“You and I will talk tomorrow,” Cathy said. “I’d like for you to have lunch with me.”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Granddad.”

“I have an idea,” Donnie interrupted again. “Why don’t Missy and I take you and your mother out for lunch tomorrow after church? I’m sure your grandparents won’t object.”

“Yeah, sure, thanks. That would be great.” Seth looked at Cathy, waiting for her to agree.

“Yes, thank you,” Cathy replied.

Donnie spread his arms out, placing one around Seth’s shoulders and the other around his daughter’s waist. “Come on, kids. It’s nearly eight o’clock. Y’all don’t want to be late. This thing is from eight tonight until eight in the morning, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Seth said.

“Yes, Daddy, eight to eight.”

Cathy stood in the yard and watched Brother Hovater back out of the driveway. He threw up his hand and waved. She waved back at him and smiled.

Donnie seemed like a very nice man. He had certainly tried his best to act as a mediator between Seth and her tonight. She appreciated his offer to take them to lunch tomorrow, which would give them time to talk without J.B. being involved.

Jack came up behind her so quietly that he startled her when he spoke. “Are you all right?”

She gasped and jumped simultaneously.

“Sorry,” he said.

She turned and faced him. “It’s okay. And yes, I’m all right, but not happy about hearing my father-in-law’s words come out of my son’s mouth.”

“All the more reason you should do everything you can to regain custody of Seth,” Lorie said from where she stood on the porch.

“I hate that my being here tonight bothered your son so much,” Jack said. “But you have to know that he’s not going to approve of your dating, no matter who the guy is. No man will live up to his father. Not in his eyes.”

Lorie and Cathy exchanged quick oh-my-God glances, and then Cathy looked directly at Jack. “That wasn’t Seth talking tonight. That was J.B. Before I went away, before my breakdown, Seth and I were very close. He was my son far more than he was ever Mark’s. Seth and Mark had a good relationship, but…I can’t let this happen. I cannot lose Seth. I will not allow J.B. to manipulate him this way.”

“I wish there was something I could do to help you,” Jack said.

“There isn’t, but thanks. I’ll deal with this in my own way and in my own time.”

“Come on, you two,” Lorie called. “I’ll put on a fresh pot of decaf and we can eat our dessert.”

Jack slipped his arm around Cathy’s waist. She felt his touch in every nerve in her body. A tingling warmth spread through her, an odd mixture of excitement and contentment. Side by side, the strength of his big body comforting her, they went up the steps, onto the porch and into the house.

Jack and Deputy Willis were holding down the fort tonight, and so far, more than four hours into their eight-hour shift, things had been relatively quiet. He glanced at the wall clock. It was already three-thirty Sunday morning. The night dispatcher had taken a total of five calls, and all of them had been easily handled by the night-shift patrolmen on duty. With little to do, he’d found himself thinking about Cathy. When he had returned to Dunmore and taken the job with the sheriff’s department, he’d been at loose ends, uncertain what the future held. Now, here he was back home only a few weeks and he’d hired a contractor to restore his old home and he was pursuing a girl who’d dumped him for another guy nearly seventeen years ago.

Well, maybe he wasn’t actually pursuing Cathy, just renewing their old friendship and seeing where it went. And to be fair, he supposed he couldn’t accuse her of dumping him. He’d been the one who had left her behind when his unit had been sent to the Middle East and he’d wound up spending months as an Iraqi prisoner of war. What had he expected her to do when he’d been reported missing in action?

Just as he lifted his coffee mug to his lips, Jack heard a ruckus at the front entrance, where Deputies Gipson and Dryer were escorting a group of teenagers into the building. He set the mug down on his desk and headed toward the officers and a gang of grumbling youngsters. He counted seven in all, four girls and three boys. Two of the girls were crying, and one of the boys, a redhead, looked scared to death.

“My folks are going to kill me,” one of the girls whined.

“Yeah, my old man will ground me for the rest of my life,” the frightened redhead said.

“Ah, shut up pissing and moaning,” said a stocky boy with a long, dark ponytail.

“You shut up,” a tattooed girl with jet black hair and heavy purple eye shadow told him. “You’re the reason we’re in this mess. You promised that nobody would know if we slipped away for a while, just to smoke and drink a few beers. We didn’t know you meant smoke marijuana.”

Jack called out, “What have we here?”

“A bunch of stupid kids. The ones that were reported missing, the ones the police have been looking for,” Deputy Dryer replied. “They didn’t think anybody would miss them when they left the youth rally over at the community center. They were wrong.”

“We just happened to find them a block away in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot,” Gipson said. “They had three six-packs of beer that apparently one of them had stashed there earlier, and a couple of them were smoking pot.”

“Miss Dagger Tattoo and Mr. Tough Guy were the two smoking,” Dryer added.

“We didn’t know it was marijuana,” the tattooed girl said. “I swear we didn’t.”

Gipson rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure, sure.”

A tall, lanky boy with brown hair turned from where he’d been shielding one of the girls with his body. When Jack got a good look at the boy, he sucked in a startled breath.

Son of a bitch. There stood Cathy’s son, Seth, a nervous yet defiant expression on his face. And the girl he’d been trying to protect was none other than Brother Hovater’s daughter.

She woke to the smell of smoke and the realization that a hand covered her mouth. Acting purely on instinct, she tried to scream, but the sound came out a muffled whimper as her eyes flew open and she looked up into her mother’s face.

“Stay calm,” her mother told her. “Don’t panic.” She eased her hand away from Ruth Ann’s mouth. “Get out of bed right now. The house is on fire, and we have to hurry before we’re trapped.”

Sleep-groggy, she jerked into a sitting position, her mind barely comprehending what she’d been told.

Her mother grabbed her arm and yanked her out of the bed. “If we run, we can make it out through the back door. The fire started in my bedroom, but it’s spreading fast.” She all but dragged Ruth Ann out of her room and into the smoky hallway. “We don’t have much time.”

Barefoot and wearing only a cotton gown, she glanced back over her shoulder as she ran with her mother down the hall and into the kitchen. Dark, heavy smoke followed them, allowing her only a glimpse of the fire quickly consuming their house. When they reached the back door, Ruth Ann hesitated half a second. Her mother screamed at her, jogging her into immediate action. They raced down the back steps and into the yard, stopping only when they were in the driveway, both of them slightly winded.

“What about Daddy?” Ruth Ann asked.

“It’s too late for your father,” Faye said.

She stared into her mother’s cold, dead eyes and knew the truth. Oh God in heaven.

“We can’t just let him die, can we?” Ruth Ann grabbed her mother’s hands and squeezed them tightly. “It would be murder.”

Faye pulled loose from Ruth Ann’s fierce grasp and focused her gaze on the burning house. “No, it’s not murder. It’s retribution.”

She didn’t say anything else, not for a long while. Not when the neighbors came out of their homes to offer them solace and to watch the parsonage burn. And not even when the fire trucks arrived, along with the police and an ambulance. The paramedics pronounced that she was in shock, but she knew better. Stunned, perhaps. Feeling horribly guilty. Afraid to speak for fear she would say the wrong thing.