three

      Heath growled in frustration from beneath the pillow that he’d wedged over his head. But it wasn’t working to block out first light.

      It was his brand of luck. His motel room faced east—and that meant bright searing sunlight was finding its way through the gaps in the fifty-year-old curtain, and it lit up the place like a lighthouse’s beacon. The light seemed to pulse and dance because the old heater that clattered like a hamster running on a squeaky wheel all night long and wouldn’t turn off, was spewing hot air full-blast beneath the curtains.

      Oh yeah, it was another night in a long string of countless nights without much sleep to speak of. His eyes were gritty, his mind numb and his back muscles aching from the sagging mattress. By the time he’d stepped into the shower, he was already resigned and so the fact that the water stayed cold even when he’d turned the knob to full force hot didn’t bother him so much.

      These days not much did. His single duffel bag was ready to go and waiting by the door. He never bothered to unpack. When he was dried off and dressed, he tossed his toothbrush and half-rolled tube of toothpaste into the bag’s side pocket. He then added his unused razor. He scraped a hand over his two-day stubble—not too long to itch yet and he didn’t care if he looked a little on the scruffy side.

      He