“Exactly.”

“I’m sorry, but I had to call.”

“Good you did. Let me know if you hear anything else.”

Jon hung up without waiting for a response.

Walker replaced the handset in the mount on the wall. He lifted the glass and swallowed the whiskey in one smooth motion and then said, “Whooo!” Something loosened in his chest, the old familiar sensation he’d been longing for. He shook his head. He’d be fine. Everything was good.

He left his glass on the counter and went out to the mailbox. He brought in the mail and tossed it on the hall table. He made sure the front door was locked and then he returned to the kitchen and refilled his glass, two fingers of Maker’s Mark, the rest water. Easy does it, he thought. He shucked his jacket and placed it on the back of a kitchen chair. He opened the French doors and went out onto the patio. He settled in an upholstered chair and set his drink next to him, as he’d imagined it. He removed his tie and unbuttoned his shirt collar, feeling he could breathe for the first time all day. He loved his life. He was a lucky guy and he knew that.

Restless, he got up and carried his drink with him as he crossed the grass. He strolled the perimeter of the yard, looking out over the wood-rail fence. In the distance, he could see the fairway for the fifth hole at the country club he and Carolyn had joined shortly after moving to town. The membership fees were steep—eighty thousand bucks up front and five hundred a month in dues thereafter. They also got assessed for any capital improvements. Not that he objected. He’d taken a secret pride in their acceptance, given the fact that his own parents had been turned down when they applied years before. Walker was coming up in the world.

He turned to look back at the house, which was all charm, Cape Cod style, with white clapboard siding and a steeply pitched roof. The large central chimney was linked to fireplaces in two rooms, upstairs and down. Carolyn had insisted on an extensive remodel before the kids came along.

There was more time for construction than either of them anticipated. Carolyn had no problem getting pregnant, but she miscarried four times and lost another baby at sixteen weeks. Faced with the prohibitive expense of additional infertility treatments after five failed intrauterine inseminations, they’d elected to adopt. Carolyn took charge of the process and powered everything through—background check, fingerprinting, a lengthy application with attendant paperwork, letters of recommendation, followed by home visits that included separate and joint interviews. It took three months to be approved and they expected to wait for a year before a baby came through. Fletcher, the wonder boy, dropped in their laps six weeks later when his intended adoptive mother learned she was pregnant with twins.

When Fletcher was two, Carolyn went back into high gear. The process was simpler that time since many of the same approvals were in place. Linnie came to them by way of a local adoption attorney who’d been chatting with Carolyn at a Christmas party. The bio-mom, unmarried and eight and a half months pregnant, had come into his office the week before. The baby’s father refused to marry her, she’d lost her job, and her parents had kicked her out of the house. Would the McNallys be interested? There was no discussion at all. The birth mom moved into the McNally’s guest room for the final weeks before the birth. Carolyn and Walker were both present in the delivery room when Linnie was born.

When his second drink was gone, he went back to the kitchen and fixed himself a short one. His tension had dimmed and the knot of anxiety in his gut was all but gone. He noticed that eight months of good behavior had boosted the effects of the booze. He loved the sensation. He couldn’t help himself. Alcohol gave him access to his feelings. He experienced an extraordinary appreciation of his wife, his children, and the life he lived. Ordinarily, he held his emotions in check. He lived in a state of detachment, a stance he’d developed years before as a matter of self-preservation. He was present in his head but his sentimental side was seldom given free rein. It was in quiet moments like these that he let down his guard.

Walker still teared up on occasion watching his two little ones who resembled Carolyn closely enough to be mistaken for her “real” kids instead of the miraculous blessings they were. Where his love for his wife was constant, his devotion to his children overrode everything. Through them he’d been made vulnerable. His heart had opened to them in wholly unexpected ways. He’d been surprised by the depth and tenderness of his feelings because his soft side was in evidence nowhere else. The loss of either child would be a blow he could never recover from. His only prayer, on the rare occasions when he prayed, was that Fletcher and Linnie would be protected from evil and violence, spared illness and injury, disease and death. No one knew better than he did how fragile life was.