LITMIR.BIZ

      BLAKE HAD NEVER DONE so much socializing. That last month before the trial, he accepted every invitation and hint of an invitation that came his way. Maybe, at least in part, he was driven by panic to get as much living in as he possibly could. Just in case.

      However, he also wanted to see everyone he could, talk to everyone he could and meet everyone he could who might have known his father and Eaton James. Juliet had spoken to every single person on his list, turning up nothing of any substance, and he just didn’t know who else might hold the elusive piece of evidence that would gain him his freedom.

      As he sat at the hospital Tuesday evening, enveloped by dread while he waited with a young woman he’d never met to find out if her husband was going to live or die, he wondered whether no one could point to that missing piece. What if his father and Eaton James were the only two people who’d ever known what had really happened between them? What if Blake would never know the whole story? What if there was no possible way to prove his innocence?

      What if the father of the unborn child across from him didn’t live through the night?

      “Do you have family in the area?” he asked the beautiful young Hispanic woman who hadn’t said a word since the doctor had left them to take her husband in for emergency neck surgery.

      She shook her head, her features striking even though her face was stiff with tension. “They’re all still in Mexico. So far, Juan is the only one who got a visa to work here. They’re all trying, though.”

      “Have you called them?”

      With her hands slowly rubbing her belly, almost as though she didn’t even know what she was doing, she shook her head a second time. “If I call my mama, she’ll call his and I don’t want them to know when there’s no way for them to get here. No money.”

      “How about friends?”

      “We really don’t know many people yet. We haven’t been here that long, and with getting ready for the baby and all…”

      He glanced at her belly and away. “How long before you’re due?”

      “A month.”

      That was how long he had left to wait, too.

      But while he had to wait alone, young Maria Gomez might not have to. Blake excused himself, made some telephone calls, and within the hour was able to tell Maria that her mother, as well as Juan’s, had been wired money and—as was often the case in emergency situations—had been granted permission to spend a week in the United States. They’d be with her by the time Juan was coming out of recovery.

      That was when the young woman started to cry. And as Blake sat there, holding a very frightened expectant mother, he prayed to a God he’d quit relying on sometime during his travels. He prayed for Juan and Maria Gomez. For their little baby. And for himself—a man ten years older than Juan Gomez, who’d never fathered a child and might never have a chance to do so.

      Might the next month somehow find miracles for all of them.

      Because, God knew, only a miracle or two would get any of them through the weeks ahead.