Once in Every Life

Emotion tightened Tess's throat as she read Savannah's letter. Impulsively she smoothed a stray lock of hair from Savannah's eyes. "That's beautiful, sweetheart."

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Katie chewed nervously on her fingernail. "How 'bout if I just sign my name to Vannah's letter?"

Tess hunkered down beside Katie, looping an arm around the child's trembling shoulders. "Come on. Let's give it a try. What would you like to say?"

Katie swallowed hard. "Just ..." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Just that I love him."

"Perfect." Tess smiled at her approvingly. "Now, let's get started."

&nb

sp; Thirty minutes later, the fire had dwindled to a hazy pile of red and black embers, and Katie's scrawled sentence was finally complete. Her letters were backward and cata-wampus, but the message was crystal-clear. / love you, Daddy.

Tess carefully folded the papers into quarters and set them on the wooden mantel, then she brought the girls back into a circle on the blanket. They joined hands and bowed their heads, and together they prayed.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Tess stared at the small brick building. The barred windows glinted in the noontime sun. She suppressed a shiver of horror and tilted her chin upward, plastering a false smile on her face.

Beside her, Charlie and Ed waited patiently. She cleared her throat. "Let's go." Lifting her skirts, she made her slow, thoughtful way up the jailhouse steps. The men walked a respectful distance behind her. With each step, she felt a desperate tightening in her chest. Remember the dream. Remember . . . She took a deep, shaky breath and forced herself to remember what she'd decided. Last night she'd lain awake in her lonely bed, thinking of the good times with Jack, the loving, laughing times. Each memory had driven like a shard of glass through her heart.

She'd closed her eyes, imagining that he was beside her. The warmth of his touch, the sound of his breathing, the scent of his hair, had all been with her, captured in the tiny, reflective place in her mind where cherished memories remained forever.

It was then, in the soft haze of remembrance, that she'd finally slept.

The dream had come with all the color and sounds and sights of reality. She and Jack were sitting in an elegant, wainscoted room. Sunlight streamed through a huge, oc-

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tagonal window, wreathing a table set with sterling and china and fine crystal. Children were clustered around the table, but they were no longer children. Savannah was a beautiful young lady with a dark-haired man beside her. On her other side was a pink-cheeked baby in a scrolled high chair. Katie, too, was grown-up and smiling, and busy laughing with a heartbreakingly handsome young man who Tess knew instinctively was Caleb. Two younger men sat across from Caleb, their heads bowed together in quiet conversation.

With the dream had come a pervasive sense of peace. Tess didn't believe it was just a figment of her desperate mind; she knew it was a vision. A picture of a future that was destined to be. A future she'd come back one hundred years to find.

And Jack was screwing it up.

She'd be damned if she'd let him.

Tess yanked her skirts up and hurried up the steps. She'd had to die to find love, and now that she'd found it, nothing would take it from her. Nothing.

Not even a stubborn, pigheaded man who didn't know when to say "maybe."

She reached for the doorknob and wrenched the huge oaken door open. It slammed into the brick wall and cracked hard.

A man looked up from his paper-piled desk in the center of a small, shadowy room.

"Hello," Tess said. "I'm Lissa Rafferty, and I'm here to see my husband, Jackson."

The man scrambled to his feet and pulled a clanking set of keys from his pocket. "This way, ma'am." He glanced at Ed and Charlie. "One visitor at a time."

Ed touched Tess's arm. "Good luck, Miz Rafferty."

"Thanks, Ed." Turning away from the men, she followed the jailer down a narrow hallway.

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