LITMIR.BIZ

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by to pick Michelle up for services on Sunday, I take it?”

      Roberta ground her teeth together. Obviously the minister knew that since Michelle couldn’t drive, Roberta had been refusing to get up and drive her to church. She almost refused. Then she realized that it would mean she could have Bert over without having to watch for her stepdaughter every second. She pursed her lips. “Of course not,” she assured him. “I don’t mind at all.”

      “Wonderful. I’ll have Carlie fetch you in time for Sunday school each week and bring you home after church, Michelle. Will that work for you?”

      Michelle’s sad face lit up. Her gray eyes were large and beautiful. She had pale blond hair and a flawless, lovely complexion. She was as fair as Roberta was dark. Jake got to his feet. He smiled down at Michelle.

      “Thanks, Reverend Blair,” she said in her soft, husky voice, and smiled at him with genuine affection.

      “You’re quite welcome.”

      She walked him out. Roberta didn’t offer.

      He turned at the steps and lowered his voice. “If you ever need help, you know where we are,” he said, and he wasn’t smiling.

      She sighed. “It’s just until graduation. Only a few more months,” she said quietly. “I’ll work hard to get a scholarship so I can go to college. I have one picked out in San Antonio.”

      He cocked his head. “What do you want to do?”

      Her face brightened. “I want to write. I want to be a reporter.”

      He laughed. “Not much money in that, you know. Of course, you could go and talk to Minette Carson. She runs the local newspaper.”

      She flushed. “Yes, sir,” she said politely, “I already did. She was the one who recommended that I go to college and major in journalism. She said working for a magazine, even a digital one, was the way to go. She’s very kind.”

      “She is. And so is her husband,” he added, referring to Jacobs County sheriff Hayes Carson.

      “I don’t really know him. Except he brought his iguana to school a few years ago. That was really fascinating.” She laughed.

      Jake just nodded. “Well, I’ll get back. Let me know if you need anything.”

      “I will. Thank you.”

      “Your father was a good man,” he added. “It hurt all of us to lose him. He was one of the best emergency-room doctors we ever had in Jacobs County, even though he was only able to work for a few months before his illness forced him to quit.”

      She smiled sadly. “It was a hard way to go, for a doctor,” she replied. “He knew all about his prognosis and he explained to me how things would be. He said if he hadn’t been so stubborn, if he’d had the tests sooner, they might have caught the cancer in time.”

      “Young lady,” Jake said softly, “things happen the way they’re meant to. There’s a plan to everything that happens in life, even if we don’t see it.”

      “That’s what I think, too. Thank you for talking to her,” she added hesitantly. “She wouldn’t let me learn how to drive, and Dad was too sick to teach me. I don’t really think she’d let me borrow the car, even if I could drive. She wouldn’t get up early for anything, especially on a Sunday. So I had no way to get to church. I’ve missed it.”

      “I wish you’d talked to me sooner,” he said, and smiled. “Never mind. Things happen in their own time.”

      She looked up into his blue eyes. “Does it...get better? Life, I mean?” she asked with the misery of someone who’d landed in a hard place and saw no way out.

      He drew in a long breath. “You’ll soon have more control over the things that happen to you,” he replied. “Life is a test, Michelle. We walk through fire. But there are rewards. Every pain brings a pleasure.”

      “Thanks.”

      He chuckled. “Don’t let her get you down.”

      “I’m trying.”

      “And if you need help, don’t hold back.” His eyes narrowed and there was something a little chilling in them. “I have yet to meet a person who frightens me.”

      She burst out laughing. “I noticed. She’s a horror, but she was really nice to you!”

      “Sensible people are.” He smiled like an angel. “See you.”

      He went down the steps two at a time. He was a tall man, very fit, and he walked with a very odd gait, light and almost soundless, as he went to his car. The vehicle wasn’t new, but it had some kind of big engine in it. He started it and wheeled out into the road with a skill and smoothness that she envied. She wondered if she’d ever learn to drive.

      She went back into the house, resigned to several minutes of absolute misery.

      “You set that man on me!” Roberta raged. “You went over my head when I told you I didn’t want you to bother with that stupid church stuff!”

      “I like going to church. Why should you mind? It isn’t hurting you....”

      “Dinner was always late when you went, when your father was alive,” the brunette said angrily. “I had to take care of him. So messy.” She made a face. In fact, Roberta had never done a thing for her husband. She left it all to Michelle. “And I had to try to cook. I hate cooking. I’m not doing it. That’s your job. So you’ll make dinner before you go to church and you can eat when you get home, but I’m not waiting an extra hour to sit down to a meal!”

      “I’ll do it,” Michelle said, averting her eyes.

      “See that you do! And the house had better be spotless, or I won’t let you go!”

      She was bluffing. Michelle knew it. She was unsettled by the Reverend Blair. That amused Michelle, but she didn’t dare let it show.

      “Can I go to my room now?” she asked quietly.

      Roberta made a face. “Do what you please.” She primped at the hall mirror. “I’m going out. Bert’s taking me to dinner up in San Antonio. I’ll be very late,” she added. She gave Michelle a worldly, patronizing laugh. “You wouldn’t know what to do with a man, you little prude.”

      Michelle stiffened. It was the same old song and dance. Roberta thought Michelle was backward and stupid.

      “Oh, go on to your room,” she muttered. That wide-eyed, resigned look was irritating.

      Michelle went without another word.

      She sat up late, studying. She had to make the best grades she could, so that she could get a scholarship. Her father had left her a little money, but her stepmother had control of it until she was of legal age. Probably by then there wouldn’t be a penny left.

      Her father hadn’t been lucid at the end because of the massive doses of painkillers he had to take for his condition. Roberta had influenced the way he set up his will, and it had been her own personal attorney who’d drawn it up for her father’s signature. Michelle was certain that he hadn’t meant to leave her so little. But she couldn’t contest it. She wasn’t even out of high school.

      It was hard, she thought, to be under someone’s thumb and unable to do anything you wanted to do. Roberta was always after her about something. She made fun of her, ridiculed her conservative clothes, made her life a daily misery. But the reverend was right. One day, she’d be out of this. She’d have her own place, and she wouldn’t have to ask Roberta even for lunch money, which was demeaning enough.

      She heard a truck go along the road, and glanced out to see a big black pickup truck pass by. So he was back. Their closest neighbor was Gabriel Brandon. Michelle knew who he was.

      She’d seen him for the first time two years ago, the last summer she’d spent with her grandfather

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