Inglath Cooper - A Gift Of Grace

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 inglathc@aol.com.

All best,

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.

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

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?”