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soul. As much as Silas had been a part of Solomon’s.
    He owed her an apology—no, more than that. His repentance, no matter how honest, could not alleviate her loss or absolve his guilt.
    “Forgive me,” he whispered at the ceiling, which seemed to ripple when viewed through the wetness in his eyes. “Jordan.” Her name felt strangely intimate upon his tongue. The memory of her lithe, wriggling body was so deeply impressed upon his senses that he responded sexually to it. He couldn’t think of her as Miss Bliss. That formality had been tossed aside the moment he’d glimpsed into her heart and recognized her selfless spirit.
    He experienced a powerful yearning to see her again, to
know
her, in the Biblical sense. “Jordan,” he said again, hearing desire in his raspy whisper.
    With sleep now hopeless, he swung his feet to the floor, dragged out the chair by his cot, and sat at the crude, metal desk.
    “Wha’s going on?” muttered Harley, who raised his head off the cot by the wall.
    “Nothing. Go back to sleep.” Solomon switched on the desk lamp. A search through the drawers turned up two tattered pieces of paper and a military-issue, ballpoint pen.
    With the point of a pen centered in the lamp’s light, he began to write from his heart, in verse, a talent few people knew he possessed.
    “
To My Son,” he titled the poem.
    By the time he’d finished, the light of the lamp was no longer needed. The sky had lightened to a purple-blue that was the exact color of Jordan Bliss’s eyes. The lines on the original poem had been scratched through and rewritten. Once the result was neatly transcribed to the second page, he felt a kinship with Jordan that overrode reason. He wanted to comfort her in person.
    Hearing Harley stir, Solomon turned the light off, put the pen away, and slipped the paper into the drawer to be mailed later.
    He’d absolved himself of his crime. But who could say whether the poem would bring solace or more despair?

Mantachie, Mississippi
    “I gotta pee,” said a small voice in the back of Ellie’s 1983 Chevy Impala.
    If Ellie Stuart weren’t just furious that her husband had forgotten that he had three sons, plus a nephew, all of whom were too hungry at eleven o’clock at night to sleep, she might have laughed at Silas’s predictable statement. The six-year-old had the bladder of a mouse.
    “We’re here, sweetie,” she comforted, even as she signaled a left turn. “You can use the potty inside.”
    They bounced into an unpaved parking lot, rutted with potholes and already crammed with cars. Spying Carl’s truck up close to the entrance, Ellie’s lips thinned. She parked her Impala between Carl’s truck and a telephone pole, ordered the boys to clamber out of one side and to hold hands while she pulled the sleeping baby from his car seat.
    “Come on,” she urged the small troop, tugging them in a straggling line behind her.
    The bar was dark and smoky and pounding with sultry music. Heads turned to speculate as Ellie shooed the boys into the bathroom. “Christopher,” she told the oldest, “make sure all of you wash your hands with soap. I’ll be over there”—she pointed toward the stage, where a scantily clad dancer was circling the center pole—“having words with your father.”
    “Yes, Mama.” Christopher took his responsibilities seriously.
    Which was more than could be said of Carl, who was so hypnotized by the dancer’s undulations that he failed to notice her approach. “Carl,” she said sharply. He swiveled with a gasp. “The boys are too hungry to sleep. I’ve come for some money to feed them.”
    His astonishment shifted abruptly into apathy. “I ain’t got no money,” he protested, hiding the dollar bill in his left hand.
    He was going to tip the dancer with it, Ellie realized, her fury mounting.
    “Carl Louis Stuart,” she hissed, clutching baby Colton fiercely to her bosom, “how can you turn your back on your own children?” she demanded,