Read Online Cradle and All by M. J. Rodgers - Free Book Online

and vibrant, and resonated like fine music inside her. A whole chorus of her own feminine chords was eagerly joining right in. She was going to have to be very careful. Tom was proving far too likable for her own good.
    “My turn to ask questions,” he said. “Where are you from?”
    “I never really know how to answer that question,” Anne admitted. “I was born in California, but I was only there the first couple of months of my life. My father was a career military officer. We moved every eighteen months.”
    “The travel must have been fun,” Tom said.
    “Sometimes, but I lost a lot of friends and memories.”
    “Memories?” Tom repeated.
    “The kind that come back when you pick up an old photo or something else from your past.”
    Anne told him then about being invited to her college roommate’s home for Thanksgiving and seeing all the stuff she had in her bedroom—dolls, toys, books, old school papers and report cards. Anne had never been able to keep any of those things. “When you’re always moving,” she explained, “you have to travel light.”
    “I understand,” Tom said, and oddly enough, Anne could see that understanding right there on his face.
    Before she knew it, she was telling him about the places she had lived, how her father had finally retired and moved to Boston, the thrill of getting the news when she had been accepted into law school, and later, the recruitment call from the Boston prosecutor’s office.
    “I was with them for eight years,” Anne said.
    “Twice as long as your marriage,” Tom commented. “You must have liked it better.”
    “When I put some really serious sinners behind bars.”
    “And when you didn’t?” Tom asked.
    “I don’t like to think about the ones that got away with what they had done.”
    “No one ever really gets away, Anne.”
    “Maybe not, but it sure would have been nice to see them pay for their sins in this lifetime.”
    Tom rolled onto his back and looked up at the sky. To Anne it seemed pale after the rich blue of his eyes.
    “So you decided to become a judge to see that those serious sinners got what was coming to them.”
    Anne laughed. “Hardly. I handle mostly probate, divorces, adoptions and deadbeat dads. Not exactly hardened criminals.”
    “Then something else made you change jobs?”
    She hesitated for a moment. These were not things she normally talked about. Still, it was surprisingly easy to talk to Tom. She supposed that was part of what made him a good priest.
    When he was a good priest.
    “I was on the fast track with the Boston district attorney’s office when the governor called with the offer of the judgeship here in the Berkshires,” Anne said. “I was ready to turn it down.”
    “And then?”
    “Then suddenly my marriage was falling apart and the job offer began to sound like a chance for a new start.”
    “So, taking the job here was a way to try to distance yourself from the pain,” Tom said with understanding. “Did it work?”
    “It helped,” she admitted. “Although I never planned to stay in either the job or the Berkshires. I froze in these hills my first winter here. But before I knew it, a year had gone by and somehow the job had grown on me.”
    “How do you mean?”
    His question wasn’t casual. There was genuine interest in his voice, and Anne found herself trying to put into words what it really felt like.
    “Law sets the standard for what’s right and wrong. Every time I hand down a decision, I’m impacting lives, possibly changing them forever. I can’t afford to be wrong. The job’s exacting, humbling and exhilarating all at the same time.”
    “I know what you mean,” Tom said.
    Anne realized Tom wasn’t just politely agreeing with her. She hadn’t thought of it before, but it must be like that for a priest, as well—impacting lives, possibly changing them forever.
    “If you don’t want to talk about why you became a priest, can you at least tell me why you’re in the