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Somewhere in the last exciting year of finishing college, making wedding plans with Marty and dreaming of distant lands and needy souls, God had grown further and further away.
Now she wondered if God had intentionally pushed her out, because she’d make a lousy missionary’s wife—she couldn’t even speak Spanish—and she was too unreliable to take care of His children. Anyone’s children.
Her eyes, protected by sunglasses slick with sweat, cut toward the creek that ran behind her family home. If she listened closely, she could hear the pretty, happy sound of clear, cold water trickling over rocks. Water could be so deceptive.
And men, even Christian men, could be so cruel. Marty hadn’t understood her fear of having children. He’d said he did at first, but he never really had.
She tugged her attention toward more comfortable thoughts. Someone, she noted with interest, had bought the house next door. The luxury home had been empty for a while—ever since the local doctor passed away and his wife had moved to Oklahoma to live near her daughter. Now the closest medical care was miles away.
Home buyers in Clayton, Colorado, were as rare as medical care. On the day of the funeral, she’d heard mention that the old Lucky Lady Mine might be opened again and that some hotshot front man from Denver had moved to town. Could he be the new neighbor? Someone with a corporate job would be the only person who could afford the doctor’s home.
By now she’d reached her long, covered front porch. Hot, thirsty and eager for a shower, she reached beneath a flowerpot for the key. It was gone.
Weird. The key had been there when she’d left. She was certain. She’d put it there herself. Although most people in Clayton rarely locked their doors, she’d been living in Colorado Springs for the past four years. She always locked up, and as she and her family had done her entire life, she’d stuck the extra key beneath the flowerpot. She tilted each of the other pots. Nothing.
Puzzled, she rattled the doorknob for good measure, then jogged around to the back.
As she’d known it would be, the back door was locked, too.
By now, she was frustrated and a little nervous. She was sure she’d put the key under the pot. Her family had always kept the key there. Vivienne and Zach each had a key, but they’d gone back to their respective cities of New York and Miami. They’d both agreed to return, but Brooke wasn’t sure about her siblings. They had jobs, lives, futures right where they were.
Brooke had a locked door, a missing key and a case of nervous worry. Someone must have taken her key.
No, that was silly. Why would anyone steal the key without going inside the house?
Her eyes cut to the curtained window. She hoped no one had gone inside.
After one final, frustrated rattle of the knob, she eyed the side of the house and her bedroom window. With an exasperated sigh, she turned in that direction.
Gabe leaned against a fluted column at the corner of his newly acquired back porch with his morning coffee and spoke into his cell phone. “Not everyone’s happy about reopening the mine.”
On the other end of the line, his lawyer and best friend, Manny Ortega, replied. “People don’t like change.”
Gabe understood that. His own life had changed often and much, and sometimes change hurt so badly it cut you in half. He’d been there. Tara’s death had taken a lot out of him. Being here in Clayton was the kind of change he needed to get him on track again. The slower pace gave him more time to pray and refuel.
“I hired a local, Vincent Clayton, to round up potential labor and smooth ruffled feathers.”
“One of the Claytons?”
“Oh, yeah. He let me know right away. Apparently, there’s more than one set of Claytons, and a good old-fashioned family feud between the factions.”
“Hatfields and McCoys? Shootin’ and feudin’?”
“Let’s hope not. According to Vincent, the Lucky Lady should have been his father’s, but his uncle, that would be late the George, swindled him out of it.”
He cast a watchful eye toward the sandbox installed yesterday afternoon where A.J. happily shoveled pale, golden sand onto a bright red fire truck. Gabe’s chest filled with overpowering love for his child. Caring for A.J. had kept him anchored when the world had spun out of control.
