A peep escaped from her. Shad wasn’t sure if Charissa had laughed slightly or was starting to cry again. But when she returned her gaze to his face there was a little more of a smile on her lips.

“You remind me of Dad when he’s nice.”

Shad stopped patting her back. He wasn’t entirely sure how to take that comment.

“Except Dad never said he was sorry.” Charissa leaned against him and her head rested under his left shoulder.

“I’m just a sorry son of a gun,” Shad muttered. Her proximity to him was beginning to sink in. And there was an eerily familiar sensation stirring in his core.

“Do you mean it, Mr. Delaney?” Charissa wrapped her arms around his left thigh. “Nothing bad is gonna happen to me?”

That despicable longing ache unfolded within him as Shad became acutely aware of every point of contact she was making with him. The poor child was reaching out to him because she saw Shad as one of the few people who might actually fulfill her needs, and that was exactly what the demon within him wanted to take advantage of.

“I’ll do everything in my power to keep anything worse from happening to you.” Shad’s voice was a bit hoarse as he decided to end this session as quickly but delicately as possible.

“You’re not gonna tell Mom, are you?”

“I have to.”

“Don’t.” Charissa sat up to look at him but left her arms around his leg. “She’ll think ... I’m bad.”

“Charissa.” Shad managed to keep his voice steady as his empathy for the girl struggled with a less noble impulse. “I’m not gonna keep a secret from your mom. She’s your mom. Part of being a parent is ...” Shad tried to come up with something a little less colorful than Pap or Karl would say. “... you’d face down the devil himself to do what’s right for your child. The things we’ve talked about might hurt your mom’s feelings, but she’d rather have her feelings hurt than let anything happen to hurt you. She loves you. Nothing’s gonna change that.”

Charissa studied his face. “It would make me feel better if you didn’t tell Mom.”

If he were an actual molester, this would have been a dream come true. Her maneuver was a perfect setup to establish a “secret” between them. Charissa might as well have been gift-wrapped for him.

Gift-wrapped ... gift ... a gift from God ... Dulsie.

His resolve not to give in to temptation just got its reinforcements. “You don’t keep secrets from your parents.”

She frowned slightly. “Even if it’s a surprise?”

“What surprise?”

“Vic is gonna take us to his friend Drake’s houseboat one day. But he said not to tell Mom because it was a surprise.” Charissa’s face brightened. “I’ll get to ride in a boat.”

“Then that’s different.” Shad removed his hand from her shoulder. He felt as though there were two dueling forces within him. For the moment they seemed evenly matched but he wasn’t sure how long that would last. He placed his hand over Charissa’s wrist but didn’t immediately move her arm. “Thank you for talking to me about this, Charissa. It will help me to help you.”

“Do you have to go now?”

Shad moved Charissa’s arm to her side and released it. “I have to. I ... have other clients I have to see.”

“Can I talk to you again?”

Shad hesitated in the process of getting to his feet. His side of light urged caution while the demon was intrigued by her question. “If you want to tell me more ... to build my case, sure.” He didn’t look at Charissa while he stood, but then glanced down at the child with an expression Shad was certain to be grave. “Remember, though, about your mom. No secrets.”

Charissa frowned slightly as she gazed up at him, then with a sigh she returned her attention to her book.

As Shad turned to leave the room his memory dredged up various aspersions the boyfriends had used against him. Only this time Shad used the most hateful remarks he could think of against himself.

Chapter Eleven

Great is peace, seeing that for its sake even God modified the truth.

--Babylonian Talmud

To this day Shad didn’t trust anybody immediately. Before he turned eleven, Shad assumed anybody who made pretensions of friendship toward him would either try to take advantage of him or decide he was unlikable and mistreat him. When Erin began visiting with him at the library, Shad believed she would figure out he was a twerp and quickly distance herself from him.

So when Erin started giving him food, Shad got a little confused. He definitely appreciated the sandwiches and fruits and vegetables she would hand to him, but Shad told himself Erin had to have an ulterior motive. One evening she showed him pictures of her parents and of the farm where she grew up, and then asked Shad if he would like to go there for a week. Shad figured something terrible would happen to him if he went, but just the night before Brody had launched a particularly vicious attack on him, so Shad decided he could either be killed by Brody or killed by strangers. At that point in time discomfort of the unknown became actually preferable to the pain of the familiar. He chose to go to the strangers.

So that woman sent him off with this person she didn’t even know, and Shad was a little surprised when he actually arrived at a real farm. Erin had to go back to St. Louis after the weekend, but every night during the remainder of the week she would call and chat with him on the phone. Every day Shad did wonder when Erin’s parents, especially Mr. Delaney, would turn on him and do something like slice open his throat the way Mrs. Delaney and her sister did with those chickens on the third day of his visit. When on the fifth day they asked Shad if he wanted to stay longer, like for the duration of summer vacation, Shad took that as a sign he was doomed. But he replied in the affirmative because Shad figured his fate was sealed, and until they actually did him in life wasn’t so bad. Besides, he still didn’t want to return to Brody.

Erin’s contact with him became less frequent but remained steady and dependable. It took nearly a year before Shad decided that these people he started calling Mam and Pap could actually be trusted, but he also developed a solid anchor of respect for Erin. When he could finally take his new lifestyle for granted, Shad never forgot it was Erin’s intervention that had brought him here.

It wasn’t until after Pap’s hospital stay that Shad learned how divine that intervention had really been.

When he got up from bed that Saturday morning, Shad told himself to be cheerful. He was always glad to see Erin again, especially since her younger sister Iona had a friendly, but not as close, relationship with him. Shad had moved in on the heels of Iona’s move out to begin college early, so he never got to know her as well as the rest of the family.

Erin and her husband Stan had two children and lived in the Rolla area, about an hour south of Jefferson City. Stan was an instructor at the university and Erin was still a librarian. Their son, Grady, was ten years old, and they had a daughter, Ida, who was six. They were coming out to visit this weekend since they had spent the Fourth of July weekend with Stan’s family. As Shad got dressed in chino shorts and a light green, button-down shirt, he thought again how there was a certain convenience to his and Dulsie’s families being so close.

Around mid-morning Dulsie drove to the Delaney farm after Mam telephoned to tell them Erin’s family had arrived. The farm was located on yet another back road, and the driveway that led up toward the house was about half the length of the Wekenheiser’s driveway, but it was still considered long. The land was a mix of crops, timber and pasture in a patchwork quilt pattern on river bottom and hills. The Osage River, outsized in this state only by the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, created a physical border on the back side of the farm. On the hills at the front of the property sat the house and various outbuildings: garden shed, chicken coop, well house, granary, machine barn, and most impressively the enormous timber frame barn. Although the exterior of the barn was covered with sheet metal to protect the over one-hundred-year-old oak planks, the interior was all wood and dirt and hay with a ground-floor plan that accommodated horse stalls and milking stanchions for an era long ago.