to sit out on the porch for breakfast. Why don’t you eat your breakfast before it gets cold?”
Fine screen wire covered three sides of the wide porch, letting the breezes flow through but keeping the mosquitoes out. When Noah was a boy, he’d begged his mama and daddy to let him sleep out there, but they never did.
She pushed her plate back. “I don’t want eggs. I want chocolate doughnuts and milk.”
The doctors had said she’d probably be gone by Christmas, so Noah figured it didn’t matter what she ate. Let me eat what I want and die when I’m supposed to—that’s what she always said, even now. He took the plate back to the kitchen and brought out a box of chocolate doughnuts from the pantry. He poured a tall glass of milk, put both on a tray, and carried it out to the porch.
“Look at that sunrise.” Miss Janie smiled. “Aunt Ruthie and I watched a sunrise like that the morning she brought me here to live. Where is Aunt Ruthie? Has she gone to the store?”
“No. She died the day I was born,” Noah gently reminded her. “Remember when you told me that there are only so many souls in heaven and they have to be reused, so I got Aunt Ruthie’s when she died? And it would help me to grow up independent and able to make up my own mind about things?”
Miss Janie giggled like a schoolgirl. “Aunt Ruthie could make the devil sit on the front row in church and get saved, sanctified, and even dehorned. She was a tough old bird.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I was kind of afraid of her when I was a little girl, but when I came to live here, I learned really quick to love her. I never told her that. I should have.”
“Was she mean?” Noah asked.
“No,” Miss Janie replied. “And she wasn’t exactly strict—she was set in her ways. Did I tell you that she got me a job at the school? She took care of the cafeteria, and when I graduated, she talked the superintendent into giving me a job working with her. The next year the secretary job came open, and I applied and went to work for the high school principal. I saw dozens of principals come and go before I retired.”
“You did tell me that.” Noah was glad to hear her talking about something other than her girls.
“When does school start back this year?” Miss Janie asked. “I have to go two weeks early to get things set up for the kids.”
“Not for a while yet.” Noah watched her eat several doughnuts and drink the whole glass of milk.
“Is Luther coming this summer?” she asked. “I always look forward to his visits.”
“Grandpa died a while back,” Noah reminded her.
“Luther died?” Miss Janie’s eyes misted over. “So now I’m all alone in the world? When is the funeral?”
“You’re not alone. I’m here with you. I moved in last June, and we set up an office for my investigative work in one of the upstairs bedrooms.” Noah laid his hand on hers.
She dried her eyes and blinked several times. “Of course you did. Did you find my girls?”
“I’m still searching for them,” he answered.
Teresa packed everything she owned in three boxes and the now-ragged suitcase that Miss Janie had given her when she graduated from high school. Since she hadn’t given a thirty-day notice, she lost the deposit on her garage apartment, and she’d used nearly all of her meager savings to put a new alternator in the truck so it would get her from Hope, Arkansas, to Birthright. She had thought she would use the money to replace at least two of the bald tires on the vehicle, but tires weren’t worth much if the damn truck wouldn’t even run. Maybe the bald tires and prayers together would get her there.
The sun peeked over the eastern horizon by the time she tossed the boxes and the suitcase into the back of the truck. She locked the door to her tiny apartment and turned the key over to the manager of the place. Noah said that she’d have a place to live until Christmas, and she sure hoped he stuck to that.
Her cell phone service died at noon that Saturday because she used a pay-as-you-go plan and hadn’t bought a refill card. She was still fifty miles from her destination, so she really was traveling on a prayer from that