Darlene Gardner - A Time To Forgive

Connor stood speechless, shocked into silence by his niece’s onslaught of emotion. Jaye resembled a cornered, injured animal ready to strike out at anyone who tried to help her.

Abby crouched down beside the nine-year-old, her eyes steady on the girl’s face.

“So scared, Abby,” Jaye said between hiccuping sobs. “Couldn’t figure out how to buy a bus ticket. Walked here to the library. Nobody talked to me. So alone.”

“It’s okay, honey.” Abby smoothed the hair back from his niece’s despondent face and made soothing noises. “Connor and I are here now. Everything’s going to be all right.”

Something thickened in Connor’s throat as he watched them—the innocent girl who’d been abandoned by her mother and the woman who refused to desert her guilty-as-sin brother.

But at that moment Abby Reed didn’t seem like the half sister of the man who’d murdered his brother.

She seemed like somebody who was on their side.

Dear Reader,

A Time To Forgive represents a departure for me. While many of my previous books were lighthearted, this one involves a ten-year-old murder and its lasting repercussions. It’s as much about hate as it is about the amazing power of love.

It’s also a book I’ve wanted to write for years, fueled by the tales of forgiveness I’d sometimes read about in the newspaper. Who hasn’t marveled at the people who ask judges and juries to be merciful toward the murderer of one of their loved ones? How, I wondered, could anyone forgive such a terrible crime?

In my book, Connor Smith faces a question that’s equally difficult. Can his love for the sister of the man who killed his brother survive the hate eating away at him?

I’m grateful to have been given the chance to write about the flip side of love—and the enduring truth that love is the strongest force of all.

All my best,

Darlene Gardner

P.S. Please visit me on the Web at www.darlenegardner.com.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For those who can find it within themselves to forgive.

But even more, for those who can’t.

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

THE KILLER WALKED into the courtroom not with the shoulder-rolling swagger Connor Smith had expected, but with his head down, his eyes cast to the floor.

He was maybe five foot nine, not nearly as tall as Connor imagined he would be, and he was handcuffed and dressed in a prison-issue jumpsuit that was a garish orange. An armed guard stood on either side of him.

Connor gripped the armrest of his wooden chair to keep himself from surrendering to the impulse to leap from his seat and attack, reminding himself that the wheels of justice were about to turn.

He’d left the fragrant beauty of a sunny spring afternoon for a preliminary hearing in the austere interior of Laurel County District Court. Very shortly, the Honorable Preston A. Hodgkins would determine whether probable cause existed to believe the defendant had committed murder.

Judge Hodgkins wasn’t expected to do anything more than hand over the case to trial, yet the courtroom gallery was nearly full with members of the news media and spectators who had been shocked by the crime.

Connor didn’t pay attention to any of them.

He sat between his parents. He was peripherally aware of his mother clutching his surgically repaired right knee, which would probably give him trouble when he stood, and his father sitting stoically. But Connor’s eyes never left the killer as he shuffled to the defense table. Once there, he lowered himself into a seat beside the tired-looking public defender who’d been assigned to his case.

Connor waited, barely breathing, for the killer to lift his head. The newspapers had run his photograph a half-dozen times in the last ten days, but they used a police mug shot slightly blurred around the edges.

Connor wanted to see what evil looked like in the flesh.

The killer shifted in his seat, stared down at the table in front of him and stroked his forehead as though his head hurt. Finally, at long last, he raised his head, then briefly glanced at the gallery behind him.

His eyes were a startling blue, a fact Connor hadn’t been able to determine from the black-and-white newspaper photo. His face was pale and unlined, his mouth wide and almost gentle looking, his nose long and straight. His cheeks were apple-red and his dark hair freshly cut.

The killer’s name was Drew Galloway. Three weeks ago, he had turned eighteen, the age at which he could legally be charged as an adult.

Eighteen days ago, Galloway had plunged a knife deep into the chest of Connor’s seventeen-year-old younger brother and left him to die. A pair of teenagers had found J.D.’s body under the bleachers adjacent to the high-school football field where he regularly covered himself in glory.

The story was that the two boys had scuffled over a girl the day before and that Galloway had lured J.D. to the field to rid himself of the competition.

The night, Connor was told, had been black. He didn’t doubt that Galloway’s soul was the same shade.

Dressed in his prison jumpsuit with his cherub’s cheeks and sky-blue eyes, Drew Galloway didn’t look evil. A middle-aged woman with shadowy circles under her eyes and a teenage girl with long, dark hair and a tear-streaked face sat behind the defense table. Probably Galloway’s mother and sister, they furthered the illusion of normalcy.

Connor wasn’t fooled.

Galloway had not only robbed his brother of life, he’d stolen the heart from Connor’s family. Connor’s mother spent her days alternating between grief and rage, and his father walked around in a fog, barely able to function.

Neither parent had the energy to do anything about Connor’s sixteen-year-old sister Diana, who stayed out until all hours of the night, not caring that she was flunking out of school. Connor didn’t even know where she was right now.

No. His family would never recover from the loss of J.D. He’d been the family favorite, so full of life and athletic talent that he’d been headed to Penn State on a football scholarship. But today, when the judge upheld the charge of first-degree murder, the path toward justice would begin.

A bailiff commanded all rise and announced that court was in session. Judge Hodgkins swept in, his black robes flowing, and took a seat behind the bench. He asked counsel to state their appearances in the case of the state of Maryland versus Drew Galloway.

Connor sat patiently through the introductions. The only lawyer who mattered, in his opinion, was State’s Attorney Douglas Benton. A tall man with a head of prematurely gray hair, Benton was a descendant of the town’s founding father. Murders weren’t common in sleepy Laurel County, nestled in the state’s southwest corner less than an hour’s drive from the nation’s capital, but the state’s attorney had a reputation for being as tough as a piece of white Maryland marble.

Judge Hodgkins shuffled some papers, then peered over his reading glasses. “I understand that the parties involved have reached a satisfactory plea agreement. I’ve reviewed the signed document. I gather you’re ready to proceed with a plea hearing and disposition. Is that correct?”

Douglas Benton stood. “That is correct.”