official. Brooklyn was a little pricey for the proportion of his pension he’d been able to salvage, but a friend had suggested Portland as a nice compromise between the big city and the Montana town where he’d been raised. He was thinking of flying out next week to check it out.
“A ‘friend’ suggested this, huh?” She hit the send key.
“Maybe you should’ve been the FBI agent.”
They had seen each other a few times before she’d been offered the job in Portland. But a few get-togethers that weren’t even officially dates could not be the reason she turned her back on the opportunity for a new life she so desperately needed.
“I’ll pick you up at the airport.” Send.
She typed the next sentence and reread it twice: “I have a guest room. It’s yours if you want it.” Send.
She tapped an impatient fingernail against the teak arm of her chair, waiting for his reply. “Sounds great. Thanks.”
Maybe the fresh start didn’t need to be entirely new. She knew she still needed to work through the lessons gleaned in the past year. Her understanding of family had been shaken. When her brother had learned what he thought was the truth about their father and that night in Bedford, he’d fallen back into addiction rather than turn to her. Now Ben was gone. So was the half sister she’d never even known she had. Art was still fighting the charges against him, but would likely die in prison. She tried not to feel sorry for the man who had raped Christie Kinley, and taken the life of his own daughter. But then she’d remember that Mia was not Art’s only daughter. No, she did not feel sorry for Art, but she might never be able to accept that her biological father was capable of the sins Arthur Cronin had committed.
And the only father she had ever known-having found forgiveness from his wife for so many transgressions-was still finding it in himself to forgive hers. But, no matter what DNA tests had to say about it, Frank Humphrey was still her father. She just had to find a way to convince him of that.
Those months when she had been unemployed, when she had wanted so desperately to be free of her family, she had made herself miserable. She wanted a job. She wanted her own money. She wanted a man. She spent every second of every hour of every day craving what she did not have. Wanting states of being she could not even identify. Wanting
Then two police officers showed up at her apartment with a photograph. That single image had been a wake- up call. In that singular moment, she had realized how much there was to appreciate in simplicity. Clean air. This view of Mount Hood. A pretty decent job in a nice place with good people, with one day a week when she could work on this deck in her jogging togs. Parents who loved her. A couple of new friends in Portland. Maybe another to add to the list if Beckman chose to move.
Nothing could be more than this.
A Special Note of Thanks to My Readers
O nce again, I want to thank my readers, without whom I would not have the privilege of being a published writer. Were it not for you, I might wake up one morning to find myself out of work like Alice Humphrey (albeit hopefully without the dead bodies and whatnot). Thank you for continuing to read and to support my work.
I’ve gotten to know many of my readers through my Web site, Facebook, and Twitter. I’m so appreciative of the community we have built online and thank Holden Richards at Kitchen Media and Catherine Cairns of Cairns Designs for their technical assistance. If you read my books and haven’t yet connected to this community, I hope you’ll do so.
Some readers have even accepted my ongoing invitation to serve as online kitchen cabinet, helping me think through decisions like
