Authors: Carolyne Aarsen
All in One Place
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2007 by Carolyne Aarsen
All rights reserved.
Faith Words
Hachette Book Group
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New York, NY 10017
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Scripture quotations are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®.
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights
reserved.
First eBook Edition: September 2009
The Faith Words name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group.
ISBN: 978-0-446-56478-6
For my Mom.
Thanks for the home you made for us,
for the love you gave us, and for pointing us to Christ.
Contents
A Preview of
The Only Best Place
I want to thank my editor Anne Goldsmith and my agent Karen Solem, who both said I should tell Terra's story.
Thanks to Mark Mynhier and Sheriff Jim Cashell for their help with the police stuff. And thanks to Fern Aarsen for her help
with the waitressing info. Diane, thanks for telling me what you liked and, probably more important, what you didn't like
about the story.
Thanks to Heidi Nobles for keeping me on track, and thanks to all the good folks at Faith Words for their help in putting
this story out into the world.
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
—
PSALM
139:7
B
y the time I left Idaho, I'd stopped looking over my shoulder. When I crossed the Continental Divide, my heart stopped jumping
every time I heard a diesel pickup snarling up the highway behind me.
I was no detective, but near as I could tell, Eric didn't know where I was.
Four days ago, I'd waited until I knew without a doubt that he was at work, slipped out of the condo we shared, swiped his
debit card, withdrew the maximum amount I could, rode the city bus as far as it would take me, and started hitchhiking. Phase
one of my master plan could be summed up in three words:
Get outta town.
Okay, four words if you want to be precise about it.
Now, as I stood on the crest of a hill overlooking a large, open valley, I was on the cusp of phase two. Again, three words:
Connect with Leslie.
I let the backpack slip off my shoulders onto the brown grass of the ditch and sank down beside it in an effort to rest my
aching feet and still my fluttering nerves. I was leery of the reception I would get from my sister. Since August, nine months
ago, I'd tapped out two long, rambling e-mails telling her what was happening. But each time I read the mess of my life laid
out in black and white on a backlit screen, guilt and shame kept me from hitting the Send key.
The click of grasshoppers laid a gentle counterpoint to the sigh that I sucked deep into my chest. I slowly released my breath,
searching for calm, reaching deep into a quiet place as my yoga instructor had taught me to do.
I pulled another breath in, tapping my fingers restlessly on my thigh, waiting.
Find the quiet place. Anytime now.
I reached deep, tried to picture myself mentally going deeper, deeper.
C'mon. C'mon.
The screech of a bird distracted me. Above, in the endless, cloudless sky, a hawk circled lazily, tucked its wings in, then
swooped down across the field. With a few heavy beats of its wings, it lifted off again, a mouse hanging from its talons.
So much for inner peace. I guess there was a reason I dropped out of yoga class. That and the fact that my friend Amy and
I kept chuckling over the intensity of the instructor as she droned on about
kleshas
and finding the state of non-ego.
The clothes were fun, though.
I dug into my backpack and pulled out my “visiting boots,” remembering too well how I got them. Eric's remorse over yet another
fight. He had come along, urging me to pick out whatever I wanted. I had thought spending over a thousand dollars would fix
what was wrong between us, and, for a few weeks, it had.
I sighed as I stroked the leather. Sad that one of the best things that had come out of my relationship with Eric was a pair
of Christian Louboutin boots with their signature red-leather soles. For now, the boots would give me that all important self-esteem
edge I desperately needed to face Leslie.
As I toed off my worn Skechers and slipped on the boots, I did some reconnoitering before my final leg of the journey.
Beyond the bend and below me, the town of Harland waited, secure in the bowl of mountains surrounding the town. For the past
three days, I'd been hitching rides from Seattle, headed toward this place, the place my sister now called home. For the past
two hours those mountains—so high that they still had snow capping their peaks even though it was late May—had drawn me on,
never getting closer.
I lifted my hair off the back of my neck. Surely it was too warm for May? I didn't expect Montana, home of mountains and rivers,
to be this warm in spring.
My head felt like someone had been drizzling hot oil on it, basting the second thoughts scurrying through my brain.
I should have at least phoned. Would Leslie even want to see me after such a long silence? I knew Dan wouldn't be thrilled
to see me come striding to his door, designer boots or not. Dan, who in his better moments laughed at my lame jokes, and in
his worse ones fretted like a father with a teenage daughter about the negative influence he thought I exerted on my little
sister. His wife.
The few times I checked my e-mail, I read about my little nephew Nicholas's stay in ICU and subsequent fight for his life.
I knew I had messed up royally as an aunt and a sister. Leslie had sent a dozen e-mails pleading with me to connect. To call.
And I'd wanted to more than anything in the world. But at the time, I was holding on to my life with my fingertips and had
no strength for anyone else.
You had your own problems. You didn't have time.
But I should have been there for my only sister. I could have tried harder.
The second thoughts were overrun by third thoughts, the mental traffic jam bruising my ego.
I pulled a hairbrush out of my knapsack in preparation for the last part of my trip. Bad enough I was showing up unannounced.
I didn't need to look like a hobo. As I worked the brush through the snarl of damp curls, I once again promised myself I was
going to get my hair cut. I pulled long auburn strands of hair out of the brush and let them float away on the faintest of
breezes, to be returned back to the land. After doing my part for recycling, the brush went back into my purse, tucked into
my backpack.
I brushed the grass off my artfully faded blue jeans. Still clean.
Zipping up my knapsack, I let out one more sigh before I heard the sound of a car coming up over the hill. Maybe a ride.
I twisted to see better, and my heart plummeted all the way down to the stiletto heels of my designer boots as the car topped
the hill.
A sheriff's car, bristling with antennas, a no-nonsense light bar across the top.
Did Eric sic the cops on me?
I teetered a bit, wishing I were a praying person. Because if I believed that God cared even one iota about my personal well-being,
I'd be reciting the Lord's Prayer, Hail Mary—anything to get His ear right now.
In spite of my sudden spate of nerves, my eyes were drawn to two young girls huddled in the backseat of the cruiser. They
didn't look older than seven or eight. What could they have possibly done to warrant the heavy artillery of a police car and
two officers?
The passenger door of the car opened, and my attention shifted to the man now approaching me. He wore the obligatory Stetson
and tan uniform of state sheriffs. And of course a mass of hardware hanging around his waist, including a pistol.
I swallowed again.
There's no way Eric could know where you are,
I reminded myself as I straightened.
They can't arrest you. You did nothing wrong.
Besides,
I thought, glancing again at the two frightened girls in the backseat,
there's no room for you in the car.
“Good morning,” the cop said as his partner got out of the car as well, also wearing the obligatory reflector sunglasses.
“Nice day, isn't it?”
Maybe it was the sunglasses. Maybe it was the setting—two men, one woman, empty countryside. I put my guard up quicker than
you can say, “Book 'em, Dano.”
“Define
nice.
” Not a great deflection, and not a good idea, but if I was in trouble, nothing I said would make a difference anyway. If
I wasn't, I had just bought myself some time while I further assessed the situation with my razor intellect.
“Would you be willing to answer a few questions?” He had a deep, rough voice that would have reinforced my prickly tendencies,
but the beginning of a dimple at the corner of his mouth made me relax. A little.
“If I answer I won't need to enter a witness protection program, will I?”
The dimple deepened a little, and I felt an answering smile.
I think I could like this guy, in spite of the gun and the shades.
He was about to say something more when his partner strode over, his uniform and upright bearing conveying “Serve and protect.”
“Were you anywhere near a house located five miles down Clarkson Road in the past twenty-four hours?” The other sheriff's
voice was quiet, polite, but his tone brooked no more nonsense from me.
“No.”
“You know nothing about a party?”
“I'm sorry, I don't.” I thought the apology was a nice cooperative touch.
“Have you seen any suspicious activity on this road? Any vehicles? People?”
“Any information you can give us would be helpful,” the first officer added.
As my eyes flitted to the little girls with their pajamas and unkempt hair, my mind flashed back to another scene, also featuring
two young girls, a hysterical mother, and a social worker who had come to ask a few questions. The social worker had left
without Leslie and me, and I learned the first of many varied life skills that day.
“I'm not from around here,” I said. “I wouldn't know suspicious from ordinary.”
“What's your business here?” the shorter officer asked.
Self-preservation urged me to keep things obscure. “Just visiting.”
“Visiting who?”
I wanted to tell him to mind his own business, my usual MO with nosy men, but the badge, the gun, the car, and all the authority
invested in him by the state of Montana gave him the right to ask. “My sister. Leslie Froese—sorry—VandeKeere.”
The dimple cop frowned. “You don't look like her.”
Okay, maybe Leslie, being a mother and all, wasn't the type to be wearing high-heeled boots, a halter top, and a diamond in
her nose, but I knew my whole image was way tamed down from what my friends in Seattle were sporting.
“How do you know her?”
“Leslie works in the emergency department of the hospital,” he said quietly. “My job takes me there from time to time. I'm
Lieutenant Jack DeWindt. This is Deputy Sheriff Diener.”
I wasn't up on my Emily Post and wasn't sure if this was the point where we shook hands, so I simply offered a decisive nod.
I hoped I wouldn't see either of them again anytime soon. I had come to Harland to lay low at Leslie's while the dust settled
back in Seattle. Getting to know cops was not on the list.
“So, you've got nothing for us?” Sheriff Diener asked again.
“Nope.” I gave him a quick smile and threw in a “hey, whatever” toss of my hair just to dot the i's and cross the t's.
Sheriff Diener looked convinced and strode back to the car, but Jack lingered for a moment. “I'll see you around,” he said
quietly, biting back a smile.