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only thing that’s going to change. This is your home, period. Don’t waste your breath trying to make me change my mind.”

      Raylene sighed with frustration and, if she were being honest, a hint of relief. “I appreciate this, I really do, but I just don’t see how you can be so generous after the way I let Tommy get away from me. Anything could have happened.”

      “But it didn’t,” Sarah said emphatically. “And I said it because it’s how I feel. You’re a Sweet Magnolia, just like me and Annie, Maddie, Helen, Dana Sue and Jeanette. That makes you the next best thing to a sister, okay? And families stick together.” She regarded Raylene slyly. “There is one thing you could do for me in return, though.”

      Raylene braced herself. She already knew what was coming. They’d had the conversation before. “You want me to see Dr. McDaniels.” The psychologist had treated Annie years ago for an eating disorder and continued to monitor her progress whenever Annie felt herself slipping. After well over a year of watching Raylene get worse, Annie and Sarah had started pushing Raylene to consult her. Their pleas had become increasingly forceful lately. Now, understandably, they were bound to be amped up even more.

      Sarah nodded. “I do. Whether you just have a panic disorder or full-blown agoraphobia, it’s time to face it, Raylene. Not just because of what happened today, but so you can get your life back. Maybe this incident today happened for a reason, to make you finally get the help you need.”

      Raylene had been waging an internal battle against seeking help from the moment her friends had first mentioned it. It had probably been a ridiculous point of pride that she conquer this problem on her own. The truth was, though, that she obviously couldn’t. Whatever was going on was bigger than she was.

      When she remained silent, trying to work up the courage to concede defeat and ask for help, Annie stepped in.

      “Raylene, this is treatable,” Annie assured her. “You know that. I’ve shown you all the research I could find on the Internet. There’s a very good chance Dr. McDaniels can work with a physician to get you on the right combination of medicine to help, and maybe teach you some calming and relaxation techniques. Don’t let that horrific ex-husband of yours rob you of the rest of your life. Now that you’re free of him, you need to live every second to the absolute fullest. You need to meet someone new, someone who’s kind and gentle and treats you with the respect you deserve. We all want that for you.”

      “And you think I’ll meet that kind of man in Serenity?” Raylene scoffed with some of the leftover snobbishness she’d been taught by her mother, a Charleston socialite who’d married a local man, then found herself stuck in Serenity and had chafed at every minute of her life here.

      “I have,” Sarah reminded her, glancing over at Travis, who gave her a wink. “So have Annie and Jeanette. And look at the men in Maddie, Dana Sue and Helen’s lives. They’re all amazing. And, if you don’t mind my saying so, that highly educated blueblooded doctor you met in Charleston wasn’t exactly a catch, now was he?”

      Raylene’s lips quirked despite the reminder of just how awful Paul Hammond had been.

      “You have me there,” she admitted. “Although a man is the last thing on my mind at the moment, I will call Dr. McDaniels.” Because she’d made the promise at least a dozen times before, she knew it probably sounded empty now. “I mean it. I’ll do it this time, first thing in the morning. You can stand right by the phone and listen in, if you want to. I owe you that much for sticking by me despite what happened.”

      “You’re not doing it for me,” Sarah corrected. “You’re doing it for yourself. You need to concentrate on that. And I don’t need to listen to the call, Raylene. If you make a promise, you’ll keep it.”

      Raylene was grateful for the trust Sarah had in her word. She just wasn’t so sure she deserved either the trust or a future. That was one more aftereffect of living with a man who’d literally and figuratively beaten her into submission for way too long before she’d wised up and left. That it had taken her years, rather than minutes, would shame her forever. That it had cost her the baby she’d been carrying had left her with the kind of gut-wrenching guilt from which she couldn’t imagine ever recovering.

      Even she recognized that she’d been punishing herself by locking herself away in this house. Paul might be serving his time in prison, but she’d been serving her self-imposed sentence right here. Even now, she wasn’t a hundred percent certain she deserved to have it end, but today the stakes of doing nothing had increased to a level she could no longer ignore.

       2

      Carter Rollins had taken one look at the woman standing on the front stoop at Sarah Price’s house the day before and labeled her some kind of expensively clad snob who thought she was too good to get her hands dirty. The fact that she’d been standing around, rather than looking for the missing boy, had grated on him. It had cemented his first impression that she was a selfish, overindulged, irresponsible female. If it had been up to him, he’d have found some way to charge her with child neglect on the spot.

      Unfortunately, he’d learned a few things since moving to Serenity. It was a tight-knit, friendly community that stuck together. Unless he had the law very firmly on his side, it was best to handle things with that in mind.

      WSER might not be the most powerful radio station in the state, or even in the region, but its owner, Travis McDonald, and star personality, Sarah Price, were local celebrities. He’d heard about their very public romance when he’d first arrived in town. Everybody in Serenity, it seemed, loved a love story. If Travis and Sarah intended to back up this woman, then there was very little Carter could do about it. And their protective attitude toward her yesterday had been as unmistakable as it was unfathomable.

      The next time, though—if there was one—he wouldn’t hesitate to handle things differently, local politics be damned. He’d involve the child protective authorities in a heartbeat.

      It was his job to protect people, especially innocent kids. Finding Tommy Price wandering alone several blocks from home had stirred his anger, so he didn’t much care who was on that babysitter’s side. Next time, he’d haul her in.

      “Why do you look so grim?” his sister Carrie asked, eyeing him warily as he set an assortment of take-out boxes from the local Chinese restaurant on the kitchen table.

      “Just a bad day,” he told his fifteen-year-old sister. One of these days, one of them—he, Carrie or his other sister, Mandy—was going to have to learn to cook. Beyond throwing meat, chicken or fish on a grill, he was pretty useless in the kitchen. Carrie had once excelled at baking chocolate-chip cookies from a package, though lately she’d refused to bake them for reasons beyond him. Mandy could make popcorn in the microwave and scramble eggs. When they’d moved and his hours had become more predictable, he’d vowed to change their pitiful culinary ineptitude, but so far, they mostly existed on takeout. Sadly, the variety in Serenity was pretty slim.

      “You’ve had a lot of bad days since we moved to Serenity,” Mandy noted. She was the younger of the girls for whom he’d had full responsibility since their parents’ deaths two years ago. “Wasn’t that the whole point of moving here, so you’d be in a better mood? I have to tell you, big brother, I don’t think it’s working.”

      Carter frowned at her interpretation of the decision he’d made to leave his police job in Columbia for a smaller community. “We’re here because this is a better environment for the two of you.”

      “In other words, because it’s totally boring,” Carrie said, disdain in her voice. “You didn’t want us to have fun ever again.”

      “No, I wanted you to be safe,” Carter countered, passing the kung pao chicken.

      “Then how come you had a bad day?” Carrie persisted, scooping a tiny spoonful of rice onto her plate and adding a few of the vegetables from another container. It was barely enough to feed a bird, but Carter resisted

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