LITMIR.BIZ

      Catherine Cantrell had asked her best friend, Lorie Hammonds, to drive her by her old home, just outside the city limits. She and Mark had lived there for nearly six years before his death eighteen months ago.

      “Are you sure you want to do this?” Lorie asked.

      “I’m sure. I have to face the past sooner or later.”

      “But does it have to be today?”

      Cathy sighed. Yes, it had to be today. One of the many things her therapist at Haven Home had taught her was that putting off unpleasant things didn’t make them go away. The sooner she faced it, whatever “it” was, and dealt with it, the sooner it ceased to be a monster hidden in a dark closet ready to pounce on her when she least expected it.

      Lorie got out of her Ford Edge, went around the hood and met Cathy as she stood at the border of the street, her gaze scanning the porch. This was where Mark had been doused with gasoline and set on fire. This was where she had waited with him, praying with every breath, until the ambulance arrived. This was where her safe, contented life had ended. Eighteen months, three weeks and five days ago.

      Every nerve in her body shivered; every muscle tensed. With her eyes wide open, she could see Mark as he had been that horrible day, his flesh charred, melted, his life draining from his body. She could hear his agonized screams and then the deadly silence that had followed.

      She closed her eyes and took a deep, fortifying breath.

      Lorie put her arm around Cathy’s quivering shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “Come on. Let’s go.”

      Cathy opened her eyes and shook her head. “Not yet.”

      “Don’t do this to yourself. Enough’s enough.”

      “I imagine the new minister’s wife redecorated,” Cathy said. “No woman wants to live in a house decorated by a former owner.”

      “The new minister is a widower with a teenage daughter. No wife.”

      “All the same, this isn’t my house any longer. My things aren’t here. The home I created with Mark is gone.”

      “Your furniture and other things are in storage,” Lorie reminded her. “When you buy a new place, you can—”

      She turned quickly and faced her oldest and dearest friend. “Thank you for letting me stay with you until I find a place.” Lorie and she were BFF—best friends forever—their friendship going back to when they wore diapers. Their parents had been good friends, and they had lived only blocks apart when they were growing up.

      “Your mother wants you to stay with her, you know.”

      “What my mother wants isn’t as important to me as what I want.”

      Lorie let out a loud, low whistle. “I don’t know what they did to you at Haven Home, but I like it. The old Cathy would never have said something like that and meant it.”

      “The old Cathy no longer exists. I think she began dying the day Mark died.” She looked directly at Lorie. “I couldn’t say this to just anyone, because they wouldn’t understand, they’d take it the wrong way…but it took something as traumatic as Mark’s gruesome murder to finally give me the courage to become my own person.”

      Mark’s death and a year of therapy.

      Cathy took one final look at the porch and then ran her gaze over the neatly manicured lawn. “I’m ready to go now.”

      She followed Lorie back to the SUV. She had faced one of many demons that she had left behind a year ago when she had checked herself in at Haven Home, a mental-rehabilitation center outside of Birmingham. After the first six months, she had become an outpatient but had stayed on as a part-time employee in the cafeteria. Her mother and Mark’s parents had visited her several times and had brought Seth with them. She had missed her son unbearably, but she had known living with his grandparents had been the best thing for him until she was able to provide him with a mentally stable mother.

      Mark’s death had almost destroyed her, and only with Dr. Milton’s help had she been able to fully recover. She had gone into the intensive therapy blaming herself for Mark’s death and believing that his parents and Seth blamed her for not being able to save him. But Dr. Milton had worked with her until she had been able to admit to herself that the guilt she felt wasn’t because she blamed herself for not being able to save Mark. Realistically, logically, she knew that would have been impossible. She had done everything within her power. No, what Cathy felt guilty about, what she had had great difficulty admitting to Dr. Milton and to herself, was that she had never loved her husband. She had married him not loving him, and although she had tried to convince herself that she loved him, she hadn’t. She had cared deeply for him, had respected and admired him, but she had never been able to feel for Mark that deep, passionate love a woman should feel for her husband.

      “Do you want to stop by J.B. and Mona’s to see Seth?” Lorie asked.

      “No, not yet. I’m supposed to have dinner with them and Mother tomorrow, after church. I’ll wait until then.”

      “J.B. and Mona may not give Seth up without a fight.” Lorie inserted the key into the ignition. “I took the liberty of hiring Elliott Floyd to represent you, just in case Mark’s parents aren’t willing to turn your son over to you now that you’re well.”

      Gasping softly, Cathy snapped her head around and stared at her friend. “I don’t think a lawyer will be necessary. But thank you all the same. Seth is my child. I appreciate all that J.B. and Mona have done for him since Mark’s death, but you can’t possibly believe that they would try to take him away from me.”

      Lorie shrugged. “You never know what people will do. If for any reason the Cantrells think you’re unfit to—”

      “I’m fit,” Cathy said. “I believe that I’m better prepared to be a good mother to my son now than ever before, and I was a damn good mother in the past.”

      Lorie eyed Cathy with speculative curiosity. “You are aware of the fact that you just said damn and didn’t blink an eye, aren’t you?”

      Cathy smiled. “Surprised?”

      “Shocked.” Lorie laughed. “Know any other forbidden words?”

      “A whole slew of them. And sooner or later, you’ll probably hear me say all of them.”

      “I want to meet your Dr. Milton one of these days,” Lorie said. “I want to shake his hand and thank him for releasing the real Catherine Nelson Cantrell from that holier-than-thou prison she stuck herself in trying to please her husband and her mother and her in-laws.”

      “The days of my trying to please everyone else are over. I’ve come home to start a new life, not to rebuild my old one. I owe it to myself and to Seth to be strong and independent and live the rest of my life to the fullest, and that’s just what I intend to do.”