it’s good to meet you. You have a lovely wife.” Myrt lifted a hand in an awkward wave.
“The hell he did?” Truck’s voice was low, growled from deep in his chest. “Motherfucker got a name?”
“Ian Sallabrook. We’re not from around here. I’m just…passing through, Mr. Truck, sir.” Her shoulders rounded as she worked to make herself small. Truck caught the reaction as quickly as Vanna did, but he evidently didn’t notice her cautioning squeeze of his waist.
“Myrt, look at me.” He’d changed his approach in an instant, voice now smooth as satin. The patience and grace that rose from his soul covered his words, and Myrt’s chin lifted until she was staring at Truck. “The things people do to us don’t define us, darlin’. We are carved from the whole of our experiences, and it’s only by those we learn how to change our future. Was your relationship with your husband one you chose, including his treatment of you?”
A tear broke free from the corner of one eye as Myrt slowly swung her head side to side.
Truck continued, “Did you learn from it and decide to change the direction of your life?”
Her nod, a jerky dip of her chin, was quicker to come in response.
“And are you determined to create what’s right for you from the opportunities you’re given?”
Myrt stared at him for the space of two deep breaths, then slowly and purposefully inclined her head.
“Then you aren’t passing through, child. You’re home.”
Vanna was overwhelmed with emotion at his oh-so tactful handling of the girl, how he'd settled her when she’d been ready to bolt. God, how I love this man.
Chapter Two
Myrtle
Soft light filled the room as Myrtle blinked awake. It took her only a moment to remember where she was and how she’d come to be living in a fairy tale, a made-for-TV movie of rescue and redemption.
Born in the type of deep backwoods in Eastern Kentucky that the rest of the world had forgotten, the seventh of fourteen children and female, she’d always known she was disposable. Her mother had been her father’s fourth wife, and when she’d passed on, Myrt had understood her time within the family was limited. When Mr. Sallabrook’s wife had died from cancer, it had taken him a single day after shoveling dirt on top of her casket to come to Myrt’s daddy and ask for a helpmeet. Clearly defined duties marked the boundaries of expectation. Cleaning, cooking, working the garden and barn animals, and—unspoken—holding tight to the rails of the footboard as he took her from behind.
In the years she’d lived with him, they’d never shared a bed. Sallabrook was shepherd for a holler flock of fundamental holdouts, their beliefs a far cry from the gentle Jesus teachings of the white-steepled church Myrt had attended as a child. Cohabitation was against his God’s laws, and without much room in the small cabin perched high in the slope of a mountainside, her sleeping pallet was most often constructed on the porch or in a barn stall. Myrt found herself happier the farther away she was from the old man, and his peculiar way of interpreting the Bible had made that easy.
It hadn’t been bad for the first couple of years. She and Mr. Sallabrook had settled into a routine easily enough, and as long as she followed his rules, everything had seemed fine. It was just sometimes the rules changed, and she’d fall afoul of them before knowing the ground had shifted underfoot.
The final year had been different. People had been moving away from their family hollers in greater numbers than ever before, and there’d been less money tithed to Sallabrook as their spiritual leader. The current bruises decorating her body all stemmed from an innocent question about an unexpected blank space in his home where a sewing machine had always stood. His first wife had been a skilled seamstress, turning out all of her mister’s suits by hand.
He’d drunk a quantity of ’shine from a parishioner one night and talked for hours about the myriad ways his first missus had cared for him. How her quilts and handmade clothing had sold for hundreds of dollars up in Louisville, her skills turned towards supporting him and his causes. Then he’d looked at Myrt, the edges of his lips curling up, the expression he wore telling her without words how lacking he found her.
That’s why she’d known better than to ask about the sewing machine. It had held a continued place of reverence in