Page 64 of Serenity Harbor

She reread the letter, tweaked a few words, took a deep breath and hit Send. The moment she did, her stomach felt hollow and her shoulders seemed to cramp with tension.

She really hoped she was doing the right thing. She had already been approved for the adoption. All these requirements for additional paperwork made no sense.

Katrina pressed a hand to her stomach, unable to avoid the grim premonition that the adoption was doomed.

She had just spoken with Gabi the night before via Skype and the girl had tried to reach out and touch the computer screen. “Come home,” Gabi had ordered in Spanish in her bossiest voice.

“Next week,” she had promised her daughter. She had hoped to have news for the nuns at the orphanage, but now she didn’t know what to tell anyone.

Needing a little comfort, she pulled up the photo album on her tablet to the familiar pictures that helped keep her focused. She saw a picture of Gabi splashing in the little wading pool at the orphanage in the purple flowered swimsuit Katrina had bought her. Another with her features fierce with concentration as she threw a ball toward a few other children on the bleak concrete play yard. A third with her hair flying back in the air and her feet straight out as she tried to figure out how to pump her legs on the swings.

Would the girl ever be her daughter legally? And if she wouldn’t, how could Katrina leave everything she loved, her family and her town and her career, to live in another country so she could be with her?

She didn’t realize she was crying until she felt a small hand on her leg. “Stop,” Milo ordered, in the same bossy tone Gabi had used the night before.

“Stop?” she asked with a sniffle.

“Stop. Sad.”

The two words were perfectly clear, the most articulate she had ever heard him. He even did the hard consonants at the end of the words. He wanted her to stop being sad. His meaning was unmistakable.

Katrina was stunned on several levels. She couldn’t forget that Milo had autism, which meant he wasn’t always in tune with his own emotions or with other people’s. The fact that he identified her sadness and expressed his displeasure in it was rather remarkable.

She managed a watery smile through her tears. “This is my daughter. Gabi.”

“Ga,” he tried.

“That’s good. Gabi. I miss her and I’m...afraid I won’t be able to bring her back here to live with me.”

He patted Katrina’s knee. “Stop. Sad.”

Oh. He was trying to comfort her. Yet another breakthrough. She hugged him, something he usually didn’t like. This time he let her hug him for about two seconds longer than usual before wriggling away and picking up his car again.

Her heart ached to know she would be leaving him in only a few days. What a cruel choice, that she had to leave one child she cared about in order to help another.

“Okay, that’s enough of that.” Katrina wiped her tears, slapped her hands on her thighs and stood up a moment later. “Let’s go find us some dogs.”

She decided on impulse to walk the short distance along the lake trail to Redemption Bay and McKenzie’s house, where the Helping Hands were meeting that day. As long as the rain held off, a little exercise might benefit both of them.

He needed to work out a little energy, and she needed to clear her head. Fresh air was exactly what she needed, especially when it was Haven Point air—clean and cool and sweet with the scent of summer blooms and pine pitch and the lake.

* * *

“THATKIDSUREloves the water, doesn’t he?”

A half hour later, Katrina sat on McKenzie’s large terrace overlooking the lake, watching diligently as Milo stood at the water’s edge. He had one hand on Hondo, McKenzie and Ben’s brawny German shepherd, while he threw rocks into the water with the other.

“He really does,” she answered McKenzie. “He would be happy all day if I let him stand there and throw rocks in.”

“Ben used to love skipping rocks,” Ben’s mother, Lydia, said with a nostalgic smile.

“Used to?He still does,” McKenzie said. “His record is eight skips.”

“All my kids loved to throw rocks,” Charlene remembered. “It’s a wonder I ever had any left in my landscaping. If you’re done with the black paint, would you hand it down?”

The Haven Point Helping Hands had gathered to finish a couple of last-minute craft projects for a booth they were sponsoring the next day at Lake Haven Days, the town’s annual summer festival.

Katrina handed the small bottle of paint in question to her mother, then continued sticking labels on the small bars of scented soap some of the Helping Hands had made for the booth.

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