Page 90 of Serenity Harbor

When she spoke, her voice held no inflection other than superficial cheerfulness. “Great. We should probably head back so we can be there to meet her.”

A million thoughts went through his head as they walked back, things he wanted to say to her before she left, but he didn’t know where to start.

Finally when they reached his house, he knew he had to say something. He reached for her hand and gazed into her eyes.

“You’ve been amazing for Milo. I don’t want to miss the chance to tell you that. You saw potential where no one else did and worked tirelessly to bring it out in him. I had been seriously considering sending him to a residential school, but you’ve given me reason to believe I might be able to provide him a stable home.”

“You provide him love. That’s the most important thing.”

He looked at Milo, running his purple car around the edge of the patio table, and drew in a deep breath. He did love him.

He hadn’t known Milo existed for most of the boy’s life. When he did find out about him, Bowie was ashamed to admit that at first he had resented the hell out of him, this strange, unique little stranger who required so much energy and patience.

Katrina had led the way, shown him how to open his heart to Milo and see the potential in him instead of only problems.

How would he ever thank her?

And how would he possibly carry on without her?

He had no freaking idea.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

SOMETERRIBLYPETTYpart of her wanted to hate Debra Peters.

In her imagination, the woman looked like something out of Katrina’s childhood nightmares, complete with hooked nose, wart on her chin and beady black eyes like the witch fromHansel and Gretel.

Instead, the woman was round and soft, with kind eyes, fashionably cut gray hair and a warm smile. She greeted Milo before she even bothered to greet Bowie and Katrina, which forever endeared her to Katrina. She seemed to have a deep understanding about the boy’s unique needs and stepped in immediately, leaving Katrina feeling superfluous from the beginning.

Debra explained that until a few years ago she was a special education teacher whose emphasis was children with autism. After her husband died, she decided she wanted to see a little of the country and have the opportunity to focus on one child at a time.

The child she had cared for in her previous position was being mainstreamed into regular classes and no longer needed the kind of intensive help Debra could offer—and didn’t it work out perfectly, she said with a twinkling smile, that Bowie contacted her just at the moment she was thinking about looking for a new position, a new part of the country to experience?

She was perfect for the situation, exactly what Bowie and Milo needed, and immediately seemed to click with both of them.

Katrina was happy, she told herself. It would have been so much harder to leave the boy she cared about with someone unsuitable. It appeared that Debra would be more than adequate to take over.

She and Debra and Bowie spent a long time at the kitchen table going over Milo’s routine and the therapies she had begun to follow with him. She was trying to figure out anything she might have forgotten to mention when her phone rang.

She glanced at it and her heart jolted. The caller ID had a Colombian prefix, but she didn’t recognize it. Maybe Angel Herrera had a new number.

Finally!

The phone rang again, and she caught Bowie watching with a steady interest that somehow calmed her.

“I need to take this. Will you both excuse me?”

“Sure. Of course,” Debra Peters said. Bowie nodded at the same time, and Katrina hurried out to the terrace, where she would have the best service, managing to connect the call an instant before it would have rung for the fourth time. “Hello. This is Katrina Bailey.”

“Miss Bailey?” A heavily accented female voice said. “This is Consuela Moreno from the Colombian Family Welfare Institute. I’m sorry to tell you, we have a problem.”

* * *

FIFTEENMINUTESLATER, Katrina disconnected the call and sat unmoving, staring at the water whispering against the dock while the heavy, smothering air pressed in on her.

Serenity Harbor.

She made a rude noise in the back of her throat. What a stupid misnomer. She had found nothing like serenity here, only turmoil and pain.

---