“What’s his name?” he asked, watching Baby eagerly latch onto the nipple.

“Ah…it’s Baby, for now. I haven’t decided on a permanent name yet,” she told him, carefully moving the cookie tin to the side of the table so that it wasn’t between them. She turned it until the front of the tin was facing Michael MacBain, foolishly thinking her sister would like to see her lover feeding their son.

He looked up from his task. “He’s a month old and you haven’t named him?” he asked, sounding appalled.

Grace wanted to close her eyes and shake her head at the thought of repeating this particular lie yet again. She did neither. She simply spoke from rote.

“A name is very important. He’s going to have to live with it the rest of his life. I’m waiting for the perfect one to come to mind.”

“Why is he in clothes that still have the price tag on them?” he asked, lifting the tag on the sleeve with his fingers.

Grace did close her eyes then and covered her face with her hands. She was so tired. After returning from the store, she’d thrown herself on the couch and managed to get only four hours of sleep before this man had broken into her house. She pushed the hair away from her face and looked at him.

“It’s the only thing he has to wear,” she explained with tired patience. “All of his clothes, and mine, are up on North Finger Ridge getting covered with ice. Our plane crashed there yesterday.” She looked at the clock on the wall. It was just past midnight. “Make that two days ago now. We just got here this afternoon. Yesterday afternoon,” she amended. “They only had two outfits at the store that fit him. I wasn’t thinking about tags when I dressed him.”

He looked from her to Baby, clearly surprised. “You survived a plane crash? Both of you?”

“Greylen MacKeage was with us. He saved our lives.”

His face immediately hardened. “MacKeage was with you?”

Grace didn’t know what to make of the sudden change in him. She recalled that Mary had said there was no love lost between her neighbors and Michael, but looking at him now, Mary’s account of the animosity had been understated. Michael MacBain looked like Grey had when he had wanted to kill the pilot all over again.

“We wouldn’t be here, either one of us, if it weren’t for him,” she said, lifting her chin and looking Michael right in the eye so that he would understand that she would defend Greylen MacKeage to him or to anyone else. “He carried Baby down the mountain and then returned for me. He saved our lives,” she repeated, just in case he hadn’t caught that little fact the first time.

He grinned at her anger. “I’m glad for you,” he said. He suddenly sobered, taking a deep breath. “Tell me more about Mary. Where is she buried? And why didn’t you bring her home to lie beside her father and mother?”

“I did bring her home,” Grace said. “Only not to be buried. Mary wants her ashes spread over TarStone Mountain. But not until Summer Solstice.”

Michael MacBain sat up straighter. “Her ashes? You’ve turned her to ash?”

She could already see the horror building in his expression. He was going to have the same reaction as the MacKeages. Only Michael had been in love with Mary. He would likely want to break something.

Grace looked at the wall where the bat was leaning.

“Yes,” she told him.

“Where is she?” he asked, craning his head to look toward the living room.

Grace stood and took Baby out of Michael’s arms, laying the child on her shoulder. “He needs to be burped,” she told him by way of explanation as she inched her way toward the broken kitchen door, appearing to soothe Baby as she looked out through the still intact storm door. “And Mary’s…well, she’

s sitting on the table beside you, in the cookie tin.”

She closed her eyes and waited for the explosion.

It didn’t come. The only sound in the room was the gentle crack of the house settling under the weight of the ice building on its roof.

Grace opened her eyes to see Michael MacBain carefully pick up the cookie tin and hold it, painful sorrow drawing his features into taut, harsh planes of despair. He tried to pry off the cover, but it wouldn

’t budge.

“I—I sealed it with glue,” she said softly.

As if he didn’t hear her, he pushed his thumb against the cover, holding pressure until it gave. He took the cover off and dipped his hand inside, lifting out some of the ash and letting it sift through his fingers back into the tin.

Grace wiped at the tears streaming down both of her cheeks. This man was looking at all his hopes and dreams for the future having been turned into ash.

Except for the child she now held in her arms and her heart.

Michael’s anguish appeared so raw, so heartbreakingly painful, that Grace very nearly blurted out her secret right then and there. She held the power to take away part of Michael’s pain by giving him a son.

Which would keep her promise to Mary.

But break her own heart for the second time this month.

Grace quietly walked out of the kitchen and into the downstairs bedroom, softly closing the door behind her. She lay down on the bed with Baby in her arms and let her tears flow freely. Michael MacBain could say his goodbyes to Mary in peace. He deserved this time.

And she could no longer witness his grief.

Chapter Nine

Aterrible racket startled Grace awake at dawn. There was a dog barking in her yard, chasing something that was protesting being chased even more loudly. A man hollered, and if she wasn’t mistaken, she could hear a goat bleating.

Grace climbed out of bed and set a pillow where she’d been to block Baby from rolling off the bed. She slipped into the pair of Mary’s shoes she had hunted up yesterday and headed out into the kitchen. She didn’t have to dress; she had slept in her clothes.

She opened her broken kitchen door just as a chicken went flapping by in a panic, a huge black dog slipping and sliding on the ice right behind it.

“Ben!” the man hollered again. “Leave that bird and get over here!”

He slammed the tailgate of his pickup truck and started toward his still open driver’s door. “In the truck, Ben,” he said again.

Grace scrambled off the porch toward him, nearly falling as soon as her feet hit the icy driveway. “Wait!

What are you doing?” she hollered after the man, who was just getting into his truck.

He got back out and faced her, his stance defensive. Grace slid to a halt in front of him, having to grab the fender to keep from falling. She took a tiny step back.

He smelled like a farm, and from the looks of his clothes, he’d been sleeping in the barn with his animals.

His weathered face was scrunched up into such a glower Grace couldn’t tell if he was red from the weather or if a cow had stepped on his cheek. The right side of his mouth bulged out as if he had a golf ball stuck in it.

“I’m returning your blasted animals,” he told her, spitting a wad of brown tobacco juice on the ground.

Grace took another step back.

He raised his blunt, calloused hand and counted off on his dirty fingers. “Three cats, one goat, and sixteen hens. Two of them died, and I’m not replacing them. They’re old hens, and they don’t produce enough eggs to keep them in feed.”

“But…but why are you bringing them here?”

“They’re Mary’s,” he told her succinctly, just before he spit another wad of tobacco juice on the ground.

“I saw the porch light on last night. She’s home now, she can have them back.”

He pointed at the detached barn at the end of the yard. “That damn goat is a menace. She’s managed to break every fence in my place. And she ate my best pair of long johns,” he finished, signaling to the huge black dog, who had finally obeyed and come running and jumped into the front seat of the truck. The man climbed in behind him and slammed the door shut.