Forever Grace by Linda Poitevin Read Free Book Online Page A

over their little haven that seemed absolute. Impenetrable. Eerily isolating. She shivered again. On the other side of the wall, the couch springs creaked beneath shifting weight. She froze, but heard nothing else.
    Her unexpected guest had only turned over. He hadn’t gotten up.
    Grace released a breath she hadn’t realized she held. Quiet settled over the cottage again.
    It was weird, having another person here.
    Another adult.
    A man.
    Hell, she didn’t remember the last time a man had stayed overnight at her place. She snorted into the dark. Whenever it was, she guaranteed he hadn’t slept on the couch. Way back then, things had still been normal in her life. Travel, work, friends around the globe who had become like family to her; she’d had everything she wanted. Been everything she wanted…
    Until a single phone call had changed everything.
    “I don’t know what to do,” Julianne’s taut, quivering voice echoed in Grace’s memory, tearing down the one corner of her world that had been her constant. Her anchor. “Barry’s so terribly harsh with the kids. They’re scared of their own shadows around him, and every time I try to intervene, it just gets worse. I don’t think I can stay with him anymore, Grace. We can’t stay.”
    “He hasn’t hurt them, has he?” Grace demanded. On the other side of the world, she was already tossing her belongings into a suitcase, planning what she would tell her Singapore client in the morning when she called to say she wouldn’t be coming in to the office. What she would tell her boss. Who she could recommend sending in her place.
    “No! No, he hasn’t raised a finger to them. I would never have stayed if he had. It’s only verbal, but it’s getting worse, and—” Julianne’s voice broke, and she took a shaky breath. “Josh’s grades have dropped, he’s sick all the time with headaches and stomach aches, and—oh, Grace, you should have heard Barry tear into him over the baseball game last night. It was brutal. It seems the older Josh gets, the more he’s after him.”
    Grace closed her eyes. Clenched her teeth. It wasn’t hard to picture her slim, quiet, owl-eyed nephew as his father’s verbal punching bag. She’d always known Barry had a temper. Hell, everyone knew Barry had a temper…
    But she hadn’t known about this.
    Hadn’t so much as suspected.
    “I found him sitting in the car in the garage this morning when I got up,” Julianne continued, her words almost inaudible. “With the keys in the ignition and the garage door closed. Just sitting there, staring out the windshield.”
    “Barry?”
    “Josh.”
    Bile rose in Grace’s chest, burning her throat. She felt behind her for the bed and sat down on its edge. “Are you serious? He’s only ten years old! How does he even know…?”
    “Television. Internet. He knows, Grace, and I may not find him next time.”
    Air shuddered into Grace’s lungs. She strove for calm. Tried to ignore the vibration trembling through her. She could only imagine how much worse Julianne felt. “All right. First things first. You need a place to stay. You have the key to my townhouse—”
    “Really?” Julianne’s voice wobbled. “You’d let us stay with you?”
    “Of course. That shouldn’t even be a question. I’ll call Sarah—she’s the neighbor across the street—and let her know you’ll be staying there. Let yourself in and make yourselves at home. If you don’t know where something is, feel free to toss the place until you find it.” Grace carried the cell phone into the hotel bathroom with her and pulled back the shower curtain on the tub. “I’ll head to the airport as soon as I’m dressed. I’ll catch the first flight out.”
    “God, no. Don’t do that. You have a client—a job—”
    “I have a sister,” Grace interrupted, “who is far more important.”
    Julianne sniffled some more at her end.
    “There’s one more thing, Jules. My friend Lucien Tremaine’s phone number is