GRACE SAT OUTSIDE beneath the covered patio with her aunt while Samuel toddled around the backyard. She’d already plucked one wiggly worm and glossy snail from his fist, thankfully before he popped them in his mouth for a taste. He headed for the big red ball, accidentally booting it. With a squealing laugh, he went after it.
Aunt Elizabeth chuckled. “He’ll make a good soccer player.” She sipped her green tea.
It was a little chilly outside, but Samuel needed running room. He’d been cooped up in the house for the last week while rain pattered the roof.
“What’s on your mind, Grace?”
What always seemed to be on her mind lately: Roman. She didn’t speak his name aloud. “Nothing but the usual.” She couldn’t bring herself to talk about him. Not with her aunt. Not with anyone. How long was it going to take to get over him?
“Is your business going all right?”
“It keeps me very busy. Jasper referred another student. Thankfully, because one of my clients no longer needs my services. He got an A on his final.”
“Just like Patrick.” Aunt Elizabeth grimaced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up the past. What about your social life?”
“Church on Sunday and the ladies’ Bible study midweek.”
“Have you met any eligible bachelors?”
“I’m not looking for one.”
“Because you’re still in love with Roman Velasco.”
Grace wasn’t going to lie. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”
Samuel pounced on the ball, and it shot out from under him like a rocket. Grace and her aunt laughed. Samuel let out a screech of surprise and propped himself up on his arms. He got to his feet and went after the ball again.
“Nice to see he doesn’t give up.” Aunt Elizabeth set her teacup on the saucer.
“Not when he wants something.”
“What about you, Grace? Why don’t you just call Roman and see what happens?”
“I know what would happen, and I’m not taking the risk. Besides, you’ve done without a man all your life. So can I.” Regretting her angry outburst, Grace stood. “Would you like more tea? I’m getting more coffee.”
“You can’t even bear to talk about—”
“If Roman wanted to pursue a real relationship, he’d find me.”
Aunt Elizabeth set her teacup and saucer on the end table. “And how on God’s green earth is he supposed to do that? You changed your number and moved to Merced. You swore me and all your friends to secrecy. What’s the man supposed to do? Hire a private detective? Hunt you down like one of the FBI’s ten most wanted?”
“Has he called you?”
Aunt Elizabeth didn’t speak for a moment. “No.”
“He’s never asked Shanice either. So there’s the answer.”
Aunt Elizabeth wilted slightly. “I didn’t know.” She looked away. “I thought . . .” She shook her head. “Never mind what I thought. It’s none of my business, and I’m sorry I butted in.” Her expression turned to one of pain and concern. “I just want to see you happy.”
“I’m fine. Really, I am.”
“No, you’re not. You’ve lost weight. And you don’t look like you’re sleeping very much.”
Grace came back and sat. She watched Samuel wrestling the red ball into submission. “I don’t want to do anything that’s going to hurt Samuel.”
“Like introducing a man into his life who may not be the marrying kind.”
“Precisely.”
Aunt Elizabeth didn’t say anything for a long time. Samuel sat and rubbed his eyes. Grace got up and went to him. Lifting him, she hugged him close. “Nap time, little man.” Aunt Elizabeth followed Grace inside and stayed in the kitchen to wash the few dishes. Grace sat in the living room rocker, Samuel snuggled in her lap, his head resting against her chest. She loved this time of day, loved the feel of his little body loosening and warming in her arms as he fell asleep.
“He looks like an angel.” Aunt Elizabeth sat on the couch. “You’re a good mother, Grace.”
“I’m trying my hardest.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s better to leave things as they are.”
Grace wanted to believe that.
Roman slept for a few hours and left around noon to drive up the Pacific Coast Highway. He needed time to think before he arrived in San Francisco. When he reached the city, he didn’t check into a hotel on Nob Hill or downtown, though he could easily afford either. He went to the Phoenix in the old hood. A last-minute cancellation had opened up a room. He took that as a sign God was with him.
Still wide-awake after midnight, he decided to take a stroll down memory lane. Nighttime had been playtime when he was a teen. Shrugging into his leather bomber jacket, Roman went for a walk through the Tenderloin.
It hadn’t improved much. The homeless population had grown. Trash still spilled over cans and alley Dumpsters. New graffiti marked walls. Some tough-looking kids came down the sidewalk toward him. Roman took his hands from his jacket pockets and stared the leader in the eye. The group passed by without a word, two looking back at him. Roman kept going until he came to the overpass where White Boy died. He looked up at the concrete arch, letting himself think about his erstwhile friend, and made peace with the place before he walked on.
The apartment house where he’d lived with his mother looked the same. The right kind of graffiti would improve the place. The third-story window was dark. How many hours had he spent looking out and waiting for his mother to come home?
You know I love you, baby. I always come back, don’t I?
The nightclub where she worked had a new name, but was still in business. Sleazy music oozed out the front door. Steeling himself, he went inside, but got no further than a podium occupied by a middle-aged man in a cheap suit. “Twenty bucks will get you inside.” The man looked Roman over. “A hundred will get you more.” Roman didn’t take out his wallet. The smell of booze hung in the place, and one glimpse of an expressionless girl gyrating on the stage turned his stomach. A man at a table by the stage stood and tucked money in her G-string. Roman went back outside.
Gulping cold, moist coastal air, he walked away.
He spent another two hours wandering the streets, thinking about his mother. Be honest. Look to Me. Understanding bubbled to the surface. He’d loved his mother. And hated her—for what she did to make a living, for leaving that night, for breaking her promise. He’d never wanted to admit those feelings, but now he felt them like an open wound that still bled and left him raw with pain. He knew what God wanted him to do—to confess what he’d kept locked inside for so many years.
I am the Healer.
Instead of the shame Roman expected, he felt the old pain soften into understanding. His mother had been a child when she got pregnant and gave birth to him, barely an adult when she died. To his knowledge, she never had friends or family to help her. She’d been abandoned long before he came along. Whatever the circumstances, Roman knew something else. She hadn’t thrown him away. She kept him close. She loved him.
Still walking, Roman suddenly remembered the landlord in the apartment building talking with the stranger who’d grabbed him. What had he said? It all came back, as if it played out in front of him. The man had given the landlord a wad of money and then followed Bobby Ray up the stairs. You’re coming with me. Bobby Ray had fought, instinctively sensing something wrong, terribly wrong. The would-be abductor started carrying him down the stairs. Then Bobby Ray’s second-grade teacher had shown up with a police officer. The man let go of him and disappeared like a rat down a hole.
The hair on Roman’s neck prickled as he experienced an epiphany. He’d only been seven, but he’d felt the evil in the man’s intentions. Even after that narrow escape, he’d kicked and clawed to get away from the policeman, who put him in the back of a squad car. He hadn’t seen them as rescuers. They were both enemies who wanted to take him away from his mother. He’d cried and screamed curses on the teacher, who sat next to him in the squad car. He’d kicked the back of the police officer’s seat all the way to the station, where he was turned over to a social worker from CPS.
Lord, how many years have I carried all that hatred around and let it shape my life?
Sitting in an all-night café, Roman asked God what he should do next. He got an answer as the sun came up. Exhausted, but resolved, he went to the elementary school and asked for the names of the second-grade teachers who’d been there the year he was seven. He recognized the name of one and asked where he might find Morgan Talbot.
“Mr. Talbot is still here. He’s on break right now.”
God’s perfect timing. “Could I speak with him?”
The secretary made a call to the teacher’s room. A few minutes later, Mr. Talbot entered the office. Roman recognized him immediately. Talbot’s hair was now gray, not red; his shoulders stooped slightly, and he wasn’t nearly as tall as Roman remembered. He’d seemed a giant to a seven-year-old boy. Talbot’s eyes were still kind.
“You probably don’t remember a seven-year-old kid named Bobby Ray Dean.”
“I remember.” His smile was wistful. “You were the first boy I had to turn in to CPS. I’m sorry to say there have been others since.”
“I don’t imagine it gets easier.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
“Maybe it’ll help to know you saved my life that day.” Looking back now, Roman saw how God sent Talbot at the exact time Bobby Ray Dean needed rescue. “The landlord had just sold me. If you and that police officer had arrived five minutes later, I would’ve been gone and probably long dead by now.” He felt gratitude well up inside him, not just for Talbot, but for God, who sent him. He held out his hand. “I’m late in saying it, but thank you, sir.”
Mr. Talbot’s eyes moistened, and he shook hands with Roman. “I was just doing what was right.” He cleared his throat. “The officer was my cousin. He’s retired. Living in Montana now.”
“How about you? Are you retiring soon?”
“He’d better not.” The secretary spoke up from behind the counter. “He’s the best teacher we have.”
Talbot apologized and said he needed to get back to the classroom. Break would be over soon, the children lining up. He paused in the doorway. “You were very good at art, as I remember.”
“I make a living at it. Under a different name. Roman Velasco.”
“Didn’t you just do a big project in Los Angeles?” The secretary intruded again. “Something on the side of a church building. I saw it on Facebook.”
Roman addressed Talbot. “If you’re interested, you can see it online. The work wouldn’t exist if you hadn’t done what was right.”
“I’ll look you up.” He smiled. “Thanks for coming by, Bobby Ray. It’s nice to know one of my pupils is doing so well.” He went down the hall, his back a little straighter.
“He needed to hear that.” The secretary nodded. “Most students remember the upper-class teachers in high school and forget all about the ones they had in the first few years, the unsung heroes who teach the basics.”
Outside, Roman took out his phone and called Jasper Hawley. He told him he had time on his hands and would like to come up and see him, and Chet and Susan. “Unless you already have plans over the next few days.”
“I’m in Portland right now, but I’ll be back day after tomorrow. Something happen, Bobby Ray?”
“Just taking another look at my life from a new perspective.”
“It’s about time.”
Roman had other things he needed to do, and he might as well get one errand done before he headed back to the hotel for some much-needed sleep. He went to the coroner’s office on Bryant Street to find out everything he could about the circumstances of his mother’s death and where she had been buried. The clerk told him the medical examiner’s office retained dental records, tissue samples, a full body X-ray, and DNA of everyone brought into the morgue. His mother had died of an overdose of heroin. Her body had been cremated, her remains placed in storage. Roman filled out all the necessary paperwork and paid the fees to have her ashes released to him.
“It’s been over twenty-five years. It might take a few days to find her.”
Roman gave his contact information. He went to the wharf for dinner and then back to the hotel. He slept for eighteen hours without dreaming and awakened fully rested. Instead of wandering the Tenderloin, he went to Golden Gate Park and imagined how much Grace would love it. He drove to Cliff House for a late lunch. His phone vibrated. The medical examiner’s office. “It usually takes a lot longer than this, but we found your mother’s remains.”
God seemed to be moving things along.
Roman pulled into Masterson Ranch the next day. Gibbs and DiNozzo barked from the front porch. Chet came out of the barn, and Susan down the steps of the house. She got to him first and hugged him. “Nice you came back so soon.”
Chet laughed. “We were worried you’d wait another decade before visiting again.”
Roman said he’d like to stay a couple of days this time, if they had room. They told him he could stay as long as he wanted. They all sat in the kitchen and talked around the table for two hours before Roman asked them if he could spread his mother’s ashes in the hills above their house.
Susan looked at Chet, tears in her eyes. Chet nodded. “We’d be honored, Bobby Ray.”
They told him he could stay in his old room, but he’d have to share it. They only had four boys right now, but the one living in his room was another tough case just like him. Roman met Jaime Lopez when everyone gathered for dinner. He recognized himself at fifteen: angry, broken, no family, no future, no hope. All that had changed on this ranch with these people, and would for this boy, too, if he cooperated. Roman told Jaime as much after lights-out.
The next morning, at dawn, Roman took his mother’s ashes up into the hills. He found a beautiful old valley oak with outstretched branches and a view of the ranch. In spring, these hills would be covered in green grass, golden poppies, and purple lupines. He opened the box and carefully spread her ashes.
“I love you, Mama. I forgive you.” When he finished, the tears came from down deep. “Forgive me.” He’d hated her, blamed her for dying and leaving him on his own. It had taken him all these years to see and confess it to her. He had carried that anger around like a heavy shield to protect himself against ever loving anyone again.
It took dying before he could learn to live.
It was sunset before Roman returned to the house. He took his place at the dinner table and listened to the conversation going on around him. He volunteered to do the dishes and then joined everyone in the living room for the house meeting. When asked, he talked about his time at the ranch. “The program works, if you work it.” Chet and Susan told the boys about his success as an artist. They all knew about the piece he’d done on the church.
Jasper came late. “Two trips up here in six months. That’s a good sign.”
Chet and Susan turned in for the night, leaving José in charge. Roman sat on the porch with Jasper. Neither Chet nor Susan had mentioned Grace. Considering how well they’d all gotten along, he’d hoped they’d bring her up. And now, here was Jasper talking about every subject except the one Roman wanted most. Several times, he had to clench his jaw so he wouldn’t ask. That wasn’t part of the bargain he’d made with God. Three people, Lord. He needed one more. His heart squeezed tight with pain. I guess You’re saying no. He looked out at the stars and let her go again.
“Time to head for home.” Jasper put his hands on his knees and stood. “Walk me to the car.” Roman fell into step beside him. Jasper opened the car door. “Don’t stay away too long, son.”
“That works two ways. You have my new address, but you’ll be on the couch again. No fancy guest room.”
“Not a problem.” Jasper studied him. “You’re not going to talk about Grace, are you?”
Roman’s heart jumped. Number three. God was answering his prayer. “I’ve been waiting for you to bring her up.”
“Are you going to see her?”
“I’d be on her front doorstep if I knew where she lived.”
“You haven’t talked to her at all?”
“Figured that was the way she wanted it after she quit and moved out of the cottage. Have you seen her?”
Jasper hesitated. “No, but I’ve talked with her several times. She’s got her own business now. VirtualGrace.biz. I’ve referred several students to her. One landed on the honor roll after she worked with him.”
“Can you give me her address? I’d like to make amends in person.”
“I can, but I won’t. Better if you contact her first. Give her the choice.”
It wasn’t the answer Roman wanted, but he understood. “That makes sense.”
As soon as Jasper drove out of the yard, Roman took out his phone and found Grace’s website. He tapped Contact, thumbed a short message, said a quick prayer, and touched Send.
Sighing, Roman looked up. All he had to do now was wait . . . and hope she’d respond.