Completely oblivious to the party going on outside her father’s office, Megan sat perfectly rigid, hugging herself in an attempt to still the tremors forming deep in her stomach. If she didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t feel, maybe she wouldn’t turn into a bottomless pit of anguish.

“Who told you this?” she asked Carl Franks of Franks Investigations.

“You said you wanted a thorough report,” Carl told her, shifting uncomfortably in his chair across the desk. “So I found the driver of the logging truck who hit them. I got his name off the accident report and found him living down in Edmonton, Alberta. He’s around seventy-five now, but he certainly remembered the accident. He never got behind the wheel of a rig after that day. I was surprised he was even willing to talk to me about it. It was obviously still painful for him.”

Megan hugged herself tighter to stave off the tears welling up inside her. “And he told you Jack watched his family burn up? His mom and dad and brother?”

Carl nodded. “Seems Mr. Stone had pulled his car onto the side of the road because his two boys were fighting in the backseat. The younger boy had punched the older one and given him a bloody nose, so the father gave the kid a time-out under a tree. The truck driver’s load of logs shifted when he came around the curve a bit too fast, and when he tried to get his rig under control, he ended up slamming into the back of the Stones’s car. He told me both vehicles burst into flames. That’s when he spotted this kid running out of the woods, and had to pull him away when the boy went to open the door of the mangled car.” Carl shook his head. “The driver figured they were dead, because there wasn’t much left of their vehicle and he couldn’t see any movement inside. But the boy fought him, kicking and screaming, and continued trying to get to his family. The kid burned his hands, and the driver eventually dragged him half a mile down the road, back around the curve so they couldn’t see the accident. He had to practically tie him down while they waited for another vehicle to come along.”

Megan used her shirt sleeve to wipe the tears running down her cheeks. “And the accident report said the boy’s name was Coyote Stone?” she asked, her throat raw with emotion.

Carl Franks stood up and grabbed the booklet he’d laid in front of her, then paced to the hearth, sticking a finger inside his collar to loosen his tie. He opened the neatly typed report, and leafed through the pages.

“Coyote Stone was brought to Edmonton, and a social worker there changed his name to Jack in hopes it would help him get adopted. But the boy,” Carl said, looking up then quickly back at his report, “who was nine at the time, just up and disappeared from his foster home. They found him ten days later walking along a road that headed north.” He looked up again, shaking his head in wonder. “The kid had made it halfway to Medicine Lake. They put him in several more foster homes after that, but he ran away from all of them. There’s speculation that his great-grandfather helped him the last time. They never saw Jack Stone again until he was fifteen,” Carl said, no longer reading his report. “But when they placed him in a foster home that time, he disappeared again and didn’t turn up until I found a record of him having joined the Canadian military at age twenty.”

Carl walked over and set the report back on the desk in front of her. “Everything’s in there, Miss MacKeage. I did exactly as you asked and was very thorough. The only thing I couldn’t discover is what Jack Stone did in the military. Those five years are classified information.” He started edging toward the door. “I’ll just send you a bill, okay? I’ll let myself out,” he said, going out the door.

Megan stared at the report, no longer bothering to wipe the tears flowing down her face. Jack had never lied to her about his childhood; he’d merely left out the heart-wrenching details. She hugged her belly, suddenly deciding she would name their son Walker, after Coyote Stone’s older brother.

What must go through a nine-year-old’s mind after witnessing something like that? Did he blame himself for their deaths, because his father had stopped to give him a time-out for fighting? Was that why he was a self-proclaimed pacifist?

And those ten days he’d spent trying to get to his great-grandfather…how had he eaten? Where had he slept? He had to have hitched rides with people; who would pick up a nine-year-old kid and not call the police?

There was a knock on the door just before it opened. “Some guy told me I’d find you in here,” Jack said, walking up to the desk. “Is there a reason you didn’t warn me about—Megan! What’s the matter?” he asked, rushing around the desk and hunching down in front of her. “You’re crying. Why? What did that man say to you?”

The dam holding back her emotions exploded, and Megan threw herself into Jack’s arms with a wailed sob and clung to him fiercely.

“Megan! What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he asked, holding her tightly. “Tell me what’s wrong!”

“M-my answer’s yes, Jack,” she said between sobs. “Yes, I’ll marry you. Tomorrow, if you want. Or right now. W-we’ll find Father Daar and get married tonight.”

“And this is making you cry?” he asked with a chuckle, trying to lean away to look in her eyes. But when she wouldn’t stop clinging, he sighed softly and just held her, her head tucked under his chin as he gently swayed them in a rocking motion. “Okay, then,” he whispered into her hair. “We’ll get married first thing tomorrow morning.” He tried once more to see her face, this time succeeding. “What brought this on all of a sudden? And why is your decision to marry me making you cry?”

Megan tried to regain her composure; she really, truly tried. But when she pictured the man in front of her as a little boy watching…“You watched your family die!” she wailed, burying her face in his shirt again.

He went perfectly still. “What are you talking about?” he whispered tightly. “What’s going on?”

“I kn-know the whole story,” she sobbed. “About the accident, and how you tried to save them. The truck driver even told Frank how he dragged you down the road to get you away from—Oh God, it must have been horrible!”

Jack took hold of her shoulders and forcibly set her away from him. Megan shuddered, blinking through her tears, and saw him pick up the report sitting on the desk. He silently thumbed through it, his face completely void of expression. “You sent someone to Medicine Lake to investigate me?” he asked ever so softly, stopping at one particular page for several seconds, then moving on. He finally brought his gaze back to her. “You couldn’t have just asked me?”

His eyes were distant, and Megan felt a cold, bottomless fissure open between them.

“No, wait, I forgot. You don’t believe anything I tell you.” He tossed the report down on the desk, the soft sound making Megan flinch. “I just remembered I have stuff to do tomorrow,” he told her. “So I guess the wedding’s off. Not that I’m in a hurry to hitch myself to a woman who doesn’t trust me—much less one who’s marrying me out of pity.”

He turned and headed for the door.

“Jack, wait!” Megan cried, grabbing the report and running over to the hearth, where she tossed it onto the glowing embers. “I haven’t even read it. I don’t need to anymore!”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, quietly closing the door behind him.

Megan chased after him but he was already down the hall, and she had to wrestle her way through a mob of children before she finally reached the front door just as it was closing. She wrenched it open and ran onto the bridge spanning the rippling brook below. “Jack! Wait! Please wait!” she pleaded.

He stopped at the end of the bridge and turned to face her.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t trust you when you first came here, so I hired someone to check out your story. But I trust you now, Jack. I burned the report because I trust you.”