All a Man Is. Janice Kay Johnson

would you suggest? That I close my eyes and stab a pin into a map, pick someplace to go at random?”

      For a second he had double vision, those red pins floating before his eyes, and he thought with an astonishing burst of anguish, Julia. What if somehow, someway, that creep came across her? Los Feliz, the part of L.A. where she and Alec both lived, was upscale. She was pure class and beautiful. He—whoever he was—would like her. Want her. Hate her.

      She and the kids would be better off, safer, away from overcrowded, smoggy, crime-ridden Southern California.

      This was the moment when Alec realized he would do anything at all for her, Matt and Liana. Anything for them, and to keep them in his life even if he was painfully aware he was destined to remain on the outside looking in.

      “We’ll pick somewhere,” he said. “I should be able to get a job running a police department in a peaceful small town somewhere. Don’t go home to your parents. Let’s stay together.”

      The shock in her green-gold eyes was such that, for a terrifying instant, he thought he’d blown it. And then those eyes filled with tears. “I can’t ask you—”

      “I’m offering.” He couldn’t let himself touch her, so he didn’t move. “I’m ready for a change, Julia.”

      She pressed fingers to her lips, laughing and crying at the same time. “Oh, God. If you mean it...”

      All the fear left him in a rush. “I mean it. I’ll go online and start looking tonight. I’ll let you know where I find possible job openings. You can research the towns. We’ll find the perfect one. I promise.”

      There was a minute there when he thought she wanted to throw herself into his arms. But, as always, she turned away. Snatching up a dish towel, she began mopping her face.

      “Do you think this is what Josh would want us to do?”

      She always did that, produced his brother’s name as if she were lighting a candle at his altar.

      And I’m pathetic to feel jealous. Worse than pathetic, he thought in disgust. Why wasn’t he glad she’d loved his brother so much?

      “Yeah.” He pulled a smile from the hat. “Josh would say go for it.”

      CHAPTER ONE

      “EW, GROSS! MO-OM! Mattie just spit on the floor,” Liana whined.

      “Tattletale,” her brother snarled. “And don’t call me Mattie again or I’ll make you sorry!”

      The dull throbbing in the left side of Julia Raynor’s skull sharpened until she felt as if a drill bit was viciously driving through her forehead. She stole a glance in her rearview mirror to see her children glaring at each other.

      She should have separated them by letting one ride in front, but she’d lost her temper this morning when they started fighting about whose turn it was.

      “Both of you,” she’d snapped, “backseat. No argument. We’re not doing this.”

      She’d wonder why Matt wanted to ride up front, given how thoroughly he seemed to detest her, except she knew. Keeping his sister from getting what she wanted seemed to be one of his few pleasures.

      Julia’s only consolation was that she was pretty sure the sibling warfare was normal, no matter how aggravating it was from her point of view. So little about Matt seemed normal now, she’d take what solace she could.

      The entire trip had been the closest thing to hell she could imagine. A step beyond purgatory. It should have been fun, an adventure. Not that long ago, it would have been.

      Before Josh died. Before Matt became so angry.

      Silence simmered behind her. It was like driving with a feral animal in a trap on the backseat right next to a fluffy, cheerful Maltese terrier now getting whiny and snappy out of fear, and Julia was beginning to wonder if the trap door was secure.

      We could have flown. Been here in a few hours instead of the longest two days of my life.

      Clenching the steering wheel, she wished she’d followed Alec’s example and sold the damn car and bought a new one when they arrived. She’d been worrying about how much life her eight-year-old Volkswagen Passat still had in it anyway. Clinging to the familiar was one thing; clinging to a cantankerous car that would not like cold winters was something else again.

      “We’re almost there,” she said, hoping to stir some tiny remnant of excitement. Not that Matt had ever felt any. He was bitterly resentful about the move.

      So what else is new? she asked herself wearily. For the past year and more, her son had bitterly resented every word she spoke, every decision she made.

      “You keep saying that,” Liana said sulkily. Even Julia’s good-natured daughter was wearing down.

      “Because we are getting closer. The sign we just passed said eighteen miles.”

      “Oh.”

      This time, a glance in the mirror assured her that they were both at least looking out their respective windows, as if some curiosity had surfaced.

      The landscape was intriguing and very different from the brown hills and canyons of their most recent home. No ocean beaches here in central Oregon, either, although Alec assured her there were countless clear, cold lakes. The highway had been following a beautiful, tumbling river for some miles now. This stretch of Highway 97 was wooded and...knobby. Those lumps couldn’t all be volcanic cinder cones, could they? If so, they’d become overgrown with pine trees.

      The fact that she was moving her children to a spot in the heart of volcano country made her a little nervous, especially now that they were here and she could see the evidence of it all around. Earlier they’d passed signs pointing to Crater Lake, which was the water-filled caldera of a truly monstrous volcano that had wrapped the entire world in black ash when it erupted 7,700 years before. She was already planning a trip back to the park in the next few weeks. Even Matt would be impressed, surely.

      To the east was Newberry National Volcanic Monument, which was described in the literature as “potentially active.” The smaller cinder cones in the area—including Angel Butte—were like pimples scattered on the edges of Newberry Volcano, which didn’t rear into the sky like Mount Rainier or Saint Helens. It was a shield volcano, she’d read, primarily made up of lava flows.

      Julia had educated herself about volcanoes before agreeing to this move. In the end, she’d decided that her family was in more danger from earthquakes in Southern California than they would be from the unlikely event of a volcanic eruption.

      Of course, Minnesota didn’t have either. But it also didn’t have Alec, which was the deciding factor.

      The truth was, she would admit only to herself, she’d have gone anywhere he’d chosen.

      Not because she needed him, although she did, but because Matt needed him, too.

      “It’s kind of pretty,” Liana said timidly.

      “There’s nothing here.” Matt sounded stunned. “It’s, like, the middle of nowhere.”

      Short of moving to a village in Alaska accessible only by fishing boat or small plane—and, oh, how tempting that idea was—Angel Butte was the closest she and Alec had been able to find to the middle of nowhere. Or so they’d convinced themselves. Alec was discovering this town had considerably more crime and corruption than he’d imagined. She could only pray it didn’t reach the middle school, where Matt would start eighth grade this fall.

      The silence in the car had a different feel when they saw the sign for the turnoff to Angel Butte. They really were only minutes away from their new home. Julia was only sorry they’d have to wait a few days for their furniture and other possessions to catch up with them. Although Alec had bought the duplex where they were going to live, she and the kids would have to stay in a motel until their beds arrived.

      The