Read Here in My Heart: A Novella (Echoes of the Heart) for Free Online

their five-minute phone conversation, he’d let himself get talked into meeting with Horace Baxter first and dealing with the business end of losing his grandmother before he visited Vi at the Harmony Grove Hospice Center. Because that was the way Vivian wanted it.
    The opinionated, obstinate force of nature who’d raised him had hidden the truth about how ill she’d become until there were only months, possibly just weeks, left. And she was still calling the shots. Brad checked his watch and winced.
    The door from the lobby swung open while he was zipping up his duffel. In walked the second most befuddling female relationship of his life. Dru headed toward him.
    “Thank you,” she said, eyes steady, her smile almost convincing. It might have been a nice moment, if she hadn’t needed the better part of an hour to work up the nerve to face him again. “If you hadn’t been here tonight, I don’t want to think about how disappointed the kids and their families would have been.”
    “If I hadn’t been driving home, Travis would have found you someone else.” The older Dixon kids were still tight. They’d stuck together more than most real families Brad knew. “Thanks to the funding you’ve secured from local businesses, there are others on the Chandlerville force trained to do this. Your brother wouldn’t have let you down.”
    The outer edges of her lips curved higher. It was a parody of how beautiful she looked when she was genuinely happy. The kind of happy he used to be able to make her feel.
    “You’re very good at the demonstrations,” she admitted. “You put my students through their paces. You were great with Sally and with the younger kids. You handled the chaos like a pro.”
    He nodded. “We made a good team tonight.”
    He realized she couldn’t place him yet, the way he was now. Not when all she could remember was him and Oliver on one drinking binge after another their last year in town, and then Brad setting into motion the events that had driven her brother away. And she was entitled to know more about whatever she needed to: his association with radKIDS; the mess with Oliver and Selena; anything else it took for them to become a united front for Vivian.
    “Can I give you a ride to the house?” he asked, instead of diving headfirst into a discussion that would have to wait.
    She shook her head.
    “My . . .” She cleared her throat and shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. “My car’s right outside. The Y staff said they’d clean up the collateral damage from the party. I . . . I’m ready to go.”
    Her words trembled just enough for him to notice. She sounded more like the young girl he’d known than the strong woman she’d become. He accepted that as hard as it was going to be for him to face losing Vivian, watching Dru hurt this way might be his undoing.
    “I’ll meet you there,” he said.
    Once he stopped needing to hold her. Once he was sure he could handle what was coming, the way she and Vi needed him to. He’d been offered a second chance to do the right thing for both women, regardless of what he wanted. He wasn’t going to blow it this time.
    Weeks before the night Dru had kissed him, Oliver had warned Brad to stay away from his little sister. Brad and Dru had been spending more time alone—just as friends, Brad had insisted to her brother, talking and telling jokes, same as always, and sharing how worried they were about the effect Oliver and Selena’s problems were having on Oliver. But Oliver had guessed there was more—especially after catching Brad and Dru together at the spring dance. He’d said Brad was trouble, the kind his little sister didn’t need.
    And he’d been right, about everything. When Brad and Oliver had fought, the night Oliver had blown things with his foster parents for the last time, it had been over Dru as much as Selena. Brad had learned a lot since then about how long a man could pay for being a careless teen.
    He