A Gift Of Grace

“There’s no easy way for me to say this, so I’ll just put it straight out.

I believe my wife gave birth to the little girl you adopted.”

The words came at Sophie in slow motion, as if they’d been delivered from miles away. She dropped into the chair, her legs suddenly unable to support her. “What did you say?”

Caleb pulled a photo from his pocket and handed it to her.

She stared at it, leaden fear settling in her stomach. The picture had obviously been taken years ago, but the child captured there could have been Grace.

“I made an awful mistake,” he said, “and gave her away.”

The words hung there between them. In that moment, it happened, the thing Sophie had feared most since the day she’d received the incredible gift of her daughter. And her world blew apart into a million tiny pieces.

Dear Reader,

I think one of the more difficult realities of life to accept is that bad things happen to good people. It is decidedly sobering to see someone we know or love go through a tragedy that completely changes the course of his or her life.

The question we cannot help asking is why.

As I get older, I realize that sometimes there isn’t any apparent or acceptable answer.

I’ve known people who have been dealt unbelievable blows, the kind of senseless violence or loss that would justify a complete withdrawal from a world that can prove too cruel. But in some of these same people I’ve witnessed a strength of character, an unwillingness to give up that has been an inspiration to me, made me look for the rainbow in circumstances that might at first glance seem hopeless.

In A Gift of Grace I’m hoping that you’ll find Caleb and Sophie to be two such people—a man and woman who manage to get back on their feet when accepting that their lives are essentially over would be a reasonable option.

Both Caleb and Sophie face a turning point where they must decide what the rest of their lives will be and whether they have the courage to accept the gift that awaits them.

Please visit my Web site at www.inglathcooper.com for a look at my other titles. I’d love to hear from you at P.O. Box 973, Rocky Mount, VA 24151 or [e-mail].

All best,

Inglath Cooper

A Gift of Grace

Inglath Cooper

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my mother, Margie McGuire, whose strength of spirit and

ability to find the good in the difficult are an inspiration to

me. And, too, for teaching me the things that matter.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

PROLOGUE

CALEB TUCKER’S WIFE DIED on one of the prettiest days ever lent to Albemarle County.

Channel eight’s morning weather anchor had declared it the pearl in the oyster of spring—get out and enjoy it, folks!—but to Caleb, the beauty of the day was simply another irony in the nightmare that had taken over his life.

He sat on a chair by the metal-railed hospital bed, his skin chilled by air-conditioning lowered to a level more appropriate for preservation than comfort. He wondered how many other people before him had sat here in this same spot, not willing to let go. In the past eight months, he had come to hate this chair, this room, as if they alone were responsible for the misery now etched into every cell of his body.

He clutched his wife’s hand between his own, the backs of his knuckles whitened, his grip too tight, too desperate.

A half hour ago, two somber doctors had walked into the room where he’d sat waiting, both his parents and Laney’s parents hovering behind him. He’d watched their mouths move, the words sitting on the surface of comprehension. “We’re sorry, Mr. Tucker. We were forced to perform an emergency cesarean. There were complications from the anesthesia. I’m afraid she’s gone.”

No. Not possible. Not after everything she’d been through. She was going to get better. She had to get better.

He’d asked to see her, alone, trying to block out the sounds of Mary Scott’s keening grief. The doctors had led him to the room, one on either side of him, as if they thought he might not make it without their help.

He had only wanted them to go away, leave him alone with her.

Once they’d closed the door behind them, he’d stood staring at her beautiful face, seen nothing there to hint at the life she had carried inside her these past months. Nothing to hint at the act of violence responsible for that life. She’d looked peaceful, accepting, unmarked by any memory of what had happened, peace erasing all traces of pain or fear.

For that, he was grateful.

It was all he could find to be grateful for now.

The day had arrived after months of dread, of willing time to slow, praying for God to bring her back to him. But Laney—the woman he had loved since he was sixteen years old—was no longer here.

The door to the room opened and hit the wall with a bang. Mary Scott stood in the entrance, her face haggard. She looked as if she had aged a dozen years in the past few hours. Behind her, Laney’s father, Emmitt Scott, put a restraining hand on her shoulder.

“Mary, come on,” he said. “Don’t do this.”

She stared at Caleb now, her eyes glazed with blame. “This is your fault,” she said, her voice ragged, high-pitched. “Because of you, my daughter is dead.”

Caleb let the words settle, the knife of accusation stabbing through his chest.

“If you had been the kind of husband she had wanted you to be, none of this would ever have happened. Do you know how many times she came home crying to me about the two of you never seeing each other? About work coming before everything else, including her?”

The last few words rang out on the edge of hysteria.

“Mary, stop now,” Emmitt Scott said, taking his wife’s arm.

But she jerked away, crossed the floor in a couple of strides and slapped Caleb hard across the face.

He sat, too numb to register more than a momentary flash of pain, and then gratitude flooded him for the realization that he could feel anything at all.

Mary glanced at her hand, then back at him.

“Mary!” Emmitt swung her up in his arms, his face taut. “I’m sorry, Caleb. We’ll come back when you’re done,” he said and carried her from the room.

Caleb stared at the door long after it had closed. No matter how much Mary blamed him, it could never equal the blame he had leveled at himself. He dropped his head onto the icy bed rail, grief swallowing him, the sounds coming from deep inside nearly inhuman. No tears, though. He’d never shed one. Not since the police had found her broken body behind a Dumpster twenty miles from the mall where her car had been left with the driver’s door open, the contents of her purse spilled onto the pavement below.

A thousand times he had asked himself why he hadn’t driven with her that night. One decision made under the carelessly arrogant assumption that they would have other nights, other opportunities. “Come on, Caleb, you can fix the tractor in the morning.” He heard her voice as clear as if it were yesterday. “We’ll just go buy Mama’s birthday present and then eat at that new Italian place I was telling you about. When was the last time we went out to dinner?”

“I can’t, honey,” he’d said. “I need to get it going so I can get hay off the ground tomorrow. We’ll go this weekend, okay?”

One small flicker of disappointment in her blue eyes, and then Laney had smiled, as she always had. Forgiven him, as she always had.

She had gone on without him, kissing him on the mouth when she’d left, telling him he worked too hard. She’d be back soon.

And he’d taken that for granted. Because of course she would be back. That was how life worked, wasn’t it? One day blending seamlessly into the next until a man never thought to question his right to it.

He leaned forward, pressed his lips to the back of his wife’s wrist, stung by its increasing coolness. Despite all the words he’d heard countless times from doctors renowned for their expertise in brain-damaged patients, he had continued to hope that this moment would never actually happen, that she would wake up, come back to him. “Laney,” he whispered. “Oh, dear God, I’m so sorry.”

Footsteps on the tile floor echoed, penetrating his consciousness far enough to prompt him to raise his head.

Dr. Richards stood at the foot of the bed, his short dark hair disheveled, as if he’d been running his hands through it. He cleared his throat. “Mr. Tucker.” The pause held a note of hopefulness. “Are you sure you don’t want to see the baby? It might make a difference.”

Caleb stared at him, as if the man had spoken a language Caleb didn’t understand. “Call the agency,” he said.

For a brief moment, the doctor’s composure slipped, and under a burdened sigh, he said, “If you’re sure then.”

“I’m sure.”

CHAPTER ONE

Three years later

SOPHIE OWENS PULLED the last clean plate from the dishwasher and placed it in the cabinet by the sink. The dinner dishes were done, the kitchen back in order for the next morning.

Norah Jones drifted down from the speakers mounted in the ceiling of the house’s main living areas. For a long time after her divorce, Sophie’s need for music had been about cloaking her own loneliness in whatever flavor of song seemed most likely to lift and soothe. Now, it felt more like an old friend whose company she simply enjoyed.

Wiping her hands on a dish towel, Sophie wandered into the living room, where her daughter sat in the middle of the floor surrounded by a ram-shackle collection of LEGO toys.

This was the largest room in the house, with a stretch of wide windows on the front and a field-stone fireplace at one end. Two oversize Bernhardt chairs sat on either side of its opening, a leather sofa the color of cognac closer to the center of the room. An antique rug covered most of the floor, its primary role a playground for Grace.

The house wasn’t huge, but comfortable in a way that made Sophie glad she had taken the plunge two years ago and bought it. To a girl from southwest Virginia, Charlottesville real estate was expensive. On an English professor’s salary, it had been an enormous debt, but so worth it with its fenced yard and proximity to the university.

And, too, the neighborhood was the sort where Grace already had friends who lived close by, who would no doubt in years to come ride over on their bicycles, have pajama parties in the attic. Hard to imagine Grace being old enough to do such things, but she was almost three, and these first years had flown by.

“Time for your bath, sweet pea,” Sophie said.

Grace looked up, her wide blue eyes the focal point of a round, rosy-cheeked face so beautiful that people often stared at her. “And then you’ll read me my story?”

“I will,” Sophie promised. She looked forward to their nightly bath-time ritual almost as much as Grace. Grace loved water, had taken to it as if it were as natural to her as air.

A few minutes later, Grace sat in the tub, eyes lit with happiness. She slapped both palms against the bubble-filled water, sending a poof of suds up to land on Sophie’s chin. She squealed with laughter. “Mama has a beard!” she said.

Sophie laughed, scooped up a dollop of soapy bubbles and gave Grace one, too, inciting another round of giggles.

Finally, when they were both soaked, Sophie lifted Grace from the tub, wrapping her in a thick white towel and dressing her in the Winnie-the-Pooh pajamas that were her favorite.

Sophie carried her into the bedroom. Stuffed animals covered a toddler-size sleigh bed. Grace couldn’t bring herself to banish any of them to the floor.

In this room, Sophie could be accused of over-indulgence, the walls a color-washed pink and yellow she had done herself. Grace said it looked like the sunrise. An old school desk sat in one corner with a stack of coloring books and crayons. A hand-hooked rug with Curious George at its center covered the floor.

“Where’s Blanky?” Grace asked as she snuggled up under the covers.

“He had a bath today, too,” Sophie said. “I forgot to get him out of the drier. Be right back.”

In the laundry room, Sophie retrieved the shabby but well-loved once-pink blanket. This was another subject she should probably tackle, but Grace’s attachment to it was so complete that Sophie couldn’t bring herself to take it away from her. She figured it would resolve itself eventually. She’d yet to see any of her freshman English students dragging Blankys into the classroom.

At Sophie’s return, Grace smiled and tucked the blanket under her left arm, resting her chin on its threadbare silk edging.

“Which book do we get to read tonight, Mama?”

“Which one would you like?”

“Are You My Mother?”

They’d read the Dr. Seuss book countless times, and Grace never tired of it. At one point, Sophie had begun to worry that on some level Grace felt the question within herself. She had never explained to Grace how she had come to be her daughter. It wasn’t something Sophie meant to hide from her. She had just never been able to say the words for fear that they would dissolve even an ounce of her daughter’s security.

Some days when Sophie caught sight of her child, framed in one of her high, sweet giggles, gratitude nearly brought her to her knees. She had lived the first year of Grace’s life in terror that it couldn’t last. That terror had quieted, but never completely gone away. It didn’t seem possible that anyone could give up a gift so precious as this and not realize their mistake.

But the days had turned to weeks, then months. Had it really been three years since the agency social worker had placed the newborn infant in her arms? Sophie could not remember what her days had been like without Grace. Only that life now had a buzz, a rhythm to it that made her previous existence seem that and only that. Existing.

Soon then. She would explain things to her daughter soon. She didn’t want to wait until Grace was old enough to think Sophie had intentionally hidden the truth from her.

She pulled the book from the shelf, sat down on the bed and, putting one arm around her daughter, began to read. Grace’s chin quivered. Tears slid down her cheeks as the little bird went from kitten to cow to dog searching for its mother.

By the time the bird finally found her, Grace’s tense shoulders relaxed, her eyes heavy with sleep. Sophie closed the book, kissed her daughter’s forehead. “Sweet dreams. Say your prayers?”

Grace nodded, reciting the verse she repeated each night before going to sleep. Sophie tucked the covers around her and smoothed a hand across her daughter’s silky hair.

“Good night.” She flicked off the lamp and turned to leave.

“Mama?”

“Yes, baby?”

“I’m glad you’re my mommy.”

Tears welled in Sophie’s eyes. “Me, too, sweetie. Me, too.”

CALEB TUCKER SAT on the front porch of the old farmhouse his grandparents had built in 1902. On the floor next to him lay Noah, a yellow Labrador retriever so named for his avoidance of water as a puppy; even rain puddles had sent him flying back to the nearest pair of available arms.

Surrounding the house were four hundred acres of farmland, the soil rich and dark with three generations of nurturing. Pockets of woods thick with century-old oak and maple trees divided hay fields from pasture. Deer slipped into the alfalfa fields just before sunset every evening. Flocks of wild turkeys pecked their way from one end of the farm to the other and back again in an endless loop of foraging.

The land had been in Caleb’s father’s family for three generations, the kind of acreage that in this part of Virginia now required the bank account of a stock-market genius or some thirty-year-old Internet wizard to afford.

The permanence of the land and its need of him held Caleb back from the brink of something too awful to define.

The moon had just started its ascent from behind Craig Mountain. It was full tonight, the pastures east of the house bathed in soft light, the Black Angus cows grazing there clearly outlined.

The day had been long, and Caleb had worked his muscles just short of failure. It was how he ended every day, wrung out, collapsing into the wicker chair and forfeiting dinner in exchange for a Dr Pepper and some cheese crackers, most of which stayed in the pack.

Headlights arced up the gravel drive, his dad’s old Ford truck rumbling over the knoll just short of the house. Caleb’s parents lived on the other end of the farm in a house they had built ten years ago. Jeb Tucker stopped and got out, balancing a plate covered in Saran wrap.

An older version of his only son, his hair had gone steel gray before Caleb had left home for college. Jeb had passed along the defined bone structure of his face as well as his wide, full mouth. Both father and son were heavily muscled from the daily routine of farm life. Like Jeb, Caleb favored Wranglers and Ropers. Dressy for both of them meant putting on their newest pair.

He looked up at Caleb now, his jaw set. “Evenin’,” he said.

“Dad.” Caleb nodded. Noah thumped his tail on the porch floor in greeting.

“Your mother asked me to bring this over,” Jeb said.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“She thinks you’re not eating.”

“Tell her I’m fine.”

“Maybe you ought to tell her. She doesn’t listen to me too much anymore.” Jeb set the plate on the step, then lowered himself down beside it.

Caleb didn’t miss the note of resignation in his father’s voice, and he realized how long it had been since he’d asked how they were doing. “You two okay?”

Jeb looked out across the darkened yard. “No,” he said. “I can’t say we are.”

Caleb let that settle and then asked, “This about me?”

Jeb looked down at the step, traced a pattern across the wood and answered without looking up. “It’s about the fact that none of us has moved on—”

Caleb erupted from his chair, his back to his father. “Don’t do this, Dad.”

“Don’t you think it’s about time we talked about it, son?”

“About what?” Caleb snapped back, swinging around. “The fact that I miss my wife so much that sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe for the pain of it?”

Jeb shook his head. “I know you miss her, Caleb. God knows we all do. But the fact is you haven’t moved a step beyond the day she died. It’s like quicksand, and it’s pulling you down. It’s pulling us all down.”

“That’s not fair, Dad.”

“There’s not a damn thing about any of this that’s fair, Caleb,” Jeb said, anger in his voice now. “But you are still here. Still alive. Somehow, some way, you have got to move on.”

“And what does that mean?” Caleb asked, forcing a level note to his voice. “Finding somebody else?”

“Maybe,” Jeb said quietly. “Don’t you think that’s what she would want?”

“I think she wanted the two of us to have a family, raise our kids, spoil our grandkids and grow old together. Those are the things I know she wanted.”

Jeb started to say something, stopped, pressed his lips together, and then said, “That’s what we all wanted for the two of you.”

“Yeah, well, we didn’t get that, did we?”

“No, son. You didn’t.” He stared up at Caleb. “You’re a young man. You can still have a good life with someone.”

“Don’t!” Caleb said. “Just don’t, okay?”

A few moments of silence ticked past before Jeb stood, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “We’re going down to your aunt Betsy’s for the weekend. You can get us on the cell phone if you need us.”

Caleb watched as his dad got in the truck and drove off, standing in the same spot long after the taillights had disappeared down the drive. The moon slipped higher in the sky. An owl hooted in a nearby tree, the sound stirring inside him a fresh swirl of loneliness.

He flipped on the radio he kept on the porch for company. Static crackled in the air before the dial came into focus. He could only pick up the AM station out of D.C. after dark.

Vivaldi’s Spring Concerto rose high and tender from the old radio. This music had been Laney’s. His only by association. She had thought it beautiful. To him, it had sounded like a foreign language, noise that he didn’t understand. But he found himself reaching for it now, his connection to her thinning like a frayed rope. The music was a medium through which he could still feel her, remember what it had been like to make love to her, her skin soft beneath his hands.

He closed his eyes, leaned his head against the wicker rocker. He didn’t listen every night. He couldn’t. Only when he needed the music’s poignant emotion to remind him he could still feel. Because even if all he felt was sadness, at least that was something.

He tried to focus on the picture he carried of her in his head, alarmed by its lack of clarity and the way it continued to dim like a photograph left too long in the light.

A soft breeze stirred, and his nostrils suddenly filled with the sweet scent of her perfume.

“Laney,” he said, his voice a hoarse plea.

He felt her touch on his shoulders like the brush of a feather. He sat as still as stone, afraid a single movement would shatter the feeling like glass all around him. And then he heard it, the wrenching sound of her weeping.

His heart twisted, felt suddenly too large for his chest. Tears streamed from his own eyes. He didn’t bother to wipe them away. “Laney,” he said. “Laney.”

CHAPTER TWO

JEB FOLLOWED THE GRAVEL ROAD that led back to the house he shared with his wife, the speedometer needle never reaching twenty. What was the point in hurrying?

There had been a time when he couldn’t wait to get home every day. Couldn’t wait to see Catherine. It had been that way all through Caleb’s childhood. Even after Caleb had left home for college, Jeb and Catherine had known a renewal of sorts in their marriage. He’d come home some nights to find her at the door in a piece of lingerie that made his heart hit the wall of his chest, and they would make love on the kitchen’s old walnut table.

Now, he couldn’t even remember the last time they had touched each other.

He blinked hard as if he could shake the gray pall that reality settled over him. But it stayed where it was, so heavy there were times he thought he would simply disintegrate beneath it.

He loved his wife, but somewhere in these last three years, he had lost her.

He stopped the truck in the middle of the road, leaned forward with his forearms on the steering wheel, staring up at the night sky. If he could just turn the clock back, figure out how to have what they’d once had. He’d tried to talk Catherine into seeing someone, even both of them together, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She’d always been one to hold everything inside, a deal-with-it-herself kind of person. Only this was too big, too much. For either of them. And their marriage had bent to the will of their grief, of Caleb’s grief.

With a weary heart, he straightened in the seat, pressed the accelerator on the crochety old truck and headed home.

ON THURSDAY MORNING, Sophie drove the short distance from her house to the University of Virginia campus with her window cracked, letting in the flavor of the crisp morning. Spring was her favorite season; she loved the trees with their newborn leaves, the tulips popping up from their winter nest. To Sophie, the world felt more hopeful at this time of year, as if all things were possible.