Chapter 1

"Yes, Mr. Henderson, I'll take it. Thank you."

I hung up the phone, the offer from the town councilman settling like a solid weight in my chest. Manager of the new community co-op garage. The job I'd turned down, the future I'd given up, was mine again.

Just ten days ago, I' d packed my life and my seven-year-old son, Caleb, into our beat-up Ford, leaving behind the only home we' d ever known. I did it for my husband, Captain Ethan Scott.

Or, as Caleb had been instructed to call him, "Uncle Ethan."

Eight years. We'd been secretly married for eight years. I' d stayed behind in our Rust Belt town, running his family's auto shop, caring for his aging parents while he built a career he could be proud of, a life far away from the grease and grit he'd grown to despise.

After his parents passed, he finally, reluctantly, let us come. But there were conditions. We were to be distant relatives, staying temporarily. I was Molly Johns, a poor cousin. Caleb was my son. And Ethan was just his kind "uncle," letting us stay.

He was ashamed of us. Ashamed of the blue-collar dust we carried on our shoes.

The apartment he' d gotten us was on the edge of the base housing, a sterile, white-walled box that smelled of fresh paint and nothing else. It wasn' t a home.

I tried to make it one. I bought cheap containers and soil, planting a small garden on the tiny concrete patio. Tomatoes, herbs, a few marigolds to keep the bugs away. It was a small piece of our old life, a way to put fresh food on the table without stretching our non-existent budget.

Ethan came home that evening in his crisp uniform, his face tightening the moment he saw the pots.

"What the hell is this, Molly?"

His voice was low, but sharp with fury.

"I was just trying to make it feel a little more like home. And it'll save money on groceries."

"It makes us look like poor hicks from the sticks," he hissed, his eyes darting around as if the neighbors were all watching, judging him. "This isn't our town. People here have standards."

He mentioned her then, for the first time. Gabrielle Chadwick.

"Do you think Gabrielle Chadwick has buckets of dirt on her patio? She's a professional. She has class."

He made me throw them out. All of them. I dumped the rich soil and the tender green shoots into the communal dumpster, the roots tearing as I pulled them from their pots. It felt like he was tearing something out of me, too.

That was the first blow.

The second came from the playground. The other kids, the shiny, well-dressed children of officers, learned quickly. Caleb wasn' t family. He was a charity case.

He came inside one afternoon, his face streaked with dirt and tears, his small shoulders slumped.

"They said I don't have a real dad. They said we're just living off Uncle Ethan."

He looked up at me, his blue eyes, so much like Ethan' s, swimming with a question that shattered my heart.

"Mommy, why can't we be a real family? Why does he pretend he's not my dad?"

I pulled him into my arms, holding him tight as he sobbed. The pain was sharp and absolute. It wasn't just my pride anymore. It was my son.

That was the moment I decided. We were leaving. We would go back to a place where we belonged, where we weren't a dirty secret.

I had ten days. Ten days until my new job started. Ten days to get us home.