“You’re not afraid of jail?” he asked. “You didn’t hide out in rehab because you’re afraid of possible jail?”

    She looked at him, her eyes so large and liquid. “Wasn’t I clear? I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not afraid of going to jail. I’m afraid of him. There’s just one thing that haunts me. Why? Why would he do that?”

    As Cal remembered that, he took several swallows of his beer. But it didn’t help. He leaned his elbows on his knees, gripped the beer in two hands, looked at the floor and wept. His baby sister, his beautiful baby sister, tied with a belt, brutally raped and beaten.

    Terrified.

    “Talk about scared straight,” she had said.

           Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

    —Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Chapter 9

    SIERRA ATTENDED A couple of meetings and they helped. She wasn’t sure exactly how, but she always came away with a feeling of peace and comfort as if her decision was reaffirmed. It hadn’t always been that way. In the early days she fought it hard, got all stirred up and anxious, but eventually she looked forward to a good meeting, knowing something would be said or done that would set her right.

    She stopped at the Leadville bookstore and bought a copy of Wuthering Heights, more determined than ever to have it now.

    One day she took Molly with her to a meeting, but she wiggled so much they had to leave. “You’ll never pass that one off as a service animal,” Moody said.

    “No kidding,” Sierra agreed.

    When Sierra and Molly were alone together, the dog was calm and quiet and so sweet. One thing that troubled Sierra was that there were times, though rare, when she lifted her hand to pet Molly and Molly flinched a little. Ducked. And Sierra was sure she knew what that meant.

    When it was Sierra, Sully and Beau around her, Molly was quiet and only a little playful, trying to nudge Beau into some frolicking or leaning up against Sully to beg a pet. Molly was a cuddle bug. She now had her own blanket that Sierra spread on the bed to keep all those golden hairs off the comforter and it became hers, so that wherever the blanket was spread, whether on the porch or the backseat of the pumpkin, Molly thought of it as her place.

    Of course Molly was young and still got in trouble. She got into Sully’s garden and ravaged some vegetables, digging up to her shoulders before Sully caught her. Luckily there weren’t many fatalities and she hadn’t gotten Sully’s prized tomatoes. She ate a few more socks, kept jumping in the lake and coming out all full of mud and weeds, and barked too much when she was left alone. “She has separation anxiety,” Sierra told Sully.

    Sierra and Molly took comfort in each other. They were both in need of a friend, a safe harbor, a confidante. Sometimes Sierra told Molly secrets and Molly listened attentively, showing Sierra those sad, deep eyes, indicating she understood and sympathized.

    Sierra and Molly were in the hammock together, Molly’s head in the crook of Sierra’s arm, gently swaying, when Connie snuck up on them.

    “Are you reading to that dog?” he asked.

    Sierra and Molly both jumped in surprise and Sierra closed her book while Molly started wiggling and struggling to get out of the hammock. But Connie just started petting her behind the ears and settled her.

    “She likes it when I read to her,” Sierra said.

    “Do you, Molly?” he asked the dog. But the traitor dog just leaned into Connie’s big, loving hands and moaned in ecstasy. “What are you reading to her?”

    “Wuthering Heights,” she said. “Bet you don’t even know what that is!”

    Connie sighed. “Okay, so it wasn’t my imagination—you’re cranky. You’ve been moody all week and I’m done having fun with this. Is something wrong? You have PMS or something? You mad at me?”

    “No,” she said, a little meekly. “No to all of that, but yes, I’ve been a little on the quiet side because I’ve been thinking. About you, as a matter of fact.”

    He grinned like he’d just won something. “Is that so? Can’t get me off your mind?”

    “Not exactly,” she said, making a face. “If you can be serious, I’ll confide in you. If you’re going to screw around, I have nothing more to say.”

    He walked around to the front of the hammock and squeezed onto it, pulling all sixty-five pounds of Molly onto his lap. He leaned back, settled in and said, “Stop being so bitchy, Sierra. I didn’t do anything wrong. And you know it.”

    She sighed. She knew it, he was right. She took a breath. “If we’re going to be friends, there are a couple of things you should know. For starters, I’m not like the other girls you’ve dated.”

    He shrugged. “We might put that in the plus column.”

    “The Jones kids have always known we were different. I was born in a bus, for God’s sake. Well, not officially—officially I was born in a clinic. Being the fourth child, I guess I was in a hurry and Marissa, my mother, hated to leave my father for even a little while—he could go off the deep end if she wasn’t around. So when she was about to drop me, she went into the free clinic and...well, I didn’t grow up the way most people do.”

    “I think none of us did,” he said.

    “And also...well, I’m an alcoholic.”

    “Oh?” he asked. “I’ve never even seen you drink.”

    “I’m recovering. Just recently made a year of sobriety. That’s it,” she said. “You should know that.”

    “Why?”