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mother would have to be there with us.”
    She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re talking to me now .”
    â€œWhat I mean is that I want to start seeing you again, regularly, like the kind of visitation you had with your mom when you lived with me.”
    She took a step forward, feeling braver. “Mom would never let you take me away from her again. Never! And I will never go back.”
    He sighed and held her gaze steadily. “I wouldn’t try to get you back. If I got to visit with you, I wouldn’t even touch you. I promise. I just want to find out if it would be okay with you before I ask for permission from your mother.’ His light blue eyes filled with tears, and he looked away for a moment. “It’s going to take a long time to become friends again, but I have to try.”
    Friends? Ha! A friend didn’t try to kill a friend. And a friend didn’t try to keep a friend from her mother or try to ruin her mother’s name in town just out of spite. “I don’t want to be your friend.”
    He reached up with the back of his hand and brushed his tears away. “Of course you don’t. I’ve been talking with my counselor about it, and he said it would be unreasonable for me to expect that. I just felt like I had to make contact.”
    So now he’d made contact. What else would he want?When Dad was nice, it was always because he wanted something. Why was she even listening to him? Why was she talking to him and thinking about what it might be like to see him again? She should hate him for what he had done to her and Mom. She shouldn’t’ve even come out here.
    But what if he’d really changed?
    â€œYou’ll have to ask Mom yourself,” she said at last. “I’m not going to be your messenger this time.”
    Dad blinked a couple of times and looked back at her. “You’d meet with me?” Some of the sadness left his face. The bell rang, and he stiffened. He reached out as if to touch her and then drew his hand back. “Tedi, I want to prove to you—and maybe to myself—that people can change, that they don’t have to be stuck in the rut they dig for themselves.”
    For a moment, she couldn’t help hoping. Then she thought of something Grandma always said, and she knew Dad needed to hear it. “Grandma Ivy says nobody can do that without God’s help.”
    Instead of sneering at her and laughing the way he used to do when she quoted Grandma, he cocked his head to the side. “How’s your grandma doing?”
    Tedi heard her name being called and glanced toward the building to find Abby gesturing for her to hurry. “I’ve got to go.” She turned to leave.
    â€œOkay. I’ll talk to your mom, Tedi. Today. I’m going to walk to her office right now.”
    She paused and looked back and felt suddenly angry again. “Don’t you hurt her. Don’t scare her, and don’t fight with her.”
    â€œI won’t.”
    â€œIf you do, I’ll never talk to you again.”
    He closed his eyes and sighed, and the muscle flexed at the side of his jaw again. “I won’t hurt her, Tedi. I promise.”
    Â 
    Lukas slipped past the curtain in exam room five and greeted Jacob Casey, who lay on the bed beneath a thinsheet, his wounded upper arm covered in a sterile dressing. “Well, Cowboy, I’ve got a lot of good news and a little bad news. The good news is that I see no vital damage to your arm, and you won’t have to leave Knolls to have the wound repaired. The bullet exited with no bone involvement. The bad news is that I want a surgeon to have a look at you, and he’ll probably want to keep you overnight.”
    He expected an argument but got no reaction. Cowboy lay watching him listlessly.
    Lukas frowned. “It won’t leave as much of a scar as the lion bite did this spring.” He waited for one of the quick, witty