The Healer by Sharon Sala Read Free Book Online Page A

was lifting a large pot from the stove.
    “Here, let me help,” he said, and took the pot and set it on the table. “If this tastes as good as it smells, I’m in heaven.”
    Luce was surprised at the spurt of pleasure his words gave her. It had been a long time since someone had praised her in any way without trying to get in her pants. Then she frowned. What made her think this man was any different? She’d brought him into her home without knowing a thing about him. Except…She glanced at Hobo, who was lying by the fireplace, and remembered what he’d done. A man like him—a man who held the promise of life in his hands—surely wouldn’t be a man who also caused harm. It had to be okay.
    “It’s just vegetable soup,” she said, and moved back to the oven to pull out a pan of cornbread.
    Jonah’s eyes widened. “Did you make all this yourself?”
    Luce nodded. “Sit. I’ll get the butter and honey.”
    Jonah sat, then closed his eyes momentarily, letting the warmth and the scents of her home and food envelop him. She’d asked him if he was an angel, but from where he was sitting, she was the one with wings. This place and this food were the closest thing to heaven that he’d known in years.
    When he opened his eyes, Luce was filling his bowl with soup. His hands were shaking as he reached for a hot yellow square of the cornbread, and when he took the first bite of the warm bread and butter, he shuddered.
    Luce frowned. “Are you okay?” Then she rolled her eyes, a bit embarrassed. “Sorry, that was a stupid question to ask a man who makes miracles.”
    Jonah swallowed, then looked at her from across the table.
    “It’s just…it’s been a long time since…” Surprised that he was stuttering, he took a breath to steady his thoughts. “I haven’t been inside a home in a very long time.”
    Luce couldn’t help but wonder what had put him on the road alone, as she filled her own bowl. Her curiosity continued as she buttered her cornbread, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask.
    Hobo glanced up from his place near the fire just long enough to look at the table, then went back to the bone he was chewing. Every now and then he licked at the place on his leg where it had been caught in the trap, even though it was unnecessary. There was no wound. No pain. Just the memory of it, and the man who’d made it go away. For the dog, it was enough.
    They ate in relative silence until the first pangs of hunger had been assuaged. Luce was the first to start talking.
    “Where are you from?”
    An old pain twisted a knot in his belly as he remembered the hunting camp in which he’d grown up.
    “Alaska.”
    Luce’s eyes widened. “Really? Is it true that they get six months of darkness and six months of light?”
    Jonah smiled. “Pretty much.”
    “Do you still have family back there?”
    Immediately, Jonah’s thoughts went to Adam, and what he’d looked like the last time he’d seen him—lying dead in their kitchen in his own blood. “My father…he was actually my adopted father…was a doctor. A medical doctor. But he’s…dead now.”
    Luce heard the word adopted and keyed in on that.
    “What about your natural parents?”
    “I have no idea,” Jonah said. He didn’t bother to tell her how he’d been told that, for a time, he’d been suckled by a wolf. To stop the questions before they got too personal, he turned the tables. “What about you? How do you come to be here and on your own?”
    “I’m not alone. Thanks to you, I still have my Hobo.”
    Jonah sensed she was dodging the truth and, not for the first time, wondered if she was on the run.
    “Where did you grow up?” he asked.
    Luce’s face lit up. “I grew up in a barrio in L.A. Papa laid tile. Mi madre cleaned houses for rich people. I was the youngest of four children. Our life was simple, but it was wonderful.”
    Jonah felt her sorrow long before she’d finished her tale.
    “Every summer after school was out, we would